I really wanted to get at those spaces of unspoken subtext and microaggressions. I think of it this way: when I go into small stores or really any store, I always make sure my hands are out of my pockets. I say hi to the shop owner because I don’t want to be seen or assumed that I’m going to steal something. 

Do you feel like there’s a way to better convey that to white people without hitting that defensive wall?

That’s a hard question. I think you need to listen to the person who’s being affected by it. They can’t exactly put into words what it is, but there’s a feeling. There are a lot of things that we can’t put into words. I also struggle with sensitivity readers as an idea because I understand it completely and I do think it’s better in most cases, but I also cringe against the idea of making a certain person be the person who decides this is okay.

That’s interesting that you mention the weight of Blackness because isn’t that essentially what the grease is supposed to lift?

Exactly.

We don’t necessarily know what was going through Nella’s mind when she gave into the grease. Was that a conscious choice of hers?

This is another question I don’t get asked. I wonder if it’s because it’s a spoiler, but I love talking about it because I do think it’s really important. I was revising that scene last summer, which was when I had edits back at my desk. It was George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and COVID-19, obviously. Everything was happening. I was in a particularly not-great space. Mentally, I felt betrayed. I felt hopeless. I felt numb. I felt a lot of feelings about what was going on. So that scene where Hazel is telling Nella, “Don’t you want to be free?” That scene was me taking my own personality and my own perspective of what it was like to work on my book and feel like it mattered when on the other side of it, people that are dying.

I want to talk about the Hulu adaptation for a second. That’s really exciting!

I can’t believe it.

That last Hulu adaptation I saw was Little Fires Everywhere.

So good.

I read that book—by Celeste Ng—and then watched the adaptation. They did a good job at making necessary tweaks. I know you’re a co-writer on the show, too. Are you prepared to sacrifice some parts of the story?

At the beginning I was like, I didn’t do this to get a TV show. I don’t know how this would work. But, the more we talked about it, I could see it. There is a lot I had to cut. And the end—there’s just so many places it could go if the story and the show were to [continue]. We’ve been talking about plans if it were to go past one season. Wagner Books is so rich for storylines.

What’s your dream casting?

I go back and forth. I feel like I give different answers every single time. I could see Keke Palmer. I could see KiKi Lane for both Nella and Hazel. They’re both the same dial turned a slightly different way. Angela Bassett … I feel like it’s clear from the book that I love Angela Bassett. I could see her as [other characters] Diana or Kendra Ray, especially Kendra Ray. She could have any role.

What’s next for you?

I can spread myself a little too thin sometimes with projects, so I really just taking it in and working on the Hulu adaptation and getting to spend more time with the characters in that way. But, definitely planning to write another book and planning for it to be about Black characters in the U.S..

Lastly, between the bidding war and a true taste of financial success, how does it feel to have a bit of a cushion?

It’s a big relief. Money was very, very, very tight before the book, even with my partner sharing the rent. So, the advance was huge. It also allowed my partner and I to move out of our tiny studio and into an apartment that had real rooms and doors. Now we’re owners, whereas two years ago, I would never have imagined ever being able to own anything.

Paulina Jayne Isaac is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia. You can follow her on Instagram @paulinajayne15.

I spent most of last year missing my friends. I posted nostalgic throwbacks on Instagram, scheduled Zooms with BFFs, and routinely complained to my fiancé about how much I yearned for the before times. “I can’t wait for things to go back to normal,” I chanted every night as he brushed his teeth.

And now, after the social hiatus felt around the world, a return to normalcy is finally around the corner. A reported 64% of all Americans have received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine and, if social media is any indication, people are gearing up for a summer of mingling. “Vax girl summer,” as it’s been dubbed, is the new hot girl summer. Vax girl (aka shot girl) summer is a season not unlike the summer before your freshman year of college. It’s a state of mind that screams, “let’s hang out!” with a little bit of “YOLO” mixed in for good measure. After a year of isolation and pandemic panic, stress-free socializing should sound like heaven. But many people are finding themselves experiencing a form of social anxiety — even around their closest friends.

My expectations collided with our new normal last month when I finally went to dinner with friends from college for the first time in more than a year. I hit the town with a pep in my step and called my mom on my way to dinner to inform her that I was not only going to see friends ~IRL~ but also  that I was wearing a real bra. Things were looking up!

