*This Conversation is featured in Gossamer Volume Seven: the Touch issue, which you can pre-order [here](https://shop.gossamer.co/products/volume-seven-touch).*

Officially, I am a psychotherapist, primarily a systemic couples and family therapist. I’m also an author, a speaker, and a podcaster.

But if I go to a second level, I would say I am a connector. I’m a relationship philosopher, or some people refer to me as such, and I’m deeply interested in the intersection between culture and mental health. I’m a traveler. I am voraciously curious. And I think that one of the pieces that really defines me is that I’m multilingual. The fact that I speak nine languages facilitates my curiosity, and my traveler spirit.

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We spoke five languages at home: French, Flemish, Yiddish, German, and Polish. Belgium in itself is a country with three national languages. We traveled for eight years to Italy every summer, so Italian was added, and we had family in Germany who would come and stay and visit. Nobody made a fuss of it. People just spoke the language in front of you and assumed you would pick it up. Even though he was basically illiterate, my own father spoke five languages. He could read the newspaper in every one of these languages, but he couldn’t write.

I added English later on in school, and then Spanish, because I got very interested in Spanish literature and political events of the ’70s and the music of South America. I arrived in Jerusalem in 1976 with students from Argentina and Uruguay who were fleeing military regimes. I lived with them and I started speaking Spanish by practicing with friends, and then I got into Brazil-ian music and that made me interested in Portuguese. That’s how one becomes multilingual: It’s travel, it’s family, and it’s personal interests.

> Like other people see the stars and they recognize a constellation, I could understand human constellations very quickly.

You can learn a language in school, but that doesn’t mean you can speak it. To live in it, to play in it as a child, to speak it, you need human interaction. There are too many people who have spent 10 years learning French in school and they still can barely have a conversation. I did two years of Spanish in school and I studied six years of Latin, which gave me the basis for the romance languages. But the actual experience of speaking comes from interaction with other people or with text or with music or with lyrics, not from sitting in the classroom.

I knew I was interested in psychology starting around age 13 or 14. First, because I hated my education system, I was interested in all the writers who wrote about alternative education. I read Summerhill: A Radical Approach to Child Rearing and Bruno Bettelheim, before he was canceled. Then I got interested in Freud. I started reading about the psyche, the inner life. Why was I interested in psychology? Because I wanted to understand my own inner rumblings. I knew I had a good knack for understanding relationships. People would come to talk to me as a teenager. My friends would confide in me. I saw things. Like other people see the stars and they recognize a constellation, I could understand human constellations very quickly.

[[1]]

I also wanted to understand my family’s history, my community’s history, and things like that. So, studying psychology was an obvious thing. But, in my time, you didn’t necessarily study something because it’s what you wanted “to do.” You studied something because you were interested in it.

I was interested in the juncture between culture and mental health, the culture of psychology and relationships. Because I’m a child of immigrants, because I’m a child of refugees, because I’m a child of parents who survived the Holocaust and who lost their entire families, and because I was part of a community of people who had experienced that massive collective trauma, I was interested in cultural transition as it pertains to refugees and as it pertains to mixed marriages.

For the first 20 years, I really focused on cultural transition in terms of the expectations of modern love, particularly in mixed couples, interracial, intercultural, and interreligious families. Basically, what is romance? What is coupledom? What is marriage about at this point and how is it changing across history and cultures? That was what I wrote about, what I lectured about, and what I focused on—a little bit because I had the languages.

> Couples therapy has become more important as the survival of the family hinges on the happiness of the couple.

When I came to New York, I had no papers, no license, nothing. The only thing I had that others had less was languages. So I figured I’d create a practice where people came for the one thing I could offer. That’s really how this became my focus. At one point I was doing 60 workshops a year at the 92nd Street Y alone, working with mixed couples. I became a so-called expert on that subject. On how people negotiate their traditional cultures, values, mandates, and loyalties with the modern ideology of love, the freechoice enterprise.

Couples therapy has become more important as the survival of the family hinges on the happiness of the couple. At first it was kind of the stepchild of family therapy. People come in with their child, and then you realize that the child is bearing symptoms that are actually the expressions of tensions in the couple. People didn’t go to therapy for couples, per se. They went to communicate a little bit better. But couples therapy becomes fundamentally more central when the meaning of the couple becomes more central. And the meaning of the couple becomes more central when people could divorce. People can divorce, so now the quality of the relationship in the couple is basically the only thing that keeps you in the marriage. It’s not the fear of being excommunicated, it’s not even the children. I mean, the children are a major part of why people stay, but basically the quality of the relationship is what will determine if the marriage will continue or not.

Now it isn’t just about companionship or economic support or family life or social status, but about intimacy and sexual satisfaction and marital happiness and all those things. That’s what makes couples therapy a practice that is really at the core, at the center of the field, in terms of relationships.

[[2]]

In the ’70s, divorce became much more common. So, shall I stay or shall I go? What do you do with blended families? What do you do with step-parenting? What do you do with going back out and being single again? These all are new themes that arrive. Fifteen years later, suddenly people start to come in to talk about non-exclusivity, about non-monogamy. That’s a subject that did not exist in my practice 40 years ago. Women wanting to have an intimate sexual relationship that is based on desire and not on duty. Men who want a woman to want and not just to placate them and say, “Yes, I’ll do whatever you want.” Same-sex couples who can finally marry and have children and be official about it and talk about their intimate struggles.

I think the field changes constantly, as society evolves and as the expectations of our relationships evolve. As the boundaries around relationships change, so do the things that people bring to couples therapy. The recognition and the effect of trauma on intimacy and sexuality, and the permission to talk about sexual abuse and sexual trauma and how it affects the intimate life of the couples today, these were silent topics before.

If you look at friendship, it’s not a relationship that has fundamentally changed in the last 20 years. Same with siblings, parents, children. I think if there’s one relationship that’s had an extreme makeover, it is the couple and everything that goes with the expectations around marriage. We went from a production model of marriage—having children and having them be an asset—to a service model of belonging and intimacy, to now wanting an identity model of “you’re going to help me become the best version of myself.” That is an intense demand from one person.

[[3]]

I’ve often talked about how we really ask one person to give us what an entire community should provide. I think this creates a level of expectation and weight on the couple that often will crumble it. For so long in our social life, many of the big decisions were made for us. Through religion, through hierarchy, through your parents. You didn’t choose who you want, who you’re with, what you’re going to do. And if you chose, you chose between two people in the village, and then you chose between 20 people in your school. Now you’re choosing between a thousand people on an app. So I think one of the biggest shifts is the burdens of the self.

We have way more freedom to decide if we like, if we don’t like, if we want to stay, if we want to go, if we like this one, if we want that one, but we are crippled with self-doubt and uncertainty.“ How do I know?” This is the question that every young person asks me. “How do I know?” We want this certainty, this 100%, this “I’m sure this is the one.” And the one among a thousand people is a really tough thing to know. At the moment when you have the most freedom, people are craving certainty. People have strong ideas about marriage, about what is okay, what is not okay, so I think that’s one of the things that we’re seeing today as a consequence of all the changes and the freedoms and the free choice that people have: it actually puts a lot of people in distress. Major distress, relational distress.

> Love and desire: they relate and they also conflict, and therein lies the mystery of eroticism.

I never thought I was going to become interested in sexuality as a professional subject. It was a pure accident. But it made a lot of sense because sexuality is a portal topic: once you enter the realm of human sexuality, it opens you to multiple other fields. It’s a topic that makes you think and read about religion, theology, culture, anthropology, sociology, and the body. I am very drawn to that. Sexuality is the way that you can look at a society where it is most entrenched, rooted, and archaic, and it’s a place where you can look at a society where it’s most progressive, changing, and radical. It’s all happening around sexuality.

There was a cultural perspective to what I was talking about. I really looked at the dilemmas of desire inside modern love, and why what is emotionally needed is not necessarily what is sexually exciting. Love and desire: they relate and they also conflict, and therein lies the mystery of eroticism. 	

I wasn’t new—there were people who were trying to integrate couples therapy and sex therapy. But I was putting words to something that many people were feeling. The generation of Boomers that had premarital sex as a given, contraception in hand, the permission to do what they want, and they didn’t feel like doing it, at least not at home. Couples who struggled with the sustainability of desire in the midst of actually good marriages. People had written about relationship problems leading to sexual problems, but I was talking about people who would come in and say, “We love each other very much. We have no sex.” And they wouldn’t know why. That dilemma, that paradox is what I began to explore.

[[4]]

After *[Mating In Captivity](https://www.harpercollins.com/products/mating-in-captivity-esther-perel?variant=32122437468194)* came out, I was interested in the dilemmas of desire on the outside, not just on the inside. What happens when desire goes looking elsewhere? Infidelity has existed since marriage was invented and there needs to be a better way to deal with it than the way we do. A way that embraces the complexity of this whole thing. Eighty percent of my audience have been affected by infidelity, be it the child of an unfaithful parent or the offspring of an illicit affair, the third in a triangle, the person who has the affair, or the person who is betrayed. That’s a lot of people, and it’s systemic and it’s intergenerational. It’s not just a few bad apples. I was asked to do a TED Talk about that, and it was a really tricky thing. I wanted to make everyone in the drama feel recognized and understood. Nobody had ever given aTED Talk on the subject of infidelity and made it, in a way, about ideas worth spreading, not just about lifestyle or gossip.

It was at that moment that I decided that I was no longer going to just talk to therapists or doctors. Instead, I am going to open up the walls and the door of my office. Therapy cannot just be the people in my room. I want to democratize it. So many people lie about their relationships and lie about their couple, especially with social media, and everybody’s hungry for truth and authenticity, but you don’t know where to find it. I want to change that. I never thought there was a way to “scale” this. But then came my podcast.

> Games offer you a wonderful balance between structure and spontaneity.

