A large part of getting ready for school involved taming my unruly curls in order to ‘look presentable’. My grandma would oil my hair with coconut hair oil, her fingers expertly weaving their way through the knots in my hair to reach the scalp. After this, came the painful process of running a comb through my hair to get rid of the knots. I remember squealing in pain as the comb worked hard to straighten my stubborn curls.
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Those first few weeks, even months, are so special. You and your partner are just in your own little bubble with this gorgeous little baby that you have spent months waiting for. Nothing can compete with those first moments; watching their hair grow, those first sparks of a personality. But what most aren't prepared for, like myself, is when ‘the bubble’ pops.
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After a full year of experiencing wedding merriment at full capacity, I started feeling the financial pinch (to say the least). Between us, my partner and I attended seven weddings in 2023, and he acted as best man or groomsman in a number of them. We worked it out: all these weddings cost the two of us nearly £5,000.
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Picture this: you’re finally pregnant and expecting your first child after years of people extolling the virtues of having children. Suddenly, the narrative is flipped, it’s no longer the best thing to ever happen to you. Unfortunately, you are now doomed to live a joyless life of servitude to said child. It almost feels as though you have been duped, scammed into some sort of parenthood pyramid scheme from which there is no escape.
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The plan to head towards Redcliffe to protect those at the Mercure hotel threw things into further chaos, splitting groups up leading to worse violence. Coined the Battle of Bristol Bridge, police had the far-right groups cornered on one side of the bridge and the counter-protesters on the other; while all police efforts were focused on keeping the two groups apart on Bristol Bridge some key members of the anti-racism protesters found their way ahead to Mercure.
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Margot Robbie’s Schroedinger-esque sexiness – at once sexy and unsexy, depending on which film you press “play” to – encapsulates something more important. A multi-millionaire, talented actress/producer/director like Margot, or a billionaire singer-songwriter like Taylor Swift, can take a break from work without worrying about making ends meet, and can build a protective network around themselves where they are safe.
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The current system for diagnosing breast cancer is the mammography screening program, which invites women for an X-ray scan of their breasts once every 3 years after they turn 50, until the age of 71. At first glance, this seems entirely logical. The system has been in place since 1988, it must be effective. But why are so many women dying of breast cancer? Why are their tumours not being found earlier?
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His stubbled cheek brushed lightly against mine as he moved his lips so close to my ear that they sent a shiver down my spine. With his deep, gravely voice, he whispered these endlessly romantic words: you’re pretty fuckable for a fat chick.
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We all too often forget that we are all souls having a human experience. Death is a common denominator; we all come to experience it and at many times the world over, we have all been united by it. Opening up conversation about death, loss, and how we experience grief could be an awakening for us; an incredible revolution.
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Too old to work, too old to attract a mate, too old to bear children. Without realising it, I was getting ready to die. I was finished.
Except I wasn’t.
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More than this though, I felt unheard and confused because nobody was really listening to me. I felt like I was pushed from department to department, with no communication between anyone. I was dealing with being a new Mum, the pandemic, and my illness, but it was up to me to be persistent, to listen to my body. I dread to think what would have happened if I had not acted like I did.
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Does she want to go travelling and to see the world? Does she want to leave Bristol and move to London with her best friend? Does she want to tend a garden and start making homemade pesto? Or does she want to be licking a shot from a strangers belly button in Ibiza? Does she want to be a high-flying corporate GirlBoss or does she want to live in the forest and wear floaty skirts? Does she want safety? Or excitement? I saw the world in a set of binaries. One or another.
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Commenting on other people's bodies, or rather, refraining from doing so, is a topic increasingly circulating not only on image-heavy platforms like Instagram, but also in the collective consciousness. The more people I meet, the more I realise that attitudes are changing, or at least, some thought is being invested into what is and is not acceptable or appropriate to say to someone about how they look.
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We live in a society where love is overly romanticised. Love is most often seen (incorrectly) as everlasting relationships, ‘till death do us part’. There are thousands of books and movies – like Pride and Prejudice – that sell us the dream of ‘happily ever after’, but does happily ever after even exist? Is it just a marketing gimmick? After all, love sells and sells well.
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It is these types of questions that could help feminists grapple with over a decades’ old debate: How do we delineate between what is pornographic content filled with sexual menace and what accounts only as sexual fantasy?
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We’ve reached the magic seventh instalment of ‘Sacred England’, our series that seeks out mythology in English places – but what even is mythology, anyway?
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Ah Naked Attraction – we love it, we hate it… my Nan once confessed she watches it when my Grandad goes to bed.
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Straight Through Processing (STP) is used in almost all industries in the world and is used just as much as the internet. When a person pays for anything using a Credit or Debit card, they are using STP.
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Season 14 of RuPaul’s Drag Race has been rightly celebrated for its trans representation. In addition to the series’ laudable trans representation, this latest season has also featured two neurodivergent queens, as Jasmine Kennedie and Orion Story have both revealed (since filming the show) that they have been diagnosed with ADD and ADHD respectively.
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