But soon after the appetizers arrived, I found myself straining to focus on conversation topics. In a room full of well-dressed humans, I suddenly felt anxious about my standard jeans and T-shirt combo. I became convinced I needed an entirely new wardrobe. At one point I found myself describing a TikTok video at length that no one had seen. I felt drained by the end of the night. I had absolutely not emanated effortless vax girl energy or whatever.

Apparently, I am not alone in feeling this way. Lots of young women I spoke to told me it’s not that they’re unhappy about seeing friends again, but they’re clearly out of practice. 

Or as Marissa, who is 29 and lives in Chicago, put it: “I feel like an athlete returning from an injury—I know all the plays but I forgot how to dribble the ball.”

Sophie, 28, from Toronto: “I’m more hyper self-aware in the presence of others now. It feels kind of crippling and makes me self-conscious.”

And Molly, 32, from Los Angeles: “The big group dinners I used to love now leave me feeling super drained. I find I don’t have the same energy or desire to be around people for long periods of time.”

This post-pandemic paralysis isn’t surprising in a professional or dating context, but it can be jarring to feel weird around our best friends. According to Adam Smiley Poswolsky, friendship expert and author of Friendship in the Age of Loneliness, the first step in navigating this unease is acceptance. Whether you’ve been living solo, shacked up with a partner, back home with your parents, and/or taking care of your kids, we’ve all been existing in individual bubbles. Acknowledging that we’ve been in different places and dealing with our own priorities is a big part of accepting where we’re at now.

Smiley’s next suggestion for approaching friendships this summer is to give others what he calls a pandemic pass if communication has been sparse during the last year. “We may not have been the best at staying in touch, and that’s okay. We can all give each other a pass and look at this as an opportunity for a friendship reset.”

I obviously left my pandemic passes at home when I went to dinner with my friends. Because we had navigated transitions before, like graduating from college and living in different cities, I expected that we would essentially pick up exactly where we’d left off more than a year earlier. But I hadn’t factored in the larger impact COVID had on our collective dynamic.

Smiley says that simple, direct communication can lead to a better outcome when maneuvering awkward situations with friends. In other words, I could have talked a little bit less about TikTok and a little bit more about how much I’d missed connecting with my (non-Internet) friends and asked them questions.

I cooked my grandmother’s congee recipe and her version is packed with extra ginger, considered to be a warming ingredient, ideal for new mothers. Ginger is quite pungent when fresh, but it becomes sweeter when cooked. Similarly, as I nourished my sister-in-law with ancient yuezi recipes, and cared for my niece by proxy, my desire to nurture her grew.

Week one of yuezi is focused on detoxification. After birth, the Chinese believe that lochia (postpartum bleeding) and expulsion of toxins must be helped along with ingredients such as liver, wood ear mushrooms, and roasted licorice root.

The very first dish that I made for yuezi was Sheng Hua soup, an herbal concoction consisting of Pao Jiang, Carthamus Tinctorius, Chinese angelica, Semen Persicae, lovage root, and roasted licorice root. The recipe is simple but requires attention: First, soak the herbs in three cups of water for 30 minutes then boil until it reduces to one cup of liquid. Repeat the process with a second set of herbs. Finally, mix the two cups of liquid together to serve.

The strong herbal flavor is also strangely sweet while bitter at the same time. My sister-in-law dutifully choked it down each morning. We bonded while enveloped in a cloud of warm peppery-spiced fumes in the morning. Ginger’s sharp scent inspires focus and it made me aware of my subconscious feelings of insecurity about my place in the family, emotions that I didn’t even know that I had.

My stance towards pregnancy is unequivocal, I’m horrified by the idea of breastfeeding, stretch marks, the idea of having your legs up in a stirrup as a team of doctors and nurses stare intensely at your nether regions. And having a baby is not like in the movies. When my niece was born, my sister-in-law wasn’t handed a freshly washed, cherubic baby wrapped up nicely in a blanket. Instead, shortly after exiting her womb, my niece was unceremoniously plopped on her chest, sans blanket, bloodied and dripping with slime.

Giving birth is damn traumatic on the body. It makes sense that week two of yuezi is all about ‘warming’ and repairing the body. 

Week three started with black chicken herbal soup, believed to regulate a new mother’s hormones and aid in kidney and liver functions. The appearance of black chicken aka silkie chicken can be disturbing, it’s black from the skin down to the bones.

