Issue #144: I Bought an Oura Ring, Even Though I Know Better

The false promise of optimization.

💿 ‘What A Devastating Turn Of Events’ album by Rachel Chinouriri: Rock songs and love ballads edge up against synthy breakup songs in this debut album from London-based Chinouriri. If her name sounds familiar, it may be from her singles, which often go viral on TikTok, or her recent music video co-starring Florence Pugh as her bestie, but you don’t have to be a prior fan to be instantly smitten.

📚 Long Island by Colm Tóibín: I never read Brooklyn, the 2009 novel about Eilis Lacey’s emigration from a small town in Ireland to New York in the 1950s, but fell in love with the film adaptation starring Saorise Ronan. The sequel, which I’m sure is enhanced by its predecessor, thankfully stands fully on its own, due to helpful reminders. In it, Eilis returns to Ireland from the Long Island suburb where she and her Italian-American husband have settled in the twenty-some years since the first book took place. Her own marriage is in disarray when she reunites with old friends, stirring things up with her American sensibilities and presence.

📺 “Hacks,” Season 3: I need my feel-good shows to have some teeth, which is why “Hacks,” about Ava, a Gen-Z comedy writer in a creative partnership with Deborah Vance, an older, legendary comic is my favorite thing on TV at the moment. In this season, Deborah is angling to become the latest host of a long-running late night now, battling both ageism and sexism through wit, golf, and connections. Well-worth a binge.

The “smart ring” sold itself as an intermediary between my body and myself. It promised, with a slew of biometrics and buzzy phrases like “Finnish design philosophy,” to ultimately help me live better and longer. One ad even pleaded, “Give your body a voice.” For $300 (plus a monthly subscription), it would help me understand the basics of my own body so that I could sleep soundly, work out and recover more efficiently, and, though not overtly advertised, develop a “maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s money” Gwyneth-approved glow.

Five years of working in lifestyle media in Los Angeles had heightened my ability to sniff out products that falsely promise shortcuts to wellness. The Oura ring felt like the latest “solution” in a parade of other nootropics, spin classes, golden lattes, rituals and regimens, and “bloat-busting” probiotics that are a lot sexier-sounding than eating vegetables—or acknowledging, say, our bodies’ myriad limitations and incontestable mortality. I kept scrolling, until I came across it the next day. And the next.

As I began to see the ring more often—in ads, on influencers, and even on my favorite yoga instructor—I came to question whether I had judged it too quickly. Maybe it could actually improve my life??