7 Essays To Read This Week: Baby Photos, "Girl Movies," And Kurt Cobain

In a poignant essay for Pigeons and Planes, Elijah Watson recalls a childhood spent listening to Nirvana and pondering questions about his identity. Paying tribute to Kurt Cobain, Watson writes, "I became uncomfortable in my own skin, trying to adapt to a type of blackness that wasn’t my own. But Cobain made me feel all right with myself." Read it at Pigeons and Planes.

Anupa Mistry wrote about the years she spent hating the way she looked — and when she later realized that insecurity is just a state of mind and not an actual existence. In an essay inspired by a tweet from Earl Sweatshirt and Kim Kardashian's Selfish, Mistry explains beauty privilege and how Kardashian's book of selfies actually displays a whole lot of security and ballsiness. Read it at The Hairpin.

Mental illnesses were never something Larissa Pham's family spoke of. It wasn’t until Pham mentioned her depression to her mother that she finally found a family member to confide in. "We tamed that wild fox together. It didn’t make my depression any easier, but at least it was a pain we could articulate," she writes in a devastating essay for BuzzFeed Ideas. Read it at here.

There's a lot more to baby photos than chubby cheeks. "The way photos are read, and the messages people receive from them, say a lot about the anxieties and priorities of our time; the subtext is almost always class," writes Kathryn Jezer-Morton. In a piece for Jezebel, Jezer-Morton breaks down how we perceive the baby pictures that flood our feeds. Read it at Jezebel.

Ann Friedman wrote about the appeal and triumph of "girl movies." For The Cut, she writes, "The movies that teen girls love become classics because they are so much more than films: They are bonding opportunities. Girl movies inspire such fervent fandom because they are seamlessly woven into young female friendships with each reblog and sleepover screening." Read it at The Cut.

Some women go to great lengths to conceal their tampons. But why the urge to keep feminine products hidden? Julie Beck pondered and did some research on this curious tendency. Read her piece at The Atlantic.