Women are slowly gaining rights and finding the strength to shake off the social taboos around ending a bad relationship
Parveena Jabeen was all set to get married, but in Kashmir weddings are extravagant affairs.
Traditionally, brides in the valley of Kashmir would take a trousseau with them to the groom’s house, including clothes, jewellery, makeup, gifts for the in-laws and even furniture.
Continue reading...She was a rock’n’roll powerhouse who electrified audiences worldwide. As Tina Turner releases a guide to happiness, she talks to playwright V (formerly Eve Ensler) about how she found the strength to overcome illness, abuse and tragedy
The first time I experienced Tina Turner in the flesh, I was a 16-year-old hippy chick doused in patchouli oil. I didn’t just see and hear Ms Turner sing Proud Mary at the Fillmore East in New York City – I felt her in every cell of my teenage body. I was transfixed by the ecstasy of her thunderous hips and legs, the vibrating canopy of her shaking fringe, the irrefutable bidding of her sultry, raw voice.
She was female sexuality fully embodied and unleashed. She catalysed the same in me and in multitudes across the planet, selling more than 200m records in her lifetime. The queen of rock’n’roll seemed as much shaman as singer. I knew instinctively that she had suffered abuse and pain. We survivors have a kind of radar.
Continue reading...From Santa bubbles to drive-through decorations and Nativity scenes made of pizza, the socially distanced year like no other is giving us a masked Christmas like no other. Guardian picture editors look at Christmas around the world in a year upended by the coronavirus pandemic
Shuang bao tai 双胞胎 is the Chinese word for twin. Following on from Land of Ibeji, Sanne de Wilde and Bénédicte Kurzen travel to Mojiang in Yunnan for the second chapter of their project about the mythology of twinhood. The area has an exceptionally high percentage of twins, celebrated in its annual tropic of cancer twin festival
The first chapter of this project was called Land Of Ibeji. West Africa, and specifically Yorubaland, has 10 times more twins than any other region in the world. Ibeji, meaning “double birth” and “the inseparable two” in Yoruba stands for the ultimate harmony between two people. “Shuang bao tai”, 双胞胎 is the Chinese word for twin, which translates as: 双 double 胞 womb 胎 embryo.
Continue reading...Naima Brown’s encounter with a lab-grown chicken nugget reminded her of a Happy Meal – but she’s less certain about what it means for the future of food
“Clean”, “cultured”, “no-kill” – these are just a few of the monikers that have been applied to San Francisco-based food start up Just Inc’s lab-grown chicken nuggets.
The product has just been approved for sale to consumers in Singapore – a world first. But the company’s CEO Josh Tetrick would prefer it if everyone dropped the additional descriptors and just called his company’s product “meat”.
Continue reading...They grew up in a ‘nowhere’ suburb in the 70s, smoking skunk, going for rides and dating girls. The photographer reveals why he decided to capture the ravages of time on his old childhood gang
Rick Schatzberg had a dark epiphany a few years back, when two of his friends died in quick succession, one from a heart attack, the other from an overdose. “When two people you know and love die within six weeks of each other,” says the photographer quietly, “you realise that death is not just something that happens to other people, to the unlucky people. It’s something that is suddenly very present.”
Schatzberg’s response was to undertake a project about encroaching mortality – his friends’ and by extension his own. The result, several years in the making, is The Boys, a photobook that is both nostalgic and brutally realistic: a visual evocation of youth in all its instinctive carefreeness; and old age in all its debilitating inevitability. Composed of casual colour snapshots of his male friends in the 1970s, and large-format contemporary portraits of their ageing bodies, it lays bare what the novelist Rick Moody, in his accompanying essay, calls “the sobering action of time”.
Continue reading...No one would argue that running isn’t good for you, but do we really have to pretend to like it, too?
For the 126th time this year, I turn the corner by the rowing club and begin the climb towards Stamford Hill. I have half a kilometre to go. Mist has settled on the river to my left, where waterfowls, Egyptian geese and a single, stately heron have gathered by some rushes in a dazzlingly pretty scene for Haringey in late November. They likely make some pleasant noises, but only the fortunes of HMS Royal Oak reach my ears, as my earphones sizzle with its battle against four French frigates near the Bight of Benin in the War of 1812. I am trying to enjoy myself.