*[Where Should We Begin?](https://whereshouldwebegin.estherperel.com/)* is a first. Nobody’s ever recorded live couples therapy sessions for this purpose before. The experience of listening in on other people’s couples sessions when you are not a therapist is a first. And because they’re not my patients and they will never be my patients, I can actually, for the first time, talk about my work outside of clinical settings. Millions of people are listening to it worldwide and they feel that they have a therapist in their ear. It’s a continuation: I’m continuously thinking about how I help people reflect, act, and develop more confidence in their relationships. It’s the same with my game.

Games offer you a wonderful balance between structure and spontaneity. In my office, I often play with a ball with couples. I throw you the ball with a question, now you have to answer while you hold the ball, but you get to throw the ball back with a question, right? I do it in my group workshops, as well. The ball instantly becomes the mediator of the question, and if you don’t have an answer, then you just say, “Can I throw the ball back?” Rather than say,“I don’t know what to say.”

[[5]]

I have always used play in therapy. I have been a puppeteer. I use puppets in my practice, I use psychodrama in my practice. I use the body in my practice. So I am multilingual in that way in my practice as well. When play is safe, it allows you to take risks.

During the pandemic, I missed my dinner parties where we have conversations around topics and you really remember the stories people tell. I missed the intimacy, the playfulness, the curiosity. I missed new people. Everything was predictable, controlled, and constricted. I wanted to create something that’s going to make people engage with all the things I miss. So I decided I wanted to make a game called *[Where Should We Begin?](https://www.estherperel.com/where-should-we-begin-the-game)*

I found this wonderful designer, Steve Tam, and we embarked on this project together. It unlocks the storyteller within. We bond through stories; human beings have sat around the fire telling stories forever. We remember people through their stories and we reveal ourselves through our stories. But it also has game mechanics. I wanted a real game where people are playing with each other.

Patients learn from me, but I learn a lot from patients. Patients bring the world into the office. The new practices, the new substances, the new explorations, the new conversations, they come into the office through the patients.

> CBD, cannabis, ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin—all of them have a tremendous amount of cultural currency at this moment.

Had I been in training today, I probably would be much more knowledgeable about plants and substances. There’s a long history all over the world of using them for religious ceremonies, for psychological healing, for relating to the spirits—either to invite them in or to chase them away. We have always used mind-altering or heart-opening substances. Then we entered the world in which we went to psychotropic medications, a world that is more in the hands of pharma.

I think that all medications, especially psychotropic medications, that are meant to deal with our states of minds and our states of being often need to be examined in terms of the relationship and the cultural meaning of that very substance in the society, and to the person. The person who takes CBD to sleep may think differently than a person who takes Ativan. One says, “I’m sick. I have a problem.” The other one says, “I’m doing something to ease my pain or my restlessness.” It’s a different dialogue in one’s head.

We are in a fascinating moment where there is an active dialogue—sometimes a debate, sometimes a standoff—between traditional Western psychotropics and all the other plants that are now being brought back, mainstreamed, and redeemed rather than seen as deviant, dangerous, destructive, and countercultural. CBD, cannabis, ketamine, MDMA, psilocybin—all of them have a tremendous amount of cultural currency at this moment and I think that how we integrate these substances into our lives and our relationships is one of the most interesting things happening in my field.

[[6]]

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Esther Perel](https://www.instagram.com/estherperelofficial/) photographed by [Ryan Duffin](https://www.instagram.com/ryanduffin/) in New York. Paintings by [Jack Saul](https://jacksaulart.com/). If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. Subscribe to our newsletter [here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*

Therapist Esther Perel on the importance of language, the efficacy of play, and the role of plant medicine in relationships.

Esther HEro

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> At the moment when you have the most freedom, people are craving certainty.

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The famed psychotherapist on the importance of language, the efficacy of play, and the role of plant medicine in relationships.

Esther Perel

I’ve seen a lot in my 30 years. I was raised throughout New England, mostly Massachusetts, but came of age in Los Angeles and on the road. I've been singing since I was a little girl and I'm lucky enough to have known what I wanted to do since before I can remember, really. 

I can't think of a day that I've gone without music. I've gone a day without solid food—juicing or something—but I've never gone a day without music. It's like my energy source. Both my parents were singers. My dad is more of a blues singer, while my mom is more operatic or showtunes-esque. My parents were not together for very long but when they were, they really bonded over music. That was what brought them together. Both of them definitely could have pursued a career in music but life got in the way—the realities of having to provide and be an adult. So music was just always around. I start my day with it, I fall asleep to it. I find music in everything, from somebody breathing heavily to the BPM on the treadmill, to the sounds of the ocean.

I was very precocious. My mom would take me to Providence where they have this thing called WaterFire. They had food and music and boats and fire in the water—it was a sensory overload and I loved it. I saw street performers and I was like, *That’s what I want to be. I want to have people surrounding me and perform.* So I would intentionally wear a hat to put it down on the street and then get up on a pillar and start singing. My mom didn't stop me. People would gather around and I would collect money. I was singing a bunch of different Aretha Franklin songs. “Chain of Fools,” “See Saw.” I sang “Old Time Rock N' Roll” by Bob Seger. I'd sing James Brown, The Jackson Five. I started doing that at probably seven or eight years old.

[[1]]

I'm just grateful that my mom didn't stop me from being as weird and as laser-focused as I was. Because a lot of parents would have, for sure. Basically, if I was born in 2021, I would definitely have been put on medication. I was such an energetic and quirky little girl and I'm grateful that my mom wasn't necessarily afraid of that. She just nurtured it.

I was bullied all throughout school. I never felt like I really fit in. We were in such a small town. I was singing a lot and kids thought it was stupid or they thought that I thought I was better than them. They thought I was annoying, and I'm sure I was.

We had a cousin in California and I was like, “Ma, I feel like I'd fit in better there.” And because she didn't have anything tethering her—she didn't really have a strong home base, necessarily—she was like, “Let's do it, let's move.” Our lives changed very shortly after. California has been a big part of my formation as a human being, just as much as my earlier years in the south of Boston.

[[2]]

I've lived in L.A. for over 10 years now. It's so strange, people like to say that L.A. doesn't have a cultural identity, but I see so much in the different neighborhoods here. There's such a strong music scene, such a strong food culture. There's such a strong intersection of different languages and different interests represented here. I lived on the west side for seven years, I’ve lived Downtown, and now I'm in the Valley. I've gotten to see a lot of Los Angeles and there are so many things that I really love about it and that have inspired me.

Eating my way through L.A. is one of my favorite things to do. I love when people come and visit me, I can't wait to take them to some of my favorite spots. I actually have a little side passion: my other Instagram is [JoJo's Sweet Spots](https://www.instagram.com/jojossweetspots/?hl=en) and it's my plant-based explorations of different restaurants, and recipes for baking, cooking, and mixology.

[[3]]

The way that I think about my experiences or my life, particularly over the past 10 years, is in boyfriends. Like, oh god, I was dating *this* guy at this time and I was living here. And then I was seeing *that* guy for two years and we were living there. Part of me, leaving the west side after seven years, was kind of throwing my hands up and being like, *okay, it's time for me to find a new part of town now that this particular relationship is over*. He can have the west side, I don't want to run into him. Let me find that next place to explore. 

I lived with one of my best girlfriends and writing partners, and we had our whole own saga of *Sex in the City*-type things where we were both single, dining, going to live concerts, volunteering together, and sharing clothes. It was such a beautiful year that we had. Creating songs together, watching movies, and nursing our hangovers on the floor. I think everybody’s experience is shaped by the company that they're with, whether that's a romantic relationship or friendship or family or job. 

![MS JoJo Z4A0139](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/CkHSROukNVd3mcRDfer7S/90819510a1450007082fc5e6707a8bee/MS_JoJo_Z4A0139.jpg)

> When you sign a contract with a major label, particularly if you're 12 years old and your family doesn't have any experience in the music industry, you don't know what you're getting into.

For a long time, I was unable to record music. Well, I was constantly recording music, I just couldn't officially release it or make money off of it. Being in the studio constantly, writing, recording, but none of those songs were seeing the light of day. That really toyed with my understanding of the value of my creativity—and my beliefs, even. *Will I ever be able to continue on in this career that I started before I was a teenager?* It was very strange to be in a contract where I didn't have legal control over my voice. 

It was disheartening. The commodification of anything pure can be disheartening. Being able to have success and make money and enjoy the good things that can come along with fame, those are all positive things. But there's also negatives that come along with that. When you sign a contract with a major label, particularly if you're 12 years old and your family doesn't have any experience in the music industry, you don't know what you're getting into. I was told, “You'll never be able to sing again. You'll have to find something else to do.” 

I felt stagnant, like I couldn't envision a future for myself. And that's the first time that I really experienced depression. I had seen it a lot in family members growing up, feeling like you can’t see a future for yourself where you’re happy or seeing all the lost potential for yourself. But it's cyclical. I have periods of feeling well and in-tune, where I'm able to clearly state all the things I'm grateful for and continue to attract more. In those moments, I really do feel that I'm a magnet for good things and able to recognize all the beauty that surrounds me. But in periods of depression, it's really hard to see possibilities, to see a future, and to get that gray lens off of your perception.

![MS JoJo Z4A0193](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/7MN3CDZX4bKLpHZvfJMih8/45f3ec42cfa9d4991b42603fcc10139c/MS_JoJo_Z4A0193.jpg)

My new project came from me feeling that way again at the end of last year, after the cycle of promoting my album, *[Good To Know](https://store.iamjojoofficial.com/good-to-know-cd-1.html)*, which came out right before lockdown. We decided not to postpone the release, but then we postponed a tour. Then we canceled it because we realized that, okay, this lockdown is going to be a lot longer than we thought. 

