Can you reschedule a landmark moment? We talk to a musician, a centenarian, a graduate, an engaged couple and an Olympic hopeful about their special occasion that got cancelled
Philip Doyle
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The power of touch: when my son visited in lockdown, we couldn’t hug. It was a reminder of the saddest truth
My son’s 14th birthday was the first he and I had spent apart – then he called to say his mother had Covid-19. We were faced with a reality I had hoped to forestall for ever
Welcome to the Guardian’s Power of Touch series
We Jacksons are not effusive types. There ain’t a helluva lot of hugging and touching at family gatherings. However, one of the few exceptions is my son, who’s been unfettered with his affections since he was toddling around his mother’s New Jersey home – he and I have never lived together full-time. My son’s been a boy who, unprompted, says, “Dad, I love you” and wraps me in the tightest of hugs. Who, when he’s seen his sister after a long absence, almost tackles her with glee. Who’s still apt to let a deluge go on account of hurt feelings. In plenty of explicit ways, he’s my emotional opposite, a boy who showed me how to embrace; who, along with his sister, softened parts of me that my own boyhood had hardened; a kid who’s been instrumental in ushering me as close to comfortable with physical expressions of love as I have been in all my almost 45 years of life.
What kind of father was I that I was scared to receive my flesh and blood?
Continue reading...From hunger to abuse: how Covid-19 has affected women worldwide
Experts fear the pandemic may set gender equality back decades. Here, seven women explain the struggles it has brought and their hopes for the future
More men than women may have contracted Covid-19 around the world, but experts have warned that the pandemic may set gender equality back by decades.
Melinda Gates, the co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, said in a paper this week that policymakers risked prolonging the crisis and slowing economic recovery if they ignored the gendered impacts of coronavirus. She added that overhauling systems could allow governments to build “more prosperous, more prepared and more equal” countries.
Continue reading...‘Everything you think Rihanna would be, she’s that’ – Fenty insiders tell all
Black Lives Matter, lockdown, and how Amina Muaddi is set to become the next high-heel superstar: RiRi’s closest collaborators on Fenty’s dramatic first year
The first and second times that Jahleel Weaver met Rihanna, they bonded over shoes. In 2007, when Weaver was a student in New York with a part-time job at the cult downtown Jeffrey boutique, he sold her a pair of Christian Louboutins. (The classic, “Pigalle” pointed-toe court in bronze, with graffiti on the side.) Four years later, Weaver was assisting stylist Mel Ottenberg, who was dressing Rihanna for a recording of the chatshow Good Morning America. “So this was, like, 4am, and she complimented me on my shoes,” remembers Weaver. “They were Raf [Simons] for Jil Sander brogues, black with neon-pink soles. One of my favourite pairs of shoes of all time.”
Continue reading...The world’s poorest women and girls risk being biggest losers in DfID merger
The department is a world leader in programmes based on gender equality. The government must show this will continue
News that the Department for International Development and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are to merge raised many questions about the UK’s commitment to supporting the world’s poorest people. A key question for us is how the new department will support women and girls.
For more than 20 years, UK aid has saved and transformed the lives of women and girls in some of the world’s poorest countries. In the past five years, 10 million women and girls have received humanitarian assistance and more than 6 million girls have been able to access quality education. Upwards of £25m has been invested to prevent violence against women and girls through the government’s What Works programme, and a further £67m committed.
Continue reading...How to stop your glasses steaming up – and 19 other essential facts about face masks
How often should you wash a cloth mask? And how effective are the disposable ones? The expert guide to choosing, wearing and caring for your face covering
The British have been slow to embrace face masks, despite calls from public health experts. Uptake has been just 25% in the UK, compared with 83.4% in Italy and 65.8% in the US. The president of the Royal Society, Venki Ramakrishnan, said this week that wearing one “is the right thing to do” and that a refusal to do so should be seen as socially unacceptable as drink-driving or not wearing a seatbelt.
Perhaps one of the problems has been the changing advice as new evidence emerges. The World Health Organization (WHO) now recommends people wear cloth masks. Ramakrishnan said that in the UK, “the message has not been clear enough, so perhaps people do not really understand the benefits or are not convinced”. It also doesn’t help that the guidance across the UK is different.
Continue reading...The death of the bra: will the great lingerie liberation of lockdown last?
