Her skin-care regimen alone is a part-time job eyelash upkeep requires regular appointments. “She’s got glossy hair and the clean, shameless expression of a person who believes she was made to be looked at.”īut if the “lifestyle” this woman presents to the world is one of carefree luxuriating on Instagram-worthy beaches, her day-to-day reality is far more gruelling. “She’s of indeterminate age but resolutely youthful presentation,” Tolentino begins, instantly capturing an aesthetic all around us.
In the resulting essay, “Always Be Optimizing,” Tolentino spends a good 10,000 words meditating on the ideal of the modern woman. The chopped salad, she explains, is a symbol of a certain kind of life, “which is you just work all day and you just do everything as efficiently as possible, including your lunch.”
“It was just a long-simmering discomfort I would have when I would get a Sweetgreen every day for lunch,” Tolentino tells The Globe and Mail, from her home in Brooklyn, N.Y., of her inspiration for the essay. Only The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino could, in one deep-dive essay, effortlessly move from lunch to life under advanced capitalism – incorporating, along the way, market-friendly feminism, overpriced athletic leisurewear, the internet skyrocketing productivity, the pleasure – and absurdity – of barre class and the phenomenon of the “fast-casual chopped-salad chain.” Thus, the genius of the young Canadian-born writer, whose debut collection of essays, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion, is one of the most anticipated titles of summer.
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