In Spain, there is a famous song called ‘Yo quiero bailar’, which translates to ‘I want to dance’. In the lyrics lies the phrase ‘cuando llega el calor los chicos se enamoran’: when the heat comes, the boys fall in love. As it happens, the summer heat is the key ingredient for the ephemeral act of falling in love and/or indulging in one’s desires. This experience has been coined by TikTok users as having a ‘hot girl summer’: the experience of enjoying oneself during the summe

I find it a hard line to tread: navigating the persona I have created on social media alongside that of my regular corporate job. In both worlds, I have always been quite good at being guarded. I share online in much the same way that I would with colleagues: a little insight, but nothing too revealing; nothing overly emotional; surface-level, with a sprinkle of humour. The perfect recipe for almost all work-based relationships. It is a strange kind of intimacy. Enough inform

Women have spent decades being interrogated about their bodies. Men, comparatively, have been given an extraordinary amount of grace. So why, when the barriers are often different, perhaps even, do I dare say, ‘lower’? Why are so many men perfectly comfortable opting out of taking care of themselves? There is something I've never quite understood about men. We live in a world where women are expected to negotiate with their bodies almost constantly. We menstruate. We get preg

“So what do you do?” I still don’t have a clean answer. I did not leave psychology because it made me miserable. I left because it was going too well. It happened in a gap. There were four months between defending my dissertation and graduating, and a visa hold meant I couldn’t work through any of them. September to January, and for the first time since I was about seventeen, there was nothing to finish, revise, apply for, or prove. I assumed I’d be bored. What happened inste

I read one of my old essays recently, and boy, did I cringe hard. I didn’t agree with a great deal of what I wrote and even found myself questioning some of the language I used. But while I am somewhat reluctant to admit it, I think I’m glad that I hate my own work. I guess, in some ways, that means I am growing. In a world where we’ve permitted ourselves to continuously pick things up and abandon them without much thought, staying with something long enough to become agitate

We're not craving nostalgia. We're craving the last time we lived in a shared reality. There was a time when culture unfolded collectively. Millions of people tuned into the same television finale on Sunday night, queued outside cinemas for midnight premieres, and walked into school or work the following morning knowing exactly what everyone would be talking about. Even the early internet, chaotic as it often felt, revolved around common experiences. Viral YouTube videos, Fla

Nora Ephron once said, “Everything is copy”, meaning whatever happens in your life, the extremes, the mundane, is fair game for your art. In fact, she promoted the idea of digging deep into oneself, whether the story is tragic or embarrassing, to use it for a higher purpose. Life’s heartbreaks can be used not only for the benefit of yourself but also for the benefit and entertainment of others. So, what happens if that higher purpose already exists? It’s been originated and

As I wandered through the streets of Málaga, absorbing the beauty around me, one question would not leave my mind. When did we stop adding magic to things? Not magic in the grand sense or fantasy. But the small details that make life feel alive. The carved balconies that someone took time to create. The hand-painted tiles. The weathered doors. The cafés that seem to have absorbed decades of conversations into their walls. Details that serve no obvious purpose other than beaut

I first discovered self-improvement when I was around 16. Back then, it wasn’t as common as it is today. I remember a woman on YouTube who talked about meditation, practising affirmations, and the importance of gratitude. I was fascinated by it because it felt like a whole new life was being promised to me if I practised certain techniques. The very thought that I could change my life made me believe that I had to. A few years later, the internet became flooded with content l

I emerge from the subway at 86th Street, on the Upper East Side, into an afternoon that feels borrowed from another year. The Q train releases me the way it always did, with a hiss, a gust of tunnel air, the sudden return of sky, and for a moment I stand at the top of the stairs just breathing, letting the neighborhood reassemble itself around me. The wind moves lightly through the avenue, softening the city into motion. Roma Pizza still sits tucked into the corner, dwarfed b

I was 23 and driving through the streets of San Diego. I had to solicit fifty doors of small businesses before I could return to the office, where I’d have the business cards I’d collected counted by my manager. I pulled over around 4 p.m. and called my dad, crying. I only had 30 cards and had basically hit every open business in the area. As instructed, I’d park on one end and walk to the other, in heels at that. I was exhausted. It was my first job out of college. Trying to

There seems to be a very specific kind of woman we have decided is liberated. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but she is sexually confident. She doesn’t need a man. She dates freely, talks openly about sex, shows her body without apology, and refuses to feel ashamed for wanting pleasure. She is independent, unattached and, most importantly, completely in control. And to be clear, she should be allowed to be all of those things. But between giving women the freedom to live this way a

