Issue #005: The Spread

animal print pants, anxiety, & gen alpha

Happy almost long weekend! Labor Day weekend has become one of my most beloved times of the year since meeting my partner four years ago on this holiday. Besides that, it symbolizes the end of summer. Technically it won’t get cold for a few more months, but it’s a step in the right direction towards coats, lower electricity bills, and soup season.

In this Spread you’ll find a true grab bag of topics: a non-diet dietician’s nutrition advice, modern science fiction trends, really good tiger print jeans, an early 2000s magazine digital archive, what I’m listening to that puts me to sleep at night, and beyond. We get a little personal, and I hope it gives you more of a glimpse of who I am and makes you feel closer to The Composite. I am so glad you’re here.

The comments are where we can continue to get to know each other, so I’ll meet you down there!

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Because we skipped the last couple weeks, this list is a little longer than usual!

📖 The Most Fun We Ever Had | Claire Lombardo | Contemporary Fiction | Finished

📖 The Wedding People| Alison Espach | Contemporary Fiction | Finished

📖 Long Bright River | Liz Moore | Literary Thriller | Finished

📖 Just One Taste | Lizzy Dent | Contemporary Romance | Finished

📖 Transcendent Kingdom | Yaa Gyasi | Contemporary Romance | Currently Reading

My August reading wrap up is coming this weekend and will include more on my TBR and full book reviews for all of the above!

And if you missed it, here are full reviews for everything I read in June + July.

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I’ve been working hard to reduce my social media doomscrolling these days, which means I’m reading more articles and consuming more intentional content - which I LOVE. These are the things that caught my attention this week.

Some quick picks:

📘 “All American fiction is race fiction” - a fantastic read by

Tembe Denton-Hurst

📲 Revisit all your favorite early 2000s magazines in this archive

🗽 “The NY Public Library Meme'd Their Way Out of Budget Cuts”

🪐 Did this month’s retrograde absolutely obliterate anyone else?

🫐 A non-diet dietician answers Qs about nutrition, sans fatphobia, c/o

Jessica Torres

If you like this quick picks section, be sure to check out my weekly send, The Digest, a lovingly curated list of links to replace your AM social media doom scroll.

Modern Sci Fi is A New Kind of Scary

My interest in science fiction only increases as time goes on. I loved this really interesting (quick!) video about how the genre has changed since the 1950s. Modern sci fi is increasingly dystopian + portrays society as the antagonist more often than humans or monsters (69% now as opposed to 20% in the 1950s). They also now more frequently take place in the (near) future, address themes of inequality + suffering, and function as commentary on current social issues. Since these stories act as a sort of foreboding warning, they lead the reader to wonder just how close to this dystopian reality we’re allowing ourselves to get.

(My favorite near-future dystopian sci fi reads this year are You’re Safe Here by

Leslie Stephens

+ Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang)

Gen Alpha is Leading the Pack

I’ve noticed in my professional life and my personal research for this blog (we’re bringing back the term blog, btw) that everyone is dying to know what Gen Alpha is thinking and therefore interested in buying. No one knows this better than

Casey Lewis

, writer of After School and host of the new podcast of the same name. In her Back to School episode, she interviews Pinterest’s Vice President of Global Consumer Marketing, Sara Pollack, who says that their back to school efforts this year are bigger than ever which seems to be consistent across the board. Casey also covers the back to school haul video boom, another topic making rounds. The hashtag #backtoschoolhaul is up 47% compared to this time last year, with parents spending nearly 22% more on BTS clothes this year than last. And, really, if you want to know how to appeal to Gen Alpha, you have to understand their Millennial parents first.

I do find myself wondering - how does Gen Alpha reconcile this overconsumption with their high levels of environmental consciousness?

Bonus: I’m really, really interested in brands investing in Roblox as an acquisition channel for these younger consumers. We talked about E.L.F.’s wild success with this a couple weeks ago

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This section will be an amalgamation of products, rituals, and more - anything that I’m just really into.

This one’s for the girls

Women in country music are a lifelong obsession for me. As a young child, I once held a group of my grandmother’s friends captive and subjected them to a lengthy performance of the entirety of Up! by Shania Twain (probably the most impactful album of my life). One very specific Reba McEntire Christmas record has been the soundtrack for every holiday season of my 28 years. Martina McBride, Jo Dee Messina, Kathy Mattea, Pam Tillis - these women raised me. So it’s no surprise that the new wave of women in country continue to be the soundtrack of most of my days. I also love seeing the ethos of the genre, especially in regards to the female artists, evolve along with the times. My current rotation of new releases includes:

💿 Maren Morris’s EP Intermission

💿 Megan Moroney’s album Am I Okay?

