TELEVISION
Great Sexpectations
Two racy new shows examine passions
of the young and young at heart.
There’s a
moment in
Mrs. Fletcher (HBO)—the
latest suburban malaise–
obsessed Tom Perrotta novel
to migrate to the small screen
—when the titular character,
Eve Fletcher (the wondrous
Kathryn Hahn), stretches
out on her kitchen floor and
indulges in some cheap
internet porn. A timer dings
—cookies are ready!—and she
has to decide what’s more
important, those chocolate
chips or her orgasm. You’ll find
yourself rooting for her to let
them burn. Eve’s coddled only
child, Brendan (Jackson
White), has just left for college,
and as a divorcée of many
years, she has an utterly
empty nest, leaving time and
space for fantasies involving
the woman handing out
Popsicle samples at the
grocery store. Meanwhile, the
once-popular Brendan is
fumbling his way through
college, unexpectedly rejected
by sorority sisters (and
virtually every other girl) who
see right into his unwoke
heart. Mrs. Fletcher is a
delightfully dirty look at how
untamed desire is an insatiable
animating force. Like every
Perrotta adaptation before it
(The Leftovers, Little Children),
it’s scripted to perfection,
designed to showcase every
inch of Hahn’s masterly range.
Another novel adaptation,
of YA phenom John Green’s
Looking for Alaska (Hulu),
also bubbles over with giddy
sexcapades, this time within
the teenage set. Loner Miles
Halter (Charlie Plummer)
shows up at Culver Creek, the
Alabama boarding school
his father attended, with the
final words of Renaissance
scholar François Rabelais as
his mandate: “I go to seek a
Great Perhaps.” That Perhaps,
for Miles, is the sense of
adventure and belonging his
lonely existence hasn’t yet
offered him. He joins an
eclectic posse and falls for
the bookish, otherworldly
Alaska (Norwegian beauty
Kristine Froseth)—a girl with a
sad, mysterious past. Together
the articulate-beyond-their-
years crew battles with Culver
Creek’s popular crowd, and
the show careens toward a
tragic event. Teen-whisperer
Josh Schwartz—cocreator of
Gossip Girl—helped write the
series, so expect a heavy dose
of salacious shenanigans.
The novel has been among
the most banned in the
YA genre, and when it transfers
to the big screen, a fresh
round of internet outrage feels
inevitable.—HILLARY KELLY
HEART STORIES
CHARLIE
PLUMMER AND
KRISTINE
FROSETH STAR
IN LOOKING FOR
ALASKA.
clinical trials on iBreastExam for more than a year. Fear of
radiation and a mistrust of the health care system are often
factors. But so-called health care deserts—underserved
parts of the country where the closest radiologist might
be miles away and insurance coverage may be at an
even higher premium—have much to do with it as well.
“There is a developing-world demographic in many
urban areas of the U.S.,” confirms Campisi. But he also
sees enticing promise in serving the demographic that
does have access to mammography. He’s promoting the
apparatus as a way to document a clinical breast exam—
“which, if you ask any O.B., is a missing link.” (I ask
my own ob-gyn, who agrees—and is eager to hear
more about the device.) “It gives you absolute, retrievable,
reproducible data you can compare year to year,”
Englander reiterates. “And the sooner breast cancer is
diagnosed, the better the chances of successful treatment.”
Campisi logs my personal information into an Android
phone (the most common platform worldwide), I slip
off my kimono, and we get started. On a gray screen, each
breast is divided into 16 quadrants; typically, only the
middle four need to be measured, but this varies with breast
size. He gently presses the padded sensor onto an upper
quadrant of my left breast. Capturing data, a screen says.
Green indicates no lumps; red means something has been
detected. He measures four areas on both breasts. Each,
thankfully, glows green. Data recorded. “Looks good,” he
says as my husband, unperturbed, wanders into the kitchen
for a sandwich. The whole process has taken five minutes.
While several studies have found iBreastExam’s
sensitivity to be on par with a mammogram’s—including
a 2016 article published in the World Journal of Surgical
Oncology, in which iBreastExam demonstrated a sensitivity
rate of 85.7 percent compared with a mammogram’s
sensitivity rate of 85–88 percent—Campisi is the first to
admit that the tool has limitations, one being that
unlike mammograms, it can’t pick up microcalcifications:
small deposits of calcium that can be an early sign of
precancerous cells. “There is also a concern that people
will say, ‘Well, I got an iBreastExam; I don’t need a
mammogram,’ ” Englander points out. “But mammography
is proven. So my hope is that if someone does get an
iBreastExam, we can say, ‘Now that you’ve done it and it’s
not that bad, let’s have you go for further evaluation.’ ”
The technology’s potential to determine which women
should go on to further testing is promising, agrees
Victoria Mango, M.D., an eminent breast radiologist at
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York,
which is conducting additional clinical trials on the
device. For those in the trenches, it cannot be overstated
how exciting that development is for fighting this
disease. Adds Campisi, “We need all the tools in our
arsenal to beat this thing.” @
The sooner breast cancer is
diagnosed, the better the chances of
successful treatment
VLIFE
130 OCTOBER 2019 VOGUE.COM
ALFONSO BRESCIANI/HULU