Last November, with the cooperation of this magazine (ie they paid me), I defied my natural inclinations and did a radical diet and exercise overhaul. The experience produced not just an eminently readable lifestyle piece, but a substantial improvement in my general fitness. And then, shortly before Christmas, it ended, as did my adherence to its stipulations. I jettisoned the protein shakes and the thrice-weekly workouts, and gamely resumed my close personal relationship with butter, sugar, alcohol and grease. I discarded all the measures that had given me these results bar one – running.
Continue reading...What did you do in lockdown? Make banana bread? Do yoga? What if you decided to try your hand at homemade tattoos?
I have a little tattoo of a cross on my right hip. It is horrible. It is small and fat, like someone made a cross out of clay then squashed it. It leans to the right for no particular reason, like a terrible tribute to the tower of Pisa. I am very fond of it, because the story behind it is incredibly stupid.
I was 18 and cool-adjacent – just about enough of my acquaintances were cool that I could hang out in “cool” social circles, but deep down I knew I was only cool by association, which pained me greatly. My housemate and I had been invited to a squat party in south London by this woman, Cat, who was definitely cool.
Continue reading...The film director, 81, on beauty in the eye of the audience, finishing with The Godfather and the family of humanity
Being able to critique yourself is a good skill. Often when a film has been released I’ll ask: “Did I make mistakes?” When I made The Cotton Club in 1984, people were telling me there were too many black people in it and too much tap dancing. I would say: “But it’s a movie about black people tap dancing.” Years later, I realised I had taken out half of the backstory. It was good to go back and fix that.
Life is a great screenwriter. My daughter, Sofia, got such awful, unjust criticism for her performance in The Godfather Part III. She was 18 and was being told she’d ruined her father’s film. It was a deep wound for the poor kid. They were gunning for me, but she took the bullets. Now she is a more famous movie director than me. She got the last laugh!
Continue reading...Want to give a little love with a handmade present, but don’t know where to start? Try these ideas from artists and designers
A friend once gave me a copy of The Lonely Doll by Dare Wright, a cult picture book about a doll who knits a scarf as a Christmas gift for Mr Bear because, she says, a present you make is so much better than one you buy. The sentiment is more relevant this year than ever – the thought is what counts, and 2020 will be the year of the homemade Christmas present.
When kept apart from family and loved ones, the surest way to show how much you care is to make a gift, however small. And it’s the perfect way to while away long winter evenings at home.
Continue reading...As Covid infections rose, hospital felt like an increasingly dangerous place to have a baby. But is labouring without midwives or doctors the answer?
On the morning of 3 May, Victoria Johnson prepared to give birth at her home in the Highlands. One by one, her three children came downstairs to where she was labouring in a birthing pool surrounded by fairy lights, the curtains tightly shut against the outside world.
Suddenly, she felt an urge to get out of the pool. “I stood up and it felt as if the weight of the universe crashed from my head to my toes.” Her waters broke – “all over the carpet, which wasn’t ideal” – and the baby started to crown. “Everyone was there, including both grandmothers on video call,” she says. “Once the baby was out, my eight-year-old son came over and said, ‘I’m so proud of you.’ And that was everything.”
Continue reading...Aiden, 29, teacher, meets Charlotte, 26, actor
What were you hoping for?
My housemate Meabh (who signed me up) was determined to find my future wife. But I was just hoping for someone to have a fun night with.
Award-winning actor admits cutting his own hair with device long before salons closed this year due to Covid
With salons largely closed until this week, male grooming has been in freefall since the start of the spring lockdown. DIY haircuts have not been successful for all. Yet one Hollywood star has proved that even in a global pandemic, bad hair is not the great equaliser we hoped it would be.
George Clooney, the 59-year-old award-winning actor and human rights activist, has admitted to successfully cutting his own hair at home using a device called a Flowbee. “My hair’s really like straw, so it’s easy,” he told CBS Sunday Morning.
Continue reading...How best to resist the temptation to send one more email? Try these healthy hacks to put the home back into WFH
Even though it happens in the same space as my Zoom counselling sessions, making music helps me to switch off immediately. I close the camera, switch on my synthesiser and load up the software. That simple process transports me into a sonic fantasy world. I take my voice and the sounds of many of the instruments I play, and I sculpt them.
