Taboo Magazine / Issue 1

TABOO

n a m o w a g in e b f e o id s r e k r The da ISSUE ONE, ÂŁ8

Cum again?

Join the masturbation generation

close shave Restyling femininity

Fight the power

Why cyber feminists are squaring up to misogyny

The drag act taking on

#metoo

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aboo is an army of women, comprising of all different cultures, sexualities, religions and backgrounds, united by one common goal: to subvert society’s standards of what women should be. We are bringing to light the women’s issues that have remained in the shadows – the kind that we are aware of but haven’t read about. We are exposing the darker side of being a woman.

Our writers have dug deep into their personal lives as well as the lives of other women. We have taken our own insecurities, beliefs and experiences and spilled them onto the pages of this magazine.

The women in this magazine have been brave with their experiences and bold with their words. Taboo is a celebration of the embarrassing, the personal and the unknown.

Take our cover girl, Solene. She and the other women pictured in Close Shave (p12) speak of the liberation they felt after shaving their heads, divorcing themselves from preconceived ideas of beauty or femininity. On page 18 we hear from a woman rejecting calls to break the glass ceiling, instead opting for a quiet life in the countryside.

Throughout this magazine we hear from women who have confronted, challenged, and reconfigured ideas of what female autonomy should look like.

That is what Taboo is: an idea that gives us the confidence to address issues we were taught to be ashamed of. Now, this magazine is your safe space to do the same. Women are Taboo, and this magazine is for us.

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Victoria Brush (left), Lisa Henderson (right)

VICTORIA & Lisa Photo: Claudia Glover

Founders, Taboo

where to find us

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TABOO Women’s Magazine

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@taboowomensmag

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@taboowomensmagazine

CONTRIBUTORS

Victoria

Lisa

Erin

Editor-in-chief @victoriabrushh

Production Editor @hilisahenderson

Chief Sub @itserincavoto

My taboo: My parents

My taboo: Perfectionism

My taboo: Religion

Photo: Claudia Glover

Parisa

Claudia

Bertille

Social Media Editor @parisaborgh

Picture Editor @claudiaglover6

Designer @bertilleduthoit

My taboo: Being vulnerable

My taboo: Mental health

My taboo: Maths

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WOMEN WE LOVE TO HATE

The best female villains, from music to the big screen

AGONY AUNT

The truth about why you shouldn’t miss your smear test

Women who flirt with death

CLOSE SHAVE

The women who are rocking close cuts over a long ‘do

THE SIMPLE LIFE Why this young woman doesn’t want to climb a career ladder

THE THIRD LESBIAN “I was in the habit of choosing my sexuality based on the audience I was entertaining”

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What it’s really like to be a woman in pop music

GETTING OVER MY PUBLIC POO-PHOBIA

How to make your number two a number one experience

THE ONE WITH THE FRIENDSHIP

Why being best friends has nothing to do with Snapchat streaks or perfect Insta captions

VEGAN LI[V]ES

Vegan influencers are serving up “beach bod” with a side of toxic diet culture

CUM AGAIN?

We explore the touchy history of women’s pleasure

WOMEN WHO FLIRT WITH DEATH

Meet the women who risk their lives for extreme sports

OVA ON ICE

Science allows women to have children later in life, but is it always the best option?

THE PLASTICS OF TEHRAN In Iran, plastic surgery is a social norm rather than a hushed taboo

PULLING THE PLUG Women are fighting tech with tech to end online harassment

LIFE CAN BE TRICHY

The disorder that has women pulling out their hair, eyelashes and more

ALL HAIL THE KING Why this drag king “wanks” on the audience to talk about sexual assault

THE DUTCH SIRENS

Taboo travels back in time to the teenage Nazi hunters

BREAKING THE CYCLE What happens when hormones run rings around your life?

HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU MAKE? We talk cold, hard cash. ‘Nuff said

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MEN BEHIND WOMEN IN MUSIC

sonic snakes Lisa Henderson

THE DIXIE CHICKS In 2003, The Dixie Chicks were vilified for saying they were ashamed that the then-president, George W Bush, was from their native Texas. The backlash in the US was incendiary, prompting death threats against the band. At the height of their infamy, the country trio responded with their album Taking the Long Way, which achieved gold status in its first week, despite having little airplay.

women we love to hate

Killing Eve proves the world is hungry for more female villains, so we rounded up our fave fearsome women from pop culture

GRIMES

Pop culture

“If there’s nothing left to lose, that’s actually a really fun idea to me. I think it has freed me artistically,” said Grimes in an interview with Crack, in response to her newly-acquired notoriety thanks to her infamous beau, Elon Musk. In this hot-headed cancel culture, is there a better sentiment for an artist to live by? The trolls may be setting light to Grimes’s reputation, but it’s only adding fuel to her fire.

TAYLOR SWIFT

Haters will give you a shopping list of trivial reasons why Taylor Swift should be cancelled.

And yet her most recent album, an R&B-styled treatise on that reputation, indicates she’s never felt more artistically liberated. And guess what?

Her record sales are as jaw-dropping as they’ve ever been. In her own words: “In the death of her reputation, she felt truly alive.”

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scary ladies Victoria Brush

Photo: Dixie Chicks Instagram, Ben Grieme, Moss Piglet

horror films are villains but only due to second-hand influence, just like Samara. Why women had to be possessed to be evil is yet to be explained.

Finally, if they weren’t possessed, they were pissed-off. Classic villains such as Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th and Hannibal Lecter from Silence of the Lambs were villains because they wanted to be. However, in the classics, women sought vengeance following heartbreak or having been drenched in pigs’ blood (fair enough).

This is why Ma is exciting. Sue Ann embraces her evil nature just like Voorhees and Lecter. The film gives you chills as she progresses on her evil path. At first, Sue Ann is an adult dealing with party-seeking teens, but her character shifts and becomes increasingly insane.

Horror needs women who are straight-up crazy just like Misery’s Annie Wilkes, the obsessive fangirl.

There should be characters like Ma’s Sue Ann and the racist Rose Armitage from Get Out, who are on their own journey to be evil. Although it’s happening slowly, finally women can be evil, too. w

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wentieth-century horror classics are full of vulnerable women who are there just to be killed.

But the tables are turning. While the classics had psychotic male serial killers, now it’s the women on the wicked warpath. Take Octavia Spencer in the 2019 horror film Ma. Spencer plays Sue Ann, a character who is purely evil. She is not possessed, not a werewolf nor a demon – she is a loner woman who is not all that she seems.

In horror films, women can be categorised into three personas: the damsel in distress, the possessed and the punisher.

We see a damsel in the 1978 classic Halloween.

Despite the badass heroine Laurie Strode, one of the first images in the film is a topless adolescent, Judith Myers, being stabbed to death by her six-year-old brother. Judith is a ditsy damsel, unable to protect herself from a small child she could surely fight off.

The possessed is represented by one of the most classic villains in western horror, Samara Morgan from The Ring: a little girl born with supernatural abilities. Generally, possessed female characters in

’Grama Queens Claudia Glover

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arlier this month, Kylie Jenner, the undisputed queen of Instagram, threw a lavish birthday celebration for her childhood friend Anastasia “Stassie” Karanikolaou. The party’s theme revolved around the birthday girl’s favourite TV drama, The Handmaid’s Tale, in which women are only deemed valuable for their fertility and are routinely raped and punished. Guests came dressed as the subjugated characters and were greeted by women dressed as Marthas (domestic helpers for high ranking families). Needless to say, the internet did not take this lightly.

In the Twitterstorm that ensued, one user wrote: “I don’t know why Kylie Jenner had the audacity to throw a ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ themed party when rape, oppression, and sexual rights are active problems in our society today.”

Another wrote: “How did no one point out to Kylie Jenner that maybe hosting a party themed on a book/series about women who’ve lost their reproductive rights isn’t the best idea, in a political climate where women are losing their reproductive rights?” By the next day, Jenner’s pictures were circulated with resounding criticism of the political insensitivity of the party.

Jenner’s fan base is big enough for her to take the occasional hit, but there are other stars who have seen their careers unceremoniously end in the hands of social media.

Take Azealia Banks’s racist and homophobic tweets aimed at former One Direction singer, Zayn Malik, which marked the beginning of the end of her career. When Malik didn’t reply to the insults, Banks kept tweeting “keep sucking this young rapunxel d**k u hairy curry scented b**ch”, leaving the internet in shock. After 14-year-old Disney

Channel star Skai Jackson responded to the feud, Banks told her to “grow some hips” and warned her that Disney didn’t like “little girls [of her] color”. In this social media age, where off-the-cuff comments made online lay the foundations of a person’s reputation, Banks’ self-destruction is easy bait for trolls and entertainment journalists.

In 2012 and 2013 Amanda Bynes of The Amanda Show fame used social media to a similar effect. She famously tweeted at the singer Drake that he had “down syndrome eyes” and told Rhianna that Chris Brown abused her because , she was ugly. She later revealed in an interview with E! News that she had been drinking and taking Adderall when tweeting. On top of her struggles with addiction, she received a DUI and was hospitalised after a mental breakdown.

People were able to recognise ' her comments as a cry for help in retrospect, but the damage to her reputation had already been done.

Social media gives us a snapshot of someone’s life, not the whole picture. Did the trolls stop to think there may be something more to Bynes’ comments than the offensive insults they appeared as? Of course not; once the information is out, it’s fair game.

But context is a two-way street. Jenner may have been forgiven for her inappropriately themed party, but used within the context of her image-conscious online branding makes it seem trivial. Online bloodlust replaces the nuance and context that’s so essential to making a fair judgement. Both the audience and content creators need to be aware of this. If we never embrace the grey areas, we’ll never see the bigger picture.

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hen it comes to female villains in literature, we’re not too hard pressed to find them. The evil stepmother trope is so pervasive, stepmothers everywhere have to overcompensate for it (but you didn’t hear it from me). Yet, it’s hard to find nuanced female villains in literature who you admire for their cleverness, ambition or simply being a badass.

The 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist is an example that the times are a-changing for our

Circe

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The nchantress The Other Mother from Coraline weaves a web of alluring mystery to trap Coraline in her alternate dimension. She is deviously clever: she entices Coraline from her distracted, busy parents with food and undivided attention. She will probably s t e a l your soul and sew on button eyes, but hey, you always wanted dessert for dinner. The Other Mother is cunning, slippery and doggedly-determined.

Tell me a creepier children’s book villain, I’ll wait.

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Nest is a ad itch demanding respect in a maledominated workplace. Ratched is head nurse of a male psych ward in the 1950s when women rarely held l e a d e r s h i p roles. Not to mention, the abusive mental “health” treatments at the time were led by the male doctors heading the medical field. Ratched must be s t o n y and implacable in order to retain respect and do her job.

The HBiC

The Devil Wears Prada’s Miranda Priestly is a harsh and unflappable editor-in-chief. She’s nothing short of horrible, yet you her. She represents women who laugh in the face of uber-masculine

envy

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boardrooms, effortlessly shattering g Photo: @kyliejenner

Erin Cavoto

The Con

Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s

ceilings. As Anne Hathaway’s Andy says in the

film, if Miranda were a man, “no one would notice anything about her, how great she is at her job”.

except

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Gone Girl’s Amy Dunne isn’t the greatest human being, yet you see yourself in her. Her sarcasticallydrenched one-liners are e p i c , and her plot to take down her husband, Nick, is brilliantly sinister. We admire Amy because she refuses to

be a victim unlike her SPINEless, whiny hubby.

We’re not excusing her actions – don’t frame your husband for your fake death. Yet, Amy isn’t afraid to get what she wants, and you have to admire that.

The pu ppe t eer

How could we forget the queen of all villainous women, Lady Macbeth. She lives in a man’s world and knows it as she literally asks to be “unsexed”.

Her constant roasting of Macbeth and his lack of masculinity is a delight. We admire Lady Macbeth’s ability to set a goal and see it through.

Lady Macbeth plans every part of King Duncan’s murder – all Macbeth has to do is stab him.

A man getting credit for a woman’s work, what else is new?

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feminine baddies. One of the books is ,a retelling of the Odyssey from the point of view of the w i t c h -slash-goddess who turns Odysseus’s men to pigs and now gets her own thrilling epic. Another is My Sister, the Serial Killer, a dark comedy about sisters, one of whom keeps killing the other’s boyfriends out of “self-defence” — whoops.

We’ve rounded up our f i v e favourite villainous vamps from literature who keep us feeling a bit... w i c k e d

Erin Cavoto is shouting you at Agony aunt

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Our resident American delivers her regular rant for British women.