I got into a really dark place again. I wasn't doing the things that I need to do to maintain my mental health: journal and work up a sweat and eat a balanced, plant-based diet and talk to a therapist and engage with my friends. I wasn't carving out the time or finding ways to do those things at home because we were in such a new situation, you know? And it really got the best of me. I started to feel like I wasn't good enough to make music anymore. That I wasn't good at writing songs, that I wasn't a good singer. I didn't feel connected to my voice anymore, which was very concerning. I was at a place where I didn't even know who I was at the end of last year. Or *why* I was.

> I was in pain, still resentful of all the songs that I wrote and recorded in my early 20s that never saw the light of day. I needed to shed that and be lighter.

My manager’s known me since I was 12 years old. I was transparent with her about how I was feeling and she was like, “I think you should write through it. I think you should write and see what happens.” I was scared. I was disbelieving. I was jaded. I was in pain, still resentful of all the songs that I wrote and recorded in my early 20s that never saw the light of day. I needed to shed that and be lighter. 

The process of making [*Trying Not To Think About It*](https://store.iamjojoofficial.com/trying-not-to-think-about-it-explicit-digital-ep.html), my new EP, helped give me back my confidence in writing about how I was feeling. Part of me hopes that whoever listens to this EP can relate to the material, and the other part hopes that they don't relate at all. I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable in their own skin. I don’t want anyone to beat themselves up, to have felt trapped inside their mind. But maybe you've felt like you needed a lift or some assistance—maybe even some chemical assistance to feel better, whether that's pharmaceutical drugs or cannabis or whatever. Because it's a challenge to be in this world and to keep it all together. And nobody can. Nobody can do it alone. I hope that this project makes you feel like you're not alone and also maybe makes you smile. Because the process comforted me. And I hope that people can find comfort somewhere in it, as well.

[[4]]

My relationship with weed has definitely evolved over the years. I used to be somebody who waked and baked, like for a period of six months. Then I realized that I wasn't being true to my nature. I really do like to be productive and I don't find that consuming like that allows me to be—or at least the type of weed that I was smoking wasn't really conducive for productivity. I've gone through periods of not smoking it at all, but I’m always a fan of CBD and taking drops. Really relishing in the anti-inflammatory benefit of it and the other good things that can come from CBD.

I enjoy smoking at night so I take a few hits of something then. I like these pre-rolls by [Dad Grass](https://dadgrass.com/) that I found at the [Life is Beautiful Festival](https://lifeisbeautiful.com/). It’s really, really high CBD. It chills me out. I don't know if it's psychosomatic or not, but it is so nice. It's funny, I know most people like to smoke indicas at night, but I’ve found that I love to smoke a little sativa. I love to take my dog for a walk, take a few hits, watch something, and then go to sleep. That's my routine. I don't smoke during the day and I don't smoke when I create. But I'll either take an edible or take a couple hits at night. That's my current relationship with it. It's really hard for me to understand how casually we look at having a glass of wine. I don't see why it should be any different from the way that we view people smoking a joint. 

For as long as I’ve been making music, weed has always been around. It's a part of a lot of people's creativity, and the culture of being in the studio. Some people will have a drink and some people will have a joint—I've always seen that. But as far as the stigma, I don't know. The older I get, the less fucks I'm capable of giving. 

[[5]]

To get to perform and connect with other human beings again is going to be really emotional. It's been a long time. For this project, there are going to be [six intimate live shows](https://www.axs.com/artists/119280/jojo-tickets). Everybody will be wearing masks. We'll be in our pod and traveling in a sprinter van and just really trying to be as safe as possible. I didn't want to be the first person to go on the road and to be a guinea pig, but now that I see that the world is opening back up and know we're going to be as safe as possible, we have to. Other industries are opening up and I think it's important that the touring industry doesn't die in the process. As a fan, I know how much I want to see live music, and as a performer, I want to be able to put on a performance. So it'll be very satisfying to be able to promote this EP and bring these songs to life in a way that I didn't get to with the album that I put out last year.

> I literally went from not believing that I was any good anymore to feeling confident in my abilities again.

I'm going to do songs from *Good To Know*, as well. COVID definitely informed how I'm putting together the set list. I wanted to put a night together that feels immersive, like a mood. A blue type of mood. Sensual, but blue. A little sad. That's where I was when I was writing this and some of that was in *Good To Know*. I literally went from not believing that I was any good anymore to feeling confident in my abilities again. And that was through the exercise of putting pen to paper and getting my ass in the studio. 

I think what the pandemic taught me is that we thought we were more in control than we really were. All we can control is our perspective. We don't know what's going to happen next. We never knew what was going to happen next. We just thought we did. But we have to be like water as much as possible and take a new shape sometimes. Transform, but stay true to who we are. Water can be vapor, it can be ice, but it's always water regardless of what form it's in or how it's flowing.

[[6]]

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.  [JoJo](https://www.instagram.com/iamjojo/) photographed by [Maggie Shannon](https://www.instagram.com/maggiehshannon/?hl=en) in Los Angeles. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. Subscribe to our newsletter [here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*

A Conversation with JoJo: The singer on finding comfort in creativity, her new EP, the culture of cannabis in music,  and re-connecting to her voice.

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> I start my day with it, I fall asleep to it. I find music in everything, from somebody breathing heavily to the BPM on the treadmill, to the sounds of the ocean.

![MS JoJo Z4A0315](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/4bEcBQK5Pkv4LzYlbqS0NJ/96786122ca22e16b0f7fec68e3b53262/MS_JoJo_Z4A0315.jpg)

MS JoJo Z4A0187

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MS JoJo Z4A0357

> It's really hard for me to understand how casually we look at having a glass of wine. I don't see why it should be any different from the way that we view people smoking a joint.

MS JoJo Z4A0229

![MS JoJo Z4A0060](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/EtUt0T05tk0z93I9ayaMf/ecb4079a524496a7125e1e9c5a834461/MS_JoJo_Z4A0060.jpg)

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MS JoJo Z4A0244

The singer on finding comfort in creativity, the culture of cannabis in music, and re-connecting to her voice.

JoJo

I feel like I’m a well balanced person, but I’m also all over the place. I have a lot of passion for people, and for creating space for learning, curation, and enjoyment. I’m a Pisces. I love to tell people my moon sign and all that stuff because I feel like it does make up a part of your identity. I’m a Scorpio moon. I’m a Virgo rising. I’m always worried that my mom is going to say, “Actually you’re not a scorpio moon. You’re on the other side.” And I’ll be like, “My whole identity is based off of this!” My parents definitely were not about astrology at all. They were like, “Girl, read the Bible and you’ll be okay.” 

Right now I’m trying to figure out how I can live purposefully while also being intentional about my movement, my growth, and anything that I touch. How can I be intentional about my company? That’s core to our mission at [Hanahana Beauty](https://hanahanabeauty.com/).

[[1]]

I grew up in Ohio. Both my parents are Ghanaian. When I was six months old, we went back to Ghana so that my brother and I could learn the language before going to school back in Ohio. We lived in the suburbs of Pickerington, but I grew up in a Ghanaian household, eating Ghanaian food, going to a Ghanaian church, speaking Twi. 

It was a strikingly diverse area in the sense that there were very rich conservative white people and very poor conservative white people, and then a fair amount of first generation Black families. But I remember being the only Black child in my first grade class. I didn’t have another Black student until my second grade class. 

In high school, I was an athlete. I ran track. I was a high jumper. I went to a pretty huge sports school and ended up being number two in the state. I was very competitive. My parents were very emphatic about being good at the things that you do. *Be better at it*, whether it was academia or track. In high jump, you’re never really competing with other people. You’re always competing against yourself. I think that’s something that helps me in the entrepreneurship world because this shit is crazy.

[[2]]

I ran track in college. I ended up going to the College of Wooster, which is a liberal arts school near Cleveland. My older brother went there, too. I got offered a lot of full ride athletic scholarships but my parents wanted me to take an academic one. I also didn’t want to go to a big school. It was an interesting place because you really start to realize who you are in college, and being around so many different types of people helped me feel more complex and understand my own identity. But I was still at a PWI—a predominantly white institution—and around a lot of ignorance.

I majored in Psych, and minored in math and education. I was a very African child like that. I interned at the Cleveland Clinic and the Summer Treatment Program, which is designed for children with ADHD and emotional behavior issues. 

I ended up getting the program director position in Chicago after I graduated. I wanted to get my PhD and focus on clinical psychology work. A year in, they ran out of the grant, and I realized I’d always wanted to teach. My first job in high school was teaching piano lessons and I’ve always been around kids, so I started at a charter school as a part-time gym teacher before becoming a full-time math teacher for seventh and eighth graders. 

![Abena Gossamer (Alina Tsvor)-99](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/1KkfHI2F6ea73zjzGSEakj/93d20cdce2eed6ad80dea78bc52b9f38/Abena_Gossamer__Alina_Tsvor_-99.jpg)

>  I spent a lot of time talking to my students about what they needed to be putting in their body and how they needed to take care of themselves. 

I also taught a high school elective on women’s studies. It was 2014, I’m in my early twenties, and I was mostly just like, *Fuck the man*. Everything felt terrible. Working in that school really drove home all the systems of white supremacy that are in place. Within the first couple of weeks, one of my students shared with me about being sexually assaulted. I wanted to be more educated about how to handle those kinds of situations other than being like, “Me too.” So I ended up going to grad school to get a master’s degree in counseling psychology at the same time.

I was extremely stressed. My roommate, Emma, her stress reliever was baking. Mine was making shea butter. I spent a lot of time talking to my students about what they needed to be putting in their body and how they needed to take care of themselves. Conversations like, “No, Hot Cheetos. Is that really the thing that you really need to be eating every day?” But one day, one of my favorite students, Brianna, challenged me. She asked, “Ms. Boamah, do you really know every single thing you put on your body?” That made me think. I was still out here all ashy and dry putting on polymers.