The soup is easy to make, one of the main ingredients is just time. After blanching the chicken, add ginger, angelica root, goji berry, red dates, milkvetch root, lovage root, rice wine, sesame oil, and water. Just let it simmer for 45 minutes and the healing soup is ready to go.

As I chopped, sautéed, and braised the warming ingredients, my heart began to fill with affection for my niece. As I recalled her all wrapped up like a dumpling and the earnestness on my brother’s face as he held her out towards me, I almost burst into tears.

The next time I dropped off food, I made a beeline for my niece and cradled her in my arms. There really is something about that new baby smell. It’s the scent of innocence and hope.

My favorite dish to make was geung cho—pigs feet and ginger stew. It’s one of the most well-known dishes of yuezi and is believed to increase the milk supply and I served it during the fourth week of yuezi. When the pigs feet arrive from the grocer, they are rock hard, you can’t imagine that they’ll be transformed into something meltingly tender and unctuous. But with time, the lowly pigs feet transform into a succulent masterpiece, slipping easily off the bone. My brother remarked that it was the best geung cho he had ever tasted.

To paraphrase renowned chef Éric Ripert’s comments in a 2017 interview, “When food is prepared with love, the people who eat it can feel that…you can feel the love in the food.”

As I spent my month in quarantine immersed in this strange project, I realized loving my niece doesn’t make my life decisions wrong. The more I chopped, sautéed, and braised, the more I began to feel a warming of my own affections for my niece, and those feelings of guilt of not being the perfect daughter slowly vanished.

Yuezi is supposed to warm the new mother but it also melted this cook’s icy heart.

Kaila Yu is a journalist based in Los Angeles. 

“If I’m being honest, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. I just want your tight pussy,” my date blurted out halfway through the evening.

At 18, I was astonished by the words that came out of his mouth. Not just because it was both misogynistic and ableist, but also because, apparently, my disabled body was the subject of hypersexualization. As an Asian woman, I had grown up in a culture that prizes physical perfection, but I was born with cerebral palsy, which affects my speech and mobility. My body was far from perfection, but I often find myself at these crossroads, caught in a web of stereotypes. An ex once told me that he didn’t care for me as a person, but his “yellow fever” made him stay with me. Back then, I was just happy someone found me attractive.

As a daughter of Korean immigrants, the unspoken rule was that dating before college was out of the question. Although I had secret boyfriends, it went only so far under the roof of my super-strict parents. In hindsight, my family probably thought no one would date me; disability was very much a foreign concept for them. In South Korea—and most Asian countries—disability is yet to be socially accepted. People with disabilities are shunned from society and often institutionalized.

In Asian communities it’s a common belief that a disability is a curse: A person is born with or acquires a disability as a form of chastisement or bad karma. When a child is born with a disability, it’s assumed that the parents are being punished for their sins. At least, that was the message I grew up hearing at the Korean American church I attended where the congregation never passed up an opportunity to remind me that I was different. They delivered their judgments under the guise of good intentions; they’d pray that I would be “healed” of my disability, while the kids would shamelessly ridicule the way I talked and walked.

For some time I thought maybe this was just an evangelist problem. But I felt isolated everywhere in the Asian community. Countless Asian-run nail salons refused to serve me because they “didn’t know how to accommodate” me. Asian taxi drivers in New York City drove off when they realized I was disabled. A Korean family physician once refused to treat me for a common cold because she never treated “a kid with my condition” (though the common cold doesn’t affect my body any differently because of my cerebral palsy). I grew up believing that I didn’t belong.

As a woman, a member of the Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPI) community, and a person with a disability, I’ve always felt like a walking target—my very existence making me a minority within a minority to either be ignored or fetishized.

So it came as no surprise to me that as hate crimes against the AAPI community grasped national attention, those of us with disabilities—an estimated 1 in 10, according to the CDC—are often left out of the conversation, and that the safety of Asian women with disabilities (who are three times more likely than their nondisabled counterparts to be victims of sexual violence) is still not included. I’m left on the borderlines of both the disability and AAPI communities, not definitively belonging to either one. It’s nothing new to me: From the men who thought they had achieved their sexual fantasy to be with a crip yellow chick to the countless times that people of my own ethnicity treated me like dirt, I’ve gotten comfortable with not feeling comfortable.

Simone Biles continues to prove she’s the G.O.A.T.

