“Age is a social construct; you can accept it or reject it”

The Weekender

“Age is a social construct; you can accept it or reject it”

In this edition of The Weekender: Girls mania, losing friends on a GLP-1, and a trip to Elizabeth Holmes’s house

Substack

Oct 17, 2026

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Painting by

Janet Asante Sullivan

This week, we’re turning 74, rebooting a favorite show, and diving into Colleen Hoover’s writing process.

GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS

“I think I may be the voice of my generation”

Perhaps by now you’ve heard the news, if not felt some sort of magnetic force field open in Brooklyn: a

Girls

reboot is officially on the horizon, nearly a decade after the show’s final episode aired. “We are not, strictly speaking, girls anymore,” Lena Dunham wrote in her announcement on

Substack

. “And I couldn’t stop thinking about where our Girls would be, and how they’d meet this milestone.” Substackers, including Dunham herself, were quick to weigh in. In the Serratore Report, best friends Em and Angela debate the concept of reboots altogether.

For and Against the

Girls

Reboot: The Debate of Our Times

—

The Serratore Report

in

The Serratore Report

Emalie: The

Girls

Reboot Is Going to Ruin Its Legacy!

Let me start here: I love

Girls

and think it’s a fantastic show! I watched each episode live as they aired, and I’ve done several rewatches. I’m also going to say two things so fast that I’m not going to elaborate on.

Nostalgia is fun and comfy-cozy, and we need it in these dark times. But all these reboots are ruining TV and film and keeping us from getting anything fun and original.

Girls

is an Obama-era show more or less and, just like

Fight Club,

didn’t stand up in a post-recession world when it no longer made sense to complain about owning a condo and having lots of IKEA furniture. The whole tone won’t really land anymore.

When I turned 30, I started to suddenly get interested and excited by birds. “Oh look, a hawk!” I’d say while I was out at the park, or “Wow, a cardinal!” I realized I was suddenly able to spot unusual birds because I was suddenly not thinking about myself as much. This is part of growth, and while

Girls

was relevant in its time for capturing the zeitgeist around archetypal millennial assholes, it endures as great art because it’s also a show about youth evolving and fading and growth!

One of my favorite episodes of comfort television is when Tally Schifrin, a.k.a. Jenny Slate, Hannah’s writing nemesis, returns, and rather than snipe at each other, the girls bond and have a beautiful day together and enter into a new friendship. The episode is so vulnerable and so unique—it basically subverts everything we expect to happen in a show about self-centered young women and shows real growth on behalf of these characters!

The entire last season of this show is about maturing, realizing what you like and don’t like, and letting go of your youth and some (many) of your young friendships and relationships because

you can’t go back

.

Angela: Thank You, Lena—We Needed This

On a personal level: I really needed this!!!!!!!!! It is still the only prestige TV show I watched that mirrored the world I actually lived in: one where everyone had an internship that might turn into a paying job and also multiple versions of that fuckass American Apparel dress that was like, “I want to look sexy but I don’t want anyone to know I want to look sexy.” You know the one I mean.

[. . .]

I do not think the reboot will be wish fulfillment for Lena in the way

And Just Like That

was for SJP and co.

Sex and the City

, when it first started airing, was genuinely Saying Something about the world around it, something emphasized by the fact that a bunch of Season 1 + 2 episodes were directed by Nicole Holofcener and the guys the gals were dating were all from Hal Hartley movies. As the show became more about shoes and Magnolia Bakery, the characters became less like characters and more like avatars of the actresses themselves.

Lena, for all her faults, is a deeply talented writer and fundamentally not a lazy creative, and I know and trust she’d never make the mistake of showing us a Hannah she thinks we’d want to see, or even a Hannah whose life looked too much like Lena’s. Remember: a huge part of why

Girls

is so good is that

Hannah is a shitty writer

. She doesn’t have anything particularly interesting to say, and she has no work ethic. Hannah at 27 couldn’t know this, because you can’t really know anything at 27, but Hannah at 40 definitely will know this, whether she admits it openly or not. This, to me, is a compelling starting point for a five-episode look at a person we once spent a lot of time with.

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OVER THE HILL

MOVIES

A spoiler-free review of

You Can See Everything

. Promise.

Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes allowed Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim to film her final days of freedom at home before reporting to prison for her 10-year sentence. Sam Bodrojan saw the highly anticipated film prior to its nationwide release and reported back.

“You Can See Everything” Is a Film About Feminism

—

sam bodrojan

in

cc: helmet girl

When I was in high school, I read

Jane Eyre

every three months. I felt I was her on some level, though I was not married nor was I yet a woman. Often touted as a proto-feminist novel about female autonomy and choosing love without sacrificing personal morals, I have basically never wavered in my more pessimistic interpretation. Jane, whose formative years were spent abused and starved, spends the rest of the novel pursuing the love of a man so ardently that she abandons every other part of her life—her education, the promise of social mobility, an honest life partner, her sense of self. And in the end, she remains satisfied with her decision; I have always found her defiant happiness troubling.