[[3]]

Anytime someone goes to Ghana, they bring back shea. It’s just something you always have. At least for me and my family, I guess I can’t speak for anyone else. But I had all this shea around and so I started googling and researching and trying a bunch of different things. I had no intent of starting a business. This was purely just about learning how to make things for myself. But like I said, I get obsessive about being good at things. So I just kept wanting to make the best product for myself.

I didn’t launch Hanahana until 2017. My inspiration for doing it was that a lot of friends and family were like, “You should make this into a business. Why not?” The guy I was dating at the time, he tried the shea butter. I remember he said something like, “Yo, my sister has a beauty business. You should sell her your formula.” And I was like, “Excuse me, you don’t think I can run a business?” All these things pointed at “you can do this.” 

[[4]]

Hanahana Beauty is a consciously clean skin care beauty and wellness brand. Our focus is looking at how you create sustainability from the producers all the way to our consumers, our community. It’s about bringing a level of humanity to beauty. We source our raw materials, such as shea butter, directly from producers in Ghana. And we pay double the asking price. We hold biannual health care days for the producers we work with, mimicking the North American system of six-month checkups. At the same time, we’re creating products that do exactly what they say they do. 

From how we work and partner with different vendors, to the ways we create space and educate through our pop-ups, experiences, and conversations, to our products, we always keep Black women top of mind. I want to make sure that the women who continue to sustain this beauty industry with their dollars are always at the forefront of our intention. 

Honestly, I was quite naive about everything. I didn’t know people didn’t go straight to the producers or source. I didn’t know about contract manufacturing. So I thought what I did was normal, because when I first started making products, shea butter was the main ingredient and the only way I knew to get shea butter was from Ghana. I was just like, *I’ll get it from my aunt*. And then I was like, “Well, where are you getting it from? I just want to pay the person.” 

![Abena Gossamer (Alina Tsvor)-21](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/zRem4xjQVz9Chp53PPtOn/18e8e480a8e7a74aa3e5eb0b9b82ef1e/Abena_Gossamer__Alina_Tsvor_-21.jpg)

I went to Ghana that July. I’d spent a lot of time in Accra and Kumasi with my family and cousins, but I had never been to Tamale, which is up north and where most of the shea is produced. People just don’t really go to Tamale unless you’re from there or you have a reason to. Even my parents were like, “You don’t need to go. Just buy the shea in Accra. Why do you need to go to the producers?” But my aunt connected me with a taxi driver there who she said knew some women who were producers.

So I flew up to Tamale early in the morning and Pa, the taxi driver, picked me up and he was just the kindest man. I remember him looking at me like, *Who is this girl with big hair and this nose ring, just moving around in Tamale?* And I was like, “I would love to learn from the women who make shea butter. I want to buy some shea. I have money ready to purchase. I don’t have a lot of money, but however much they want, I will pay. And I know I can make a really good story. I can take photos and share their names.” 

> I just felt like I had to do something because the price was so low that it felt wrong. And that’s where our mission came from.

He took me to the Katariga Cooperative, which is the same cooperative we still source from today. I remember meeting Samantha and Memunatu, who are two of the women I’m still very close with. They took the time to show me the full process of making shea. After I was like, “Okay. One, can I pay you for that? But two, can I buy some shea butter?” The price they gave me made no sense. It was less than a dollar per kilo. I think I was buying 50 kilos so I said, “Can I at least double the amount?” It’s funny, because they were like, “I mean, if you want to, but this is what we’re selling it for.” I just felt like I had to do something because the price was so low that it felt wrong. And that’s where our mission came from.

By December, we had formalized a relationship. Later that spring, I graduated from grad school and moved to Ghana. I would go to Tamale monthly and I kept thinking about what else Hanahana could offer that would make this system sustainable. I kept coming back to health care. I’ve worked in health care. I’ve worked in a clinic. I’ve run a clinic. I’ve also been a therapist before. I don’t know the specifics around the health care systems in Ghana, but I felt comfortable attacking it.

[[5]]

Around the same time, Pa, the original taxi driver who was helping us, passed away. However, his son had just finished nursing school and was looking for a job. He was like, “I know you need a translator,” because I speak Twi, but I don’t speak Dagbani. He started helping me translate, and for nine months we worked on our plan for a bi-annual health care day. We built an outreach team with different nurses in Tamale. The first day, we were able to treat maybe 80 or 90 women. The most recent one had 350 people. 

> When you think of the indigenous women and people who are producing these raw materials, they are literally supporting an entire industry. But the industry is not supporting them in return.

Part of it is funded out of Hanahana, and then the rest is from different campaigns. This year we’re working on a docu-series around the women we work with, and now we have a social impact lead, Teni, who works with me on all our initiatives. 

There’s just so much we have been able to do, and so much more we can still do. We now offer monthly health care education. Our whole thing is about offering access to health care. It shouldn’t be a privilege. When you think of the indigenous women and people who are producing these raw materials, they are literally supporting an entire industry. But the industry is not supporting them in return.

The thing is, sustainability is very expensive. This whole brand has been bootstrapped from my funds and from our sales. And I want to make sure we continue to grow and support our initiatives. But to do that, you need money. And so I am fundraising right now, which is literally hell. You can quote me on that.

![Abena Gossamer (Alina Tsvor)-131](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/1g8BgXtiPNgSEfY4VgkcVu/53958e77feff6137e673295095ff9725/Abena_Gossamer__Alina_Tsvor_-131.jpg)

I smoke weed every day. I think one of the reasons I left teaching and mental health is because I struggle to turn off my emotions. I have an anxious personality. But cannabis really helps me calm down and it also helps me focus. It allows me to remember that I don’t have to do everything, but that I can actually just focus on the things that are important. Sometimes that’s work, and sometimes that’s just chilling. And sometimes it’s sleep.

I try to be really intentional about my use. I’m not just trying to get high to be high. If I’m trying to get high to do work, I’ll add some lavender. If I’m on my period, I might add raspberry leaf, or something higher in CBD. I continue to try to educate myself on how I can use it. It’s not that I feel I need to have it, but I recognize that it’s very helpful for me, and for my mental health, and that I should be okay with that.

[[6]]

It’s still extremely stigmatized in Ghana. I think there’s just this general approach all drugs are the same and all drugs are bad and all drugs are marijuana. Someone could be on meth and they still think it’s marijuana. It’s all one drug. There’s nothing else. But people do smoke in Ghana. They just don’t want to talk about it. 

I think what’s really interesting is that marijuana was recently legalized in Ghana for production use. Which is really sad, because then the only people who really have access to it are outsiders and expats. The money is going to the companies who are able to produce and go there. 

But I’ll speak really openly about this: the issue with marijuana in Ghana goes deeper than weed. It’s about the legal system and how people are treated because the police are not paid well. So they are stopping people and making money off of citizens who are smoking. It’s a whole thing that everyone knows about. I mean, I’ve gotten stopped in Ghana. I had lavender on me and they said it was weed. It’s bribery. They’ll drive you to the ATM for you to get the money. And then you’re on your merry way. And it’s sad because no one talks about it. There’s a whole community of growers in Ghana. And there’s so much possibility to use the plant to create opportunities and jobs. I hope the space won’t be exploited.

![Abena Gossamer (Alina Tsvor)-81](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/5JKP1kNnBofdbHZde2KxUh/7152368fcaf2517f818fa1ef79fab305/Abena_Gossamer__Alina_Tsvor_-81.jpg)
> Some of my greatest accomplishments have been done while high. Honestly, most of them. 

I’m feeling more confident speaking openly about my own weed use because people can also read about me in Forbes. Just because you smoke weed doesn’t mean you can’t be successful. I love the account [Black Girls Smoke](https://www.instagram.com/blackgirlssmoke/). I’m a Ghanaian girl. I respect my abilities. And I’m out here lighting up joints. I was recently on a trip to Jamaica with some of my girlfriends and we’re all working. We’re all making moves. But we’re also smoking weed. Some of my greatest accomplishments have been done while high. Honestly, most of them. My business plan! So I guess I just don’t really see it as a big deal. 

I’m so inspired by musicians and creatives. I think of my brother, who is an artist, and the amount of time and intentionality an artist puts toward their craft. I look at entrepreneurship the same way. This is a toddler business. This is really only the beginning.

[[7]]

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Abena Boamah](https://www.instagram.com/beanieboamah/?hl=en) photographed by [Alina Tsvor](https://www.alinatsvor.com/) in Chicago. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. Subscribe to our newsletter [here](https://gossamer.co/subscribe).*

Abena Boamah of Hanahana Beauty on the culture of cannabis in Ghana, centering her business around Black women, and the cost of sustainability.

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> I get obsessive about being good at things. So I just kept wanting to make the best product for myself.

Abena Gossamer (Alina Tsvor)-66

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> The issue with marijuana in Ghana goes deeper than weed. It’s about the legal system and how people are treated.


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Abena Gossamer (Alina Tsvor)-2

The beauty entrepreneur on the culture of cannabis in Ghana, centering her business around Black women, and the cost of sustainability.

Abena Boamah-Acheampong

I’m a single mom. I have three girls—my oldest daughter is about to turn 12—so I have very feminine energy around me. My mother is only 20 years older than me. 

I’m a seeker. I am always seeking ways to get to know myself better. Because I was born and raised at a certain time in the world and to Iranian immigrant parents, I thought that I would have to follow a certain way of living, whether that was what I accomplished in school, how I looked, who I was friends with, what kind of career I had, or getting married young and having children. I was very much asleep and trying to—how do I put this? Trying to just make my parents proud. 

![Shari2](//images.contentful.com/qal3w7tbm3rt/1pysCHV5A0oalkM8CaUrKJ/802a707cfb40e6065440dc065af5abe0/Shari2.jpg)
>When you struggle with feeling like you can’t love yourself, that action will permeate into behavior that might not be consistent with who you are. 