In this issue, she calls out women who avoid smear tests

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Photo: Claudia Glover

Your excuse: It’s going to hurt

The reality: For most women, a cervical screening is quick and painless. The test itself takes a brief one to three minutes. The only thing you feel is the speculum – which is no colder, harder, or weirder than the Goop dildo you have reserved for Saturday nights in.“The trade-off between a short-term, slightly uncomfortable experience to reduce the risk of something in the future that could be really awful is worth it for most people,” says Dr Jo Waller, a behavioural health scientist at University College London.

Your excuse: I don’t want the hassle The reality: About half of women who don’t go for screenings intended to go, but never got around to it. It can take weeks of persistence to schedule screenings. “You have to have the capability, opportunity and motivation,” says Waller. “It might be that you’re aware [of screenings] and you’re motivated but you’ve tried to get an appointment and you can’t so the opportunity is missing.” Ladies, if you’ve waited in online queues for festival tickets, I think you can make a few phone calls for your gynaecological health.

Your excuse: I’m too young

The reality: “Most young women won’t know someone who’s had cervical cancer,” says Waller.

When Jade Goody, a young reality TV star, died from cervical cancer in 2009, there was an unusual spike in women going for tests because she was someone we felt we knew. Young women don’t feel at risk due to their age. But this excuse still sucks when skirting screenings. “It’s really hard to have a clear, home-hitting message for young women,” says Kath Mazzella, a cervical cancer survivor and advocate for women’s gynaecological health.

Your excuse: I only have one partner

The reality: “It’s a really long timeline between acquiring the HPV infection and cancer developing,” says Waller. “Even if you haven’t got a sexual partner at the moment, or you’ve been married for a long time, it’s not your current situation that determines your risk.” The same goes for your partner. They might have contracted HPV from another partner years ago and can still pass it on to you. Sure, your perfect partner might be completely faithful to you, but monogamy can’t save you here. Nice try with this one, but next.

Your excuse: I don’t want to have cancer The reality: People avoid screenings as they’re afraid of hearing they might have the big C. But Waller says that’s unlikely: “The thing people least understand is that cervical screening prevents cancer.” You heard her right: prevents, not detects. The whole point of cervical screenings is to stop cells from becoming cancerous. If your results show abnormal cells, then the treatment is straightforward and effective to eliminate the abnormal cells. So, if you’re not going because you don’t want to find out you have cancer – you’re shooting yourself in the foot there.

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he number of women attending their cervical screening, or smear test, is at a pitiful 20-year low, with one in four women missing their appointment. Meanwhile, the amount of women getting their bikini lines ripped clean is soaring – up 84 per cent according to Treatwell, an online platform for booking beauty appointments. This astonishing combination of facts led to an unlikely alliance between Public Health England and Treatwell in order to boost the number of women aged 25 to 34 getting a smear test.

Why women think having a stranger between their legs ripping their hair out is more desirable than having a licensed medical professional doing a preliminary check for cancer is beyond me. Maybe it’s the American in me who feels the need to go to the doctor at the slightest worry, but I don’t understand why you wouldn’t take the offer of a free test that could prevent you from getting cancer.

Cervical cancer occurs when abnormal cells in the lining of the cervix develop and grow in an uncontrollable way. The reason screenings are so important is that they detect abnormal cervical cells that, if untreated, could turn into cancer. Certain strains of the human papilloma virus, or HPV, are the main cause of cervical cancer as these strains can cause changes in the cervix that lead to cancerous cell growth. The HPV vaccine is now routinely offered to young girls in the UK and protects against the types of HPV that most likely cause cancer. Still, it doesn’t protect against all types of HPV so it’s important to still be screened.

With screening rates for young women particularly low (four in 10 women between 25 and 29 avoid their test), it’s clear that they’re not getting the message. So listen up serial smear slackers: before you can give your excuse for not going to your smear test, I’ve gone ahead and explained why it’s not good enough.

Erin Cavoto

CLOSE SHAVE Meet the women trading in long locks for buzz cuts while shedding outdated assumptions of femininity Bertille Duthoit

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e live in a society in which a girl is pretty when she has long hair,” says Emma, 21, who saved her head three years ago. “One of my friends called me ‘cancer’,” she says. “I didn’t feel pretty or feminine. From the moment I shaved my hair, men didn’t look at me anymore.”

Women’s sexuality is often characterized by soft, feminine features so when women like Emma decide to shave their heads, it provokes shock. Because of these outdated assumptions about femininity, luscious hair tells men that a woman is taking care of herself; with her shiny and soft hair, she fits into the idea of what a woman should look like. Without it, a woman’s appearance is, physically, more similar to a man’s – and that scares our society. The patriarchal idea of what women should look like has existed in our society since the beginning of time.

In 1895, 22-year-old Annie Sigalove was sent to a convent known as “the home for abandoned and troubled women” because of her liberal attitude.

Her head was then shaven after she misbehaved.

According to a nun this was because “girls do not like to lose their hair so the fear of having it cut

off tends to make them more obedient”. Women also had their heads shaved after the second world war as a form of humiliation for spending time with German collaborators. Pauline Dubuisson was one of them. At 14 years old, she was found offering flowers to a German soldier. During liberation, she was brought to Dunkirk’s town centre where her head was shaved and she was spat at. Swastikas were painted on her chests and forehead with her own lipsticks. She committed suicide a few years after that.

But now, the idea of femininity has evolved.

Having a close-cut look is often used as a statement of power and a reclamation of control over our appearances. From Grace Jones and Sinead O’Connor to Cara Delevigne and Natalie Portman, women are trying to destabilise the notion of traditional femininity by chopping off their hair and opting for a short hair or even going bald. For some women, getting rid of long hair is simply a practical choice, for others it’s cultural, personal or a statement. Some women share their experiences with us and the reasons for their close cut.

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Photo: Solene Van Gout

I’ve had a shaved head for nine years.

My hair was healthy, I could’ve let it grow long and voluminous. But I realised haircare wasn’t my thing.

The first time I cut my hair, I was overwhelmed by a sense of freedom when I felt the wind behind my ears.

I feel good with this haircut; I think it suits me. It’s always fun when you see another bald head in public. There’s a moment of camaraderie created by seeing each other: “Girl, I see you!”

“And I see you, too!” And that’s beautiful. w

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Emma

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The first time I shaved my head was after the death of my father, to end my period of mourning. I decided to cut my hair to start my life again by feeling at ease with myself. I felt ultra-light and free: from conventions, from my personal problems, from everything people think about me. To people who say it’s a loss of femininity, I tell them that a woman doesn’t exist through her hair. And why does a woman need to be feminine to be a woman?

Beauty

I always had really long hair. I was 18 when I decided to cut it. At that time, I felt really weak mentally and wanted to move on by cutting my hair. But in hindsight, it was a way of inflicting pain on myself. My family and friends were shocked. Everyone thought my long hair made me beautiful. On the Tube, on the streets, I could feel people staring at me. I don’t regret it, but I would never do it again.

I was so sad, I took the hair I cut off and kept it in the cupboard in my bathroom.

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Photo: Emma Genovaite (top), Maureen Gilbert (bottom), Nogoflani Fofana (right)

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I used to have braids going down to my butt and after a really tough break-up, I wanted a new identity so I shaved my head. Even after a year, I keep saying to myself: Is this really me? I love it and I won’t let my hair grow for now. In the streets, Tube or restaurants, people stare at me. It’s hard for people to see a woman with a shaved head. But women are not defined by their hair, skin colour or size. w

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Beatriz

I remember the first time I showered after shaving my head. It was incredible to feel the water falling directly onto it. I shaved my hair on my birthday, seven months ago.

I always liked to see women with short hair. I had very curly and bulky hair, and despite the fact that it was beautiful, I felt that people often only saw my hair. That’s what I wanted to prove to myself and others: a woman can be pretty and feminine even with short hair; that we are much more than that. I was very surprised by how many girls came to talk to me because they wanted to have the courage to do the same. The only comments I sometimes hear are asking if I’m sick or a lesbian as people often associate those with short hair in women. But the experience is worth it, it’s a whole new world of sensations.

Photo: Joana Luis Photography

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the Simple life...

Ella-Mae Brush, 20, has a dream: to be the best mum she can be. But some say she isn’t ambitious enough

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have the perfect image of my future. It doesn’t involve smashing a glass ceiling. Instead, it focuses on my home and my family. I want to live in a village surrounded by fields filled with cows. I want to be near my mother and my sisters, so my children understand how important family is. I want to be close to open spaces so my children and dogs have fresh air. In 2019, a time of gender parity, is this wrong?

Sometimes people look down on me when I say I essentially want to be a 1950s housewife – even if my version is more feminist. I want to stay at home, look after my children and work when I’m ready. I still want to be (and will be) independent. Yet being a mother will always be my priority. People find it shocking that although women have fought for years to get out of the kitchen, I want to stay in it.

This vision started at 16. Despite looking into different careers and my father trying to push me into

medicine, the idea of teaching always excited me. I’ve always looked for an excuse to teach. I’ve helped at summer clubs, taught dance lessons and volunteered at schools because I wanted to.

I know what will make me happy, yet I have to justify it to other women my age. Some of my peers have said that I am not taking advantage of being a woman in such an exciting time when really, I see myself as lucky already to have found something I love.

I was pushed into university by my family. When I was having second thoughts after my foundation year, I was told to stay and compromised by changing my degree from sociology to politics. All I want for my career is to be a secondary-school teacher. I don’t need to climb a career ladder or focus on money or promotions. Teaching is the only career I’m drawn to.

When I tell others that I want to be a teacher, I get a lot of back-handed compliments. The one I

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experience most often is: “Really? You’re so smart, you can do so much more.” I am constantly looked down on because I want to have a simple life. Women are told that we need to fight to prove that we are as capable as men, but what if I don’t want to?

I’m a feminist, but I also want to be a teacher and a mother. I want a job that I love, but I don’t need it to be my identity or the centre of my happiness. I want friends, dogs and a family – those are more important to me than a career. It’s something that I think some millennial women don’t understand. My happiness

comes from having a family and working with children, not from proving that I can be a workaholic.

Don’t get me wrong, while I want a simple life, I will have to work hard to get the role I want. As I want to be a politics teacher but didn’t take history as an A-level, I will need to take a longer route. I will be at university for five years – that’s the same amount of time it takes to be a doctor.

Just because I don’t want to work in a cutthroat career, it doesn’t mean that I will be coasting along in life. I have goals. I want to be a head of year, head of sixth form and a headteacher one day. I want responsibilities in my job within a career I love.

I’m not naive. I know I can’t just graduate and suddenly I’m a teacher, living in a beautiful house with two children. I still have goals and a five-year plan. I’m taking my future as seriously as someone who wants a 40-hour work week and to own a flat in London.

I grew up making decisions that other people wanted and basing my life around what my sisters had already achieved. I will be a great teacher and a great mother, and that’s all I care about. Why should anyone else worry about it? I am starting to feel settled in my life choices and what I want in the future. Now, I am openly admitting I just want to be a teacher in a small school in Hertfordshire.

I want to stand at my butler sink in a relatively large house in the countryside. The garden looks onto fields filled with either cows or sunflowers – I’m not fussy, either is perfect. I can hear my two children laughing in a high-pitched tone; an Irish Setter puppy called Fergus is following them, barking to get the children’s attention.

Phoebe, the working Cocker Spaniel I’ve had since the age of 20, is at my feet; she’s done with running and needs to rest. I will start work again tomorrow at the local secondary school, helping sixth formers understand Margaret Thatcher’s policies. I am content.

This is my world, and it makes me happy.

My picture may be different to that of other women my age, but it is no less ambitious.

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Ella as a baby (top), her today (middle) and with her sisters (bottom).

Her dream life would be to recreate these moments as a mother

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As told to Victoria Brush. Photos: Flo Westbrook (left), The Brush family (right)

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the third lesbian Capitalising on her fluid sexuality, Lisa’s one-night stand ends in a stickier situation than expected

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told Tristan that he’ll be drinking with three lesbians tonight,” Callum announced to the table. I rolled my eyes at him. I was less offended that he relished the novelty of having three female friends who happened to be queer, and more offended that he’d declared my sexuality before I had the chance to – especially because it wasn’t true.

My early adulthood was littered with a series of one-night stands with men who could barely finish an interesting thought, let alone a woman. After a few underwhelming years of this, I entered a four-year relationship with a woman.

