A few weeks ago, my mother handed me a box of old primary school report cards. She’s doing something called Swedish death cleaning, where you slowly shed yourself of everything you’ve been hanging onto. She’s not dying or anything, just decluttering.
The internet has decided that being a reader makes you sexy and mysterious, but I remain unconvinced by the hot newcomers.This brings me to the 8:09 am train to the city and the man seated in front of me. Conventionally good-looking in a Jude Law kind of way, he surely works in advertising, based on the logo-free luxury of his totally neutral wardrobe.
There are now more celebrity book clubs than there are actual celebrities, with everyone from Dua Lipa to Emma Watson, Jimmy Fallon to Kaia Gerber encouraging fans to read along with their picks of the month. Gerber, especially, has become a tour de force in the famous readers’ scene. I’m not claiming these people don’t love books. I’m sure they do, but when they’re also professionally good-looking, the lines begin to blur. Suddenly, reading is not just an intellectual pursuit, but a hobby associated with being really hot.
Unfortunately, because I love books and book-related content, I cannot escape the fetishisation of reading, and now the algorithms relentlessly feed me pictures of Hot People Reading.and Kendall Jenner, also on a boat, reading Darcie Wilder’s. Wait, what about Gigi Hadid eating pasta and reading Albert Camus’ French classicIn these pictures, it becomes obvious Kaia Gerber is right — reading is so sexy — but it’s also unrecognisable from how I do it at home.