Category: Women

A new trend is sweeping TikTok: #boysober. Its rules? No dating apps, no dates, no exes, no hookups. Thousands of women are uploading videos describing why they have gone boy sober and extolling its benefits. What could cause this kind of heterosexual exodus? Two words: dating apps. The apps have transformed the landscape of modern […]

‘I’m looking for a man in finance” goes the viral TikTok song of the summer. And it doesn’t mean my version – standing in the only bank branch for miles that hasn’t become a Costa, looking for someone, anyone, with a lanyard, a tablet and a can-do attitude to sort out my direct debit problem. […]

I remember exactly when I decided to forgo motherhood. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but it happened all the same. I was six and had just been given a new doll. It was a doll with an appendage in the form of a belly – if pressed in, then pulled out, the piece would detach. […]

In a Goop-ified world where one can purchase sleek, luxury vibrators for up to three figures, how has one sex toy that’s existed for 55 years garnered such devotion? It’s a question the sex writer Kate Sloan explores in Making Magic, a new podcast about the clunky, white-and-blue, straight-from-a-70s-porn-set Magic Wand Original Massager. Sloan first […]

One night in September 2022, like a kid sticking my finger into the flame of a candle, I Googled “how to buy sperm”. I’d been thinking about it since splitting with a partner a year earlier. I was about to turn 37, and had started wondering if continuing on the “traditional” path – meeting someone, […]

From first crush to first love, from the closet to coming out and from loss to connection. For the last 25 years, retired schoolteacher Arden Eversmeyer travelled from Houston across the US to record hundreds of oral ‘herstories’ from a rapidly disappearing population. Old Lesbians honours Arden’s legacy by animating the resilient, joyful voices she […]

Upon reading Tara Judah’s article, I felt relief (I stopped chasing the Hollywood vision of female friendship – and embraced the person I am, 13 May). I am in my late 30s and find myself in the same position, where strong female friendship groups have eluded me. I know the familiar feeling of hope when I’m […]

First of all, sending lots of love during what can’t be an easy time. Your surgical team will tell you what to do straight after the operation. “It’s important to follow their instructions,” says breast surgeon Chloe Constantinou. “After surgery, the dressings will be taken off if everything has healed, and you’ll be given advice on […]

How important are you? So ­important that only other important ­people are permitted to speak to you? So eminent your hair must be snipped in monastic silence? I ask because hair stylist Kati Hakomeri has introduced a “silent service” at her salon, Parturi Kati, in Helsinki. Clients can book the online option: “A haircut without […]

While filming The Great British Sewing Bee, the presenter and clothing entrepreneur Patrick Grant found himself in need of a pair of black socks. The production team bought a pair from the Marks & Spencer shop close to where the popular BBC show was being filmed. Grant said: “They went to everybody’s favourite high street […]