Now, newly single, I was back in the habit of choosing my sexuality based on the audience I was trying to entertain (both metaphorically and literally). Some might call this attention-seeking, some might call it fluidity – it probably depends if you’re Tory or not.

I didn’t bother to correct him. The four of us were sitting on stools, grouped around the end of a grubby wooden table in a lively Camden pub where the decibel level was on a par with a football game.

In terms of my sexuality tonight, the jury was still out – that is until Tristan walked in. He greeted us in a smooth Irish accent, every time he smiled his lips caused a little ripple of dimples in his caramel skin, revealing a set of perfect white teeth. I decided to avoid the L-word at all costs.

I took the first chance I had to be alone with him.

We went to the bar and I stared at his mouth while

he ordered a round of drinks, until he looked at me expectantly. I hadn’t registered his question. “Callum told me that there are three lesbians here tonight, where’s the third one?” If I had paused for a moment longer he might have figured it out. I pretended to cast my eyes around the pub. “Ummm, I’m not sure who he meant,” I said, feigning naivety.

Several pints later and I was pushing him down onto his bed. I moved with the confidence of someone who hadn’t been used to a pair of boobs obstructing this move for the last four years. My former experiences with men came flooding back – this was easy, I thought. And then things came to a head. I hated giving men oral. In my dread, I recalled conversations in high school between my straight friends about whether to “spit or swallow”.

I opted for the former, though I was aware this might give the game away. I got on with it before I could lose my nerve.

Is it happening, is this it? I couldn’t tell. The panic in my stomach was rising far more quickly than the warmth filling my mouth. I frantically clawed into the blackness of the room, trying to get a purchase on the American frat party-style red and white cup we’d strategically placed nearby. Before I knew what was happening my body lurched forward and the warm, salty semen sprayed onto his stomach. In the room, everything was still.

“You’re the third lesbian, aren’t you?”

“I suppose I am.”

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Photo: Ismael Sanchez

Lisa Henderson

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SOME GIRLS MARRY GIRLS GET OVER IT!

Stonewall

MEN WOMEN IN MUSIC

BEHIND

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Although feminist anthems are trending, Erin Cavoto exposes the behind-the-scenes gender gap in music

the armies of men behind female artists. In 2018 when Rita Ora’s song Girls faced backlash for sexualising lesbian and bi women, the singer became a scapegoat while the 12 men behind the song got off largely unnoticed.

In its annual study, the USC Annenberg Inclusion Institute found that out of the top 100 popular songs each year from 2012 to 2018, only 12 per cent of the songwriters were women.

More than half of the songs didn’t credit a single woman. A mere 2 and 3 per cent of producers and sound engineers were women, respectively.

Of all artists, only 22 per cent are women. This severe lack of representation perpetuates the music industry’s boys’ club and allows behaviour like Urban’s to become the norm.

After the 2018 Grammys, women took to Twitter with the hashtag #GrammysSoMale after only one woman won in a major category. The USC Annenberg study found that between 2012 and 2018, over 90 per cent of Grammy nominees were male, while zero women have ever won Producer of the Year for non-classical music. At the 2019 Grammys, Dua Lipa spoke out against the gender gap in the music industry after former Grammys’ president Neil Portnow told women to “step up”, rather than acknowledge the issue. When accepting her award, Lipa sarcastically told the crowd that “I guess this year we stepped up”.

When addressing the gender gap in music, looking to the lack of opportunities women have to get into music seems like the right place to start. Young girls are less likely to be encouraged to play instruments, and therefore less likely to pursue music professionally.

This lack of teaching spills into women being underrepresented in live performances, especially in a band. A Guardian analysis showed that of all live gigs occurring in the UK on October 12, 2017, nearly 70 per cent had no w

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here are three words singer-songwriter L Rodgers, 30, won’t forget: “Does she sing?”

It’s what country musician Keith Urban asked an entire room of superstar-hopefuls at the infamous “Hollywood Week” round of American Idol. L says that while men got to talk as much as they wanted, there were different expectations for women. When Urban felt that she was talking too much, he didn’t think twice before commenting and laughing in front of the whole room. “It was like I was not right there,” says L. After auditioning for The Voice and making it to the top 30 on American Idol before choosing to go home, Baltimore-based L saw enough of the inner-workings of the pop industry.

As a woman and as a survivor of sex trafficking, L doesn’t want anyone else in control of her story. Especially because in the music industry, men are the ones in controlling narrative.

“It took me being trafficked and forced into prostitution to realize how much the music industry is just like prostitution for women,” says L. “There’s just men behind tables telling you what to do, how you should be, and what to look like. They’re critiquing your body and want to fuck you. And if they don’t want to fuck you, they want nothing to do with you.”

Feminist artists like Lizzo, Halsey and Carly Rae Jepsen and their empowering anthems give the impression of times changing for women in the music industry. And rightfully so: on top of their pro-female lyrics, they practice what they preach in their personal lives. Halsey gave a chilling poem about sexual abuse at the 2018 Women’s March. Lizzo has racked up nearly two million Instagram followers for her posts celebrating her body and encouraging others to do the same. Jepsen embraces her status as a queer icon. But a quick Google search exposes

Arts

women. Most of the acts that did contain women had no more than one.

“Men are just like, ‘Oh I just picked up a guitar and started learning’,” says L. “That’s a very normal thing for a man. But if a girl picks up a guitar, everybody tells her it’s a waste of time.”

Not playing an instrument has led to frustrating recording sessions for L in male-dominated recording studios. She recalls arriving to a session armed with reference songs but being completely disregarded as though she didn’t know what she was talking about. “It was two men talking over me the entire time about what my songs should sound like,” she says. “I didn’t get to put any input in.”

When L rehearsed with a new female guitarist for the first time, she had a revelatory moment.

“I could stop her in the middle of a song and be like, ‘Oh it’s too fast’. I didn’t feel like I was stepping on her toes,” she says. “She asked me, ‘Do you want it to sound like this or that?’ I’ve never had a man ask me.”

A constant issue in the industry is women not being taken seriously with their music. After her former male cowriter and guitarist of two years quit, it left her blindsided. “He said, ‘I wanted to support you and let you do your thing. But this low-budget thing is just not worth my time and energy’,” she says. “It was belittling.”

Similar to L, Kala, a 25-year-old singer-songwriter from New York, found that men in her life didn’t take her music seriously. While studying at the Professional Performing Arts School in Manhattan, she would constantly invite her male friends to collaborate in the studio together. “They would support each other so hard like there was a guy code, and they’d do everything for free,” she says. “When it came to me and music, they just did not see me like that.” Instead, they saw her as a friend and emotional support, but not someone who they saw in a professional way.

“Everything is men in my life,” says Kala, who jumped ship from the pop scene as a teenager.

“All my opportunities have come from men in the music industry.” She now is represented

by Flow Records, a Congolese label in Denver, Colorado, where she blends her Congolese roots and love for R&B. Unlike L, Kala’s personal experiences with men in music have mostly been positive. But still, she has had to learn the hard way. She remembers being invited to studios in the pop scene and being “looked at like a steak”. Although the music industry arguably treats male and female artists like an object with a price tag, women get

a lot less wiggle room. You’ve got to be either the good girl or the bad girl, or as L puts it: “The virgin or the whore”. After that’s sorted, women aren’t asked to do much else besides, well, sing.

When it comes to production, since men are so dominant in number, they also monopolize information. For instance, Kala explains the “pop formula” and how it’s a very specific pattern that only a select number of people know. Max Martin, the Swedish mastermind behind many pop megahits, shared the blocks of the perfect pop song in 2017 such as using repetitive melodies but changing the chords to create a sense of familiarity. Developing this expertise takes years of experience and mentorship. In music, since it’s all about who you know, this formula creates an even greater barrier for female producers if men are passing it along in their inner circle.

“It’s like a hidden secret. It’s almost like a language,” says Kala. “Anybody who has a better vocabulary already understands more.”

For Sylvia Suli, lead singer of the Londonbased all-women band Silva, her expertise has been disregarded during sound checks and recording sessions by men. After having their own instruments explained to them by the sound engineer during sound check, Sylvia had to be careful about how she responded. Pissing off the person in charge of your gig’s sound— even if justified—could have some serious consequences for a newbie band. Especially an all-female band who has to fight twice as hard to be taken seriously. “You can’t say much when you’re up and coming,” says Sylvia. “You have to pick your battles.”

Chloe Kraemer, 25, is an assistant engineer at The Church Studios in north London, colloquially known as “The Church”, and a music producer.

The Church has worked with artists from Adele to Radiohead. Chloe got into producing music in her bedroom at the age of 14, before she even realised it could be a career. “If I had female role models, I would have started this journey nine or 10 years before I did,” she said. “I would’ve decided not to go to uni; I’m going to start doing this now.”

For anyone to get a job in music production is an odds-defying feat. If women aren’t encouraged to pursue production roles, then women will feel less equipped to tackle such a large obstacle. “There’s often times where I feel outnumbered,” says Chloe. “It’s 10 guys in a room and you’re the only woman and you notice it. I do find it hard sometimes.”

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Photos: Chantal Anderson (left and right), Burak Cingi (middle) Ricky Reed (left and right), Lizzo (middle)

sold-out a European tour, enlisted Chloe’s help to record some vocals for her new album YU. At first, she told the singer no because she didn’t think she could do it. “Since then, I’ve been the one to go up to artists and ask to record for them,” says Chloe.

Fortunately, Chloe thinks the future of female representation in music is bright. “Feminism is a really marketable subject at the moment which is why labels are telling songwriters to write songs about feminism because it makes money, which is quite sad,” says Chloe. “But I think there will be more weight behind the songs if it’s actually a female crew. I think these female anthems are actually going to be written by women.”

Chloe refers to the “wave” of women entering music careers now. With more women in the industry, it would mean there are more female crews behind artists and the songs in pop culture.

Ultimately, it’s an important message because music can be a place of powerful change. Having songs from artists like L who have important stories to tell is why we listen to music in the first place. With more women in music, hopefully the stories on the radio will be more diverse and by artists supported in the industry.

“I’ve been to hell and back,” says L. “I’m going to tell that story.”

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While working at The Church, Chloe has always felt supported by her employer. The Church is paving the way forward with initiatives to bring more women into engineering and production roles in music. Though she had to rack her brain for times she wasn’t taken seriously in the industry, she says she’s been mistaken a few times for a receptionist or manager by guests.

Recently, an A&R rep was complaining about a producer and mocking his abilities. He sarcastically added: “There’s more of a chance that Chloe will make a number one record.” By using Chloe as the butt of his joke, he assumed that she had no idea how to produce a record.

“It didn’t offend me at all,” says Chloe. “It made me feel so ambitious, like I’m going to prove him wrong.”

Despite the daily battles women still go through in the music industry, there might be hope on the horizon. New non-profits are popping up such as She Is The Music, which joins female creators in music, and the collective For The Record, which is working to promote female songwriters, producers and engineers.

In order to make changes on a wider scale, it’s necessary that women in music work together and advocate for each other.

Chloe got her first sound engineering credit when singer Rosie Lowe, who recently had a

Neurotic shitters rejoice: Claudia Glover shares her tips on how to poo away from home

Lifestyle

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ow, I don’t know about everyone else, but shitting in public terrifies me. Whether you’re out there earning a living or living your best life, there is nowhere outside of your own home that can give the sweet balance of seclusion and safety, allowing you to poo in peace.

Even then, at home when the house is empty, I have been known to go to ridiculous lengths just to cleanse the shitting experience. The liberal employment of aerosols or perfume can cover the disgusting smells that your body will, of course, make. Putting the tap on full force stops you from having to listen to a symphony of your own farts.

Leaving the shower running with the window open is basically committing the perfect crime.

However, neurotic squeamishness aside, our emotions might be why we like shitting at home so much. For those of you who are genuinely deaf to the calls of nature until you’re on the other side of your own toilet door, you are not alone. When asked why we are more comfortable pooing at home, Jack Gilbert, faculty director of University of Chicago’s Microbiome Center, told The Atlantic: “‘More comfortable’ is an emotional state, but emotions are physiological responses. So it’s a way in which your body responds to its environment.”

He goes on to explain how as soon as you walk into your own house, your glucose tolerance, breathing and hormones will change, as well as other bodily adjustments. This is a suspected response to your own habitat’s unique conditions, like the sounds, smells and other sensations. All together, these stimuli prompt the body to get things moving.