Working from home has been a chance to do away with uncomfortable, unnecessary underwear. And many women have no intention of returning to underwires and constriction
It was after a shopping trip, the first time for weeks that Louise Kilburn had ventured out during the lockdown, that she realised she wasn’t wearing a bra. “I’d completely forgotten to put it on,” she says. Kilburn, a university lecturer, had been shielding since the last week of March. She was still busy teaching online, although not usually by video, and had created a more comfortable work wardrobe of pyjamas, loungewear “and, more importantly, no bra”. Her bras were somewhere, she says, with a laugh, under a pile of pre-lockdown clothes – lost enough that she had to buy some bralettes, a more unstructured style, to try out. She had, she says, “mislaid my boob cages”.
Lockdown has changed a lot of things about the way we present ourselves to the world, and for many women, ditching their bra has been a particularly popular one. “I just don’t see bras making a comeback after this,” tweeted the Buzzfeed writer Tomi Obaro in May. Her tweet has been “liked” more than half a million times. The feminist satire website Reductress ran a headline last week reading: “Bra furlough extended.”
Continue reading...England’s first taste of freedom – in pictures
Pubs, restaurants, hairdressers, cinemas and theme parks reopen, and weddings and baptisms take place as the lockdown eases
Continue reading...One school, 25 bereavements: Essex head fears emotional impact of Covid-19
Vic Goddard is one of many school leaders daunted by the burden of supporting pupils and staff through their grief
Vic Goddard is trying not to cry. The headteacher of Passmores academy in Harlow and star of the 2011 TV series Educating Essex is thinking about the 23 pupils and two staff at his school who have been bereaved during the coronavirus pandemic.
His greatest fear, a fear that keeps him awake at night and is making his voice tremble, is what could happen to them if he does not manage to support them adequately when they return to school. “I’m going to get upset, I’m really sorry…” he stops. “You feel dreadfully … dreadfully … There is an element of responsibility.”
Continue reading...Jenni Murray: ‘I hate the diet industry. It’s caused me misery’
The Woman’s Hour presenter has written a book about her lifelong struggle with her weight. She discusses fat-shaming, body positivity and what happened when she had bariatric surgery
A few years ago, Jenni Murray was out walking with her son and dogs when she saw a potential vision of her future. While she was strolling painfully around the park, stopping to rest at benches where she could, a woman not much larger than Murray passed them on a mobility scooter, her own dogs’ leads attached to the handlebars. If Murray – at 24 stone (152kg) – didn’t do something about her weight, her concerned son said, that might be her before long. How did she feel about herself at that point?
“Extremely obese,” she says. “I was not the fit, active person that I wanted to be. I just lumbered everywhere. I’d had breast cancer and a double hip replacement in my 50s, but it was the obesity that was going to kill me.” It was the final push Murray needed, after a lifetime of dieting, and a warning from her doctor that she was on the way to developing type 2 diabetes. “I thought, I’ve got to do something about it, I’m 64 and I’m not going to make it to 70.” She adds, triumph in her voice, “And I did make it to 70!” She reached the milestone birthday in May.
Continue reading...France bans Dutch bike TV ad for creating ‘climate of fear’ about cars
Ad for VanMoof bike unfairly discredits automobile industry, says watchdog
A TV commercial for a Dutch-made bicycle has been banned by France’s advertising watchdog for creating a “climate of fear” about cars.
Despite being aired on Dutch and German television, the Autorité de régulation professionnelle de la publicité (ARPP) said the ad for the VanMoof bike unfairly discredited the automobile industry.
Continue reading...How to handle your private health insurance – in one afternoon a year
If you turned 31 this year, you have until 1 July to avoid a fee loading on private health cover, but experts say there’s no need to panic-buy
Private health insurance in Australia is kind of an oxymoron. “Every Australian already has health insurance: Medicare,” says Uta Mihm of consumer advocacy group Choice.
So why does it exist here at all? Well, that’s the million dollar question. Firstly, it’s important to note that “health insurance” in Australia actually refers to two different types of cover: private hospital cover and extras cover. The former will pay for you to receive treatment in private hospitals, where you’ll stay in comfortable rooms and get shorter wait times for elective surgery. Extras cover is meant to reduce the cost of things like dental, optical and massage.
Continue reading...No going back to normal after the pandemic? Don’t bet on it | Gaby Hinsliff
After every crisis, great thinkers declare life will never be the same again. But don’t underestimate the pull of old habits
As the US army rolls into a newly liberated Paris, a woman sits serenely under the only working hairdryer in the city. The war photographer Lee Miller’s iconic shot of a salon reopening amid the rubble in the summer of 1944 could easily have become an image of heartless vanity when Vogue published it. Who cares about a hairdo, when millions have died?
Yet at the time it somehow managed to convey both ingenuity and hope, in a world far enough steeped in death to long for a little frivolity. The return of being able to care about something that doesn’t actually matter must have come, in the circumstances, as a blessed relief. When Boris Johnson announced the reopening of British hairdressers this July, Miller’s picture sprang to mind.
