Do You Smell That?

Hi friend,

It started out innocently enough. A pitch landed in our inbox. The topic was generic — how stressed out, overworked middle-aged women were stealing away for “micro-breaks” — but in the right hands, it could have been a funny article.

But when the “writer” filed her story, it was repetitive, cliche, and plain boring. A lot of words, but nothing to grasp hold of; a squishy, boneless blob of pablum.

Oh! It was AI.

It took maybe one minute to figure out what was amiss. Editors at Wired and Business Insider weren’t as quick to catch on. Both publications had to retract a raft of published pieces when it was discovered that a “freelancer” named Margaux Blanchard was an AI-generated cipher. 

Some new AI writing and pitching tool must have hit the market, because all of a sudden, our inbox is full of this bullshit. So: What does an AI “think” middle-aged women are all about? It describes us as, “funny, hot, hormonal, powerful, curious, and real.” We’re full of "resilience" and are game to “redefine” this phase of life. We’re “ditching the playbook” when it comes to beauty standards, are living “unapologetically,” and are not “asking for permission” anymore. And yes, there are m-dashes.

“Fabulists and plagiarists are as old as media itself,” says Wired in a mea culpa from its management team. “But AI presents a new challenge. It lets anyone craft a perfect pitch with a simple prompt and play-act the role of journalist convincingly enough to fool, well, us.”

Writing isn’t an efficient process. It requires a lot of trying and failing, reading and thinking, and general struggle. AI is sold as a shortcut, but true creativity is often at odds with productivity. (Meanwhile, this newsletter is the product of actual human brain functioning and therefore, occasionally contains spelling/grammatical errors. Consider them artisanal mistakes.)

The reclusive writer Thomas Pynchon, who is back in the news cycle thanks to the film adaptation of his book Vineland (One Battle After Another) and his upcoming novel Shadow Ticket, said these words in 1984 about the Luddites … but you could apply them to our situation now, too: “Public feeling about the machines could never have been simple unreasoning horror, but likely something more complex: the love/hate that grows up between humans and machinery – especially when it's been around for a while – not to mention serious resentment toward at least two multiplications of effect that were seen as unfair and threatening. One was the concentration of capital that each machine represented, and the other was the ability of each machine to put a certain number of humans out of work – to be ‘worth’' that many human souls.”

As the AI industry continues its bold march forward, more and more of our precious cognition will need to be used to determine what the hell is going on. Do we have the time, space, energy, or critical-thinking skills to do so?

Also: What the hell is going on with our sense of smell, which all of a sudden is as heightened and sensitive as it was during pregnancy? Fun answers to that question, below, plus a few recommendations for your weekend.

Bye,
Your friends at Gloria

P.S. Our annual reader survey is back! If you could spare a few moments, we’d love to hear from you.

It was the strangest thing. Six months ago, Kate, 52, walked into her house and was absolutely repulsed by the smell of her dog and two cats. “To me, the house reeked of pet,” says the author of Strong Like a Girl. “I'm generally very, very clean. I don't think we have a house that smells like animals.” To make the matter worse, no one else could confirm what she was feeling. “Everybody around me was like, ‘Kate, there’s nothing there,” she recalls. “A friend who is very honest was dropping something off. I knew she would tell me the truth. She smelled nothing.” To Kate, the sensation resembled a return to pregnancy, where she had been highly sensitive to all smells. Though she knew she was in perimenopause, and had other indicators like unusual rage and brain fog, Kate was unprepared for this particular symptom. “I was like, oh my God, is this a thing?”

While Kate embarked on a possibly unnecessary cleaning kick, Lauren, 41, was experiencing something even more disturbing — smelling cigarette smoke where there was none. “I thought my husband was smoking in our house,” she says. “He doesn't smoke. I remember being very confused. There's only one other person on the other side of us, and I thought he might be a secret cigarette smoker. He's not. Last week I was coming down my stairs and all of a sudden I was hit with cigarette smoke. I said to my husband, ‘Do you smell that?’ And he said, ‘Smell what?’” Lauren started researching her olfactory hallucinations online. “TikTok served me something about how this could be a sign of perimenopause,” she says. “I also have lupus, so for me, now, it's like, ‘Is it lupus? Is it perimenopause? Am I dying?’”

