April, 27, heritage project officer, meets Jake, 27, company director
April on Jake
What were you hoping for?
Someone based in London with similar interests, who was laid-back but up for trying new things.
Category Archives: Men
You be the judge: should my girlfriend spend less money on her cats?
We air both sides of a domestic disagreement – and ask you to deliver a verdict
• Have a disagreement you’d like settled? Or want to be part of our jury? Click here
Lakshmi spends her entire salary on the cats, then says she can’t afford to go on holiday with me
Continue reading...Tom Ford: ‘I paid $90,000 for my own dress. The clothes we make are not meant to be thrown away’
From fashion with va-va-voom to veganism – ahead of the release of his new book, America’s starriest designer takes a moment to reflect
Tom Ford answers my phone call in precisely the way I’d hoped he would: with a voice as smooth as butter and the grace of Cary Grant.
We are in touch to discuss his latest project, a coffee-table book charting the past 15 years of his career – or “post-Gucci”, as those familiar with luxury fashion prefer to describe the era that has followed Ford’s departure from the Italian super brand.
Continue reading...‘The bikini line is still a no-no’: why does dance have a problem with body hair?
Chests must be de-fuzzed, armpits shaved, legs waxed. But as dance becomes more diverse, should it stop policing what grows naturally? Top performers speak out about their body hair
The ideal dancer’s body is unrealistic in many ways: bendier than a Barbie, incredibly lean but super-strong, with very particular proportions (in ballet, small head, long legs, short torso, high insteps). And also, it’s hairless. As with swimmers, athletes, gymnasts and others who wear leotards for a living, constant depilation is part of the job.
That goes for men as well as women. “I choose to shave because it gives me a sense of readiness,” says dancer and choreographer Eliot Smith. “I believe it gives me better outlines of the body against the stage lights.” On ballet message boards, it’s not uncommon to find parents of teenage boys asking what to do about hairy legs showing under white tights (wear two pairs of tights, or paint over hairs with pancake are two suggestions, if shaving isn’t an option).
But is there an alternative? When pole dancer Leila Davis was pictured in an Adidas campaign in March showing off armpit fuzz, as well as toned abs, there were plenty of online haters, predictably, but lots of lovers, too. And there are a few – although not many – contemporary dancers who are happy to let their body hair be seen on stage.
“I want it to be normalised,” says Jessie Roberts-Smith, a performer with Scottish Dance Theatre. And independent choreographer Ellie Sikorski sees it as part of a bigger picture. “It’s not the first fight I would pick about the homogeneity of bodies on stage,” she says. “But there’s something archaic in dance – where your body is policed in certain ways. You’re taught not to have agency over your body and body hair is a tiny detail of that.”
Continue reading...Nearly two-thirds of those who died young in 2019 were male, research finds
Boys and young men neglected in efforts to tackle mortality in 10- to 24-year-olds, Lancet report says, with a failure to address violence, substance use and accidents
Boys and men are more likely than women to die as teenagers or young adults, according to new research that warns the gender gap in mortality rates for that age group is widening in many countries.
In 2019, boys and young men aged 10 to 24 accounted for nearly two-thirds (61%) of all global deaths.
Continue reading...‘I’m terrified it might be my last chance’: the rise of the pre-baby ‘stag do’
‘Dad dos’, or ‘Dadchelor parties’ – one last blow out for a father-to-be – are on the up. Are they just an excuse for a bender, or a crucial celebration for the modern, hands-on father?
‘Take a moment to say goodbye to your old life.” This is what Kit Harington said earlier this year, when asked what advice he’d give to fellow new parents. The actor, best known as the angst-ridden bastard prince Jon Snow in the fantasy series Game of Thrones, regretted not having held a proper celebration before the birth of his son in January.
Harington said he would have liked to mark the occasion “with a kind of stag”. “You’re so prepped about gearing up for being a parent that you forget. And then it’s too late. It’s gone.” Yet it’s the kind of sob story that’s likely to invite eye-rolls from mothers, for whom this approach to having a baby is not a matter of negotiation.
