Bluestockings Unite!

My new favorite word, from Virginia Heffernan’s NYT Magazine column this weekend: marmish. She and Urban Dictionary (which says it has been around since 2006) both consider it a bad thing, but I have actually felt liberated by embracing my marmishness in recent years. Maybe it is the teaching, since students seem to respect organization, lists, and many many marginal notes in a classroom setting in ways they might not in the real world. And isn’t that what the academy (even a rapidly changing, totally digital academy) is for? Marmishness turned up in Michael Winerip’s column too, which suggests that a return to standards might be part of web whatever-point-0 we are up to. I hardly want to align myself with the boomers, but the idea that the evolution of digital media might not only go in a shorter and shorter and sloppier and sloppier direction is appealing. As I was trying to say in my takedown of Nicolai Ouroussoff (I reject the “savage” Curbed plastered on there) not everything that is new and shiny is a good idea, or even progress.

Now I need to go put on my bloomers and ride my bike, scandalizing the neighborhood.

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By Alexandra Lange

Alexandra Lange is an architecture critic and author, and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize winner for Criticism, awarded for her work as a contributing writer for Bloomberg CityLab. She is currently the architecture critic for Curbed and has written extensively for Design Observer, Architect, New York Magazine, and The New York Times. Lange holds a PhD in 20th-century architecture history from New York University. Her writing often explores the intersection of architecture, urban planning, and design, with a focus on how the built environment shapes everyday life. She is also a recipient of the Steven Heller Prize for Cultural Commentary from AIGA, an honor she shares with Design Observer’s Editor-in-Chief, Ellen McGirt.