Kate and Lauren are not alone. Online, women are reporting a sensitivity to smells, questioning whether their own body odor has changed in their 40s, or if they are simply experiencing it differently. “Has anyone noticed their body producing all sorts of extra smells once they’re in perimenopause? I double cleanse in the shower with soap and an anti-bacterial wash and I’m still funky,” writes one Facebook user. “I can’t tell if I smell more or if I am smelling more,” says another woman in response. “I can be grossed out by every single odor that wafts within 30 feet of me.”

Olfactory hallucination is a real phenomenon (it’s called phantosmia), but a change in your sense of smell in perimenopause is not imagined. “If you ask a Harvard researcher, they're going to say, ‘We don't have enough data to support that.’ If you ask someone that talks to women every single day, they're going to say, ‘Absolutely,’” says Daniela Ezratty, an Atlanta-based nurse practitioner who specializes in hormone replacement therapy, nutrition, and aesthetics at Ezratty Integrative Aesthetics. “I hear some women saying, ‘I can't smell my perfume anymore,’ and I hear women going, ‘Oh my God, when my husband cooks, I want to throw up.’”

While olfactory changes are not the most reported symptom of perimenopause, they are not out of the realm of possibilities. There are estrogen receptors everywhere in our body, including our olfactory system, which controls our sense of smell. “We know that estrogen and progesterone have modulatory effects on your olfactory system,” says Dr. Kim Einhorn, board certified OBGYN and founder of MP Collective, the Philadelphia area’s first comprehensive, membership-based GYN practice for women in menopause and perimenopause. “Sometimes in perimenopause, when your hormone levels are fluctuating, they can be very high followed by very low, and you could absolutely have a heightened sense of smell. It is similar to when you're pregnant, when your estrogen levels are running super high and you are sensitive to different smells.”

If you thought perimenopause just meant a steady decline in estrogen, think again. “What really happens during perimenopause is that, as our ovaries age, they become less able to pump out estrogen, but it doesn't cease all together,” says Dr. Einhorn. “You have months where you're not really making any estrogen and you feel the night sweats and low energy, and then you have other months where your pituitary gland is working so hard to stimulate your ovaries to make estrogen that it can cause a double ovulation. That triggers breast tenderness and bloating and can include potential olfactory changes, cognitive changes, and mood changes. It runs the gamut.” 

TO WATCH When director Paul Thomas Anderson links up with star Leonardo DiCaprio, you know the movie is going to be one of the most talked-about of the year. We’re referring to the action thriller One Battle After Another. Out in theaters now, it stars Leo as a schlumpy former revolutionary who had all but forgotten his craft…until his daughter is kidnapped.

TO TRY The simplest way to support your health goals isn’t slashing calories — it’s moving more in a way that feels good. Think low-intensity Zone 1 activity that strengthens your cardiovascular system and works with your body, not against it. Forget the rigid 10k step rule, every body is different, and your movement strategy should be too. Simple’s quick, personalized quiz helps you uncover the step count and activity level that’s actually optimal for you. No crash diets, no guesswork — just a smarter, sustainable way to move. It's easy, start here. #partner

TO LISTEN Jeff Tweedy and Neko Case are both in their 50s. Is that why each of their new albums – Tweedy’s Twilight Override and Case’s Neon Grey Midnight Green – feel well-seasoned and a bit world-weary? 

TO MAKE We’re going to try this Smitten Kitchen turkey meatloaf recipe this weekend. It just feels like it’s time for meatloaf to come back. This one’s been tested a ton and there are lots of helpful (and positive) comments.

TO LISTEN The Bloomberg podcast Big Take is telling the story of fertility chain Kindbody in the new six-part series IVF Disrupted: The Kindbody Story. It includes promising beginnings and idealistic employees, disillusioned clients, and problems that aren’t just specific to Kindbody, but rather the industry at large.

Attn: The Jim Henson Company is auctioning off puppets and various ephemera from Fraggle Rock and The Dark Crystal. • An extremely detailed rundown of what life with a Tin Can phone is like. • “The discount data that some colleges still won’t publish.” • This upcoming documentary looks wild. • Ugh, workslop.

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