Sometimes, however, you will be caught short on the go. The calls of nature may not listen to your fancy, scientific rationale, and there will be certain allowances that you will have to make. After all, while it is not actually dangerous to hold it in, it can definitely cause discomfort, gas and constipation, which are not attractive prospects for the slaying goddess-on-the-go. Luckily, public buildings such as libraries or large supermarkets offer the privacy of disabled access toilets. Enjoy the solitude and soundproof door that might make your anxious colon a little more comfortable.

If you are not within spitting distance of such bathrooms, or “the throne” as we call them in the biz, your problem may be runnier or lumpier than previously imagined. Lines of cubicles are difficult as the last thing anyone wants is a noisy neighbour.

But sometimes needs must, and, luckily for you, preparing for the worst-case scenario is a favourite pastime for a chronic over-thinker such as myself.

These techniques can also be used at work, for those of you who don’t fancy loudly shitting within hearing distance of Linda from marketing.

First, use your flush regularly. Not only does this act as noise cancellation, but the less the little guys

hang around, the less smelly your surroundings.

If you’re still struggling, tap both feet and/or whistle. Admittedly, this enters into the realms of the slightly ridiculous, but when letting rip, you will need some sort of smoke screen to protect your dignity.

Finally, the holy grail of the emergency crap, the life line, or a life net as they are named by the fire departments across our great nation. Specifically, this is what firemen use on the ground to catch people jumping out of burning buildings. Substitute the pavement for toilet water and the safety net for loo paper. Yes, that terrified person jumping is your shit, whose telling ka-SPLOOSH has now been muffled, allowing you to walk out of that bathroom with your head held high.

Employing any and all of the above will minimise the shame of shitting in public, and allow you to carry on with your day.

There are situations, however, where the facilities are so disgusting that it really doesn’t matter what sort of fresh hell you unleash from your backside as it will not make a difference to the biblical-scale of revulsion that you are subjected to. In some ways, this : is calming as the embarrassment has , been eradicated. However, it has been replaced with something that is arguably much worse.

I am talking, of course, about Portaloos at festivals. Particularly in the morning or if you have been lucky with the weather. You’ve seen them. A line of makeshift toilets sitting in between the tents and food stalls. As the day winds on into night, the antics of the punters become more frenzied and chemically enhanced, filling the “toilets” with brick phones, MDMA-laced cans of Kronenbourg, and lots and lots of crap. The Portaloos are in constant use throughout the night. When the sun comes up, the festival goers rest and the loos are left for an hour or so to ripen. They sit in direct sunlight, filled to the brim and bubbling with anticipation specifically for me. I trip over my feet on my way to the bathroom in mud-covered wellies and some sort of complicated backless, strappy onesie to relieve myself before I die.

The reek is bulletproof. You couldn’t throw a chair through that smell. My fragile state isn’t prepared for such an apocalyptic stench. I retch unreservedly while peeing. Coughing, eyes and nose watering, every fibre of my being objecting to the steaming vat of shit that I am precariously hovering over.

There is nothing left to do but picture my happy place: in my bathroom, with the shower running and the window open.

Hopefully, I have granted you perspective to be more psychologically and practically prepared for how to handle the ins and outs of the spontaneous number two. In the words of Chairman Mao: “If you have to shit, shit!”

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Photo: Claudia Glover

Ihappypicture my pl a ce i n mywibathroom t h the shower runni n g and the window open

Lifestyle

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THE ONE WITH THE

FRIENDSHIP Parisa Borghei takes a deep dive on why friendships fizzle and flop

A 2016 study that appeared in the Royal Society Open Science found that people begin to lose friends around the age of 25. It attributes the loss of relationships to settling down with a few close friends after spending your younger years experimenting with different groups of friends. “Individuals explore the range of opportunities (both for friendships and for reproductive partners) available to them before finally settling down with those considered optimal or most valuable,” says the study. As people age, they learn which friendships are valuable and let the rest fizzle out.

The painful paradox of a broken friendship is that no matter how personal the relationship is, the reason for its breakdown is rarely personal.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to silence the slew of insecurities that follows the end of a friendship. Was I too much for them? Did I miss the signs that the friendship was coming to an end? Is there something else I could have done? Sometimes, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. It’s time to say goodbye. There may be the odd like on an Instagram photo or a mandatory “Happy Birthday” on Facebook, but these are the usual signs a friendship is over.

For some people, if a friendship isn’t mirroring the closeness and carefree nature of the pals in Friends, it’s not worth spending any amount of time on it. But, friends, it’s time for a wake-up call. The concept of having the perfect squad is totally unrealistic. Stop striving for that RachelPhoebe-Monica dynamic, and start embracing the friends-with-benefits relationships. I’m not talking about the Justin Timberlake/Mila Kunis type, but the type that you can pick up and drop when you need them.

Let’s celebrate low-maintenance friendships, because they’re the healthiest and realistic friendships of them all.

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blame friends. The TV show and the real life kind.

Ever since we were old enough (and cool enough) to watch the Central Perk pals on our screens, we’ve had this romantic idea of what friendship should look like. It looks like six friends lounging about in a coffee shop for an inordinate amount of time, talking about who they’re dating, what movie they’re going to see and when to order pizza.

This has led us to believe that we should have not just one close friend but several, and that to feel close to our friends we must live in their pockets.

No matter how many Instagram photos you caption with “squad goals”, “BFFs forever” and “sister from another mister”, and how desperately you try to find the people who will “be there for you”, this Friends-level of friendship is unrealistic. We simply don’t have time to see each other all the time.

Prof Jeffery A Hall, associate professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas, published a study in 2018 on how long it takes to make a close friend. Part of it consisted of surveying first years as they made new friends at university. “I found freshmen who spent one-third of all waking hours in a month with one good friend,” Hall said in a press release.

He continued: “You can’t make people spend time with you, but you can invite them, make it a priority to spend time with potential friends. If you are interested in a friendship, switch up the context. If you work together, go to lunch or out for a drink.”

Sometimes, it’s the friends who get in the way of a friendship. There are friends who don’t stick around for as long as you hoped they would, and friends who will only knock on your door when it’s convenient for them. Then there are the friends who don’t want to see you win and will dump their insecurities onto you. But more often than not, work, family or a relationship brings friendships to a standstill.

Health

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VEGAN LI(V)es

Beyond vegan influencers’ Instagrams is a dark underbelly of misinformation and extreme diets

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ou don’t have to be scared to get fat on this lifestyle,” says YouTuber KasumiKriss in 2015 to nearly 90,000 viewers about her high-carb, low-fat vegan diet. The video, which has since been taken down, made broad claims about the benefits of this kind of vegan diet while playing into weight loss narratives about the fear of getting fat.

Four years later and KasumiKriss – the online moniker of Kristel – has done a 180 to a fully fledged meat lover. The Netherlands-based YouTuber is now outspoken on her non-vegan lifestyle, producing videos like “Vegan to Carnivore” and “How To Start Eating Meat After Being Vegan”.

“When I look back, it’s clear I became brainwashed about veganism,” says Kristel from her home in Rotterdam.

Her brainwashers? Vegan influencers.

“I couldn’t find people to relate to so I watched a lot of vegan influencers. It made me feel part of a group,” says Kristel. “I only listened to them. I thought, these people are speaking the truth.”

Kristel became vegan five years ago after learning about it from influencers as a way to live healthier. She focused specifically on raw veganism, which she feels was dangerous in diet and message now looking back.

“They said raw veganism was purer and a better way to live,” says Kristel. “They kept promoting juice fasting and only eating fruit and just saying that it’s totally healthy, safe and good for your body.” But every time she followed the influencers’ advice, she found herself wondering, Why isn’t this working?

Why do I feel so bad?

The online vegan community has been in the spotlight lately as a handful of popular influencers have “come out” as having turned their backs on the lifestyle. YouTuber Rawvana came clean to her

1.2 million followers after being outed for eating fish. On a similar note, YouTuber Bonny Rebecca told her nearly half a million followers this year she was leaving the vegan lifestyle behind, citing skin and digestive problems. Eventually, doctors recommended she incorporate animal-based protein into her diet to get the nutrients she needed.

Vegans have quadrupled their ranks since 2014, with half of vegans joining the lifestyle just in the last year. With millennials making up one-third of the vegan population, the influencer is an inherent part of the movement.

A quick look at these vegan influencers’ Instagrams and YouTube channels paints a uniform picture: a slender young woman posing ocean-side with an array of colourful plates, pushing “pure” and “clean” eating. They promise ways to improve your mental health, your productivity, your skin, your waistline, your mood, all while selling an overall message of “this could be you”. This type of influencer pulls veganism further away from messages about animals . or the environment and instead, sells a restrictive diet to their followers by tapping into women’s body insecurities. Though some former vegans claim the diet is not sustainable, the finger should point to the influencers.

Heather Saunders, who runs the Oxford-based Vegan Eats Oxford blog, recalls meeting a fellow vegan blogger only to find she wasn’t actually vegan.

“She just had a vegan account because it’s a popular thing to do,” she says. Heather says that this might not be that uncommon, that people are saying they’re vegan to tap into the trend but might not be a strict vegan in real life. It might help explain why juice cleanses and fasting take off so rapidly on social platforms, because everyone jumps on the bandwagon. w

I onliynflluisencers tened to I thought these peopletheweretruthspeaking

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Photos: Pixabay (top left), Thought Catalog (top middle), Dyamis Kleber (top right), Aliyah Jamous (middle left), aloespower (middle), Plantvillage (middle right), Dimitri Svetkikas (bottom left), Charles Deluvio (bottom centre), Social cut (bottom right)

Erin Cavoto

powerful. Kristel became obsessed with what she ate because food became either “pure” or “toxic”. She felt constantly hungry and always thought about her next meal. “My life would revolve around my food,” she says.

Julieanna Hever, known as The Plant-Based Dietitian who also practices a vegan diet, cautions people only getting their dietary information from influencers. “So many people listen to these selfproclaimed nutrition experts,” says Julieanna. “Many are attempting extreme variations on diet, like restricting many types of foods, so they’re setting themselves up for failure.”

Many of the influencers who left veganism for health reasons often practiced these extreme variations and lacking in supplements.

For instance, Rawvana quit veganism due to intenstinal complications from raw veganism and once doing a 25-day water fast. It’s an obvious example of influencers lacking the knowledge to back up their advice.

and food challenges. Her photos show her on beaches in exotic locations, linking her diet to not only health but improvements “mentally, emotionally, and spiritually”. It’s an enticing message.

Heather has a different message, however, as she used her vegan blogging to help her issues with food. “I didn’t have the best relationship with food,” she says. Sharing her food online made her excited about food again. “To be eating a lot of food a lot of the time was a massive fear for me. But the more I did it, and the more regularly I’m doing it, I don’t think or worry about it now.”

Because of the negative impact ill-informed accounts can have, Heather makes a conscious decision to keep toxic influencers out of her feed, such as people plugging juice cleanses.

“I unfollow accounts when the account isn’t really healthy,” says Heather. “Most of the accounts I follow are food-related. I like following people who share a holistic view of a vegan lifestyle.” This means accounts that with tips on bringing veganism into all aspects of their life, such as sharing nail polish brands that are vegan. Making veganism not just about food is an important distinction between practicing veganism as a diet versus as a lifestyle.

Women must be careful about who they’re listening to as the words influencers use can be

Both Kristel and Heather admitted to getting defensive toward vegan naysayers before they supplied themselves with more information.

“I wasn’t educating myself to the various nutrients you need in your diet,” says Heather. “It’s like reading one news source. You’re curating a feed that’s very focused on one thing, and you start to believe that’s the way everyone sees the world.”

Seeking information beyond the diet-crazed influencers made Heather’s veganism more sustainable. Rather than just health, she is now vegan because of animals and the environment, which motivates her to stay vegan. For Kristel, listening to the other side is what made her “wake up”.

“You can get influenced so quickly, especially if you don’t look up whether things are true,” says Kristel.

Just as dieting fads aren’t anything new, the trick to combating bogus influencers might also not be anything new. Julieanna says any change in diet requires hard work, unlike what’s sold by influencers.

“Real, sustainable change requires a shift in one’s relationship with food,” she says.

Once she ditched the influencers, Kristel’s relationship with food transformed. “I’m happily eating a meal without feeling like it’s toxic to me,” says Kristel. “It took some time, but my relationship with food is much better now.”

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Photo: Ula Mamonik (left), Vegan liftz (middle), Pixabay (right)

Health

When your only source of dietary information comes from influencers with no background in nutrition, the door swings wide open for unhealthy cleanses, fasting and even masked eating disorders.