I moved to New York City with the idea that I would feel like a rockstar trapped in a supermodel's body when I went out. Then I went out and saw nobody was dancing. Moving to New York City used to come with the promise of a vibrant nightlife and a complicated dating life; but the chances of dating getting easier are low, I’m still single, so let’s stick with dancing I always dreamed of being a true party girl, fur coats in the winter, messy hair every season. Almost everythin

My first encounter with heartbreak was fairly early. Not the kind you’re thinking of (my social skills with boys are virtually non-existent), but a little something called friendship. As a child, this heartbreak did a pretty fantastic job of rattling my brain when I couldn’t yet make sense of the world. When I was nine, I spent two hours making handmade Halloween cards for two of my closest friends, each card personalised for them. But they never showed up. I’d wait exactly

Last summer, I read Just Kids by Patti Smith. It was a memoir, an autobiography, but it was so much more than that. It told a love story, one that moved back and forth between platonic and romantic, but most of all, it was about two people whose art blended into each other, who drew inspiration from each other, from their love, from their courage, and who supported each other through hard times. The love and artistic bond between Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith moved me s

Last week, I experienced the girlhood-classic conundrum of running out of iPhone storage. The warning on my screen, alongside the red, disproportionate percentage of my photo album occupying 70% of my entire storage, forced me to finally go through my gallery. And when I did, I realised I had so much junk floating around there; most pictures were so meaningless. Why did I have 40 live pictures of me with a drink? Or why did I have 35 different split-second screenshots of a si

Three years ago, if you had told someone that one of the most desirable luxury products of the next decade would be a community, they probably would have laughed at you. Communities were supposed to happen naturally. You inherited them through neighbourhoods, schools, workplaces, religion, university campuses and long-standing friendships. Nobody needed an application form to make friends. Nobody paid a membership fee to feel understood. Belonging wasn't something you purchas

My therapist always asks me to challenge my thoughts. Not because having them is the problem, but because letting them consume me is. Which sounds simple enough, until you realize how little control you actually have over what shows up in your head. The other day I caught myself doing something that, in hindsight, is completely normal. I had a thought (shocking!), then another. Then another. Instead of letting them pass, I did what I always seem to do: I got swallowed by the

Lying in my hospital bed, trapped in the cold, sterile silence of the ER, I was desperately trying to hide from my phone and the relentless stream of messages waiting for me. Just before coming here, I had to cancel plans I’d been looking forward to for weeks, the kind that included all my closest friends. I have long since lost count of how many events I’ve had to bail on over the last three years because of these recurring hospital visits. But this time, the familiar sadne

The other day, my sister and I were talking about personal style when she casually pointed out that I never seem to stick to one. I'm always trying something new, always dressing like a different version of myself. I laughed when she said it. Then I went home and couldn't stop thinking about it. Because she wasn't wrong. Maybe I've spent years chasing trends, trying to build a style that finally feels like mine. Trying to find somewhere to belong. And somewhere along the way,

For six seasons, that table belonged to them. In the middle of Manhattan, it was always the same scene: four women, one brunch table, and perhaps the safest seating arrangement in the city. Whatever chaos waited outside could stay there. Even when New York seemed determined to humble them, there was comfort in knowing that, inside that restaurant, everyone had a seat and everyone had a turn to speak. When one of them cried, another ordered another round of coffee. When someon

After an intense and dramatic acne breakout, I did the unthinkable. I googled how to get rid of the scars, and my algorithm across all social media was never the same again. Big captions that say: “How to go from average to gorgeous”, “Learn more about your aura”, “Are you dark autumn or dark winter?”, and my favorite, “How to fix crow’s feet without Botox” (I’m not embarrassed to say that I didn’t know what crow’s feet were and why I should fix them). The language used in th

Let’s honestly talk about love, money, female friendship, and the luxury of never having to settle. The other day, completely unprovoked, I heard myself say something that would've horrified twenty-year-old me. "I think the only man I actually need in my life is an asset manager." Not a boyfriend, not a husband, or even a “soulmate” - But someone who understands compound interest… Someone who can explain whether my money is sitting in the right place...

Nobody prepares you for that friendship that just quietly stops. Not with a fight, not with a conversation, not with any kind of closure. Just the slow, gradual realization that the messages have become less frequent, the plans less concrete and one day you are not entirely sure when you last spoke. No drama. No ending. Just a fade so gradual you almost missed it happening. And then the guilt. The low-grade, persistent guilt of having let something that once mattered just d

A few weeks ago, I found myself deep in a YouTube rabbit hole watching someone explain Sabrina Carpenter's place in heteropessimism. It was one of those ideas that seems, at first glance, either like profound cultural criticism or exquisitely packaged word vomit. The term heteropessimism, coined by writer Asa Seresin, describes the performative public disavowal of heterosexuality: the jokes about how terrible men are, the declarations that dating is hopeless, the "I wish I we