Our Fave Essays & Personal Stories in 2023

We’ve loved sharing our favourite articles, unhinged Twitter threads and analysis Tik Toks in our Weekend Recommendations every Sunday – it's become a beloved series for both you and us. With so much valuable content shared throughout the year, we want to give each recommendation its well-deserved spotlight.

If you’re looking for some great reading material over the slow summer weeks, scroll down for the links to every Essay & Personal Story we recommended in 2023. Feel like something different? Why not try our fave pieces on:

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• Big Ideas

• Internet Culture & Tech

• Climate

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We’ll continue finding the smartest stuff on the Internet for you in 2024 – subscribe to this newsletter to make sure you don’t miss ‘em.

The Best Essays & Personal Stories from 2023

How chronic illness radically changed my view of womanhood on The Guardian
“That we still regard discussing the physicality of womanhood as something as shocking proves how fragile our notion of femininity is in the first place."

You Need Help: You Fat-Shamed Your Beautiful Girlfriend on Autostraddle
This advice column on LGBTQIA+ website Autostraddle was misinterpreted by a lot of people on Twitter, but the advice is rock solid – about performative 'activism', fatphobia, self-perception, relationships.

LIFE IS NOT BEAUTIFUL on playwright Hanif Kureishi's substack
This beautiful, from Hanif's perspective having suffered a fall in December and now hospitalised, unable to move his limbs."Most of us at some time in our lives will suffer from a catastrophic health crisis which will make us feel isolated and afraid. But it is as if we want to believe that we live in a world of many healthy and well-functioning people. We do not. We have convinced ourselves that there is a standard of the well and effective human being."

Looking back at home and seeing something new, Flex Mami on Better Than Yesterday podcast
Flex is Australia's best, most thoughtful influencer (that's not the right word for her).There is so much in this conversation that is good, but especially their discussion about the lie that Australians are chill, casual people. It's a myth that the rest of the world is starting to see through.

‘The older I get, the younger I was’: What’s it like to be the subject of News Corp coverage? on Crikey
Go off Grace Tame! “To put it plainly, News Corp regularly engages in perpetrator tactics. It creates chaos and then positions itself as the saviour. Cosmetically, the context had changed from The Mercury front pages in 2011 to 2019, but I was still and always will be exploitation material in the eyes of the Murdoch press.”

Everyone needs to grow up on Dazed
This essay is SO much more than it seems on the surface! Stick with it: "Hitler himself was a Disney adult. If the desire to relinquish responsibility for your own life can be considered an infantile trait, it’s easy to see why this would make you more susceptible to authoritarianism."

Gen Z grew up in a world filled with ugly fashion – no wonder they love their Crocs on The Conversation
"Crocs are, in a sense, wearable memes for Gen Z... They signal the wearer’s capacity for casualness, irony, rebellion, and a desire to forge their own fashion rules in an Internet Ugly world."

Listening to Taylor Swift in Prison on The New Yorker
i“In 2020, the California legislature passed a law that made anyone who served twenty continuous years, and who was at least fifty years of age, eligible for parole. I’m fifty-three, and I’ll get my first chance at release in 2024. I couldn’t help but think of ‘Daylight’ again. “I’ve been sleeping so long in a twenty-year dark night,” Swift sings. “And now I see daylight.”

In Defence Of Bad Vibes on Refinery29
"The insinuation that the sole purpose of life is to accumulate good feelings and experiences fits neatly into a culture of hyper-consumerism thereby de-prioritising community, virtue and health."

My Ugly Bathroom on The Paris Review
"I get so sick of everyone thinking that everything they use has to be nice. Can’t some stuff just be crappy? Why do we have to get rid of perfectly functional stuff just so that every corner of our vision can twinkle with magic and possibility?"

We’re in Asian America’s peak media moment. But ‘Beef’ has poisoned the well on the San Francisco Chronicle
The horrific rape-confession-joke by one cast member of hit Netflix show Beef raised tangled ideas about representation that this piece lays out: "To uncritically embrace Beef... shows that we’re willing to let others pay the price for our feelings of validation and belonging."

The Internet Isn’t Meant To Be So Small on Defector
“The internet wasn't supposed to be six boring men with too much money creating spaces that no one likes but everyone is forced to use because those men have driven every other form of online existence into the ground. The internet was supposed to have pockets, to have enchanting forests you could stumble into and dark ravines you knew better than to enter.