I struggled so much with feeling less than because of the way I looked. I needed to overachieve to feel like I was worthy of being lovable. When you struggle with feeling like you can’t love yourself, that action will permeate into behavior that might not be consistent with who you are. 

I was born in Columbia, Maryland, but I was raised most of my childhood in a very small town called Boxborough, Massachusetts. That’s with a B, not an F. Everyone thinks I’m from Foxborough because they’re Patriots fans. But it was a very small homogenous town of less than 3,000 people—it didn’t even have a stoplight. I lived there until eighth grade. There wasn’t a lot of diversity. As a result, I was teased a lot about my appearance. For having a unibrow, for having hairy limbs, for having very tan skin. I think I was more tan as a child than I am now. I just stuck out, visually. That pain really permeated deep inside of my psyche. It made me need to shape shift, code switch, become a chameleon, to try to figure out how I could survive.

I didn’t have the emotional wherewithal to put language to my feelings or to go to my parents and say that I was having all these troubles. Instead I used fitness and exploration in the woods to kind of soothe myself. I’m also a lifelong ballet dancer. There was always a polarity in me. I was a tomboy, but also a bunhead. I would run to basketball practice with my tights rolled up. 

[[1]]

In eighth grade, my family moved to Boca Raton. I looked at that as an opportunity to reinvent myself. I got addicted to the power of wearing masks. When I removed my unibrow for the first time, I saw myself as human. That became a lifelong undercurrent for me, from the way I groomed myself with lasering, waxing, and highlighting, to the people that I got into relationships with, to the jobs that I had, and my friendships and whatnot. 

When I came to New York for college, I felt more connected to the community because of the diversity. But even immersed in that, I still felt like I had to be a WASP.  I went to business school, I double majored in IT and marketing. I had a whole career in pharmaceuticals. I got married. I had children.

My first two girls were very fair, and then my youngest daughter came out looking exactly like me. That was an invitation to say to myself, “My child is so beautiful.  Why do I not give myself the same level of love and adoration that I do for her?” I realized that if I don’t live a life where I can accept myself for who I am, my children will absorb that, and they will also follow in my footsteps.

[[2]]
>Open communication is the key to a beautiful relationship, whether that’s friend to friend or mother to daughter. 

What I now understand about mothering is that, at the end of the day, children only want to feel safe and they want to feel loved. I want to make sure my children are advocates for themselves. The last thing on earth I want to do, if my child says, “Mom, I want to smoke weed,” is make her feel ashamed for being honest with me. Because open communication is the key to a beautiful relationship, whether that’s friend to friend or mother to daughter. 

If my daughter came to me and said, “Mom, I want to smoke weed,” I would want to have a conversation with her to understand, like, “How did you learn about it? Have you tried it before? Are your friends doing it? How are they doing it? Are you rolling a joint? Have you smoked out of a pipe? Are you vaping?” Because I think there’s some health consequences of that. I don’t want my 12-year-old daughter smoking weed. That’s just developmentally inappropriate for her, for her lung growth and for her brain development and all that stuff. But I don’t want her to feel embarrassed talking to me about it because she’s going to do it anyway.  We all know how we were when we were teens. 

When I think about how cannabis has been used in the past for medicinal reasons, to help with anxiety, to help with creativity, to help with community or bonding, it has unlocked so much magic for people. But it’s gotten a bad rap. This flower can really help so many people if used correctly and in the right dose and in the right strain. Everyone’s journey with cannabis should be very customized based on the type that you take and how that impacts your chemistry. People should be open to exploring and know that there’s not one solution for all.  The key here is in choice and in observing yourself and how you interact with this powerful plant. And making sure that you are policing for yourself what works for you.

![ShariWindow](//images.contentful.com/qal3w7tbm3rt/3uKKT6gJcxwfCyqbYXs5AR/70f3d9730f1e23fbc9bd311ab66d0e67/ShariWindow.jpg)
[[3]]

At the beginning of 2020, right before we knew that the pandemic was going to start, I posted something like, “I’m so tired of the 30 under 30 list. I would love to see the 50 over 50.” I want to know the single mom of two kids who at 47 published her first book. Because to me, the journey of how she got there would be more fascinating to me than measures of success that are tied to youth. My tagline in life is “experiment until it works.” Everything is an input that drives another input into creation.

Around my early 30s, I stepped away from corporate life. I got more into philanthropy and started to teach ballet at a nonprofit in East Harlem. I understood the beauty of community and movement to talk about trauma, either firsthand or within your family. I understood how much the power of an emotional connection and being witnessed and seen was. I also started to get more involved in the art world and to become not only a patron, but also heavily involved in raising funds to help artists and museums because I really believe in the power of how art and storytelling can heal so many of us.

Because I had come from such a traditional and corporate background, that was the first time that I got to be around people and places where I saw more individuality and freedom of expression. It permitted me to express myself with fashion.  It gave me the confidence to say, “What mood am I in today? Let me use my body as a canvas to express that.” 

[[4]]

When I grew my unibrow back, my entire aura changed. It was like I was no longer hiding something. I think shame festers in secrecy. When you are so secretive about something, it completely changes how you behave. I started the Instagram handle [@myfiercebrow](https://www.instagram.com/myfiercebrow/?hl=en) to share my experience with people. 

Then I thought that the best way to do this would be through children, through a new generation—to have a picture book about a little girl with a unibrow. Then anyone else who had that experience would feel seen, or maybe a family member or a friend would then have at least one reference book to provide an opportunity for a conversation about different forms of beauty. I wanted to create a complimentary product that I could bundle with the book that would allow children to self-express and paint themselves and highlight their uniqueness. 

This was the summer of 2019. My book agent introduced me to someone who took me to a lab and when I walked in I thought, “How can I just create one product that no one in the world will know?” I had this internal checklist of what kind of product line I wanted to create so I wouldn’t add more pollution to an over-polluted world. This was the first project I worked on that I had zero expectation and pressure on because I wasn’t sure if I could do it. Maybe that’s why it worked.

![ShariShadow](//images.contentful.com/qal3w7tbm3rt/5L6GdI6fxMpZtrSU3ObWiE/858be16080eae973714235d1fbd29122/ShariShadow.jpg)
>Every message in the media is telling you that there’s something wrong with you.

I had zero experience in the beauty industry except, of course, being a woman in this country who has been marketed to since the second she was born and also been told that she’s not good enough. I wanted one product that would corner the market in terms of clean color and performance was vital to me. 

I took a hard stance when I publicly said that TooD will not invest in anything that makes you want to erase yourself. My tagline is, “embrace, don’t erase,” because I don’t want to invest in products that make you feel like you’re not enough. I will not invest in a concealer or a foundation. But, at the same time, I don’t view makeup as something shameful. What I’m trying to do is change the conversation of what makeup is.

Every message in the media is telling you that there’s something wrong with you. Every message is still showing curated diversity. Or, if you’re old, then this is the way you look when you’re old: a muted face and all-black attire and Anna Wintour-chic. It’s like, no, I want to be Baddie Winkle smoking a joint at 95 years old with glitter all over myself and pink hair. Why is that not the splendor that we aspire to?

[[5]]
>If you could create your own rules and if you could wear makeup in any way, shape, or form, on any part of your hair or skin or body, what would that look like?

As a Persian girl, my mother and grandmother always had a beautiful face of makeup. We’d go to these parties with other Persian women and they all would adorn themselves in bright colors and bold lipsticks and eye shadows. This is in the ‘80s and ‘90s, when that was very much the fashion. I remember going through my mother’s drawers and trying every lipstick on. Putting it on different parts of my face, too.

That is where I want to get [TooD](https://www.instagram.com/toodbeauty/?hl=en): that childlike wonder of having products or paints or tools—whatever you want to call them—in front of you and saying to yourself, “How do I want to express myself?” How fun is it to be able to share your creativity in the world by using makeup and not about covering up yourself to fit in? That’s really what I want to have with this brand. To ask people, if you could create your own rules and if you could wear makeup in any way, shape, or form, on any part of your hair or skin or body, what would that look like? That, to me, is the coolest thing.

[[6]]

I like to call bullshit on the industry because there’s this new wave of everyone feeling like they have to step up the diversity game. But it’s curated diversity where people are like, “Well, we’ll get canceled if we don’t do this.” But it’s not really coming from an authentic place. It should be, “How are we showing the different forms of beauty and the beauty exists in all of us? How can we showcase that?” And secondly, when makeup has been marketed to kids, it’s really trying to just get them in the funnel at a younger age. To get them attached and addicted to needing to look a certain way. 

With TooD, it’s about unlocking the creativity that we have within us. None of us are one thing. We shouldn’t feel like we are trapped in one identity or one way of being. The world may perceive you as one thing, but you really are more. We’ve been conditioned to feel that way. I’m only speaking from my own life experience. I struggled with how much I was, not for how little I was. I thought that I had to fit myself in a box. When I permit myself to fully expose all the polarity that I have inside of me is when I feel the most free. Freedom is contagious. 

[[7]]

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [[Shari Siadat](https://www.instagram.com/sharisiadat/?hl=en)](https://toodbeauty.com/) photographed by Meghan Marin at her home in Amagansett, NY. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. [Subscribe to our newsletter here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*

Shari Siadat, TooD founder, on unibrows, raising daughters right, and curated diversity.

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I just want to give my daughter the tools to make the best decisions for herself. That’s really my approach, because the world is only opening up to legalization, and this is a conversation that is going to probably happen in my life sooner rather than later.  Giving them good information and making my children really feel safe and willing to share with me how they really feel about cannabis is the only way to help them move forward.

It was out of love for my children that I decided to grow back my unibrow. Not only did I grow it back at 37 and wear it proudly for the last four or five years, but now I have COVID grays and COVID curves. It’s been this beautiful unraveling. Now I get to choose which society rules I want to follow and what are the ones that I want to actually create for myself. That’s very much the spirit behind [TooD](https://toodbeauty.com/).