Continue reading...‘I’m scared I’ve left it too late to have kids’: the men haunted by their biological clocks
It’s certainly not just women who worry about ageing and procreation – and now men have begun speaking about their own deep anxieties
It was when Connor woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom that he started thinking about it. The 38-year-old civil servant from London got back into bed and couldn’t sleep: he was spiralling. “I thought: ‘Shit, I might not be able to have children. It actually might not happen,’” he says.
“It started with me thinking about how I’m looking to buy a house, and everything is happening too late in my life,” Connor says. “Then I started worrying about how long it would take me to save again to get married, after I buy the house. I was doing the maths on that – when will I be able to afford to be married, own a house and start having kids? Probably in my 40s. Then I started freaking out about what the quality of my sperm will be like by then. What if something’s wrong with the child? And then I thought, oh no, what if me and my girlfriend don’t work out? I’ll be in an even worse scenario in a few years.”
Continue reading...Blind date: ‘A man on the next table was watching a horror film’
Marta, 30, project manager, meets Andrew, 33, broadcast journalist
Marta on Andrew
What were you hoping for?
Romance, naturally. Failing that, someone I could have an interesting conversation with.
Y: The Last Man review – a stale, male manbaby mess
Disney+’s new drama imagines what the world would look like if there was just one man left on Earth … by sidelining the women who would be in control. What a waste of time
There is much to say about the protagonist of Y: The Last Man (Disney+ in the UK), had we but time and space. For the sake of practicality, let us confine commentary to this: having a whining slacker manbaby as the sole surviving male after a mysterious plague wipes out the rest of XY humanity and upon whom the future of everything depends feels … yeah, about right. Why not get this last undeserved heap of attention, resources and every other goddamned thing shovelled at your emblematically incompetent ass?
I should possibly have recused myself from watching the series until I was in a better mood. On the other hand, there’s something inescapably irritating about switching between looking at the television screen and a phoneful of real-life headlines and not being able to pick out much difference between the fictional dystopia and reality.
Continue reading...‘Now I know love is real!’ The people who gave up on romance – then found it in lockdown
Dating apps can be difficult and daunting at the best of times, and many users give up on them entirely. But for some the pandemic was a chance to reassess their priorities, and they were able to forge a much deeper connection
When the country first went into lockdown, I – reluctantly – reloaded my dating app. With the world on pause and friends navigating the choppy waters of home schooling, I needed something to pass the time. I had never had much luck with the apps but, this time, I connected with Bart, a Dutch PR manager who lived in Windsor. To begin with, I assumed our conversation would follow the same pattern as most of my chats on the apps – last a few days, then fizzle out. To my surprise, this time was different. Instead of ending in the great bin-fire of Hinge matches lost, a friendship grew. We began to have regular Zoom cinema nights – watching the same film online and chatting about it afterwards. As we got to know each other, I began to notice how kind and thoughtful he was, and I appreciated his interest in my life. Slowly I found myself opening up, something that had not happened for years.
Before the world turned upside down, I was happy with my single life. I have never wanted children, and spent my time with friends, occasionally dipping my toes into the murky pool of online dating. The process was always the same. Dates lasted an hour or two, before I would slink off home to catch up on Love Island. Every few years I would find that elusive spark but it was always with a charismatic, gym-honed banker who would allude to a string of heartbroken ex-girlfriends and send me aubergine emojis at 3am. I knew this penchant for unavailable men was unhealthy, but despite my efforts, I somehow never managed – or bothered – to break the cycle.
