Gen Z knows red flags, therapy and boundaries. But between healing ourselves and protecting our peace, did sex stop being a priority? We know our standards. We can spot a red flag from three Hinge swipes away. We’ve learned that “wyd?” at 11:47 pm isn't really communication, a situationship isn't a real relationship, and sometimes the healthiest thing you can do is block them and move on. We’re going to therapy. We’re setting boundaries. We’re protecting our peace. And appare

The wellness industry has never paid women more attention. That isn't the same as caring about them, and the difference is where all the money is. There's a particular kind of tired that has nothing to do with sleep. It's the tired of a woman who has done everything right: the rings, the wearables, the supplement stack, the protocol she screenshotted at midnight. She reads the studies. She tracks the metrics. And she still feels one step behind her own body. That feeling isn'

We have become so accustomed to digital surveillance that sometimes we mistake control for care, jealousy for desire, and access for intimacy. But what happens when the person monitoring you is the person who says they love you? There is an important question we rarely ask at the beginning of a relationship: How much access should another person have to you?

It started with a TikTok binge and an underwhelming experience on Hinge. Since I’d become single, I’d been blessed (inundated) with an algorithm that was telling me how not to be single, yet how bad dating is, and how I should be dating intentionally, while providing me with an unending list of ‘red flags’ to look out for. I also had a million different tarot card readers telling me that this message was most definitely meant to find me, specifically (NO HASHTAGS), to tell me

Forget Wall Street. Why every other guy traded his corporate ladder for a Pioneer deck and a USB drive. Once upon a time, a man's ambition came with a very predictable, neatly ironed résumé. You dated the investment banker who practically lived inside his navy suit. The restless startup founder who believed sleep was for people without vision. The Silicon Valley wunderkind who promised to “change the world” between sips of overpriced cold brew. Or the brooding rock star who s

When I was a child, a dog bite left a scar across my entire face. Significant enough that a plastic surgeon had to be called in to save my eye. Significant enough that the cutest boy in class would awkwardly flirt with me loudly on the bus by calling me Scarface. Statement pieces, as I grew older, were my sleight of hand. A face I'd learned to downplay, consciously upstaged by sequins and bold patterns. As I grew up, more plastic surgery was always an option on the table. My

Everyone tells you this as you grow up. Be accommodating. Be understanding. Be patient. Don’t make it awkward. Deal with it. We’ll talk about it later. It’s not a big deal. You’re being emotional. Translation? Shut up and smile. Please don’t make other people uncomfortable by having needs. Stop asking questions. Be respectful. Do as you're told. But we’re never directly told, because that would be absurd. The message, however, is clear: if you want people in your life, be ag

There is something very interesting about having a conversation with someone you have watched for years. Long before Roe existed, before I was sitting across from Cartia Mallan asking her questions for our September cover, I knew her through the internet. I followed her when YouTube still felt less like an industry and more like a place where people simply made things. I watched her videos, listened to her speak about life, and found myself inspired by the way she seemed to m

“I’ve always enjoyed her music, but nothing really connected with me personally until this one,” is the statement all over social media after listening to Olivia Rodrigo’s You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. I thought I was the only one under that impression after listening to the first single “drop dead”, but it was suddenly everywhere, as if we were in an episode of Pluribus. The interesting part is that this came from people in their thirties, forties, and beyond. A

No matter where we grew up, we all carry echoes of patriarchal values. Since childhood, we've been taught that a man is the protector of the family, while a woman is supposed to be wise and take care of her hair, nails, and skin with the same level of attention stockbrokers use to analyse the market. And that would be fine, because in 2026 we're already grown adults, fully formed people who supposedly live by different rules. Men cry now, and women make money and build career

Everything is TV now, and it might be one of the reasons we are living through a community recession. In his 2025 essay on the “anti-social century,” journalist Derek Thompson observed something strange about modern media: despite the internet once promising an endless variety of formats, almost every form of media seems to be evolving towards the same destination: a continuous flow of episodic video. The platforms may still have different names, but increasingly, they want u

We talk about reinvention like it’s a rebrand. New city, new job, new person on your arm: some clean before-and-after you can point to and say, there, that’s where the old you ended and someone else began. That’s not how it actually happens. What happens is closer to demolition. Something has to come down before you can even ask what you want to build in its place. For a long time, a lot of us call it healing. The therapy. The books stacked by the bed. The runs that are suppo

As someone who loves to travel and has travelled to many places, the idea of “building a life you don’t want to escape” felt completely foreign to me, almost distant. For the longest time, I didn’t even understand what exactly it meant. Do I need to give up travelling? Or should I just settle down? Should I just accept my life as it is? Should I just not change anything? I think I even feared it, as to me it sounded like a trap: being stuck in one place for your entire life.

There was a time when independence was fashion’s greatest ambition. Before billion-dollar conglomerates, creative directors became celebrities and algorithms could predict next season’s silhouettes months in advance, fashion was built in workshops. I swear! By people?! Around conversations??!! Garments carried the fingerprints of those who made them, not the marketing strategies of those who sold them. Today, that idea feels almost nostalgic… I’m tearing. The global luxury in

Gone are the days when Hollywood glamour shone. Now the studios look tired, the Hollywood sign looks dilapidated, and no one is making good movies anyway. The death of the cinema doesn't just come down to streaming; it's about the death of the star. Marketing firms are throwing millions at trying to revive the traditional celebrity. They're spending fortunes on press tours, but for the most part, Gen Z isn't buying it. The truth is our attention spans are shortening, but tha