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ShariSurf2

![ShariSwing](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/Lqf0MCb2QuVgAZkQ6ZTHR/f0eba883e0443c58f5b6aaed4deae8a8/ShariSwing.jpg)
>I like to call bullshit on the industry because there’s this new wave of everyone feeling like they have to step up the diversity game. But it’s curated diversity.

ShariHouse

ShariBench

The TooD founder on unibrows, raising daughters right, and curated diversity.

Shari Siadat

First off, I’m Paper, yeah. It’s our time. One love. It’s Paperboy Prince, Paperboy Love Prince. 

It’s hard to describe what exactly it is that I do because the more that I talk about one thing, it’s like leaving out a bunch of other pieces that help better contextualize everything. I’m an artist, an activist, an athlete, a dancer, a motivational speaker, a creator, and a community leader. I also ran for mayor of New York City, and for Congress as well.

![ryanduffin gossamer paperboy 0067](//images.contentful.com/qal3w7tbm3rt/vNiySel3ayb2Ys3hUhPFu/ac28acc4ef0c169ab9f31d0f487f7d25/ryanduffin_gossamer_paperboy_0067.jpg)
>The mainstream want us to be asleep and to not think. Just do, and not really analyze.

It sounds weird when I talk about myself, so what ends up happening when someone asks me to is I’m like, “How can I say it in a unique way that breaks it down?” But then it’s like, *Oh, man. I sound like I’m full of myself.* So that’s my preface before saying that I consider myself a thought leader—someone who’s an influencer of thought on the topics that’ll change society. Everything from schools, to climate change, to racial justice, to queer issues, to housing, to marijuana justice, to ageism, to religion, to business. My job is to be a conversationalist, to speak about these things, and to challenge people to think in a new way.

The mainstream want us to be asleep and to not think. Just do, and not really analyze. They don’t want us to ask questions or speak out. They want us to wait until we get a certain degree, wait until we’re a certain age, wait until we have a certain status.

I was always very political. I was into reading the newspaper because I was a paperboy. Sometimes that would involve politics. Sometimes you go straight to sports and style, or whatever’s flashy, but then sometimes it’s like, Oh, okay. This story seems interesting. There was a lot in there. I knew that the world was messed up in a very real way.

[[1]]

I grew up with a revolutionary education at home. I feel like it starts there. My parents were very open. They were much younger then, so they showed me a lot. They told me about how New York used to be, and how the country used to be. It inspired me to just look at things through that lens. 

In middle school, I was able to get some internships on Capitol Hill. I was there really alone, honestly, because everyone down there is ambitious. So the intern coordinator, or whoever’s supposed to be looking after me, they wanted to do something better than that. I had a bunch of time to just wander around, which was probably the most formative thing for me. I spent a lot of time being a sponge, soaking it all in, understanding the culture of federal politics at a young age. 

It’s like being able to be around NBA players in elementary school, and realizing these guys wake up at 8:00 AM and they’re in the gym for six hours a day. So I know that if I want to be in the NBA, I have to do that. Same thing for the political stuff. It’s like, *Okay, these people work with everyone*. There were Democrats working with Republicans, who were working with diplomats from overseas—everybody’s working together and they’re all thinking in a certain type of way. But their constituents are left out of the entire conversation. 

[[2]]
>I spent a lot of time being a sponge, soaking it all in, understanding the culture of federal politics at a young age.

I also worked at the Supreme Court, which was the same deal, interning with a bunch of folks who were law students, stuff like that. They wanted to do cooler things. It was the summer, and sometimes it would be slow, so I had more time to go around, explore, be places that I shouldn’t. I’d be like, “Oh, can I help with this for a week?” Just doing whatever I could. But my favorite part was playing basketball on the top of the Supreme Court. It wasn’t really kept up that well, but it was cool to play on the Supreme Court’s secret court. 

As a kid, you really take that stuff for granted. Now I would’ve been able to really use that in a Paperboy way. I’d have gone there and did something. They would’ve kicked me out and I would’ve never been invited back. But I was really quiet then. I was taking it all in, speaking when I was spoken to, just doing my time. 

My mom used to say, “Whatever you do, this will be a good experience.” The funny thing is, they never thought that I would take the experience this literally. “Oh, you’re running for mayor?” Should’ve never signed me up. 

![ryanduffin gossamer paperboy 0081](//images.ctfassets.net/qal3w7tbm3rt/6PbM8WrWWufLghObz8Slxu/3882648431280b73903c7e8a0f218df8/ryanduffin_gossamer_paperboy_0081.jpg)

My parents are creative, but they’re not what you would consider creatives. They’re more like business people, lawyer-type folks. Growing up, I definitely wanted to be an athlete, but realistically I knew that I had to do something business-y. That’s how I could describe it as a kid. I didn’t know what type of things really made money, my thought was just that all of this is good for business jobs. That was my mindset. I wasn’t trying to be an artist. In fact, I wasn’t interested in art at all. 

I think my parents are lukewarm on my political career. They’re not super into it, but they’re not not supportive. I’m luckily a person who’s never been a prisoner to what my parents thought. I’m more like, “You guys think this is a bad idea? Perfect, that means it’s a great idea.” I want them to be into it, but part of me works harder, stays up longer, and is more inspired by the fact that they aren’t. Even though I have nothing to prove at all, it’s added motivation. 

The thing is, they’re also super supportive people. I have amazing parents. I completely lucked out and it’s a big part of why I do what I do. 

![ryanduffin gossamer paperboy 0033](//images.contentful.com/qal3w7tbm3rt/2U16VhHwJXBrIja6oz8BSX/3729200510534b80750bd158057ea073/ryanduffin_gossamer_paperboy_0033.jpg)

Growing up, I spent a lot of time in our church choir. I went to some big churches and that allowed me to start getting in front of people and performing. In high school, I was in our praise band. But I started my rap career by making parody songs, and making fun of music because I thought everyone took themselves way too seriously.

I just loved making a bunch of stuff and having an ocean’s-worth of content that’s hard to categorize and that feels very raw. That felt very internet to me, or what the internet was about. I’ve done a bunch of brand deals, too, where I’ll make jingles and stuff like that. Eventually from making the parody stuff, I started getting more serious with it, and that ties into how I now use my music with politics. It’s very much theme music—and themed music. Songs that are about my policies and specific things we’re doing.

Some songs are very straight on, and some allude to politics, and some blur the lines between the political and parody. I have the song “Spreading Love.” 

*I’m spreading love/ Instead of community I’m on a block/ I’m spreading unity/ I’m being positive/ What they going to do to me waving that stick/ This isn’t new to me/ I’m in a trap/ I’m spreading love/ I’m in your hood/ I’m giving out hugs/ I want your girl/ She want some love/ They need some more/ This ain’t enough/ I’m Paper, yeah.*

![ryanduffin gossamer paperboy 0043](//images.contentful.com/qal3w7tbm3rt/EBcTbQybrIpalFMJbZSRU/01b9983c7fdbd994ee3b224de351b4a0/ryanduffin_gossamer_paperboy_0043.jpg)

I have a song about housing for all and talking about why that’s important called “Everybody Needs A House.” 

*Everybody need a house, house, house, house, house, house, house/ Everybody need a house, house, house, house, house, house, house/ Paperboy in the house, house, house, house, house, house, house.*

And then I have songs which I also use for our campaigns that have either poked fun at other politicians or have highlighted issues. One that was popular during my mayoral campaign went like, *Eric Adams get out of my room/ What you doing in my room, Eric Adams/ Get out of my room/ What you doing in my room.*

I had before:

*I got the governor mad/ He said I’m too wild/ He said I’m too rad/ I talk for the people you talk for the man/ I got the list we made a demand/ I’m spreading love but he hating again/ We spreading love again/ We spreading love again/ I got the governor mad/ Governor Cuomo heard my speech/ He know that we want to help all the peeps/ He just want Brooklyn for the elites/ We got the video we got the receipt/ So many promises that you ain’t keep/ Reach out everyone spreading more peace/ They bossy I ain’t talking Kelis/ I was at the meeting they weren’t talking to me.*

>With a little bit of help, I can do a lot. I’m really Mr. And Mrs. Make Something Out Of Nothing.

These are just some examples. It’s so hard to actually do this work with music, present it the way that I want to, and that I feel like really will connect with people. That’s a big part of what I like to do with music, and how I like to get out there.

Because of my background doing parody music—making songs about random things—I can make a song about housing for all make sense, and feel comfortable in that, whereas somebody who might be even better than me at music, or better than me at politics, isn’t going to be comfortable using that medium to talk about these issues. 

![ryanduffin gossamer paperboy 0045](//images.contentful.com/qal3w7tbm3rt/32sBtmiwjkgIjdD8OebYl4/313d3bbdf5a7e729d0873cb0a41e24ff/ryanduffin_gossamer_paperboy_0045.jpg)

With a little bit of help, I can do a lot. I’m really Mr. And Mrs. Make Something Out Of Nothing. By myself I’m going far, so with a little help I can do a whole lot. And with a little bit of money, I can go very, very far. I’ve been battle tested. Everything has been a natural progression. I’m really ready to take it to the next level, and way past it. 

Politically, I’m definitely going to be running again. We want to help the state of New York become the best state that there is. It’s looking like for 2022, Paperboy Prince for governor. I mean, it’s only right. I’m excited about that but I’m really excited about Congress. I’m going to be running for Congress, too. It will be interesting. It’s a redistricting year, so they are going to be redrawing all of the districts. This is a process that has disenfranchised a lot of folks and helps to keep our established politicians in power. I’m going to be running for Congress in a very unique way to call attention to all of that. 

We did smokeouts at City Hall during the campaign and gave out free weed. We did multiple rallies like that. We did one at Union Square, which is just a great link-up spot but also has a lot of political significance. Union Square is where unions would come to protest injustices back before it even had its name. 