I thought a lot about Jane Eyre during

You Can See Everything

, Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s 174-minute hybrid documentary about Theranos founder and Silicon Valley pharmafraud Elizabeth Holmes.

YCSE

was made 95% in secret. Nathan and Lance arrive at a beachfront rental in San Diego on April 26, 2023—34 days before Elizabeth is to be sent to prison. They are given unfettered access to the daily lives of Elizabeth, her husband Billy Evans, and their two young children. The first portion of the film chronicles this month-and-change in intimate detail.

Lance’s approach resembles the steady accumulation of a laundry pile in the corner: It is never invisible—on the contrary, it is quite invasive—but his subjects habituate to his constant presence, learn how to walk around him without looking up or tripping. He loves watching people perform, actors and non-actors alike. He is at once condescending and sincerely interested in his subjects. He sensationalizes and lampoons them at the same time as he seems invested in depicting them honestly. He is manipulative and generous at once. You are never quite sure if you’ve “bought in” to his project, even when you undoubtedly have.

The film is predicated on a similar type of skepticism. Nominally, Nathan Fielder is focused on a single question: Is Elizabeth Holmes a liar? The answer is “yes,” and you already know that. She denies it, of course, giving absurd roundabout justifications for her previous words and present manipulations of the filmmaker (and the audience). One extraordinary scene finds Fielder trying to illustrate (justify? disprove?) how Elizabeth processes words using a specific YouTube video, only to accidentally administer something quite similar to an autism test frequently given to young children. When presented with evidence of her own dishonesty, she claims that she understood her own words differently. It doesn’t really matter whether you believe her. The real question is whether she believes herself, especially when the alternative is acknowledging how far she has drifted from self-knowledge. Not even 30 minutes in, Elizabeth Holmes has admitted that she is fundamentally incapable of communicating honestly with another human being.

At this point, the focus starts drifting towards Elizabeth’s relationship with Billy. Her husband is a classic Cali-to-Austin type: a far-right misogynist with terminal founder brain. It is not a spoiler to say that

You Can See Everything

is, in part, a portrait of domestic abuse. What is at first only visible through telling details, like when Billy chastises Elizabeth for how she whisks eggs, eventually escalates to absurd extremities beyond my comprehension. Dissenters on

YCSE

will likely say it makes a spectacle out of partner violence, but I found its gawking, befuddled helplessness to be honest and unexpectedly empathetic.

Keep reading

NEW ROMANTICS

“a subtly spooky detail,” shared by

@youroldersisterscloset

WINNING SOME, LOSING SOME

A GLP-1 might change more than just a body

When Jacqueline Sahlin started a weight-loss journey, she knew her life would look different on the other side. What she didn’t anticipate was that the people in her orbit would too.

Losing Friendships While Losing Weight

—

Jacqueline Sahlin

in

Jac’s Loudest Secret

“What’s the biggest change you’ve experienced after losing 60 pounds?”

It’s a question I get often, and my answer surprises most people. People expect me to say pretty privilege, that people treat me differently, open doors for me, and give me free things. While that’s true to an extent, the biggest change was how losing weight affected my friendships.

It wasn’t every friendship, and there were certainly other contributing factors to the strain of these relationships, but losing weight and everything that came with that journey played a part. It’s an experience I don’t see many people talk about, and being on a GLP-1 added another, complicated, layer.

There are two parts of going on a GLP-1 that I wasn’t prepared for.

The first: confessing I was going on a GLP-1. And yes, at the time, it felt like a confession.

Whether they know it or not, every single person I’ve told that I’m on a GLP-1 has had a reaction. Sometimes it’s an excited, “I’m on a GLP-1 too!” Sometimes it’s concern: “Oh wow, that seems scary, injecting yourself every week.” And sometimes it’s a look of disappointment. The kind that seems to say, “Great, another person on a GLP-1.”

Seeing the look of disappointment was a blow. And I will tell you this now: I’m no longer friends with any of the people who gave me that look. I didn’t stop talking to them then and there. But looking back, those reactions feel connected to the ways I later felt unsupported. That helped ease some of the guilt I had about ending those friendships.

The second is something I really wish I’d known about. If you’re starting a GLP-1, this is the part I hope you take with you.

The exhaustion I felt after starting a GLP-1 affected my relationships.

In the initial months after starting a GLP-1, I was exhausted all of the time. I didn’t have energy for even the most basic social interactions. As someone who is normally pretty social, I went from regularly spending time with friends to sleeping or resting. I saved what little energy I had for work and getting myself to the gym twice a week.

I stopped seeing friends I used to walk with multiple times a week. Dinners I might have had were out the door. I turned down every invite. And my friendships felt it. How many times can you expect someone to hear “can’t make it” before they get annoyed?

