The New York Times’ Framing Britney Spears documentary casts a spell. I am thinking specifically of the stretch that chronicles Spears’s rise as a teen idol, starting with the “Baby One More Time” video. I had not seen it since elementary school and was unsettled, as an adult, to watch a 16-year-old embody a schoolgirl fantasy. To make sense of the video’s popularity, the Times’ Wesley Morris suggests that, to the 12- and 13-year-olds watching the video when it came out, “It isn’t the sex part that seems cool. It’s the control and command over herself and her space that seems cool.” I felt unsure that younger me could distinguish the control from the sexiness. But before I could think too hard about it, Framing Britney Spears was making a compelling argument: Spears’s teen image was an expression of her sexuality, and questioning the kind of agency she had in it is misogynistic.

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From an August 1897 issue of the Atlantic, W.E.B. Du Bois (whose birthday it is today) on “being a problem.” Dreaming of a great relationship transforming your whole life? There’s a balance between fantasy and reality to be struck, one that makes room for shamelessly daydreaming while keeping our feet on the ground. The first migrant facility for children has opened under the Biden administration. Megan Thee Stallion in conversation with Representative Maxine Waters. And the sadism of eating real meat over lab meat.

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