In 2013, a UK study found that half of the women surveyed with a history of eating disorders had followed some form of a vegetarian diet. At the time, only two per cent of the UK was vegetarian.

When presented without evidence and branded as a superior lifestyle, it could give women a reason to restrict food items and attribute it to health.

Raw veganism can be especially overly promotional in its message, as Kristel explained.

Though raw veganism can lead to deficiencies in vitamin B12, vitamin D, and calcium, the diet discourages taking supplements because they aren’t dervied from plants. Without these supplements, people can experience fatigue and digestive issues.

Look to popular raw vegan influencer Fully Raw Kristina who has over one million followers on YouTube and Instagram and regularly plugs cleanses

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um Cagain?

Finishing off the debate on female pleasure once and for all

Bertille Duthoit

Sex

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Women share their masturbating stories, from their first time to what gets the best Big O

Before even having sexual relationships, I might have tried once in the shower not knowing what I was doing. But I really discovered masturbation after my first relationship. I just wanted more. It’s important to talk about it: pleasure and orgasms are good!

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Sophie, 20

I think there’s a strong stereotype for women that they are supposed to want to make love with someone because they are in love, that they need affection and that they have less desire than men. But more and more, we’re starting to realise that it’s not true. Clara, 22

Gretchen, 27

The first time I masturbated I was around 15.

I had no idea what I was doing. I encourage everybody to touch themselves and learn what your body feels like. I’ve been in a relationship for eight years now, and it’s important to know what I like so I can then tell him how I like it.

I used to play with the shower head or my fingers, but then I discovered the “Womanizer” and “Magic Wand”. They’re the best sex toys for me. Masturbation helps me relax: I love the feeling after an orgasm.

We can’t be passive with our own bodies.

I felt like it was wrong because I did not know any girls who would acknowledge that they were doing it. We talk about it very rarely.

There’s a myth that because women are not taught how to masturbate, they are dependent on their partner. A

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Lena, 24

June, 25

Photo: Claudia Glover

your body and mind as a woman. But we also need education through family and friends.

When a boy gets an erection, parents say it’s normal and sometimes celebrate that “he’s a man”. But when a girl rubs herself against a cushion, there’s discomfort and shame.

The discourse around female pleasure must move forward so that friends can talk about it without turning red. Parents should have “the conversation” about female pleasure just like they awkwardly do when it comes to sex. It doesn’t only give us an unexplainable pleasure, but being open about masturbation also helps to improve our sexual relations with our partners. According to Laumann’s study on sexual dysfunction, masturbation can help with stress and sleep deprivation.

Female masturbation is not a myth. Love your body in every way, and free the world from this silly social stigma.

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his is the clitoris. Make a circular motion here,” says your screen when using HappyPlayTime, an app which encourages women to touch themselves by giving them anatomy lessons and tips. If women need virtual confidence to discover their own body and not be embarrassed by their own genitalia, then we can definitely call female masturbation a taboo.

Stigmatising female pleasure isn’t new. The Victorians saw masturbation as a clinical cure to “female hysteria” and repressed “abnormal” female sexual desires (this was before sending women to asylums or undergoing surgical hysterectomy in extreme cases), while Freud found clitoral orgasms “infantile”. History certainly didn’t help to open people’s mind on the subject.

Meanwhile, men masturbating is so commonplace it’s a joke: “When is the only time a guy can multi-task?” “When he’s watching porn, masturbating, and keeping an eye on the door at the same time.”

Along the same lines, slang terms such as “wanker” and “balls out” turn male genitals into everyday vocabulary as well as idioms like bashing the bishop or banging one out. There’s clearly no taboo when men talk about their “manhood” while female self-love remains a forbidden subject.

Women in Sweden were so embarrassed talking about masturbating that they made a new code name: klittra.

Why are women still not allowed to know our bodies and simply enjoy ourselves? Whenever female masturbation was represented in pop culture, it is often in a pornographic or embarrassing way. In her 1992 picture book, Sex, Madonna is shown looking at her vagina in a mirror in the middle of sadomasochist photos. And who can forget the scene in the 1989 movie Parenthood where Steve Martin accidentally picks up Dianne Wiest’s vibrator? She’s mortified, a situation that shows female pleasure as unsettling.

But the 2000s ushered in a lighter representation of female masturbation in pop culture. We all remember Samantha’s drawer full of vibrators in Sex and the City, the first and over-the-top representation of female pleasure.

After years of being treated as The Act that Shall Not Be Named, it seems like a new cultural wave is shaking off the taboo. The Netflix show Sex Education proves this in a scene of crazy female masturbation in which Aimee (Aimee Lou Wood) discovers the magic of self-love.

Despite pop culture starting to open up about women masturbating, a Swedish study shows that in real life women are not as confident. Out of the 3,000 men and women who were interviewed, 15 per cent of women said they never masturbated compared to one per cent of men.

There are clearly causes for this difference because – let’s be honest with each other – women have no reason to be less horny than men. As young women, we’re never told about masturbation. If women’s magazines didn’t exist, we would have lived in solitude with our dirty little secret. While boys get erections and little girls don’t, girls aren’t told about ways to experience sexual pleasure. Men are taught how to feel pleasure, while women are only taught how children will be made.

Education must liberate speech around female masturbation. By education, we don’t only mean for science books at school to show more vulvas. We need to know that pleasure benefits

WOMEN WHO FLIRT WITH

DEATH How extreme sports became a woman’s game, even when the ultimate risk can be fatal

Photo: Carmen McIlveen

Victoria Brush

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n August 6 1926, Gertrude Ederle was the first woman to swim across the English Channel. The American completed the distance in the quickest time, clocking in at 14 hours and 39 minutes. Before Gertrude, there were five men who swam between France and England, but she was the fastest. The swimmer opened a lane for women who wanted to be recognised in this sport: “People said women couldn’t swim the Channel, but I proved they could.”

Since the American’s swim in 1926, numerous women have attempted and completed the journey. English swimmer Alison Streeter broke the record for most recorded swims across the Channel with a total of 43, nine more times than the highest recorded male swimmer. Canadian swimmer Cindy Nicholas crossed the Channel 19 times, including a record-breaking five two-way crossings. Two men have tried to beat Cindy’s record, but they have only completed the return journey three times.

Gertrude was a role model for women in this extreme sport. She showed that long distance, high-intensity swimming wasn’t just a man’s game, despite news publications both then and now believing that men are the only people breaking records just like in 2017 when Andy Murray corrected a journalist who assumed he was the first US major semi-finalist despite Serena Williams’s constant tournament wins.

Kim Chambers is a marathon open water swimmer who constantly stares death in the face to beat a record. In August 2015, the New Zealand native became the first woman to swim from the Farallon Islands to the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, a roughly 30-mile trek deemed one of the toughest swims in the world due to areas of the ocean as deep as 10,000ft and having one of the world’s highest concentrations of great white sharks. It took Kim 17 hours to swim to the Golden Gate Bridge. There was not a moment that she was out of the water as she swam the open ocean only equipped with a swimsuit, hat and goggles. In order to survive the ordeal, Kim paused every 30 minutes to drink a liquid feed thrown to her by the support boat while treading water.

For Kim, the swim was all about breaking the record. Only four other people completed the swim before Kim who was the first woman to do so. “Everyone thought I was mad,“ she has said. Kim wanted to break records, push herself further and make people see that women can do what men do.

The swimmer has risked her life with other extreme swims in the past. When swimming the Channel, Kim almost died after being stung hundreds of times by jellyfish but still finished the swim. Before her swim from the Farallon Islands, she was prepared to die. Kim told the Guardian: “It sounds completely nuts, but when I went to the Farallones, I prepared not to come back. I did my laundry because I wanted my place to be decent when they came to collect my stuff.”

Kim Chambers

While swimming might be about records, people do BASE and wingsuit jumping for the thrill.

Instead of jumping out of a plane with a parachute, BASE jumpers run off of cliffs or fixed structures.

They jump from lower altitudes with a parachute which poses less control and a higher risk of injury or death. According to Blinc Magazine’s unofficial “BASE Fatality List” which has recorded BASE fatalities since 1981, 368 people have died so far, 27 of which were women. Wingsuit jumpers are even more extreme as they fall out of planes or off of cliffs just wearing a winged outfit, looking like a flying squirrel. It’s a risky yet adrenalineseeking game.

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Photo: Kim Chambers (left), Abbi Haerne Clare (top), Nedfee (right)

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Taya Weiss is one of those adrenaline junkies.

She completed her first wingsuit dive in 2004.

While she is a Harvard graduate who describes herself as an “overeducated skydiver”, she proves that women can have crazy hobbies. One of the dangers in this sport, apart from falling from an incredibly high altitude, is the addiction to the thrill. Taya has experienced this herself, as she told Blue Skies Magazine: “I think wingsuit BASE jumping is one of the most wonderful things on earth and it feels amazing. It is very addictive and it can be very hard to self-assess and know where your limits are. I am proud that I’ve thus far made decisions to survive.

Hopefully, I will quit before I die.

“I have definitely lost a lot of people through skydiving and BASE jumping,” Taya went on to say. “It is hard to come back from that and those types of loss truly push you to swim in the risk that you are taking.” Taya is an advocate for more education and understanding of the extremities of the sport in order to prevent these fatalities.

Carmen, a 31-year-old rock climber from London, experienced the same adrenaline addiction. “I was studying to become a personal trainer when a friend who is a climbing instructor invited me along to check out the local wall. I didn’t visit a ‘normal gym’ again for almost six months after that day. I was officially hooked.”

Since her first visit to a rock climbing gym in

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2017, she has climbed cliffs and mountains in Dorset, France and Spain.

Overcoming mental blocks and pushing yourself seem to be addictive qualities to female athletes in extreme sports. Carmen agrees: “What I haven’t found with other types of exercise is the mental challenge that climbing presents, such as overcoming fear and problem solving. It’s a totally different experience.” When asked how her rock climbing makes her feel, she responded with one word: free.

While you might have climbed up an indoor wall in a fancy gym before, what Carmen does is a little different. Free solo climbing is much more extreme. Instead of being strapped into a harness with a person on the ground spotting you, free solo climbing excludes extra equipment. Like marathon swimming, this extreme sport looks at what people can do through strength alone.

While bouldering walls are an up-and-coming trend in the exercise community, Carmen’s climbing has potentially fatal consequences.

Instead of falling onto a crash pad, if Carmen falls, she will hit the ground. While there are risks of sprained ankles or wrists as Carmen has experienced, these are small injuries when compared to a long fall. “I’ve picked up a few injuries along the way, so there’s usually at least one part of my body that hurts,” she says.

“Thankfully none of these are from dangerous situations.” Free solo climbing is an extremely male-dominated area. The most notable ascents across the world are completed by men. Even the two most famous films about rock climbing, 127 Hours and Free Solo, are films about men.

There are women who are trying to push past this closed community. Lynn Hill, a 58-year-old rock climber, is one of them. This American was one of the leading competitive sport climbers in the 1990s. She became the first person to successfully ascent The Nose, a sheer rock face in Yosemite, without equipment. She completed the 2,900ft ascent in four days before completing it the next year in just 23 hours.

Lynn wasn’t phased by the risks; she just wanted to climb. She told Mountain Zone: “If you’re small, if you’re tall, if you’re...whatever your body type or sex, it doesn’t really matter. If you want to do a climb and you’ve worked at it, it’s not unreasonable even, if you do have the ability, why not? Why be limited by what other people say?”

Women like Gertrude and Lynn have created a path for other female extreme athletes to follow.

They show that once you find passion and thrill, you can do anything despite the high risk. The high from extreme sports becomes addicting and athletes will stop at nothing to go back for that thrill again and again.

These women are physically and mentally strong women who should be an inspiration to all, not just women. From swimming to climbing, they have proved that women can kick ass just as much as, if not more than, their male opponents.

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OVA On ice Claudia Glover weighs the pros and cons of freezing her eggs on the verge of 30

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t happened on the phone about a year ago. I was feeling existentially anxious, so went to the sales in Covent Garden to get out of the house and clear my head. I called my father for a fairly one-sided conversation. I began painting myself into a body-clock themed corner over the phone: although I have only just got the confidence together to qualify for my dream job at 29, I also want a family and be young enough to pick my children up. My dad paused, looking for something soothing to say after my fretting rambles.

Eventually he tried: “Claudia, shall we look into getting your eggs frozen?”

