Category: Women

I too hated my wavy/frizzy hair for decades like Diana Spechler (I spent decades straightening my ‘Jewish hair’ – until I realised I was hiding my true self, 5 August). Long, straight hair was fashionable in my youth in the 1960s, so, like Spechler, I pulled, pushed, ironed and generally tortured my hair into straightness. Unlike hers, […]

Hi Ugly, At 12, I became self-conscious about my feet. They were size 10 – bigger than most girls’ – and my toes were dark and rough. (I’m Black. Melanin can and will appear everywhere. Even through toenails.) I tried squeezing my feet into smaller shoes and filed down my toenails, which sometimes led to […]

Judy Blume’s novel about early female puberty, Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, depicts a group of 12-year-old girls eagerly willing their first periods to arrive, impatient to be in on the unfathomable mystery of monthly bleeds. Little do they know that the mysteries surrounding their ovaries and wombs will only ever deepen, in […]

As we walked through the dark marina at 3.30am, I swallowed the last bite of my banana then tossed the skin on a pile of others on the dock. Bananas are considered to bring bad luck on boats and we needed all the good fortune we could summon to make it the next 750 cold, […]

“Nans against Nazis” read one large placard brandished at the recent anti-racism protests in Liverpool. It belonged to 71-year-old Pat. “Someone said to me, ‘You’re too old, don’t be doing this,’” she told the Independent. “But as long as they’re here someone’s got to do it.” She’s not the only one who refuses to be […]

I know what you’re thinking: “Whatever happened to sexy tyre calendars? I really miss those.” You’re in luck. The 2025 Pirelli calendar has been shot ultra-sexy, with tasteful nudity/near-nudity again. This is after the Italian company spent years reacting to #MeToo and accusations of pandering to the male gaze by shooting clothed campaigns. Annie Leibovitz was […]

Sonya, 50 If we go through a couple of weeks when we don’t have sex, Kyle starts to lose the plot I’m normally the talker, but in the bedroom I really struggle using language around sex. Whereas Kyle, who’s normally the quieter one, likes to have conversations about what he’d like to try, and what […]

Providers of women’s healthcare around the world are preparing for potentially disastrous consequences should Donald Trump win the US presidential election in November. Policies pursued during Trump’s last presidency caused “devastating” harm in a number of countries, said Beth Schlachter, a senior director at MSI Reproductive Choices in the US. It meant “clinics shuttered, health […]

Reflecting on Team GB’s results at the Paris Olympics, and Laura Kenny’s column (Team GB are reaping the rewards of a transformed attitude to Olympic mums, 7 August), a lot has been made of the number of mothers who won medals. This shows an amazing step change in sporting bodies’ understanding of maternal health. I […]

We went 1,000 years, or maybe 10,000, without anyone ever mentioning menopause, and then we started mentioning it all the time – which wasn’t ideal either. There was a little bit of overcorrection, a little bit of generalisation. There was the Davina McCall type of menopause, where your car keys were in the fridge while […]