Celebrity documentaries have always fed on pain, but the way that pain is framed has changed radically in the last half-century; celebrity itself is now a disease—an affliction that curdles the mind and batters the body all while coating you in gold.
JoinedJune 5, 2019
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Eleanor Cummins is s a freelance journalist in Brooklyn. She is a former editor at Popular Science. Her story on Babe Ruth's cancer treatment was an editor's pick of the week on Longreads, and her reporting on oyster rehabilitation in New York City won the 2017 Edible Communities award for best reporting on sustainability. In her free time, she writes The Pine Overcoat, a newsletter about death and design.
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Despite the widow’s omnipresence in society, she remains an object of dangerous fixation.