Continue reading...Experience: my yoga class turned out to be a cult
After a few months, I realised I wasn’t seeing my friends and family as much as I used to. The organisation didn’t like it
I was 22 when I moved to a different US city and needed a new yoga studio. I discovered a place that believed in eastern mysticism – perfect for an open-minded spiritualist, which was how I saw myself at the time.
I walked in and a young woman was very excited to see me. She paid attention to my every word, making me feel cared about. I then met with a “master”, who informed me I was in very poor energetic health and needed to sign up right away. The classes were quirky. We’d do 40 minutes of exercise and meditation to a mix of new age flute music and Michael Jackson. It was far less pretentious than the yoga studios I had visited before. I decided to join for the haggled price of $100 (£79) a month.
Continue reading...There weren’t enough stories about people who looked like me. So I wrote my own | Coco Khan
My contribution to The Good Immigrant prompted a stream of apology emails: forgive me, ethnic friend, for I have sinned
Four years ago, I wrote an essay that appeared in a collection called The Good Immigrant. The story, based on an episode from my life, opens with a South Asian girl waking up in the bed of a (white) stranger after a one-night stand in the dark. Dawn is breaking, and as the light fills the room she notices something: he has flags. Union jack flags hanging all around the room. I won’t spoil the story, but if you’re beginning to panic, don’t. No hate crime occurs (well, not there anyway), and the piece is a comedy.
My reason for writing it was relatively simple. At the time, Britain was in the midst of a campaign to leave the EU. For us – the writers, the children of immigrants – it was urgent to counter the xenophobic rhetoric that reduced people who love, hurt, bleed and dream to £-signs.
Continue reading...K-pop singer Yohan dies aged 28
Record label announces ‘the most unfortunate, sorrowful news’ about singer from boyband TST
Kim Jeong-hwan, known as Yohan in the Korean pop group TST, has died aged 28.
TST’s record label, KJ Entertainment confirmed the news, saying: “We are sad to relay the most unfortunate, sorrowful news. On June 16, TST member Yohan left this world. The late Yohan’s family is currently in deep mourning.” The cause of death has not been announced.
Continue reading...Emma Watson joins board of Kering, the luxury fashion giant behind Gucci
Actor and eco-fashion advocate to take a seat on board of conglomerate that oversees Gucci, Balenciaga, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta and Alexander McQueen
Emma Watson, the actor and activist who made her name as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, has joined the board of the French fashion giant Kering, in a major coup for the world’s second-biggest luxury group.
The British star, who was born in Paris, is the face of the Good On You app, which rates fashion brands on their ethical and sustainability credentials. Watson is also known for her work with Eco Age’s Green Carpet Challenge. She wears sustainable red carpet looks, frequently custom-made by top-tier designers, for most public appearances.
Continue reading...Why coronavirus has placed millions more girls at risk of FGM
As lockdowns linger and economies falter, girls who are out of school are at increased risk of being cut
Covid-19 has exposed just how much work remains to be done to wipe out female genital mutilation (FGM) around the world. Two million girls who would otherwise be safe from the practice are believed to be at risk over the next decade as a direct result of the virus.
As lockdowns linger and economies tumble, many families have been spurred into action over the fate of their daughters, using school closures to cut them and marry them off, campaigners say.
Continue reading...The stranded babies of Kyiv and the women who give birth for money
Lockdown exposed the scale of the commercial baby business in Ukraine, and now women hired for their wombs are speaking out
Some are crying in their cots; others are being cradled or bottle-fed by nannies. These newborns are not in the nursery of a maternity hospital, they are lined up side by side in two large reception rooms of the improbably named Hotel Venice on the outskirts of Kyiv, protected by outer walls and barbed wire.
They are the children of foreign couples born to Ukrainian surrogate mothers at the Kyiv-based BioTexCom Centre for Human Reproduction, the largest surrogacy clinic in the world. They’re stranded in the hotel because their biological parents have not been able to travel in or out of Ukraine since borders closed in March because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Continue reading...Young Americans having less sex than ever, study finds
About one in three men aged 18 to 24 reported no sexual activity in past year between 2000 and 2018, Jama report said
In 1975, David Bowie famously sang of a girl who wanted “the young American/ All night”. Nearly 50 years later, however, a lot of young Americans are having less sex – and can’t even blame the coronavirus for it.
According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, data collected between 2000 and 2018, two years before the pandemic, shows that “approximately one in three men aged 18 to 24 years reported no sexual activity in the past year.
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