Continue reading...I’m worried my husband’s porn use has ruined his sex drive
He lied to me about watching porn and now only wants sex when he’s already aroused. It makes me feel like I no longer turn him on
When I married my husband, one of the conditions was: no pornography. We have been married 25 years. In 2018, I discovered my husband had been watching porn regularly for six years. I found out because it gave him erectile dysfunction. He said he would give it up, which he did for 18 months. Then he started again. I was furious. We went to counselling. My husband only wants to have what I consider lazy sex. He wants sex only when he wakes up with an erection. I have told him that it is important to me to make love and have sex at night, too. I am concerned the past long-term regular porn use has affected his desire for intimacy and lovemaking, since he wants sex only when he has already got a hard on. It makes me feel like I don’t turn him on.
This is not necessarily about you – or your husband’s desire, or lack of it, for you – and his pornography use may not be related to his needs regarding the timing of sex with you. Many men are so afraid of not being able to achieve an erection that they approach their partners for sex only when they are already aroused – and for him that may be mornings only.
Continue reading...‘We always see sex from the man’s view’: Cammie Toloui, the peep show performer who peeped back
Turning her camera on her customers, the sex worker and photojournalist exposed the male gaze to itself – and opened up a world of shame and desire
“As a rebellious preteen, I sat down and made a list of my life goals,” writes Cammie Toloui in her photobook 5 Dollars for 3 Minutes. “It was pretty simple: 1. Sex. 2. Drugs. 3. Rock’n’roll.”
Born in the San Francisco Bay Area in the Summer of Love, Toloui was in the right place to hit these targets, and by 1990 was a member of a feminist punk band, Yeastie Girlz, and working at the Lusty Lady strip club. Stripping was part-rebellion and part-necessity because Toloui was studying photojournalism at San Francisco State University and the Lusty Lady paid well, but when she was given an assignment to shoot her own life, it also became a project. Deciding not to photograph herself or her colleagues, because female nudes have been seen so many times before, she trained her camera on the customers.
Continue reading...Good old days: why body confidence improves after 60
A New Zealand study claims men and women become more satisfied with their bodies over time – bucking the expectations of our youth-obsessed culture
Name: Happy retirees.
Age: Well, as you know, people retire at different ages, typically from about 60 onwards.
Continue reading...My partner cheated on me – then told me about the fantastic lover she’d found
This man was well endowed, highly sexed and lasted longer than me. Is our relationship doomed?
I have been with my partner for three years, and a month ago she cheated on me. We discussed the matter and from that I discovered that this guy she cheated with is well endowed, lasted longer than me and has a huge sex drive. She now wants us to fix things, but I am uncomfortable knowing all of this. I am afraid that I will not satisfy her and she may end up going back to this person and that I’ll be hurt. What can I possibly do to overcome all of this?
Don’t believe your partner’s description of the other guy. It sounds spiteful. Is there a reason why she would try to hurt you? Is she angry or resentful of you for some reason? It’s time for a calm talk to try to understand each other far better and to have a chance to express your true feelings without resorting to blaming or name-calling. Tell her honestly that you feel uncomfortable and afraid and say: “Please help me to understand your feelings too.” After a breach of trust it takes time to repair a damaged relationship and the hazy spectre of a rival’s dimensions is really the least of your worries.
Continue reading...‘I had a crush on my sexy manager’: seven readers on their summers of love
A virtual lockdown date that blossomed, an encounter on a backpackers’ bus and a school trip to Spain – readers share their most memorable summer romances
After just one week of living in New York, the city locked down, and a summer of love seemed unlikely. I did go on a series of virtual dates, with around 20 guys over four months; some were funny, kind and smart, and some were a little weird. One or two of them became my friends. Then, I finally got a call from Mr Right on the long weekend of 4 July. We started talking and he was everything I’d hoped for – except he was in Michigan, hundreds of miles away. In early August, he casually mentioned he’d be coming to NYC to meet me, and the next day he drove for 10 hours to take me for dinner.