![ryanduffin gossamer paperboy 0031](//images.contentful.com/qal3w7tbm3rt/76vHZ0H8smZVfMasyNtoB6/dd3f6dd8aaed916a8551e505768422f8/ryanduffin_gossamer_paperboy_0031.jpg)

We did one at the Board of Elections, who have made a lot of mistakes and still haven’t released a lot of voter data. I’ve been vocal about that. It was a cool way to merge my issues—elections protections and marijuana activism—into one by doing a smoke out there. Most voters don’t even know where it is (it’s right next to the bull on Wall Street). We smoked out there, saying, “They must be high.” It was an awesome event and really one of a kind.

I’ve never seen a politician do this kind of stuff. It opened up a lane for me. I see myself really growing to be the first marijuana activist politician that I know of. It’s not my main issue, but it’s a core issue. 

During the mayoral race, it wasn’t something the other candidates were going to talk about in a real way. They were going to talk about it in a fake way to get them retweets. They were willing to accept whatever. They were not going to fight for it like their family member was unjustly incarcerated. They weren’t going to fight for it like it was their community that had been ravaged by the over policing of this plant. 

>If people are getting arrested so much for something it means it’s not a problem with the people, it’s a problem with the system. 

It doesn’t make sense. If people are getting arrested so much for something it means it’s not a problem with the people, it’s a problem with the system. These politicians have been empowered this long and they’ve  never said anything about it. And if they have, it hasn’t cut through because I haven’t heard about it. It hasn’t cut through how it should. I’m running for mayor and I’m listening closely and I don’t hear it. The smoke outs were a way for me to put this issue in the forefront, and to help catapult my voice as a leader on this issue, It’s allowed me to meet a lot of dope marijuana activists and to open doors for others, and it’s allowed dope folks to come together and have a lot of fun.

I have a bunch of TV and some film stuff coming. We’re going to be homing in on the entertainment stuff. It’s going to be a lot bigger than before. I’ve got people who are excited to work with me on it and see the vision. It’s like a new lane is opening up. I’m gonna have songs as big as Lady Gaga while I’m also running for governor. This is a part of my new artist trajectory. It’s going to hit different.

My gallery basically started as my campaign office and was serving as a resource center for protestors. I was very embedded in all of that. My idea was there had to be a new way of doing business where you give back to the community beyond the products that you offer, and also create spaces for people like me, who are different, who are creatives, who have different interests, who are figuring out where they want to go.

![ryanduffin gossamer paperboy 0017](//images.contentful.com/qal3w7tbm3rt/2N9bY3kjFkcx7LQlxddCDI/6f517e6b20262afeb62331613748717f/ryanduffin_gossamer_paperboy_0017.jpg)

It’s been amazing. We’ve given out over 2.5 million dollars worth of food. We’ve given out thousands and thousands of cases of PPE to folks. We’ve given out clothes. We’ve been doing STD testing. It’s all pretty much funded by me, but we have some folks who have helped donate here and there. It’s also funded by the people who support our space. By supporting me and supporting the Love Gallery, you’re supporting the work that we’re doing. It’s been really fun and rewarding. We had our soft opening in January but it’s technically not even open yet because I was running for mayor this whole time.

It’s already inspired at least 10 people across the country who have told me that they want to do something similar. I’ve even seen people here locally who have started to transition their current business into something like the gallery, or something similar with that same type of mission. At first it was like, *Oh, man. People are copying what I’m doing*, but then it’s like, *Oh, wow. Folks are inspired. They want to help*. That’s the whole point of this. 

It’s a love gallery. Art galleries display art, a love gallery displays love. It’s just me being my truest self. A lot of rappers, if you listen to their songs, one of the main things they talk about is weed, right? And so that’s the central concept of it. Weed, getting high, the lifestyle around that. We’re going to be doing a bunch of 4/20-inspired events, and fundraisers, and meetups and things like that. 

[[3]]

For me, it’s spreading love, getting love, and making the lifestyle around that cool. I’m passionate about that. I also got a lot of love. I grew up in an environment where I had a great childhood and was given a lot of love. Everything wasn’t perfect but it was good enough to let me focus on the positive. 

I’ve also lived a life where I focused on the negative, and I’ve lived a life where love wasn’t my main focus. I’m much happier now that it is. It’s just naturally in me. I’m a preacher. To really want to help somebody, you have to love them. To really want to help other people, you have to love yourself. A lot of people want to help people but they can’t help themselves. How you going to help me, you can’t even help you? How you going to love me, you can’t even love you? Once I completed the task of learning how to love myself, then it was like, Okay, now I can really go out and love others. When I completed that task of helping myself out of a bind, then I could help others to help themselves.

It’s me being selfish. I feel like one of the reasons I stand out is because I’m doing it in a way that is selfish. I’m doing it so that it can help me get bigger and get better. I want that. That’s important because it’s real. For so long people have been fake about it. Helping people and doing it in a selfless way, I personally don’t think that’s real. I feel like when you’re helping people, it’s selfish. It’s better to give than to receive. It really is. It’s good, being selfish is good. 

![ryanduffin gossamer paperboy 0065](//images.contentful.com/qal3w7tbm3rt/3CrkWdnR3OrtoypWkpMtaH/0c3a07e2ec0f96ee6782589ab5751304/ryanduffin_gossamer_paperboy_0065.jpg)

***

*This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. [Paperboy Prince](https://www.instagram.com/paperboytheprince/?hl=en) photographed by [Ryan Duffin](https://www.instagram.com/ryanduffin/) in Brooklyn. If you like this Conversation, please feel free to share it with friends or enemies. Subscribe to our newsletter [here](https://www.gossamer.co/subscribe).*

The ultimate multi-hyphenate on running for office, spreading love, and playing basketball in the Supreme Court.

ryanduffin gossamer paperboy 0071

![ryanduffin gossamer paperboy 0004](//images.contentful.com/qal3w7tbm3rt/68hbKqPN6SwRqGoxts2udL/3c1154b34854db48d8d1e75783d19c8c/ryanduffin_gossamer_paperboy_0004.jpg)

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Paperboy Prince

Gossamer looks at the world—travel, design, art, culture, and food—through a green lens.

Open plan offices for new media companies, beautiful as they are, contain few physical pleasures.

There are no opaque phone rooms for naps or crying, just glass boxes with doors that don’t lock. No coffee pots, just a cumbersome robot that spits out diesel-scented “espresso,” and milk substitute. No room for a plant on your desk, which is more like designated space at a table.
 
The office I worked at in the summer of 2017, which was situated on two floors of the graveyard of Goldman Sachs, offered a few things worth having: narrow windows with views of the East River and the Stone Street meat restaurants, proximity to a neighbor’s helicopter pad, and an array of Fresh Direct-supplied snacks. La Croix in 10 flavors, single-serving discs of hummus and guacamole, pita chips of every stripe, slimey packages of hard-boiled eggs that came in pairs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, hundreds of dollars worth of cashews and almonds, apples and oranges and one or two rock-hard green pears, and, most importantly, Babybel cheese. I ate it every day.

I spent that summer thinking about a crush, and complaining about my job, which was to pay attention to Tumblr and *Game of Thrones*. I thank god that we are not all bloggers, and that we have not all spent time in Manhattan’s Financial District, but I imagine you still know what I am talking about: each day is the same. An iced coffee drips condensation next to your laptop, an idle conversation about going to the beach this weekend ends with no one making a plan, and a music video or two breaks up the hours by giving you something to tweet about. Mercifully, the day will end when the sun is still out, the way it doesn’t for three-fourths of the year. It’s not all bad.
 
Plus, Babybel cheese. After breakfast, but before lunch, the same little red wax guy. Originated in France, manufactured at a factory in South Dakota, one of an estimated 1.5 million wheels per day. Driven to a 30-story office building in lower Manhattan at five in the morning. You can pop them like pieces of gum while you stew in the the languid but fizzy energy of waiting for a day to end.

It’s the perfect snack. For staring into space and dreaming of never returning another email. For doing something, anything, with your hands, while you recite a fraught iMessage conversation from memory to whomever sits next to you. For swallowing a low-calorie placeholder in two bites and, synched with the crouch to the trash can, subtly dipping your chin to find out if you remembered to put on deodorant.

 
The red cellophane wrapper makes the whole package look like a Valentine. The Valentine weighs exactly 20 grams every time, which according to some reliable-enough internet resources, is the same as a mouse and twice as much as a human eye. The wax shell looks like something that’s been hatched out of and discarded in a weird place, as chilling as a cicada husk dropping into an open pitcher of sangria. You can warm it in your hand and make a tight, shiny ball. But it’ll leave a pink film on your skin, so why would you?

The experience is sensual, like the slow drag of a zipper that you’re opening mostly for effect. The wax resists. It’s basically alive. Then there’s a two-centimeter gasp of bright white, appearing like a not-yet-tan belly peeking out from the narrow, moving gap between jean shorts and crop top. It is pretty much as close as you will get to a strip tease in a work environment.

The experience is also a little bit gross. Like peeling anything is a little bit gross. Like the word “peeling,” which is gross. Depending on your mood: a little bit like in *Black Swan*, when Natalie Portman peels back a frayed strip of the skin around her cuticle until there’s a bright red bloody line all the way down her finger.

And then there’s the cheese itself, which, bitten into, looks like an orthodontist’s upper jaw mold, and tastes like nothing.

***

*Kaitlyn Tiffany is a writer living in Brooklyn. She co-authors a [weekly newsletter](https://famouspeople.substack.com/) about terrible parties.  *

GreenBabybel

Babybel

The first time I fell in love, we bonded in the early stages through phone Scrabble. “Scrabble back,” he’d text me, if a few hours passed without my next move. This was pre-Tinder, and our matches got heated. We eventually spent enough years together to re-download the app for a burst of nostalgia in our long-distance monogamy.