I fell silent on the other end of the line, frozen by his offer. I had not considered this as a possibility before. Spending time trying to figure out a life path while hearing the biological clock tick had felt like a fairly typical cross to bear for a woman of 29.

And yet there I was, blinking at the overpriced clothes that had completely lost their significance. I was left wondering whether now, in the sale section of Urban Outfitters, was the time to start contemplating my future. Am I really going to be able to achieve everything I want to achieve organically? Do I need ovarian insurance?

For women now, having a family is not always a priority. Whenever I talk to female friends about wanting to have everything, I am told that I’m still young enough, just neurotic. However, the medical term for pregnant women who are 35 and older is “geriatric mother”. This has been slammed as sexist, but I’m scared that there’s a grain of truth in it. Medical advancements may continue to make us look younger and live longer, but can the biological birthing window really be widened?

While I might be a little young to be thinking like this, I’m certainly not alone. Women are having children later and later. According to the Office of National Statistics, the average age of mothers in 2017 increased to 30 from 26 in 1975.

It seems that a woman’s 20s have become their own, while their 30s are the best time to build their lives. Terrifyingly, this might not wash biologically.

Claiming your 20s is an excellent way of ensuring your happiness for the rest of your life, but you may need an egg freezing addendum to this life path if you want to have a family as well.

On the surface this seems perfect. I will magically have all the time I need to develop my career and

to find the perfect co-baby-maker. I can save up and plan for it, like an expensive holiday or a PhD. I can get nominated for a Pulitzer and master the art of crochet. Providing that this all takes less than 10 years. After that, your biological eulogy will be unceremoniously destroyed by whichever clinic you have chosen to house your future spawn.

Cost-wise, one cycle of oocyte cryopreservation (egg freezing) costs £5,000. Experts recommend that you have three of these cycles to ensure that one egg that goes the distance. £15,000 of expendable income, plus about £150 to £400 a year to store them, at this point in my life is about as likely as having the emotional stability to consider starting a family without wining about it in an opinion piece.However, in my cool new cryogenically-enhanced future, £15,000 is exactly the sort of money that I could comfortably set aside for a rainy day. Sadly, I would need that money now to harvest my eggs when they are still relatively fresh, as disgusting as that sounds.

Even after that, the success rate of getting pregnant from a frozen egg is only at 27 per cent.

In vitro fertilisation (IVF) is a popular choice for the hopeful mother approaching 40. While this works for many women, practically it seems stressful and expensive. Its effectiveness rapidly declines with each passing year, going from 20 per cent effective in your mid 30s to just 5 per cent by 41 according to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. If you freeze your eggs when you are young and more fertile, the rate of success for IVF increases, according to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. IVF with or without frozen ova seems to be risky as a last-ditch attempt at an age where you may as well give birth naturally anyway.

It’s probably best not to put all my eggs in one basket. If I shelve my dreams of having a family in lieu of an expensive myth, the dream could shatter after I have missed all my other chances. I’m not sure it’s possible to construct my own contentment.

As worrying as the prospect of not having it all might be, putting my hopes into a pipe dream is somehow scarier. For now, manically trying to do everything at the same time seems to be the way that induces the least anxiety. Maybe being mistrustful of new technology is being stuck in the past, but I don’t think I can put all of my hopes into one prediction of the future.

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Photo: Claudia Glover

Can the bi o l o gi c al birthirealngyl wibendow widened?

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The Plastics of Tehran For Iranian women, nose jobs are not simply a sign of vanity or a hidden secret Parisa Borghei

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am an Iranian woman living in the UK. As far as I can remember, plastic surgery was never a subject that was hidden, quietly talked about or left in the dark. It was something that was brought up in conversation and openly spoken about with friends and family members like it was nothing significant. My family was always familiar with plastic surgery. Mostly rhinoplasty, but not limited to Botox fillers, liposuction, butt implants and any other body part that could be enhanced by the prick of a needle.

Any woman who was either getting married or insecure about her nose would go under the knife.

These procedures were deemed normal while I was growing up.

Rhinoplasty has arguably become a beauty trend in Iranian culture. Women either have their noses done for medical reasons or just a social fad. Getting an upward, pointed nose is the most sought-after plastic surgery procedure in Iran. The main aim for a lot of Iranian women is to have a nose that isn’t too big and doesn’t have an outward hump that is disproportionate to the rest of their face. Most of the time, with the right plastic surgeon, they get the perfect nose. But what is it that draws Iranian women, and even men, to have the perfect nose?

In an environment such as Iran, where the government has overruled the country and women have to cover their heads with scarves and wear modest clothing, plastic surgery has become more

than a physical transformation. In response to the strict laws on women’s appearances following the revolution in Iran in 1979, women sometimes wear loosely wrapped headscarves over their hair and dance in the streets of Iran as a way to express their freedom that they lost forty years ago.

Malika* tells me: “Because women in Iran can’t show their bodies, they have to have work done to their faces.” It’s possible that by going under the knife, plastic surgery allows women to take agency over their own beauty since they are limited in how they can express it.

“We have a desperate need to show ourselves as westernised and as far as possible from the regime,” says Mohammed. “So we idolise the western idea of beauty, from blonde hair to small noses, in a vain attempt to show westerners that we are not the stereotype. Many people from our country detest that look because of the association of pain and hardship.”

Others might have procedures done to be in style. “I do it to look better for my partner,” says Kiana. “For any person who chooses to have plastic surgery, even if they don’t have any problem with their body, they do it to be more fashionable.”

Despite the Middle East’s mostly Islamic morals and ideologies, women are drawn to having rhinoplasty more than western countries like the UK or US (despite the US being the number one country for all plastic surgeries). Therefore, w

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Photo: Claudia Glover

P lwas asticopenl surgyery spoken about witand h myfamifrileynds members l i k e it siwas nothi n g gnif icant

Iranian women look to Hollywood actresses such as Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Lopez who have iconic features that women wish to recreate.

In its 2016 study, the International Society of Aesthetics and Plastic Surgery ranked Iran as number 16 in the world for face and head procedures. It was recorded that there were 12,117 rhinoplasties of the total 46,096 face and head procedures. The rankings were based solely on those countries from which a sufficient survey response was received and data were considered to be representative, which consisted of a questionnaire sent to 35,000 plastic surgeons.

Rhinoplasty was ranked as the fourth most popular cosmetic procedure in the world.

Many Iranian plastic surgeons who specialise in face surgery have backed a 2015 study by the Rhinology Research Society of Iran and Johns Hopkins University, which found that there are seven times more nose jobs per capita in Iran than in the United States. According to Dr Amir Sajadian, an Iranian otolaryngologist (medical specialist of ear, nose and throat surgery) based in Tehran said: “In Iran, there have usually been cases of women as young as 16.”

The average cost for rhinoplasty in Iran is between £790 to £2,400. In his professional experience, Sajadian says that there is a common reason for rhinoplasty in this region. “Middle eastern people have a bigger hump in their noses and a downward tip which causes dramatic changes after surgery when compared to western features of smaller noses,” says Sajadian.

What’s interesting about Sajadian is that he works in between the countries of Iran and Oman. He treats patients from around the world who seek his expertise. His global attraction is drawn from the over 48,000 followers he shares before and after pictures with on Instagram.

Since rhinoplasty is so popular in Iran, the amount of patients coming to Iran from overseas has grown. Some of these medical tourists go to more accessible countries in the Middle East such as Turkey. However, Sajadian states that within the last 30 years as Iran’s medical industry started to grow and the expertise began to flourish, Turkey’s social media presence started to develop and in return gained traffic.

My experience with rhinoplasty, although not having gotten a nose job myself, has been neither bad nor good. It’s just an experience that I’ve grown up with. The women in my family have had the procedure done without giving it a second thought because it is the norm.

The upside of having plastic surgery within Iranian culture is that no one questions your decision. In a western society, the subject of plastic surgery is frowned upon or is something you’d find on gossip websites on the dodgy side of the internet. If having rhinoplasty is something that makes you happy, then go forward with that choice and never look back.

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PULLING the PLUG From doxxing to revenge porn, sexist abuse suffered online has offline consequences for women

Claudia Glover

Photo: Claudia Glover

says. She recalls the messages she received after speaking on Sunday morning live with the BBC. “One of the first messages I was sent was, ‘What are you crying about? You’re a bigger girl, you should be grateful for the attention’.”

She continues: “At one point, all of the catcalling accounts made a decision for International Women’s Day to use women spelt with an X (womxn) to be inclusive of trans and non-binary individuals. Throughout the night I was getting messages non-stop; really hurtful, hateful stuff. Some guy was telling me ‘You need to get raped’. I was up the whole night thinking, Why do people hate me? I can’t believe people.

I was publicising a message of inclusivity and positivity, and there are so many people out there with so much hate and misery.”

Triggering a toxic Twitter backlash or having your details leaked online will undoubtedly have a negative effect on your psychology, but what about the psychology of the people doing it? The online space is full of trolls, but some trolls have become seriously threatening.

Incels, men who are “involuntarily celibate”, are a particularly venomous online group who have become dangerous towards women offline as well as online. One incel quote on Reddit reads, “Women were created to be helpers of men by providing children and being homemakers.

Not by being fucking sluts and working on their ‘professional’ careers’”, while another cites breast cancer as a “godsend” and “natural selection for being a Stacy [a term used by incels for an average woman] who dislikes us.”

These men, while embittered, appear to want to stay removed from society, which normally prevents them from being a physical threat.

But some become obsessed and progress into violence and even murder in some cases. Last year, Alek Minassian drove a van into a group of people in Toronto, killing 14 women, after posting on Facebook, “The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys!” Last November, Scott Beierle opened fire in a yoga studio in Florida, killing two women. He wrote misogynistic song lyrics w

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endered violence online manifests itself in all sorts of ways. Singer Lana Del Rey was forced to take out a restraining order against a man who raved on Facebook about their fictitious relationship. Posting his journey across America to her house added a layer of terrifying reality to his fantasy. Ashley Tisdale of High School Musical fame was sent an incredible 18,000 tweets by one cyber stalker before police intervened.

Every day, women are subjected to abuse online. Cyberstalking, having personal details hacked and leaked (known as doxxing) or falling victim to revenge porn are just a few ways that women can be targeted on the internet. In 2013, there was a wave of high-profile doxxing attacks, from Kim Kardashian to Lady Gaga to FLOTUS Michelle Obama. In this coordinated celebrity attack, sensitive information was leaked online, such as home addresses which is incredibly dangerous and puts the victims’ security in jeopardy.

In 2017, a survey by the Pew Research Center in the US reported that women are more likely than men to be sexually harassed online, with 21 per cent of women between the ages of 18 and 29 experiencing sexual harassment.

Elsewhere, Amnesty International conducted a poll in 2017 which reported that women are far more likely to experience adverse psychological effects as a result of such harassment. The poll looked at the experiences of women between the ages of 18 and 55 in eight countries including the UK and US, and found that more than half admitted to experiencing stress, anxiety or panic attacks after falling victim to online abuse or harassment.

Farah Benis runs Catcalls of London, an Instagram-based campaign that draws attention to women and girls being catcalled on the street.

She has found that whenever she promotes her company, she attracts anonymous hate online. “I find that this campaign has gotten a fair amount of visibility in the press, which can provoke negative attention. They seem to see me on television and actively seek out my account,” she

that he posted online including: “Just beneath their blushing lashes and their innocent smiles lies the most rancid and putrid, sickening essences”.

Charlotte Webb, head honcho at the Feminist Internet Project, an organisation dedicated to pioneering social equality online. The project aims to “collectively build an internet where information and opportunities can be accessed by all”. Webb explained to the Evening Standard: “It’s much better to have a conversation with big tech. They’re not going anywhere so we’re trying to be in dialogue with companies that have so much power and try to affect some change in the way that they take responsibility for the reproduction of social media and inequalities.” The Feminist Internet Project stands on the shoulders of other projects online such as GenderIT.org, launched in 2006, whose goal is to provide feminist reviews and commentary on internet policy and culture.

The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative is an online project that exists to help people who have suffered from online abuse, specifically “revenge porn”, or non-consensual pornography. The project allows women to share their experiences in a safe online group and get advice. Two years ago, Katie Styles, a victim of revenge porn, reached out to the initiative to discuss her case.

She posted on the group: “My ex sent all the nudes that I’d sent him to all my male friends at school. He created a fake Instagram account of me and posted all the nudes there, as well as my real full name, Snapchat, Facebook, my real number, where I live and where I go to school.