In case you forgot that Biles is the most decorated gymnast in US history, she came to remind you by nailing a move that has never been performed by a female gymnast in a competition, according to The Washington Post.

On May 21, the official NBC account for the Tokyo Olympics shared a clip of Biles practicing the Yurchenko double pike ahead of this weekend’s U.S. Classic competition. Biles stunned fellow gymnasts with the impressive vault trick that involves a round-off onto the springboard, a back handspring onto the vault, and a double pike flip. According to People, the move that’s named after Russian gymnast Natalia Yurchenko usually only involves one flip, but Biles is just that good. 

“Simone Biles just landed her Yurchenko double pike podium training and we are SPEECHLESS,” @NBCOlympics tweeted.

They weren’t the only ones. “MY GOODNESS @Simone_Biles,” LeBron James tweeted. Here are some more reactions:

If the 24-year-old athlete attempts this move at the U.S. Classic on May 22, she will make history as the first woman to compete with the trick, which is even more impressive considering the event will be her first time competing in over a year.

After practice, Biles told the press that she had to give herself a pep talk before attempting the move. “I was like, ‘It’s ok, I’ve done this so many times, I’ve been doing this for months now,’ ” she said, according to NBC Sports. In the Twitter video, she can be heard telling her coach, “I just got a little nervous on the landing.”

This April, Simone Biles opened up about one of her biggest motivations for competing in the Olympics this Summer: to represent survivors of sexual abuse, especially the victims of the former Team USA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. “I feel like, if there weren’t a remaining survivor in the sport, they would have just brushed it to the side,” she told Hoda Kotb of Today. “But since I’m still here and I have quite a social media presence and platform, they have to do something. So I feel like coming back, gymnastics just wasn’t the only purpose I was supposed to do.”

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Prince Harry recently revealed more personal details about his royal exit, and it reportedly didn’t go over well with Prince William. 

Following the debut of Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey’s new mental health series on Apple TV+, The Me You Can’t See, things have apparently become even more strained between the royal brothers. 

“William feels that Harry should discuss his issues privately and can’t comprehend why he continues to shade his own flesh and blood on TV,” a source told Us Weekly. “Of course, mental health is a serious issue, but William can’t get his head around why Harry keeps throwing his family under the bus.”

Throughout the series, Prince Harry opened up about what led him to seek therapy in order to help destigmatize conversations surrounding mental health. From the argument with Meghan Markle that pushed him to see a professional to its effect on his family, the Duke of Sussex did not hold back about the damage done by his royal life in the spotlight.

One of the most painful moments for Prince Harry was what occurred when his wife was suffering from suicidal thoughts. “I thought my family would help, but every single ask—request, warning, whatever—just got met with total silence, total neglect,” Prince Harry shared in one episode, per People. “We spent four years trying to make it work. We did everything that we possibly could to stay there and carry on doing the role and doing the job. But Meghan was struggling.” 

Prince Harry also spoke about the vicious cycle of “suffering” passed along throughout the royal family. “My father used to say to me when I was younger, he used to say to William and I, ‘Well, it was like that for me, so it’s gonna be like that for you.’ That doesn’t make sense,” he said during the show’s third episode, per Us Weekly. “Just because you suffered, it doesn’t mean that your kids have to suffer. In fact, quite the opposite. If you suffered, do everything you can to make sure that whatever experiences, negative experiences that you had, you can make it right for your kids.”

However, Prince Harry’s statements may have negated the slight progress made between the brothers during his visit to the U.K. for Prince Phillip’s funeral. “There’s no way they’ll ever trust him after this,” the source said regarding Prince William and Prince Charles. “The damage is done.”

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For nearly a year journalist Sara Sidner was on the ground in Minneapolis. She covered the murder of George Floyd, the subsequent uprisings, and the trial of Derek Chauvin, the now convicted officer responsible for Floyd’s death. For a time she was a welcome local.

“There isn’t a day that has gone by since George Floyd was murdered, and the video went viral, where I didn’t talk to someone from the Minneapolis community—the Floyd family, their attorneys—[or have] written about what happened here,” she said the day after the Chauvin verdict was announced.

Sider, a national and international correspondent for CNN, knows a thing or two about being on the front lines. She’s witnessed families mangled by war and terrorism firsthand and led CNN’s coverage in Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown was shot by a police officer in 2014.

There was also that time she was hit by a bullet shell while reporting outside of Muammar el-Qaddafi’s seized compound in 2011. “Rebel: Libya is free,” she tweeted from her BlackBerry.