Every week or two, I upload a tune to streaming sites. Making music used to be my profession rather than a hobby, but that distinction now gives me a feeling of immense freedom. I can create my music in any way I like. I no longer need approval or affirmation from the outside world. John Walter, counsellor, Cornwall
After praise for Duchess of Sussex’s disclosure, readers say there has been a culture of silence around the subject
“I was at my 10-week scan and I just felt something wasn’t right. The doctor became very quiet and I instantly knew. Then I heard the words: ‘I’m sorry, there is no heartbeat,’” says Emma Redston, a 38-year-old primary school teacher who lives in Surrey. “I remember falling to my knees, feeling like the floor had been ripped from under me.”
It was 2016 and Redston had suffered a miscarriage after becoming pregnant quickly when she and her husband, Steve, tried for a baby. She was given medicine to induce the miscarriage, and after four hours of extreme bleeding and cramps she passed her baby in her bathroom.
Continue reading...The French fashion house took a team of 300 to a Loire castle for a blowout event this week, despite the pandemic preventing anyone from attending
How important is a catwalk show to a fashion house? Important enough, in the case of Chanel, to take a team of 300 – including the actor Kristen Stewart, the photographer Juergen Teller and a small army of models – to put on a show in one of the most magnificent chateaux in France, despite an audience capped at zero.
Chanel had hoped to welcome 200 guests to admire chic black-velvet coats, rich damask gowns with lace collars and double-ply cashmere embroidered with double-C logos on a promenade across Chateau de Chenonceau’s 60-metre ballroom, which spans the River Cher. This proved impossible, but – in contrast to May, when a planned show in Capri was replaced by a digital-only presentation – Chanel chose to go ahead with the Métiers d’Art event on Tuesday, even though it was viewed only online.
“The show is just the same as it would have been, but without an audience,” said Bruno Pavlovsky, Chanel’s president of fashion. “We don’t see any other way to talk about the collections, other than having a show. We need to have impactful events to maintain a strong bond with our audience.”
Portraits of presidents’ wives have evolved with the role, and although it remains highly gendered, a new exhibition aims to celebrate their contribution and to ‘rectify the absences of women in US history’
Bess Truman, US first lady from 1945 until 1953, has not become the sort of historical figure people quote on Instagram. “A woman’s public role is to sit beside her husband, be silent, and be sure her hat is on straight,” she said, even though, behind the scenes, she was nicknamed “the Boss” and wrote many of President Truman’s speeches.
Continue reading...Stations switch to humble earthen kulhads in move to cut down on toxic waste and boost incomes of village potters
A small and humble relic from India’s past is about to stage a major comeback. At all 7,000 railway stations in the country, tea will be served in earthen cups known as kulhads.
The kulhads, redolent of a bygone pastoral era, are unpainted, unglazed and have no handles, but are perfectly biodegradable and environment-friendly, which is why the country’s railways minister, Piyush Goyal, has said they will replace plastic cups as part of the government’s goal of making India free of single-use plastic.
Continue reading...With its celebrity collaborations and turbo-charged launches, Philip Green’s Topshop brought fun and drama to the once uninspiring business of clothes-shopping. We chart the rise and fall of the pandemic’s most glamorous corporate victim
“What’s this I’m reading in the paper? It’s a load of absolute shit, that’s what it is. What’s the matter with you? Are you stupid or what? I’ve never read so much rubbish in my life.”
It was February 2010, and I was at my desk in the Guardian office. Philip Green didn’t need to introduce himself. His habit of bellowing down the phone was unmistakable, and I had just written an article about how I was falling out of love with Topshop after a decade being in thrall to its shop floor. Green never did take kindly to criticism of the golden child of his Arcadia empire.
Continue reading...When the McCormicks came home on Wednesday, the Christmas tree in their Adelaide house had acquired a new ornament
The McCormicks went for a silver, pink and blue theme on their Christmas tree. The old plastic leaves were worn but looked beautiful with baubles on each branch and twinkling lights.
But this year the family tree included one very unexpected ornament: a wild – and somewhat confused – juvenile koala.
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