He sent them to accounts on Instagram that post pictures of naked girls, where they got reposted hundreds of times. They are still circulating.” The tone of hopelessness of the message hints at the lack of control over the situation. Once there is so much personal information leaked, it may not be possible to retrieve all of it.

Another anonymous woman who reached out to the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative to speak about her experience was underage when she was affected by revenge porn. “I had depression at the time. A boy contacted me through Snapchat.

He sent me nudes, then asked me for mine,” she posted “I know, wag your fingers at me and say I’m making up excuses as to why I did it, but I was so upset at that time, and I felt wanted when he asked.” A common effect of revenge porn is victim blaming, which is why this woman feels the need to defend herself.

The man threatened to put her image on revenge porn sites unless she did what he said. She documented all her conversations with him and was clear and stern with him

about which laws he would be breaking, and he retreated. Still, the damage had been done.

She posted, “I cannot sleep or eat. I am really scared and I have no one else I can tell and trust. I cannot tell my parents. It’s affecting me severely. I can’t deal with the worries and stress of just knowing he has it. Why do guys have to be such jerks? Is there anyone who can help me? Please, I need help.” ' While overt cyber misogyny is dangerous, there are also subtler forms that affect . women’s lives offline. Some companies use recruitment software to trawl the internet for CVs and bring up perfect candidates for them to interview. Last year, Amazon had to drop a recruitment programme that they had , been perfecting since 2014, because they found that it was inherently biased against women. The software would take successful applicants and use their criteria to look for similar candidates, effectively teaching itself that men were preferable, reflecting the human bias in the tech industry.

This bias towards men manifests itself in other bizarre ways online. Google Translate had to tweak its algorithms last year as their translations were skewing masculine for words like “strong” or “doctor” and feminine for words like “nurse” or “beautiful”. In 2017, linguist and data scientist Rachael Tatman published a study that found YouTube’s subtitle function was 13 per cent more likely to incorrectly translate female voices into subtitles than male.

Noah Kelley, founder of activist organisation Hack Blossom and creator of the DIY Guide to Feminist Cybersecurity, dedicates himself to establishing a culture of safe, accessible, and enriching technology free from exploitation. He provides easy-to-use cybersecurity specifically for women to use the internet safely. On his website, he states: “Although we have to rely on outside parties for technology to access these spaces, there are tons of helpful tools and strategies that allow you to take greater control of your digital life and mitigate the risk of malicious threats.” These resources provide a comprehensive list of links and download suggestions that will help users gain online anonymity and protect their data.

Looking towards the future of tech and the internet, one thing is clear: while cyber misogyny is a problem, it is reflective of the wider problem of gender bias within society. For tech algorithms to be more gender neutral, the environment that they work within will also need to include more women. Open dialogue is the key, with a view to actual change. In the end, online bias and abuse can only stop when it is proactively reduced in the real world first.

My ex sent al l the nudes I d sent hifrim etonds alatl myschool male He sent them toInstagram accountsthaton post pi c tures of naked gi r l s where the y got reposted hundreds of times

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life can be trichy

Women share their stories of trichotillomania, a rare hair-pulling disorder, to shatter its stigma

Paris a Borghei

Photo: Alec Stanley

she pulls her hair. She says: “I ask friends to mention it to me if they see me [pulling]. It would usually be in a more ‘You’re pulling again’ rather than ‘Stop pulling’.”

For Naomi, her dream is to change societal norms so people don’t treat the condition like it’s the elephant in the room, tip-toeing around it rather than addressing it. “Why is it acceptable to wax certain body parts, but people stare if you have no eyelashes or eyebrows or have bald patches?”

For many trichotillomania sufferers, the main effect after pulling is the feeling of shame and guilt. “Once I’m done, it normally concludes with feelings of guilt, or embarrassment if people notice the pulling and/or bald spots,” says Natalie.

Sometimes the urge to pull is too overwhelming to ignore. Naomi compares her internal battle over whether to pull or not to smoking: “They say 90 per cent of the addiction to smoking is the habit of having something in your fingers. I think trich is the same thing. You go from this high to a sense of frustration, guilt and shame. It’s quite exhausting, emotionally. Is it worth it?” After pulling, she describes feeling euphoric before the guilt settles in.

While there are some ways of finding treatment for the disorder, there isn’t a lot of expert help out there. Increasing treatment and awareness could help erase the stigma around trich.

Even after getting help, sufferers may still face a daily battle with trich. For Natalie, her condition has improved but requires hard work. “I still have bouts of anxiety and stress which can start it up again,” she says. “Sometimes I find myself doing it without even realising it or without having an obvious trigger.”

Last year, Naomi felt that her condition was taking over her life. As a temporary solution, she got eyelash extensions, which only exacerbated the problem. “They completely set me off again, because I found my lashes even more pluckable,” she says. “If I plucked one eyelash extension, six of my own lashes would come out. I ended up pulling out the extensions and pretty much all my lashes with them.”

Naomi is now two months pull-free. She’s wearing mascara and beginning to feel feminine for the first time in years. She’s determined to be one of the success stories to inspire those who are still struggling with trich.

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hen she was nine years old, Naomi, 44, started pulling at her eyelashes. “I don’t know why I started. I’m certain it wasn’t a conscious decision, and I am unaware of a single event that could have caused it.”

Naomi, a mother from Basingstoke, suffers from trichotillomania a compulsive hair-pulling disorder that can cause anyone, predominantly women, to pull the root of their hair, eyelashes or eyebrows.

Trich is mostly triggered by habit. Naomi says: “If I was in a car driving familiar routes, I would feel my hand going up to my eye. It’s like muscle memory.

If I’m in the car it’s my lashes, if I’m sitting at my laptop, I start fiddling with my eyebrows.”

Trisha Buller is a senior consultant trichologist, who has been practicing for 14 years. “Trichotillomania is classified as a form of self-harm. So the people who suffer with it don’t always seek help,” says Trisha.

She explains how people might pull their hair due to psychological reasons, anxiety or stress or even nutritional deficiency.

“The more successful patients have been younger children who work with their parents, who are usually the source of the hair-pulling. Generally, it does improve, because they start at an early age,” says Trish. “Teenagers and adults are difficult as they’ve been hiding it for a long time. As they go into adulthood, I tend to see patients once and never again. During that time they might relapse but they might even improve and come to me to show their progress.”

For some sufferers, trich can affect them at different points in their lives. Natalie, 27, suffered from trich as a child before it resurfaced in her early 20s. “I refer to myself as a perfectionist, and a bit of a control freak. The way I personally view [trich] is as an anxiety thing, it always gets worse if I am stressed or anxious, “ she says. “As a child, I used to twirl my hair around my finger and rip it out in chunks. When it restarted a few years ago, I think it was triggered by a breakdown of a long-term relationship.”

Naomi’s daughter, who also suffers from a skinpicking condition, tries to help Naomi from pulling.

“When she sees me pulling, she points it out,” she says. “I don’t take offence. The more I talk about it, the more comfortable I feel.”

Natalie copes with trich by being open with the people around her and enlisting their help whenever

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ALL HAIL THE

KING

Drag king Evie Fehilly talks to Lisa Henderson about sexual assault, #MeToo and a sex clown cabaret

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vie Fehilly draws back the red velvet curtain and ushers me inside. Dildos. Thick black leather harnesses adorn the walls. Pebbleshaped vibrators sit high on their perspex platforms. The 26-year-old looks at home roaming among the erotic paraphernalia in Sh! Women’s Erotic Emporium, Old Street. It’s no surprise really. As a sometime sex educator for the shop and a Louis CK drag impersonator, Evie is used to dealing with dicks.

“I made a dick suit with 26 handsewn penises, and I filled some with hand cream so I could wank onstage,” says Evie. The Birmingham native is referring to the costume she wore for her satirical takedown of the disgraced comedian Louis CK. Following the comedian’s admission of sexual misconduct in 2017 (namely masturbating in front of five women), Evie crafted a provocative and extremely silly act that saw her character, Louis f.u.C.K., crowned the winner of Man Up!, Europe’s biggest drag king competition.

“My background is in comedy, so the only way I know to talk about shitty things is through trying to make people laugh,” says Evie. “Phoebe WallerBridge said that with Fleabag she wanted to get into the . hearts of the audience through their open laughing mouths, and that’s what I want to do.” That’s exactly what she does with Louis f.u.C.K. on the Saturday night after our interview. At the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, I witnessed her first reprisal of the act since winning the competition. From start to finish, it was jaw-dropping.

Dressed in a black t-shirt and blue jeans, Louis f.u.C.K. lumbers onto the stage with the sheepish grin of a man who has been told off but doesn’t fully understand why. He runs back and forth between singing Sorry Seems to Be the Hardest Word and touching himself in front of the audience, pausing occasionally to lip sync soundbites of his complaints about the money he’s lost. Overcome with arousal, he strips away his casual attire to reveal the dick suit and the front row of RVT is splattered with hand cream.

Eventually, he turns his back to the audience and tears down the dick suit to reveal Evie with #MeToo written across her back and Louis F U C K U on her bare chest.

With Louis f.u.C.K., her first ever drag king, Evie achieved a feat that many performers could only dream of – crafting an act that’s both wildly entertaining and also vindicating for women everywhere. “It’s so easy to tick the #MeToo box and say that we’ve had that conversation, but there are still so many conversations we need to have. My act was supposed to be a protest so I hope this is my little part of that,” says Evie.

She shows me a message from a sexual assault survivor who saw her performance at the Man Up! final, thanking her for her powerful performance and said Evie had touched everyone in the room.

Evidently, she has had some effect.

While messages like that reaffirm Evie’s modus operandi to “make work around sex, sexual equality, and trauma in a fun way”, she’s also motivated by personal experiences. “Growing up, lots of my sexual experiences with men were very negative. The impression I got was that sex wasn’t for me, it was something that I let a boy do to me,” says Evie. After moving to London, those negative experiences were further reinforced when Evie was sexually assaulted. “It was something that completely destroyed me and made me terrified of sex,” she says.

She threw herself into performing, finding a place for her “boiling femininity” on the stage at École Philippe Gaulier, a prestigious theatre and clown school in Paris. “It was incredibly patriarchal and it made me bolder and angrier,” she says. It may have provided an outlet for her rage for at the time, but on return to London, her fear of sex had manifested into a sexuality crisis: “I really wanted to have a relationship and start being able to have sex again, but I was really confused and really hurt.

I didn’t really understand my sexuality anymore.”

Craving the stage, Evie threw herself back into performing and was embraced by London’s queer art organisation, Duckie.

She attended the Duckie Homosexualist Summer School and immersed herself in the community. “It made me realize that I was queer. The community completely changed my life in London. I went from feeling lonely, depressed, confused and hurt to feeling like I had a community and a home. It was just brilliant,” she says. She applied for a job behind the desk at Sh! Women’s Erotic Emporium before quickly progressing to teaching sex classes and began meeting people again.

“That journey was so important for me because I want to empower people to take that step in immersing themselves in sex again. Having someone give you permission to own it and enjoy it and advocate for yourself sexually is so important,” says Evie. Though it’s been a painful journey, she now feels comfortable enough to use her own experiences to help others, both on and off the stage. She reveals plans to combine her two roles as a sex educator and a clown to put on a sex clown cabaret, bringing together her experiences around sex and trauma.

Meanwhile, she’s also writing a play based on the sexual abuse she went through. “It’s not going well,” she tells me. “It was meant to be about [the sexual abuse], but I sort of realised the more interesting part of it was my parents’ reaction to it,” she says. “I think rape and sexual abuse gets portrayed a lot in the media, but the fallout afterwards, the recovery, and the strength that you have to summon to be a normal person again – we don’t see that journey very often,” she says. “That’s the journey I’m interested in sharing and that’s what I think is useful to other people going through it.”

Ipeoplwante tototake empower that step i n i m mersi n g themsel v es i n sex agai n Advocati n g for yoursel f sexual y l i s so important

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THE dutch SIRENS SIRENS SIRENS TABOO travels back in time to highlight the teenagers who lured in and ambushed Nazis

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Time machine

he Oversteegen sisters were living in a small flat in the city of Haarlem, Netherlands, when they were asked to join the Dutch resistance.

On May 10, 1940, under the orders of Adolf Hitler, Nazi troops invaded the Netherlands. Dutch forces surrendered to German occupation just five days later, and many Dutch residents were sent to concentration camps.

Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, 16 and 14 respectively, were used to hiding refugees in their flat with their single mother, Trijn. When a commander for the resistance came to recruit the sisters to fight Nazis, their mother gave them one rule: “Always stay human.”