Earlier than that she was there—in person—amid the Mumbai terrorist attacks in 2008. For the one-year anniversary, she recalled the experience for CNN:

“Outside there were a flurry of stunned reporters struggling with cables and notepads, cameras and phones trying to get the information back ASAP. We all stood in a row like sitting ducks. There were no barriers, no police tape, and nothing to stop anyone from getting too close.”

But it was the 2021 story of Juliana Jimenez Sesma, a Los Angeles woman who lost her mother and stepfather to COVID-19, that memorably brought Sidner to tears on live television in January. There were no stray bullet shells or bombs, no concrete buildings tumbling to the ground. Just a somber, socially distanced funeral in a parking lot under a pop-up canopy. For Sidner, and for numerous people around the world, this was another kind of front line.

Despite enduring those core-shaking experiences, there was something different about Minneapolis. In June, days after Floyd’s death, the city’s police chief, Medaria Arradondo, called the killing “a violation of humanity” outright. To see a chief almost immediately react against the blue-wall-of-silence culture that permeates the police force was a rare moment. For months Sidner was embedded in the community, which up until this April she referred to as her second home. Minneapolitans greeted her like she was one of their own, a kindness that helped take the edge off of a difficult day of reporting. 

“I just always felt so helpless, honestly,” she says. “Because nothing I could say or do could fix the heartbreak in the community, the heartbreak of the family, the heartbreak of the people who stood there and watched a man be murdered, you know?”

Choosing summer party themes might sound like overkill, but since most of us still feel off-kilter socially, having a party theme can help take some of the guesswork out of the equation.

For your guests, deciding what to wear might be one of the most daunting elements of summer party season (right below food allergies, right above running into an ex). A theme will make it easier for them to get dressed and pick a potluck dish or hostess gift.

To make it easier on you—because planning the damn thing isn’t so simple, either—we spoke to two party-planning experts about the best summer party themes.

If the pandemic has given us anything, it’s more TV time. “This year has seen many of us confined to our homes with the company of our TVs,” says designer and calligrapher Sam Pauletto. “Our showtime companions can offer great party themes.” He’s right.

Channel WandaVision and dress as either Wanda or Vision as host. Let your guests get creative and dress in the style of the sitcoms that inspired WandaVision, such as Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, The Brady Bunch, or The Office. “Many of these costumes can be made from everyday objects, thrift store finds, and items in our wardrobes,” Pauletto says. He recommends leaning into the theme with a playlist of TV show theme songs and the hits from each era.

Tie one of the biggest summer aesthetics with one of Netflix’s most popular shows. Start by giving the party an elevated picnic vibe. “Rustic-chic food presentation is back in,” Pauletto says. “Lay out fresh baguettes, bowls of seasonal fruit, ciders, cheese platters, and home-baked cakes.” To make it feel more Bridgerton, “serve high tea with finger sandwiches, Champagne, and tea cakes.”

He also recommends spreading vintage blankets around the lawn and offering outdoor games, such as badminton. For a special touch, mail handwritten invitations in the style of Lady Whistledown. “My focus when throwing a party is on how I want my guests to feel, and what I remember from special events,” Pauletto says. “Handwriting is a personal act and a treat to read after nothing but bills. If time allows, find a local calligrapher, or that one friend who has really nice handwriting and might even help with the promise of wine.”

Tropical Flavors

Chenai Bukutu is the founder of wedding- and party-planning company ByChenai Events, as well as a creative consultant in the interiors space. For summer party themes, Bukutu takes it to the Caribbean.

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case on a Mississippi abortion law challenging Roe v. Wade. The decision to review Jackson Women’s Health Organization v. Dobbs next term was made on Monday, May 17, after being rescheduled for the court’s consideration in conference more than a dozen times.

The controversial law seeks to ban abortions in Mississippi provided after the 15-week mark. In 1973, the court’s ruling in Roe v. Wade gave women the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy during the first 24 weeks, when the fetus is incapable of surviving outside the womb. In this latest case, SCOTUS will review whether all state laws, like the one passed in Mississippi, that ban previability abortions are unconstitutional.