This mini video series on Envy by Ayanda
Ayanda’s three-part series on how our society creates envy within us has been so helpful for me in sorting out my own feelings of jealousy and inadequacy, and realigning the goals of this business.

Fence-sitting at fashion week on Bri Lee’s substack
“None of the [clothes] makers get invited to see the garments their hands have brought into being. They don’t get to sip the complimentary drinks…. Is the designer is the only person in the manufacturing process who has the creative genius that ought to be rewarded?”

Are selfish people happier? on Bobo’s Void pocast
Bobo Matjila’s podcast gets really deep into philosophy for the modern, digital age - there is a video version of every episode on YouTube, and they shoot in gorgeous outdoor locations.

Nobody I’ve been locked up with in a psychiatric hospital felt ‘proud’ of their illness on The Guardian
“In the last decade I have noticed a shift in how openly mental health is discussed… But the sickest people I’ve ever known – myself included – have had almost no part in this opening up, as if we’re suffering from a different condition altogether.”

​​The Lows of the High Life on the New Yorker
“I had never had money, and then I did. For three days in New York, I learned how not to use it.” A very special, long essay about suddenly having a lot of money after generations of having next to nothing.

A case for inconveniencing your friends on i-D
"‘If it doesn't fit into our schedule or causes us any stress, we can be quick to feel burdened by our friends, rather than seeing it as an opportunity to connect.’ This is where the self-care movement (which started as a form of resistance for Black women) has lost its original meaning and become an excuse for self-isolation and self-centered behavior.”

We all need our little stories on The Spinoff
“‘Grandma needs to watch her stories’ was a phrase I was very familiar with growing up. It meant that every night, at an appointed time, some member of the family would disengage from the day-to-day stresses of the house, in favour of another world.”

‘I never thought I’d end up with a man who won’t call himself a feminist’: And yet...on Sydney Morning Herald
This interview with a relatively high-profile Australian couple made be very uncomfortable. A lot of layers of ickiness, much to think about.

How can I best support my daughter who’s clashing with her teachers over racism? on Guardian Australia
“You’ve got to help her frame what is happening in ways that support her excellent instincts. Help her see that she has every right to challenge her teachers and point out racism, but ultimately if she wants to change the broader system, she is going to need a lot of help.”

Boy Problems on Mother Jones
Must-read for anyone with boys or men in their life (so, all of us): “[Manosphere figures] market to a real crisis among men. But they offer a flimsy absolution, despite all the talk of grit: The problem with boys, the manosphere says, is actually just women. ‘They promised that if I followed what they said I’d fix my life,’ Mark remembered. ‘But I just felt lonely as fuck.’”

I Can’t Afford My Friends Anymore on Refinery29
"Socialising is increasingly a luxury, with one study finding that the cost of living crisis has impacted about a third of people's ability to spend time with friends. Another recent study surveyed more than 1,000 people over the age of 18 and found that more than a third of Gen Z and millennials have a friend who pushes them to overspend."

Gaza Diaries on the Guardian
Ziad, a 35-year-old Palestinian living in Gaza, has been writing diary-style updates for the Guardian since October 14. Of course, I think you should read them all, but this one is my pick: Part seven: ‘I am weak, I am vulnerable. But I want to live’.

‘New nihilism’: How Gen Z is embracing a life of futility and meaninglessness on Sydney Morning Herald
“Critics of nihilism will argue that this way of thinking can result in a selfish, individualistic outlook. But ironically, this new 2.0 take on nihilism hasn’t resulted in a breakdown of society; if anything, it’s led to a more empathetic way of approaching the world.”

This commentary on why ‘woke’ or light TV is often criticised as unrealistic, but violent TV stories never are. Her examples of Sex Education vs Breaking Bad really got me thinking. 

I’m Israeli, my ex-husband is Palestinian – and our union has never been stronger on The Guardian
“Since the war began, however, we have all but remarried. At this moment, no one understands our pain better than one another. In the midst of our shared grief, we both reach for and cling to the thing that is most familiar – the two of us, our kids, our family.”

The Oversexualization of Trans Bodies on TIME
“Society teaches men that being with trans women is an attack on their masculinity. They feel loved, desired, nurtured, and cared for by us while simultaneously feeling emasculated, disempowered, and shameful by dating us. They “loved” us until they could no longer have us and then they abused us.”

Tea Tea on Vulture
NO SPOILERS but this is one of the funniest pieces of the year lmao. Best summed up by a comment: “no matter your background, class, ethnicity, nationality, etc., we are all human. which is to say, we are all insufferable blowhards.” LITERALLY.