At the time, the siblings were the only two women in the resistance organisation. The sisters were told later what the resistance needed from them: to sabotage bridges and, most important, to shoot Nazis. The first assignment they were given was to burn down a Nazi warehouse. They flirted and batted their eyelashes to distract the guards – their young, pretty faces meant that no one would be suspicious of them.

The Oversteegen sisters were involved in a variety of missions with the resistance. They used dynamite to disable bridges and railway tracks. They learnt how to shoot in an underground potato shed. Truus would ride her bicycle in the streets, and Freddie would sit on the back and shoot. They staged driveby shootings alongside a fellow resistance member and friend, Hannie Schaft, known to Nazi authorities as The Girl with the Red Hair.

Ultimately, their most important mission was aiding Jewish children by smuggling them to the Netherlands, even in the middle of bombings.

Freddie and Truus were like sirens for Nazis, luring them to their demise. Freddie was the first out of the two sisters to kill a Nazi soldier. She coaxed him into the woods where other members of the resistance killed him.

Victoria Brush

One of their biggest missions involved a highranking Nazi officer. Truus met the man in an expensive bar where they chatted and flirted.

Truus asked him to go for a stroll in the forest, a common tactic of the sisters. When Truus and the man went into the forest, an undercover resistance soldier was waiting and told them to leave. As they walked away, the Nazi was shot in the back.

The grave was already dug. Once the officer was captured, the rest was considered a “man’s job”.

After the liberation of the Netherlands in 1944, the sisters moved on with their lives. Eighty years later, in 2014, they received the Mobilisation War Cross from the prime minister, Mark Rutte.

Truus was also recognised as Officer of the Order of Orange-Nassau and Righteous Among the Nations, an honorific title for non-Jews who risked their lives during the Holocaust to save Jews.

The two also set up the National Hannie Schaft Foundation. Schaft, who was later named a national heroine, was captured and executed at the age of 24 by Nazi soldiers, only 18 days before the Netherlands was liberated.

Truus married a fellow resistance fighter. She became a painter, sculptor and novelist, writing her memoir Not Then, Not Now, Not Ever. She died in 2016 at the age of 93.

After the war, Freddie married and had three children. Her husband and children tried to protect her from her trauma.

“She hated it, and she hated herself for doing it,” Remi Dekker, Freddie’s son, has said of his mother, even if the people she killed were Nazis.

She struggled to talk about the things she had to do and only spoke about it towards the end of her life. “We had to do it,” she said. “It was a necessary evil.” After suffering several heart attacks, Freddie died in September 2018, one day before her 93rd birthday, five miles away from where she was born.

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Words: Victoria Brush; Photo: @Louiserawauthor

Freddie (left) and Truus (right) Oversteegen pose in a family photo

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BREAKING THE

Cycle The chronic hormonal disorder, PMDD, leaves women’s lives a shambles every month

Lisa Henderson

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ost people, myself included, say they don’t actually want to die, they just want the pain to stop,” says Alice Girling. The 33-year-old from Bournemouth is describing what it feels like to be in the darkest throes of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, or PMDD, the brain’s severe negative reaction to the natural rise and fall of estrogen and progesterone. The symptoms arise during the premenstrual, or luteal, phase of the menstrual cycle and can last until the onset of menstrual flow, stretching over roughly two weeks.

In retrospect, Alice believes the chronic condition was triggered when she was in primary school by the onset of puberty, but it wasn’t until her late 20s when Alice had her “lightbulb moment”. Armed with records of her moods throughout her menstrual cycle, she marched into her GP’s office and said: “Look, there’s something wrong with my hormones.”

He diagnosed her with PMDD right there and then.

Alice’s speedy diagnosis from her GP is a rare occurrence in the PMDD community, but the years of being in the dark about her condition are not. Despite the fact that one in 20 women and individuals assigned female at birth suffer from this cyclical hormone-based disorder during their

reproductive years, There’s little awareness about PMDD. The disorder straddles two areas that have historically carried a stigma – mental health and menstruation – with symptoms ranging from panic attacks to feeling out of control to suicidal thoughts.

According to the 2018 Global Survey of Premenstrual Disorders, the largest survey so far of women with premenstrual disorders, 30 per cent of women with PMDD will attempt suicide in their lifetime while 75 per cent report suicidal thoughts.

Moreover, there is no blood or saliva test to diagnose PMDD, which is why so few healthcare professionals know how to recognise the disorder. Women have to educate and advocate for themselves to be heard by GPs. Shockingly, the survey also found that patients waited for an average of 12 years before PMDD was diagnosed via tracking symptoms across the menstrual cycle.

Laura Murphy, 40, from Kent, is embedded in the peer-support aspect of PMDD. Currently, Laura runs her own website, Vicious Cycle, which aims to empower and educate sufferers to advocate for themselves. She also sits on the board of directors for the IAPMD which focuses on peer-reviewed, w

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Photo: Kim Kim

PMDD fel t l i k e IevenwaswhendrowniI came ng butup for ai r I was just prepariunder ng toagaigon back

evidence-based data. Considering Laura’s lightbulb moment was inspired by reading similar stories to hers on the UK PMDD Facebook group, she understands the necessity of peer support.

Laura recalls a time years ago when she was sitting in her car late at night and couldn’t stop crying. She posted on the UK PMDD Facebook group and was flooded with replies from other women. “They were all posting saying: ‘Are you okay? Are you safe? Can you go to a supermarket and walk around just to be around people and be safe? Do you want to talk? Can I send you cat videos?’ With friends, you might have to explain why you’re feeling that way, but the UK group is a safe space to go with no questioning.”

For many sufferers, it’s easier to talk to fellow sufferers than deliver the same spiel to their friends and family.

“You get very good at hiding for a couple of weeks a month,” says Laura. “You have your social life on your good days, and then I would just become a hermit in my bad ones.” Being out of action for the luteal phase often means that a sufferer relies heavily on their partner, both for emotional and financial support. ' “To me, PMDD felt like I was drowning, but even when I came up for air, I was just preparing to go back under again,” says Laura. “It’s not , even like I’m living my life when I’m up gasping for air; I would try to earn money to pay the rent and live normally before going under again.”

The 2018 Global PMDD survey also found that sufferers have lost both jobs and intimate partners due to PMDD symptoms.

For Lorna Blyth, 39, from Durham, her marriage was thrown into jeopardy after the birth of her first son triggered PMDD. “I had these intense feelings of hating my husband and, at times, hating the fact I’d given birth to this little person,” she says. She felt guilty but assumed this anger was exclusive to the postnatal phase. “I’ve never had a child before.

I’ve never given birth before, I’d never been pregnant before. Never been in this situation before,” she says.

Fast forward a year and everything was back to normal for Lorna – except for debilitating, chronic back pain that would arrive at a specific time of the month. Lorna called a physiotherapist who confirmed what she thought all along: it did coincide with her hormone problems. This was revelatory for Lorna. When the physio asked how things were at home, she discovered something else: “I realised that I hated my husband every month at the same time. It got to the point where I was googling divorce lawyers and looking for houses to move into every single month.”

These monthly phases weren’t posing a risk to just her marriage but her physical and mental

health, too. “I used to physically bang my head against the wall or scratch at my veins. I would get that frustrated and that would be my only release.

My husband found me with a knife to my wrist before,” says Laura. She began the same lengthy process of being batted between doctors until, eventually, she saw a gynaecologist who inspired her lightbulb moment.

After Lorna explained the hatred for her husband, the back pains and the mood swings, the doctor understood. “She said, ‘Look, I’ve got another patient just like you who comes to see me and this is how I’ve treated her. There’s this condition called Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, read about it. I really think this is kind of where you are’.” The gynaecologist gave Lorna two options: the birth control pill or antidepressants.

The former was not an option for Lorna as, like most women with PMDD, birth control exacerbated her symptoms.

The turning point was when she shouted at her little boy over something trivial, which she felt infinitely guilty for, that she decided to take the antidepressants.

Within 24 hours “the clouds lifted”. Since last October, she’s . been taking the antidepressants only during her luteal phase.

“Taking them saved my marriage,” she says. “They really turned my life around.”

Though there’s still some residual guilt from her pre. medication stage – Lorna apologises to her husband , frequently – she says she and her husband couldn’t be happier.

Alice’s relationship has been through a lengthy and tumultuous journey too. She and her wife (who transitioned how long ago?) were thinking of having a family, but when she came off the pill, Alice’s hormones “went mental”. “Every two weeks I’d be suicidal and wanting to selfharm. I experienced this deep, deep depression that felt like walking through treacle. Quite literally, you just want to fall asleep all the time.”

Naturally, it took a huge toll on her relationship.

Her partner became her carer, keeping Alice from committing suicide.

That’s the crux of it: unlike the symptoms of PMDD, the repercussions aren’t contained to a couple weeks a month. “PMDD affects you every single day of the month. Even when you’re symptom-free, anyone who has cared for you might be needing care themselves because they are so emotionally drained. You may feel fine and ready to go out on dates and go for dinner and coffee but everyone else is just sort of licking their wounds,” says Alice.

Not only did Sarah, Alice’s wife, have to deal with the fallout from PMDD, but she also had to deal with her own emotions pre-transition. Sarah waited to transition until Alice’s symptoms had w

Ever y two weeks Iwanti d beng suitociseldalf harm and Ideepexperideepenced thi s depressi o n thatthrough felt liktreacl e waleking Qui t e l i t er a l y you just want to fal l asleep all the time

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levelled out and is now starting estrogen as a trans woman.

Does Sarah suffer from PMDD too, I ask. “No thank god, she’s reacting to the hormones fine.”

After all, it’s not just cisgender women who are prone to PMDD. The IAPMD website says: “It is not well understood if transgender women are able to develop PMDD, although many do report PMSlike symptoms when using hormone therapy.

‘Chemically induced PMDD’ is quite plausible, and further research is needed.”

At the depths of her lowest period suffering of PMDD, Alice visited Professor John Studd who runs the London PMS and Menopause Clinic. He offered her the standard lines of treatment, but her symptoms persevered. The only solution left was to have a total hysterectomy, meaning she wouldn’t be able to have children. “I couldn’t go on doing what I was doing so I knew something had to stop. I knew that was my only option at that point,” says Alice.

Not only is PMDD known to get worse with each pregnancy, but recent research suggests that it’s a genetic condition. Having recognised the symptoms in her family, she didn’t want to risk passing it down to her own daughter. “Knowing my diagnosis and being able to see it in my family, I couldn’t bear the guilt of passing this on to my daughter. Plus, it’d really impact on my ability to parent. There are just too many risk factors.”

But just because Alice felt a hysterectomy was the right decision, it didn’t mean it was the easy one. “Even on the day of surgery, when I walked into the theatre I was thinking: Do I want to do this? And no, I didn’t want to do it, but I knew I had to.”

In the 18 months after the surgery, Alice went through a grieving process. “Every time one of my friends got pregnant, it was just really hard,” says Alice. “I was feeling like I wasn’t whole as a woman because I hadn’t had a pregnancy or baby.”

What complicated that grieving process further was Alice’s job as a midwife. “I really struggled to carry on and deliver babies. It was like a double slap around the face.” Alice described how she’d detach herself from reality during the day, continuing to deliver babies with a smile on her face, but would crumble on the drive home. “Inside I was dying, it was absolutely horrendous.” That was when she decided to step away from clinical midwifery and go into midwifery education.

“Now I’m okay with that decision, and the conclusion I’ve come to is that you don’t have to be a mother to be a woman.” She tells me how she and Sarah are happier than ever and have expanded their family to include a sphynx cat and a huge Doberman.

They still visit the same GP they’ve had throughout Alice’s PMDD journey and Sarah’s transition.

“He says we’re a very strange success story,” Alice laughs.

HOW MUCH DO YOUMAKE?

MONEY

Do women feel comfortable sharing their salaries? We asked our readers to find out if the taboo on money has changed

Victoria Brush

My parents have always said it’s a rude question but I don’t think I’d mind telling you India, 19

Not telling Sue, 53

I’m a baller, so k n i h t t ’ I wouldn’t mind I don telling you r e v e n a c u yo e n o e m o s k as A h c u If I had a pittance, I work how m they earn willy I would for the NHS Nicole, 21

fucking

Emily, 21

have told you Lucy, 23

None of your fucking business Joanne, 33

Q&A

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Tracey, 56

fuck all compared to what i pay out

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Bryony, 24