Continue reading...Hope Virgo: the woman who survived anorexia – and began Dump the Scales
Hospitalised with an eating disorder as a teenager, she recovered to become a campaigner. Her mission? To show that eating disorders aren’t always visible
Hope Virgo’s description of her descent into anorexia is so harrowing and filled with danger that meeting her in real life – in the south London flat she shares with her fiance – is like meeting the personification of triumph or optimism. “In the media, you see the same stories, the same distressed, emaciated person; you hear of people dying,” Virgo says. “We need to hear those stories, but at the same time, I really believe that a full recovery is possible. I think we lose sight of that glimmer of hope.”
In her book Stand Tall Little Girl, she gives the figures to back this up: 40% of people who have had an eating disorder never think about it again; 15% are unable to fight it off and are stuck in it; and 45% of people find a way to live with it, using coping mechanisms. Virgo’s pioneering work has an overarching purpose: to say, in her words and through her actions, that recovery is possible. It’s a rescue mission launched from regular life into a world of crisis – in which no one is seen as irrecoverable.
Continue reading...Mystery of the wheelie suitcase: how gender stereotypes held back the history of invention
Why have some brilliant innovations – from rolling luggage to electric cars – taken so long to come to market? Macho culture has a lot to answer for
In 1972 an American luggage executive unscrewed four castors from a wardrobe and fixed them to a suitcase. Then he put a strap on his contraption and trotted it gleefully around his house.
This was how Bernard Sadow invented the world’s first rolling suitcase. It happened roughly 5,000 years after the invention of the wheel and barely one year after Nasa managed to put two men on the surface of the moon using the largest rocket ever built. We had driven an electric rover with wheels on a foreign heavenly body and even invented the hamster wheel. So why did it take us so long to put wheels on suitcases? This has become something of a classic mystery of innovation.
Continue reading...In praise of fathers: the making of the modern dad
Once they were only seen as breadwinners and disciplinarians. A leading anthropologist highlights 10 ways in which the role of fathers has been transformed
The role of dads in the UK has changed beyond all recognition in the past 50 years. Today, fathers no longer want to be limited to the role of family breadwinner and disciplinarian; they want to be true co-parents, providing nurture and care to their children. This change is due in part to the rise of two-earner households, reductions in hospital-based post-birth care and an absence of geographically close extended family, requiring dad to step in. But as we in the research community have learned more about who dad is biologically and psychologically, and the unique role he plays in the family, fathers have felt empowered to get involved, safe in the knowledge that they are as important to their kids and family as mum is.
Continue reading...The sexual assault of sleeping women: the hidden, horrifying rape crisis in Britain’s bedrooms
A recent survey suggested a shockingly high proportion of women have been sexually assaulted by a partner as they slept. Now more and more are speaking out
Niamh Ní Dhomhnaill had been with her partner for almost a year when she discovered that he’d been raping her while she slept. At the time, she was 25, and a language teacher in a Dublin secondary school. Her partner, Magnus Meyer Hustveit, was Norwegian. The couple had moved in together within a few months of meeting, but things were tense. It wasn’t a happy relationship.
On that particular night, Ní Dhomhnaill had been out with Hustveit and other friends, but left early, alone, because she felt unwell. “I’d only drunk water but I’d gone to bed and was out for the count,” she says. “I didn’t hear Magnus come back, which is unusual because I’d always been a light sleeper.”
Continue reading...Scientists launch search for genetic test to spot killer prostate cancer
Gene-screening, as is used to detect some breast cancer risks, could save thousands of lives
Scientists have begun work to create a prostate cancer screening service for the UK. In a few years, middle-aged men could be tested to reveal their genetic susceptibility to the condition, with those deemed to be under significant threat of developing it being offered treatment or surgery.
The service would tackle a disease that has become the nation’s most commonly diagnosed cancer and would parallel Britain’s breast cancer screening programme. Every year, more than 47,500 men are diagnosed with prostate cancer: 129 a day on average. More than 11,500 deaths from the disease occur each year, with one in eight men being diagnosed with prostate cancer at some time in their lives.
Continue reading...