Caitlin Flanagan
Caitlin Flanagan began her magazine-writing career, in 2001, with a series of extended book reviews about the conflicts at the very heart of modern life—specifically, modern domestic life as it is lived by professional-class women. Flanagan quickly established herself as a highly entertaining social critic unafraid to take on self-indulgence and political correctness, and her essays provide penetrating and witheringly funny observations about the sexes and their discontents.
Flanagan's Atlantic articles have been named as finalists for the National Magazine Award seven times, and her essay “Confessions of a Prep School College Counselor,” which ran in September 2001, was included in the 2002 compilation of Best American Magazine Writing. Her work has also been included in Best American Essays 2003 and Best American Magazine Writing 2003. She is the author of the book To Hell With All That—an exploration, based on her Atlantic articles, of the lives of modern women.
Born and raised in Berkeley, California, Flanagan earned a B.A. and an M.A. in art history from the University of Virginia.
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Brian Hamill / Getty What Mia Farrow Knew
Farrow says she witnessed disturbing and occasionally ghastly things for years. Why didn’t she act earlier?
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Searchlight Pictures The Anti-consumption Weirdos of Nomadland
I surprised myself by enjoying this sad movie about old people working seasonal jobs.
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Anwar Hussein / WireImage / Getty Meghan Markle Didn’t Do the Work
Part of Meghan’s problem was her naïveté about the workings of the Royal Family, which she had assumed would be similar to the workings of celebrity culture.
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Illustration by Oliver Munday and Arsh Raziuddin; rendering … Private Schools Have Become Truly Obscene
Elite schools breed entitlement, entrench inequality—and then pretend to be engines of social change.
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Getty/Johanna Goodman Worst Revolution Ever
Attacking the U.S. Capitol is not an act of patriotism. Obviously.
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Peanuts / The Atlantic Charlie Brown’s Inside Job
What gives the 1965 Peanuts special its staying power?
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AFP / GETTY / THE ATLANTIC What Language Game Are the Defunders Playing?
The national conversation about police reform has devolved into a never-ending argument over words.
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Illustration by Oliver Munday; NBC / Getty Don’t Subject Your Kids to Rudolph
The world is bleak enough as it is.
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JONATHAN ERNST / Reuters Melania’s Plastic Camelot
Stephanie Winston Wolkoff’s tell-all book about the first lady is as sordid as it is fascinating.
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Getty / The Atlantic Go Ahead, Laugh at Their Expense
The mad king and his courtiers learned a lot about COVID-19.
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AP / Getty / Arsh Raziuddin / The … Will Democrats Fail the Amy Coney Barrett Test?
If the judge’s faith has put limits on her talent and ambition, there are few signs of it.
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Jean-François Rault / Sygma / Getty / The … I Actually Read Woody Allen’s Memoir
Why Hollywood accepted the director for so long. And why it turned on him.
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Caitlin Flanagan / The Atlantic I Thought Stage IV Cancer Was Bad Enough
Then came a pandemic during the presidency of Donald Trump.
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Getty / The Atlantic You Thought You Were Free, but History Found You
The 2020 commencement speech you’ll never hear
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Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP Meghan and Harry Overplayed Their Hand
Megxit is the most complicated, self-involved, grandiose, shortsighted, letter of partial, fingers-crossed resignation in history.
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Wilson Webb Little Women’s Real Feminist Problem
The film reveals that there was, and is, something powerful about domestic life, and that women are particularly attracted to it.
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Win McNamee / Reuters Losing the Rare in ‘Safe, Legal, and Rare’
Coined by Bill Clinton, the phrase was an inspired way to bring together a range of abortion supporters under a now-abandoned umbrella.
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Erik McGregor / LightRocket / Carolyn Van Houten … The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate
Why we need to face the best arguments from the other side
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Lucas Jackson / Reuters Matt Lauer’s Woman Problem
The allegations against the Today show host have disgusted and unsettled me like few others in the #MeToo era.
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Noam Galai / Getty Caroline Calloway Isn’t a Scammer
Her Instagram account reads like Brideshead Revisited meets Twilight meets Vanity Fair magazine circa 1988, when greed was good and having money was a golden superpower.
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