As our relationship wore on, Newtoy’s then-wildly popular Words with Friends became available on my Android, like the Snapchat app we’d use to sext. Then came Scramble with Friends (renamed Word Streak), which really spiced things up.

To me, word games will always be kind of romantic: a throwback to simpler times. They’re nerdy, but nobody really cares that much if you underperform. There’s space to slack, to try too hard, or to embarrass yourself only in front of a bot.

On Wikipedia, a website predicated on people volunteering to write and edit words, “word games” [are categorized by type](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_game). There’s letter arrangement (Scrabble), puzzle (crossword), structured (Mad Libs), or linguistic recreations (spelling bees).

These games predate artificial intelligence by eons, well before Siri had all the answers and Merriam-Webster Dictionary started dragging people [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/MerriamWebster).

Words, one of the most basic forms of communication, can be primal. Like puzzles—or a budding relationship—they can leave us vulnerable or confused. Choosing the right word could win you millions of dollars, grant you acceptance to a prestigious school, or earn you 10 whole seconds of glory on a dimly lit stage before a crowd of boozing spectators.

We may be post-truth, but a word well-played still brings people together. On a recent Galentine’s Day, I watched a group of grown adults in a Manhattan speakeasy compete in a spelling bee. “French from Latin,” the moderator read. I sipped my beer. “Can you please define the word?” Plot twist! In line for the restroom, I learned one very good contestant spoke only English and Portuguese, the latter not much help here. More were eliminated. No mercy was spared. Only one speller—who asked to hear a word in a sentence—behaved as a “douche,” at least according to the moderators.

For the same reason I go to estate sales, word games have retro appeal. They’re a haven from the noise, and from a president who does not open books. They’re a cerebral flex in a society that keeps telling me how to fix my face, company for a “lonely generation.”

If we match in a Scrabble game, thanks to some algorithm that connects people all around the globe, your choices tell me something about you. Maybe you learned a word from reading The Hobbit as a kid, which totally changed your life. Maybe you’re really into Shakespeare, or you’re a jackass who keeps making two-letter combinations until one finally sticks.

People separated by time or distance or language can play word games. True to form, most Americans are unwittingly more limited: notorious for only speaking English, and often afraid to look silly. It’s a humbling thing to admit that you can’t make a halfway decent play in a word game.  

Maybe you’re like my younger brother, who at age 10 won a round of Scattergories, the 30-year-old board game that includes pencils and paper in a box. For the category of “medicine” and the letter of “M,” he chose Midol, much to our mom’s and aunts’ delight. Obvious victor.

Maybe work is boring and unchallenging and you’ve been entertaining fantasies of quitting, but there’s some temporary spontaneity in the daily crossword—or whatever the frequency, depending your source.

In a culture that thrives on superficial connections, when your next lay can be only a few swipes away, word games can be intimate. An opponent’s assemblage of letters is suggestive, tells me something different than the 280-character tweet you spent an hour crafting and retooling.

On a recent early-morning bus ride to Manhattan from Philadelphia, I passed time by redownloading the word game apps I deleted forever ago. Delirious from little sleep, I felt slightly self-conscious and rusty playing against random players or bots. I remembered that I preferred Scrabble, because the virtual instructor would tell me if I chose the best possible word based on the tiles given. Uncertainty can be thrilling, until it’s not.

I drag the tiles: “F-I-R-E.”  Best word! “R-I-D-S.” Best word! An analog-looking, starry popup appears on my screen, a form of congratulations.

Is this as hard as it gets? Maybe I’m taking the easy way out. Or maybe, I still got it.

***

*[Natalie Daher](http://www.nataliedaher.com/) is a writer and journalist based in New York. She co-authors a newsletter, [Clipped](https://us16.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=469667a58e33374cf748297f7&id=4e1050af80), about women's media.*

Finding common ground one letter at a time.

scrabble

Word Games

In 2016, I moved into an apartment outfitted with a panini press, a clunky appliance I used exactly once and which then served as an ersatz modern art installation for the remaining 364 days of my lease. Its worthlessness was solidified when, on a camping trip with nary a press in sight, my roommates and I placed hunks of cheese-stuffed baguette on a grill and flattened them with large rocks. Me, dependent on a single-use appliance? I scoffed as I bit into my panini. Please. I was practically Bear Grylls.


My ambitions — at least when it came to eating sandwiches — may not have been lofty enough to capitalize on a panini press, but its existence served as a gateway gadget, paving the way for what I now consider to be the holy grail of single-use appliances. It sits in my kitchen. It is small. It is sharp. It cuts without hurting and slices without contrition. Friends: meet the egg slicer.

 
Invented in the early 1900s by a German man named Willy, the egg slicer was created for the sole purpose of — this isn’t hard, folks — cutting eggs. The device itself is composed of two parts: a slotted base and a hinged frame strung with taut metal wires. To wield this contraption, all one has to do is place a peeled, hard boiled egg on the base and lower the top, allowing the wires to cut through the membrane and separate the orb into equal segments. As Willy was clearly aware, no one wants to accidentally coat their egg with fingerprints or deal with buckled whites, two common hazards of holding an egg and cleaving it with a knife. Best yet, these slicers transform the yolk (which I’ve always found slightly repellant) into manageable, aesthetically appealing ribbons of chalky yellow fat.

 
There is something pleasingly democratic about an apparatus that elevates an egg from an inexpensive, ubiquitous form of protein to a delicacy with one quick sever. The devices are also widely accessible, with myriad brands, styles, and price points from which to choose. While I prefer the bare bones, 100% aluminum version that sells for [$2.81 online](https://www.tigerchef.com/tigerchef-round-aluminum-egg-slicer.html), egg-eaters with upscale taste can purchase fancier instruments. Williams Sonoma offers a [$14.95 BPA-free "Egg Slicer and Wedger](https://www.williams-sonoma.com/products/williams-sonoma-egg-slicer/),” which one online reviewer bought "on a lark" and then loved so much that she ordered another for the kitchen in her lake house.

 
The egg slicer may be my favorite, but a brief tour of my pint-sized Brooklyn apartment reveals that I now own a small army of single-use appliances, all honed to execute one task perfectly: there is a [milk frother](https://www.amazon.com/Bellemain-Stainless-Steel-Frother-capacity/dp/B010E1ZQVC/ref=sr_1_20?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1529576025&sr=1-20&keywords=milk+frother), which I use every morning and a [rice cooker](https://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-SR-G06FGL-1-Step-Automatic-Cooker/dp/B01DGQVX46/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1529575340&sr=8-3&keywords=panasonic+rice+cookers), whose services I employ on occasion; on the table sits a [small wedge](https://www.amazon.com/Bobino-LATOFTQ-Laptop-Foot-Turquoise/dp/B0758161RQ/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?ie=UTF8&qid=1529575443&sr=8-1-spons&keywords=bobino+laptop+foot&psc=1) that serves no purpose other than propping up my roommate’s laptop and which she claims stands between her and a lifetime of carpal tunnel; and in the back of my closet is a [sweater razor](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015RN9JN8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1), which I drunk-ordered last winter after reading that it would slice the fuzz off all my sweaters and, thus, “change my life.” I still believe this although I have yet to prove it true — in my aforementioned state I forgot that I own only one sweater and zero of the batteries the device requires.

 
The beauty of single-use appliances is that, unlike Pokémon or sexual harassers, it doesn’t behoove anyone to catch ‘em all. Unless you happen to inhabit a mansion of Versailles-style proportions, collecting these contraptions forces one to prioritize. Would you rather be greeted every day with the dead-eyed stare of a [hot dog steamer](https://www.amazon.com/Nostalgia-HDS248RD-Extra-Large-Steamer/dp/B01LVWIIVR/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1529576752&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=hot+dog+cooker&psc=1) or a [strawberry huller](https://www.amazon.com/Chefn-27466-StemGem-Strawberry-Huller/dp/B002XOHZWC/ref=sr_1_4?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1529575061&sr=1-4&keywords=strawberry+huller)? Are you the sort of person who values flawlessly [spiralized zucchini](https://www.amazon.com/OXO-Grips-Handheld-Spiralizer-Green/dp/B013KAW5IQ/ref=sr_1_8?s=home-garden&ie=UTF8&qid=1529682126&sr=1-8&keywords=zuchinni+spiral+noodle+maker) over a properly [scraped coconut](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07D59NVXH/ref=sspa_dk_detail_0?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B07D59NVXH&pd_rd_wg=iz3Tv&pd_rd_r=SGF4GQ8K4JYKWNKRHBV0&pd_rd_w=PPENA)? At some point, the questions become nearly existential: in the vast scheme of things, do the rewards of a [banana bunker](https://www.vat19.com/item/banana-bunker-protects-bananas?adid=gshopping&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&adpos=1o2&scid=scplpbanana-bunker&sc_intid=banana-bunker&gclid=CjwKCAjwma3ZBRBwEiwA-CsblIot5ie4bOdhlrGp7z1XY6XwEvJyHjmvyPgJiWZMXMWQXpNZe5JBShoCsrcQAvD_BwE) trump the spoils of a [hamburger press](https://www.amazon.com/Weston-Express-Hamburger-Ejector-07-0310-W/dp/B000XB45DO/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1529576579&sr=8-3&keywords=hamburger+press)?

 
I was speaking with a friend recently who admitted that she has a rule against owning single-use kitchen appliances, her reasoning being that in most instances you could probably use a knife to accomplish the same task. Does she have a point? Sure.


But sometimes “good enough” just isn’t good enough. And if anyone needs me, I'll be in my own (slightly more crowded) kitchen, with my slicer, basking in that rare flavor of joy that accompanies placing a perfectly mathematically bisected egg atop an otherwise mundane salad.


***


*[Luna Adler](http://www.lunaadler.com/) likes to think of herself as an agreeable Scorpio. She lives in Brooklyn.*

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