7 Essays To Read: Befriending Your Incarcerated Dad, Male-Brides, And Lamar Odom

For most of her life, Georgia Brown has had to go to prison to spend any quality time with her father. In a BuzzFeed Ideas essay, she describes growing up with an incarcerated father and how they've become friends over the years. "I’m not a princess, and he’s no Disney dad. He will never be a fat little inventor or a mermaid king. But as I’ve got older, he’s become a friend," she writes. Read it at BuzzFeed Ideas.

Zach Baron is getting married soon, and while his bride-to-be does not care about the wedding, he sure does. For GQ, he writes about being the bride, the one who cares about table settings and centerpieces and guest lists. "I feel like men have been missing out, honestly. The evolution of gender roles, in wedding planning as in all other things, has been great for women, sure. But it’s also been great for us. I’m happy my future wife doesn’t have to enter the wedding-planning terrordome—it doesn’t suit her. But I’m also happy to assume the role that’s traditionally been assigned to her. There’s a sort of joy in the ritual, I’m discovering." Read it at GQ.

Earlier this week, Playboy Enterprises announced that it would no longer publish photos of nude women. It's an indication that the white female naked body is no longer the epitome of a sexual object in mainstream American media, according to Dodai Stewart. For Fusion, Stewart explains how thin, white, and blonde aren't everyone's fantasy and how people actually crave diversity, which the internet provides. Read her piece at Fusion.

During an interview for a New York Times Magazine profile that ran last week, Nicki Minaj walked out on the journalist after calling out her racist and sexist remarks. Responding to the profile, Sally Kohn confronts her own whiteness and contemplates what "white supremacy" really means. "Where white supremacy comes into play is in putting an historical and structural thumb on our side of that argument — that there can only be one truth, about bias or anything else for that matter, and the truth belongs to white people," she writes. "How can there be racial profiling by police if I’ve never experienced it? ... How can racial discrimination be a real thing, it’s never happened to me? Well no shit it’s never happened to you, you’re white!" Read her piece at Medium.

In the wake of news that Lamar Odom had been hospitalized after being found unconscious, Lee Jenkins asks where things went wrong for the former NBA star. In a piece for Sports Illustrated, he writes of Odom's ongoing struggles. An excerpt: "The descriptions of Odom’s weekend at the ranch recall Nicolas Cage’s character in Leaving Las Vegas, an alcoholic who drinks himself to death in the company of a prostitute. 'I don’t know if I started drinking ‘cause my wife left me or my wife left me ‘cause I started drinking,' the character says. 'But f*ck it anyway.'" Read it at Sports Illustrated.

More brown women on television may or may not have cured Scaachi Koul's adolescent self-loathing, but she suspects it might have made her nicer to brown guys. For BuzzFeed, she explains how limited representation on TV can be damaging and how it made her hate herself — and Indian men. "Had you asked 15-year-old me what I thought about dating a brown guy, I’d groan and recount their flaws. They were lecherous, or they were repulsive, or they were cheap, or they were meek, or they were weak, or they were aggressive, or they were terrifying, or they were asexual. They were whatever version of an Indian man has been on television the week before." Read her essay at BuzzFeed.

After Joe Fassler's wife was struck by a mysterious, crippling pain, their trip to the emergency room revealed that doctors have a tendency to treat women's pain less seriously. For The Atlantic, Fassler recalls the nerve-racking experience of waiting hours to see a doctor. Read it here.