There are certain things about the men in our lives that we all seem to encounter at least once. Maybe we just don't talk about them enough. Or maybe we've become so used to them that we've stopped questioning them. He wakes up grumpy in the morning, starts complaining about everyone and everything, and gets irritated while getting dressed and heading to work. Even the coffee he drinks every day, exactly the same as always, suddenly gives him something to complain about. When

On creative obsession, the pressure to succeed, and why believing in yourself might be the only way to get anywhere. The first time I meet Henry Morris, he's sitting in a Whole Foods somewhere in Oklahoma City. Not a recording studio, not a backstage dressing room, not even a particularly atmospheric café. A Whole Foods. His tour bus, he explains, is somehow louder than the supermarket itself, which I find rather amusing. I'm in Barcelona, he's somewhere between shows, and ne

Is social media to blame? Absolutely. Are we watching people become richer, more successful and more beautiful? Constantly. Is it real? There is legitimately no way to know, but we buy into the vision, and as our brains rot and our greed increases, we have forgotten how truly lucky we are. How lucky we are to have dreams, to have access, to connect with like-minded people around the world, to have the leisure to be bored and the opportunity to pursue our full potential. If we

I have to admit, when I first started my job at a fashion magazine in Vienna, I proudly told my roommate that this time I would look flawless every single day. I was going to wear makeup, do my hair, and always look amazing when I went to work. It didn't take long before she saw me leaving the house in jeans rocking a bare face. When I look around on the streets, I see so many people wearing clothes that are comfortable and practical. It made me wonder: Are we, as a society,

Find My Friends seems well-meaning, but I can’t decide whether it’s unnecessary surveillance or just performative community. I am baffled by how normalised it is to share your location with your friends at all times. Many will say, “Well, what are you hiding?” The answer is: nothing… but also maybe everything? Why do my friends need to know when I’m at home or the grocery store? What value does that add to anyone’s life? It’s quite intrusive to think my friends could check wh

Back when people met in clubs or simply out in the real world, I was a clueless teenager who apparently thought kissing someone while tipsy and dancing in a club was more than enough. By the time I was a little older, more mature and a bit more experienced, the world had changed. More precisely, a huge part of our love lives had moved onto our phones. During the COVID-19 pandemic, clubs in my city shut down, and by then, I was also reaching an age when I no longer had the tim

This week, I saw a reader submit a question that stopped me. Why is no one talking about the connection between young adults refusing to move back home and pursuing graduate degrees? At first glance, the two things seem unrelated. One is about housing. The other is about education. But for many people my age, they are deeply connected. A bachelor’s degree used to represent a clear transition into adulthood. Graduate school was often a choice, something pursued for specializat

As a society, honestly, I think we’ve killed the art of caring rather embarrassingly and loudly. We have become so concerned about how we are perceived by onlookers rather than by ourselves. We have prioritised the maintenance of a persona, a character that we have adopted rather than following our own desires. We have become so caught up in this world of (curated) effortless appearances, so we can be seen as detached or mysterious, like we have forgotten the very thing that

Like countless individuals before me, I have finally realised my low-commitment, long distance, casual humiliationship may, indeed, not be particularly interested in me. Countless friends have attempted to convince me that I can do better (thank you Lucy, for your endless patience over the past year of emotional meltdowns). As many people stuck in the teenage mindset do, I buried my head in the sand and refused to acknowledge my own feelings, as well as those of the other per

On the modern knight, the fantasy of being rescued, and what happens when a woman finally becomes her own. Like many modern women, I grew up with stories of knights on white horses. The hero who would arrive at exactly the right moment to save me. My knight in shining armour, my salvation. And like many women, I had unintentionally, subconsciously outsourced something far more important than I realised: my autonomy, my sovereignty, to a fantasy. Knight. How beautiful it sound

On growing up with the Pussycat Dolls, meeting your childhood idols, and discovering that becoming a woman might be the most empowering thing of all. When I was a little girl, the Pussycat Dolls were everything. And like most little girls growing up with a girl band, my sister Sophia and I naturally found the ones we identified with most. You know how it is. There's always that one member you see a little bit of yourself in. For Sophia, it was Nicole Scherzinger. For me, it

I’m unemployed. And somewhere between my morning, my afternoon and my late-night spiral of confusing thoughts about what to do with my life, I have decided to go back to studying and redirect my career towards international cooperation. I have a few months to kill before I start and, given the amount of free time on my hands, I thought I could do something with it. Something meaningful. Something that wasn’t simply waiting for October to arrive while once again reconsidering

I think there has only been one person in my life I was truly, deeply in love with. When I found that kind of connection, I used to believe it would never end. Because when you love something that much, you don’t want to believe it can ever disappear from your life. Especially when that connection has taught you so much about yourself. Losing it can almost feel like losing a part of yourself. But as I grew up, I realised that you can never really control a connection. Sometim

I've been with that guy since January. And starting in February, the disrespect began: his ex coming back, the lies, the humiliation and the constant stress. By March, I had to quit my part-time job, which I blamed entirely on a severe depression that I felt coming on all of a sudden. I was on sick leave until July, with that guy still in my life. In July, we broke up, and we didn't stay in touch like we used to. My job was going well; in fact, I quickly found a better one, r

If you’ve been anywhere on the internet lately, you’ve seen the question over and over again: are we experiencing chic psychosis? Maybe the first question to ask is what chic actually is. If that conjures a mental monolith of skinny, white, shiny-haired, impeccably tailored women, we may have an issue. The word is not even that old. Chic came into English around the 1870s, borrowed from the French, who most likely took it from the German Schick, meaning skill or knowing how t