I will be honest about my own faults here and own my part in this. My exhaustion made me selfish. I only “had energy” to think about myself. I was so focused on getting through the exhaustion that I wasn’t thinking about how my absence affected other people. I don’t just mean that I wasn’t physically spending time with them. I wasn’t making room for the fact that my absence hurt them.

Keep reading

ANCIENT TEXTS

ADAPTATIONS

“I’m not a brilliant literary writer”

Bestselling author Colleen Hoover sits down with Dakota Johnson to discuss her writing process, upbringing, and how “professional” a person should be.

Colleen Hoover & Dakota Johnson on Verity

—

TeaTime Pictures

Keep watching

ART

AGING

When getting older just means more birthday candles

Dierdre Wolownick has done it all. An award-winning writer, tour guide, marathoner, rock climber, artist, conductor, musician, and mother, she reflects on what it’s like to be 74.

This is 74: Mountaineer, Conductor, Painter and more Dierdre Wolownick Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire

—

Sari Botton

in

Oldster

Dierdre Wolownick’s award-winning writing is published worldwide, and her books have won 17 awards. For 44 years, she taught 5 foreign languages on 3 continents and has been an independent publisher, international speaker (in 4 languages), tour guide, marathoner, rock climber, artist (painter), airline personnel (Air France) and more. She founded and created the West Sacramento Community Orchestra, which she conducted for 4 years, and through it all has been a performing musician (piano, flute, others). She is the mother of two extreme athletes, one of whom is Alex Honnold of the Oscar-winning film

Free Solo

.

In 2017, she became the oldest woman to scale Yosemite’s El Capitan, and the first feature-length documentary about her,

Climbing Into Life

, won 13 awards at film festivals across the U.S. and will soon be available to the public. The second documentary feature about her,

Au Pied du Mur/Inner Walls

, was just released in Montréal and throughout Québec and will soon play in Las Vegas. Her memoir,

The Sharp End of Life

, is now published in five languages, and her latest book,

Success in 7 Steps

, which has won 3 awards, distills all her successes into a simple, how-to method that anyone of any age or gender can follow, to finally achieve their dream goal.

Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?

20. Because at that age I lived for a year in France (did my third year of university there), and that’s when I really started to live and be aware. (I was raised in a very repressive, controlling household.)

What do you like about being your age?

Not being dead. Still enjoying life!

What is difficult about being your age?

Every age has difficult parts. Now, at my age, the difficulties are mostly physical. And I’m guessing that, as I get even older, I will begin losing more friends and family. My father always used to talk about that, in his 90s. The longer you live, the lonelier you get, simply because those you knew are gone. I’ve been feeling that lately; I’m from a huge extended family, and now we’re down to just a few.

What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?

I’ve never understood why people prefer being one age or another. We learn so much as we go through any/every age. Why deny any of it its importance? So I guess my “favorite” age would be the one I’m in now.

Would I go back to any previous age? Probably not… Maybe my “middle age,” but just so that I could get more done! Publish more books! Make more music. Conduct my orchestra in more places. Have more fun. But this age can be fun too!

How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?

Not sure what you mean by this. I’m still the same person I’ve always been. My person, my identity has never been tied to age. Age is meaningless; I knew that when I was 4 and following all the older neighborhood boys up the trees and onto the garage roofs. I still believe it, as I go rock climbing with my younger friends.

Age is a social construct; you can accept it or reject it. This is, of course, a health-bound concept; if you suffer from a horrible or crippling disease, obviously things will be different for you. But all things being equal, age plays no role except in how many candles to buy for your birthday cake.

Keep reading

PLAYING WITH FOOD

Substackers featured in this edition

Art & Photography:

Janet Asante Sullivan

,

Court Street Journal

,

your older sister's closet

,

stephanie

,

Katie Bagley

Video & Audio:

TeaTime Pictures

Writing:

The Serratore Report

,

sam bodrojan

,

Jacqueline Sahlin

,

Dan Ozzi

,

Sari Botton

Recently launched

Author and digital creator Drew Afualo is now on Substack.

Her first post

is an ode to women everywhere.

Singer and songwriter Sheryl Crow has launched on

Substack

.

Marina Hyde, a podcast host and writer, is now on

Substack

, where she’ll be “writing at least twice a week on entertainment, culture, politics, sport, the royals, viral moments, the media,” and other “personal obsessions.”

Interior designer, author, cabaret singer, and art editor Nicky Haslam has launched on

Substack

.

Inspired by the writers and creators featured in the Weekender? Starting your own Substack is just a few clicks away:

Start a Substack

The Weekender is a weekly roundup of writing, ideas, art, audio, and video from the world of Substack. Posts are recommended by staff and readers, and curated and edited by

Danya Issawi

out of Substack’s New York office.

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