Category Archives: Life and style

Listen to your migraine to help you feel better – and to learn about yourself

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Headaches are telling you something about how your brain works with your body, influencing your behaviour and feelings

We need pain. It seems contradictory to say it, particularly now that we have so many ways of dealing with it and switching it off. Pain not only tells us something is wrong, it also protects us. If you slam the car door on your hand, it’s going to hurt. You will have damaged the soft tissue; all the muscles and ligaments that help you move your fingers. It will no doubt swell up to twice its size. This inflammation is part of the healing process. Your hand feels hot and looks red because of all the extra blood flow. All these inflammatory agents that are acting to heal you are stimulating the pain receptors in your hand, the ones in your skin and your muscles. Your head is not so different except, crucially, the underlying cause can be much more subtle and varied.

As a neuroscientist who writes about headaches, it is somewhat ironic to admit that I suffer from them still. Two recent headaches stand out. The first happened when I couldn’t find my glasses. I’m astigmatic so I see the world on a bit of a slant because my left eyeball is shaped like a rugby ball instead of a football. Just looking around can be effortful. Plus, the search made me late for everything that day which was unpleasant. By the time I got home, my head felt like it was in the grip of giant hands and they had begun to squeeze hard. All I wanted for dinner was a paracetamol sandwich.

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‘I’ve had men rub their genitals against me’: female comedians on extreme sexism in standup

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For years, sexual predators have infested the live comedy scene. But female comedians are demanding action. Is this British standup’s #MeToo moment?

‘If this was a normal office where, on your first day, someone higher up than you goes: ‘Here’s a list of guys in the office who might rape you,’ you would go straight to HR. But there’s no HR – there’s nowhere we can go to say this is happening,” says Laura Duddy, who started out in standup comedy last year.

“For new comics, it’s normal that a more established comic will give them a list of open-mic gigs to try,” says Ellie Calnan, who began standup 18 months ago. “Whereas for women, it’s: ‘Here’s the people and gigs to avoid.’”

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So Ellen DeGeneres is not as nice as we thought? She’s been saying that all along

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Staff on DeGeneres’s talkshow have denounced its ‘toxic’ environment. The host may not be to blame, but she has always been spikier than her public image

What on earth is going on with Ellen DeGeneres?
Kate, by email

Things are not well in Ellen land. Things have been worse, but let’s catch up on the current situation first.

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Marcus Rashford scores cover of British Vogue’s September issue

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The footballer is recognised for his activism in the magazine among 40 ‘faces of hope’

Marcus Rashford’s inspirational, policy-changing campaign against child poverty has garnered him accolades aplenty. Now it has also propelled the footballer on to the front cover of British Vogue’s September issue.

The Manchester United striker, who forced a government U-turn on the granting of free food vouchers for the poorest families over the summer, headlines a special edition dedicated to activism.

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Improve your relationships – with advice from counter-terrorism experts

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Emily and Laurence Alison specialise in communication and co-operation with criminal suspects. But their methods work in the home and at work, too

“The more you push someone, the more they close up,” say Emily and Laurence Alison, a husband-and-wife psychology team. “The hungrier you are for information, the harder it will be to get that out of someone. But give the person a choice about what they say; give them some autonomy and you begin to build the rapport that may lead to a better conversation,” says Laurence.

This sounds like parenting advice and yet the Alisons’ specialism is helping counter-terrorism officers and the police to improve communication and co-operation with criminal suspects. When the atmosphere turns adversarial and competitive, as it so often does, they turn to the Alisons to help them navigate and negotiate.

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Baldness and rashes? Experts split over unusual Covid-19 risk factors and symptoms

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Academics analyse whether hair and hearing loss may also be linked to coronavirus

From hearing loss and rashes, to being tall and bald, as the Covid-19 pandemic develops, a host of new symptoms and risk factors are being linked to the virus. We take a look at the evidence.

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Gisèle Halimi, trailblazing French feminist MP and lawyer, dies aged 93

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Instrumental in decriminalising abortion in France, Halimi spent her life fighting for women’s rights

The Tunisian-born French feminist MP and lawyer Gisèle Halimi, described as a “trailblazer” and a “rebel”, has died one day after her 93rd birthday.

Halimi was instrumental in the decriminalisation of abortion in France and spent her life fighting for women’s rights. “Injustice is physically intolerable to me. All my life can be summed up with that,” she once said.

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Again Once Again review – elegant meditation on the pains of motherhood

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This engaging, philosophical film unpicks the challenges faced by a young mother trying to reconnect with the life she had before her son’s birth

A woman leaves her boyfriend to visit her mum in Buenos Aires, taking their three-year-old son with her – not sure yet if it’s a holiday or a breakup. She hasn’t worked since her son was born and is having an emotional and intellectual crisis. She feels almost non-existent. “I don’t see myself. Who am I?”

This is an elegant, elusive debut from the Argentinian playwright Romina Paula, who picks away at the fantasy that motherhood leads to instant fulfilment. Her film is like an arthouse version of the sitcoms Motherland and Catastrophe, with fewer laughs and more philosophical introspection. It has the feel of a feminist essay that has been semi-dramatised for screen – with Paula starring as a fictional version of herself and her real-life mum and son Ramón playing themselves.

