lifestyle

I got lost at the circus as a child. I must have been anxious, but mostly I remember feeling at peace with being separated from my parents – an early ambivalence to being part of my family of origin. I had a bourgeois, Jewish upbringing. My mother worked promoting racially integrated housing. My father was…

Clare Hamilton and Sara Cox as young women, wearing white dressing gowns and with face masks on, with a cigarette hanging out of Sara’s mouth, photographed in a wooden hotel mirror, and recreating the same image todaySara Cox, right, and Clare Hamilton in 2000 and 2025. Later photograph: Pål Hansen/The Guardian. Styling: Andie Redman. Hair…

Stella, 31 When I looked at the body of his favourite porn star I felt insecure and started crying When Gabriel and I first met, a year and a half ago, we were living in different countries. I was in a fallow period, and hadn’t had sex in months, but we slept together for the…

The pill harms your fertility FALSE It can take around three menstrual cycles for someone’s expected fertility to return once they stop taking the pill, but there’s no long-term impact. In fact, around 83% of women get pregnant within the first 12 months after coming off the pill. Why, then, do 69% of college students worry…

We all procrastinate, but most conventional advice for conquering it doesn’t work, at least not for me, beyond chores like cleaning the kitchen or going to the gym or getting my tax return in on time. It certainly doesn’t work for the kind of procrastination that has obstructed my best life: swerving that relationship I…