💿 Kelsea Ballerini’s Sorry Mom

💿 Carly Pearce’s album Hummingbird

PS: I feel like the intro music to Juno by Sabrina Carpenter is giving old Shania instrumentation… My fave Short ‘n Sweet track is Sharpest Tool, though - what’s yours?

A rare relic of my Southern upbringing. The only thing that stuck was the music taste

Soothing Stories for Sleep

In keeping with the listening theme, my other recent obsession is the Lights Out Library. On nights that I’m alone and not with my partner, I like to fall asleep to something, but having a TV series on didn’t feel quite right - I genuinely do not need more blue light in my life. Enter Lights Out Library: soothing stories about a variety of interesting topics (anything about dinosaurs or space is exactly my taste), but told in a manner that allows me to drift off easily and quickly. Topics also include Greek + Roman mythology, history of railroads, the Ice Age (another area of personal interest), Pompeii, ancient Egypt, and more. I highly recommend letting the lovely Olimpia read you to sleep tonight as I have been for a couple weeks now.

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I know many of us want to use better discretion in our purchasing, an increasingly important concept. These are items I want to purchase, have purchased, or think you may enjoy, and are mindfully curated. My goal at The Composite is not to shill items, but to be a helpful resource.

Brooklyn Shoulder Bag | Coach | $495 (budget friendly alternatives too!)

Really, this is an ode to these triangular shaped bags in general (okay, maybe not that one for me).

Sarah Shapiro

of Retail Diary wrote about the virality of the Coach iteration this week and I recently mentioned this more affordable Anthropologie version. I love the one Coach bag I own, but I’m not in the market to drop a half grand on this triangle beauty. However I do think it can transcend the trend with lasting power beyond this season and luckily there seem to be a variety of options in various price points. If you’re planning to snag a triangle bag this fall I’d recommend going for an espresso brown or burgundy hue in a leather or suede texture.

Tiger Print Jeans | ASOS | $53 | US 14-24

Animal print will serve as an on-trend neutral this fall (but let’s be real, does it ever really go out of style?) and I felt confident about the cost per wear of these jeans as my animal print pick for the season. Baggy jeans are all the rage right now, and while GAP jeans aren’t relevant to anyone above a size 12, Troye Sivan doing that lil dance did still make me want to get loose, so to speak. They’re a little more low rise than I’m used to, but I actually really like where they sit on my hips. They also come in zebra + leopard!

• If you’re looking for animal print pieces up to a 5X, Gia IRL is about to drop some new goodness on 9/3.

• I also keep thinking about these mesh leopard kitten heel mules from Dolce Vita, and if I didn’t already have something vaguely similar (but admittedly not nearly as good) then I would be purchasing them.

PS: If you missed it in The Digest this week, I mentioned Dolce Vita’s new wide width boots campaign, dropping 9/4. I love seeing brands that really give a shit about the plus customer, and after personally getting to know the brand I fully believe that they do. Serendipitously, they worked with Gia of Gia IRL on these boots - unplanned coincidence here!!

I hemmed like 8 inches off these with hem tape moments before running out the door. I’m wearing a size 20 which is a bit big in the waist but just right on the belly

Dolce Vita & Gia IRL doing what needs to be done!

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I thought that this would be a nice new addition to the categories here on The Spread for us to get to know each other better - and we simply do not celebrate ourselves enough.

*This section will include mention of doctors / health / sickness / anxiety*

I have a deeply rooted fear of doctors and of becoming sick, which tend to be dueling anxieties - When I have anxious thoughts about being ill, my other anxious thoughts about going to the doctor prevent me from being able to seek reassurance in test results and medical attention. So, this week I am exuberantly celebrating a successful visit to the doctor, as well as a clean bill of health that has done wonders for the voice in my brain that tells me something could be wrong - it’s not silent, but it sure is quieter. And while I always make sure to listen to my body, the reality is that sometimes my brain is an unreliable narrator and I need a little help in knowing the difference between intuition and fear.

In conjunction, I hit a major milestone for my mental health and have finally started going to therapy. Taking care of myself has often been on the back burner throughout my life for a variety of reasons, so I’m proud to be investing in my mind and body this way and showing up as the best version of me I can be. Now to figure out how to conquer my (even worse) fear of the dentist…

What are you celebrating this week?

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*There are affiliate links in this post. If you purchase an item through these links, I’ll earn a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for your support*