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Cooking eased my exile and became my homage to the lives of immigrants

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Preparing food helped me reconcile my old and new world. Now my restaurant produces a beautiful mongrel cuisine

‘Now you better behave and don’t cry!” was the warning from my mother, shot with a stern look to show she was deadly serious. We disembarked from the aircraft at Heathrow. It was a dark and dank day. Cold rain spat at us as we walked across the tarmac into the immigration hall. In the terminal, the world seemed full of strangers and I swallowed back my tears.

The sunless flat above a shop that my father had found for us was full of draughts and damp. At the makeshift kitchen table, I stared at the exposed electrical wires knotted together on the wall and pined for the warmth of the neat, beloved grandmother we had left behind in our haste to leave Kenya. England welcomed immigrants, but its housing did not. Back home, when you opened the door, every room was fragrant with the scent of ripening guavas. Here, there was just a solitary freckled apple in the fruit bowl that, like us, had seen better days.

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‘We were the luckiest people in the world’: our month on the last lockdown cruise

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On 1 March, photographer Jon Tonks left New Zealand on a Pacific cruise. Twenty eight days later, the boat docked in San Diego, amid a pandemic. What happened in between?

The cruise ship MS Maasdam left New Zealand on the evening of 1 March, steaming out of Auckland’s Waitemata harbour into the Hauraki Gulf, where it headed north. The route was to San Diego via Fiji, the Cook Islands, French Polynesia and Hawaii. On board the Holland America Line ship were around 1,200 passengers, including Americans, Britons, Canadians, Australians and French holidaymakers. The 542 crew included Dutch, Americans, Germans, Venezuelans and Filipinos. There were also a handful of entertainers and guest lecturers along for the ride, including Jon Tonks, a portrait photographer from Bath, who ended up with a portrait of a cruise that didn’t go to plan.

Covid-19 was certainly a thing at the beginning of March, but it was still considered mainly a China thing. The Maasdam wouldn’t be going anywhere near China. Questionnaires were handed to passengers, about symptoms and where they’d been before, but then they were good to go. Still, Tonks says that friends had joked before he left: “Good luck on your corona cruise.”

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‘I cannot be silent’: exposing the racial pay gap among influencers

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The disparity between the fees paid to black influencers and their white counterparts has come under scrutiny after a group of campaigners spoke out

At the start of the pandemic, Vanity Fair asked whether the influencer era was over because people were tired of glossy, edited lives on social media and wanted something more “real”. Instead, it seems the world of influencers is adapting to reflect changes in the rest of the world. In recent weeks, the focus has been the shocking pay disparity between white influencers and influencers of colour.

In June, a group of influencers of colour shared an open letter on Instagram that called out Fohr, a marketing agency that work as a middleman between brands and influencers. Women including Valerie Eguavoen spoke out. “I cannot be silent when I see clear evidence of pay disparities between Black women and other creatives who work with you,” she wrote in an Instagram post. “I cannot be silent when you refuse to address racism form [sic] individuals on your team adequately. Enough is enough.” (Fohr replied on Instagram, apologising for its conduct, writing: “We HAVE to do a better job listening to, promoting and working with black influencers.”)

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Two wheels good: India falls back in love with bikes after Covid-19

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A bicycle boom has seen Indians swapping cars – the ultimate status symbol – for a more humble mode of transport

With cases of Covid-19 surging past the one million mark, Indians are shunning crowded buses and trains to travel on what has traditionally been regarded in this status-conscious society as the poor man’s mode of mobility: the bicycle.

At Bike Studio in Bhopal, owner Varun Awasthi is almost out of stock. Sales are up by 30% and he expects them to rise to 50% once he gets more bicycles.

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Kim Kardashian requests compassion for Kanye West’s bipolar disorder

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The rapper’s recent string of erratic tweets prompted his wife to comment on his mental health for the first time

Kim Kardashian West has spoken for the first time about her husband Kanye West’s bipolar disorder after he posted and deleted a string of erratic tweets regarding his family life after the launch of his presidential campaign in Charleston, South Carolina, on Monday.

“Those who are close with Kanye know his heart and understand his words sometimes do not align with his intentions,” she wrote on her Instagram Stories.

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‘No exemptions’ but Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban reportedly allowed to quarantine at NSW holiday home

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Gladys Berejiklian says Nine Perfect Strangers cast and crew allowed to isolate at separate location from coronavirus quarantine hotels

The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has said there are “no exemptions” from hotel quarantine for returned travellers despite reports Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban were allowed to isolate at their holiday home in regional NSW.

Media outlets reported on Tuesday that Kidman and Urban, and their two daughters, flew back to Sydney from the United States on a private jet and were allowed to isolate at their home in Sutton Forest ahead of the filming of Kidman’s new mini-series, Nine Perfect Strangers, in August.

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Beyond sourdough: the hobbies that helped readers cope with lockdown

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As lockdown restrictions continue to ease, Guardian readers tell us what pastimes and skills they’ve discovered – and rediscovered – during the pandemic

During lockdown, my husband and I have taken daily walks in the countryside that have kept us sane and given us a break from the monotony of confinement. Along the way, I have collected stones to paint. Looking for ways to engage the five-year-olds in my class (and missing them a bit too), I painted each stone to look like them and used them to make videos, games and to tell stories. The children loved them and it made some of their lessons a little more meaningful in what has been a challenging time. Anna Clow, 52, early years teacher, Lyon, France

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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

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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?

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From hunger to abuse: how Covid-19 has affected women worldwide

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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.

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‘Everything you think Rihanna would be, she’s that’ – Fenty insiders tell all

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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.”

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