If the Supreme Court upholds Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban, it will pose a threat to abortion rights nationwide. The ban was signed into law in 2018 by former Republican governor Phil Bryant. The only noted exception was for medical emergencies or cases in which there is a “severe fetal abnormality.” Instances of rape or incest were not considered exemptions. A federal judge in Mississippi struck down the law later that year, and the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling in December 2019. Now the Supreme Court, which currently has a 6-3 conservative majority since Amy Coney-Barrett’s appointment, will potentially rule on the case in the middle of the 2022 midterm elections.

What this means for Roe v. Wade right now

The decision on the Mississippi abortion law will affect the future of Roe v. Wade in a time when other states like Louisiana and Alabama are attempting to strip women of their reproductive freedoms. The Center for Reproductive Rights published a report showing that if Roe fell tomorrow, 24 states would likely take action to ban abortion outright. Eleven states already have “trigger bans” in place, which would ban abortion immediately if Roe v. Wade is overturned.

Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, tells Glamour that federal protections are what will matter if the ban is upheld. “One of the most important things is to make sure we have protection at the federal level,” Northup explains. “We’re going to need to have nationwide protections should the Supreme Court weaken those protections at all. We want to make sure that the EACH Act and the Women’s Health Protection Act are there as strong federal safeguards.”

Kristyn Brandi, M.D., an ob-gyn and board chair of Physicians for Reproductive Health, agrees. “I am very concerned by this and other attacks on reproductive health care during a global pandemic,” Brandi said in a statement. “We should be making care more accessible, not limiting options. That is why federal legislation like the Women’s Health Protection Act and the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance (EACH) Act are so important. The evidence is clear—abortion is health care. We should not be questioning the validity of this fact.”

How the law could affect Mississippi 

Jackson Women’s Health Organization is the only abortion clinic in Mississippi. Restrictions on abortions have a disproportionate impact on communities who are already inequitably impacted by barriers to health care. These communities include BIPOC people capable of pregnancy, people with low incomes, people living in rural communities, and LGBTQIA people.

“It is very disheartening to me that often your reproductive health care depends on your zip code,” Brandi tells Glamour. “I want people in Mississippi to be able to access the same quality health care, including abortion care, as they could anywhere else. All people should have access to care. We should be trying to strengthen the care of all people, not weaken it with partisan legislation.”

Clinic director Shannon Brewer is the plaintiff in the case and says that the clinic doesn’t provide abortions past 16 weeks. When asked the percentage of patients who receive abortions after 15 weeks, she said, “A rough estimate is 10%.”

Northup added that the low percentage of women seeking abortions past the 15-week mark shows that the legislation is about trying to roll back abortion rights. “I think this shows how much this is a political tactic to seek to destroy the fabric of Roe v. Wade,” she said. “It’s a small percentage of women…. This is part of what’s been a strategy for years.”

What happens next

The vast majority of Americans support reproductive freedom. Polling has found that 77% support Roe v. Wade, and there is no state in the country where banning abortion is popular. 

“Everyone across the country who cares about this issue needs to get motivated and active now,” Northup says. “You need to make sure that both the White House and the Congress understand that we are going to have these rights protected and not go backward.”

Peak “dog mom” vibes. First lady Jill Biden recently carried a Valentino purse with custom artwork on the front: a J, presumably for Jill, and hand-painted portraits of her two dogs, Champ and Major. 

The detail was spotted by Page Six, which reports the accessory is a Valentino Garavani Rockstud, and that the designer is offering the item plus pet portraits for the low, low price of $2,000 a pop. Click here to see all the ways you can customize the bag with an animal image courtesy of illustrator Riccardo Cusimano.

The first lady has been spotted carrying the bag a few times this month. Maybe it’s a way to keep the animals close to her heart when she has to travel for work.

Jill Biden recently offered the Obama family words of consolation following the passing of their canine, Bo, who lived at the White House during Barack Obama’s years in office. “Bo brought smiles to us all,” she wrote on May 8 after the Obamas confirmed the dog had passed following a battle with cancer.

“Today our family lost a true friend and loyal companion,” Obama wrote on Twitter. “For more than a decade, Bo was a constant, gentle presence in our lives—happy to see us on our good days, our bad days, and everyday in between. He tolerated all the fuss that came with being in the White House, had a big bark but no bite, loved to jump in the pool in the summer, was unflappable with children, lived for scraps around the dinner table, and had great hair.”

Hold your pets close, friends. And if you have the extra cash, go ahead and get them painted on your stuff. It’s actually super cute, now that I think about it. Anyone have $2,000 I can borrow?