In 2016, when Britney Pollock was 26, she decided to get breast implants: 400 cubic cm of silicone, inserted under her pectoral muscles. She “felt awesome” after the procedure, says Pollock, now 34 and a teacher based in California. “It just felt good to look good.” Around 2019, things began changing. “I started getting randomly […]
‘Young women from the ghetto were taken advantage of’: the power and pain of R&B’s ‘new jill swing’ era | Music
A flash of Technicolor fills the screen, as four women spin and glide in perfect unison. The bouncy crunch of drum machines collides with slick, soaring vocals, as the women then jump over one another’s heads. “I broke my ankle doing some of this stuff,” says Stacy Francis of the lively music video for You […]
‘It’s natural, it’s real, it’s raw’: the rise of birth photography | Childbirth
Click. Click. Click. I’m vaguely aware of the sound of a camera shutter coming from somewhere above me. I push deep into my bottom, a dull, rising ache reverberating around my stomach and back. Click. Click. The noise is now in front of me, I think, but I can’t focus on it, so great is […]
Do you want kids? It’s finally OK to simply say no | Life and style
There are more people dying in the UK every year than there are people being born. It’s a stark news story to read over toast, containing as it does all of life and all of death, and the shape and perfume of ancient fables, so I read it again, with tea. Even after stripping out […]
I’m a woman in my 30s and I haven’t got any close female friends – it’s making me sad | Life and style
Do “romantic comedy friendships” still exist? I am perpetually hopeful, but losing faith. I love my alone time, and enjoy coffees with women in my neighbourhood and colleagues from work. But, although these encounters are mostly pleasant, they feel superficial. Thoughts of missing out on my “tribe” have been overwhelming lately; even back at school, […]
How we met: ‘We got chatting on the plane – and she suggested I move in with her’ | Friendship
As a friendly student who loved to travel, striking up a conversation on a flight wasn’t unusual for Kate. But when she boarded a plane headed from New York to London in January 1996, she had no idea she would be making a friend for life. “I’d spent the previous summer interning for Rolling Stone […]