On the modern knight, the fantasy of being rescued, and what happens when a woman finally becomes her own. Like many modern women, I grew up with stories of knights on white horses. The hero who would arrive at exactly the right moment to save me. My knight in shining armour, my salvation. And like many women, I had unintentionally, subconsciously outsourced something far more important than I realised: my autonomy, my sovereignty, to a fantasy. Knight. How beautiful it sound

On growing up with the Pussycat Dolls, meeting your childhood idols, and discovering that becoming a woman might be the most empowering thing of all. When I was a little girl, the Pussycat Dolls were everything. And like most little girls growing up with a girl band, my sister Sophia and I naturally found the ones we identified with most. You know how it is. There's always that one member you see a little bit of yourself in. For Sophia, it was Nicole Scherzinger. For me, it

I’m unemployed. And somewhere between my morning, my afternoon and my late-night spiral of confusing thoughts about what to do with my life, I have decided to go back to studying and redirect my career towards international cooperation. I have a few months to kill before I start and, given the amount of free time on my hands, I thought I could do something with it. Something meaningful. Something that wasn’t simply waiting for October to arrive while once again reconsidering

I think there has only been one person in my life I was truly, deeply in love with. When I found that kind of connection, I used to believe it would never end. Because when you love something that much, you don’t want to believe it can ever disappear from your life. Especially when that connection has taught you so much about yourself. Losing it can almost feel like losing a part of yourself. But as I grew up, I realised that you can never really control a connection. Sometim

I've been with that guy since January. And starting in February, the disrespect began: his ex coming back, the lies, the humiliation and the constant stress. By March, I had to quit my part-time job, which I blamed entirely on a severe depression that I felt coming on all of a sudden. I was on sick leave until July, with that guy still in my life. In July, we broke up, and we didn't stay in touch like we used to. My job was going well; in fact, I quickly found a better one, r

If you’ve been anywhere on the internet lately, you’ve seen the question over and over again: are we experiencing chic psychosis? Maybe the first question to ask is what chic actually is. If that conjures a mental monolith of skinny, white, shiny-haired, impeccably tailored women, we may have an issue. The word is not even that old. Chic came into English around the 1870s, borrowed from the French, who most likely took it from the German Schick, meaning skill or knowing how t

Before I got married, I had a sprouting frustration with weddings and all the demands around them. Like the first weed poking out of a flowerbed. Although so grateful and honoured to be a part of every celebration I had been to, an internal screech sounded in my ears with every hen’s invite quoting me a minimum of $250 and requiring a complete disco-cowgirl outfit to attend. So when it came to my turn… I proudly deemed myself an “anti-bride”. Looking back on it, I felt very s

Make no mistake. The Convenient Wife is much more sinister than the Trad Wife. In your late twenties to early thirties, you will encounter a very specific species of married woman. She might be your best friend from high school, your neighbour, your coworker or your sister. She has a high-paying job and a fancy title, a $79-a-week reformer Pilates membership and a husband everyone describes as “a great guy”. She pays half the mortgage on their house in Toorak. She has her own

In my eyes, ADÈLA has made a great debut pop album, so why is everyone so torn up about it? Icon Academy has done irreparable damage. First, they created KATSEYE. Second, they absolutely shattered the hopes and dreams of dozens of girls. One of those girls was ADÈLA. Thanks to whatever is left of the good in the world and a little word we call “karma”, ADÈLA has now made an excellent comeback in the form of her debut album, PRIMA. On this record, the Slovakian-born singer sho

I grew up in a world that was, in almost every visible way, run by men. But inside the home, it was always the women who ran everything. They decided where everyone would sit at the dinner table, what we would eat that night, what the children would wear and what was appropriate for everyone else to wear, too. My grandmother was a very modern, cool and dominant woman. She was the kind of woman whose word was law. Once she made a decision, nobody really questioned it. She had

From flapper dresses to GLP-1s, fashion’s idea of liberation has always come with a preferred body. The newest trend on the runway isn’t a shape, a colour or even a fabric. It’s a drug. One in eight American adults say they are currently taking a GLP-1 medication such as Ozempic, a class of drugs that has become almost inseparable from conversations about weight loss and the return of extreme thinness. And according to The New York Times, their influence is beginning to reach

Five-year-old me was up to something when she watched Peter Pan (2003) for the first time and thought moving to London was the key to eternal happiness. Twelve-year-old me had such a huge crush on One Direction that she wrote collaborative fanfiction with her friends about them moving to London and having the members fall head over heels for them. Eighteen-year-old me packed up her clothes in a 23kg bag, said goodbye to everything and everyone she knew, and hopped on a plane

There's a format going round at the moment where people list five things they think are worth your money. A good coat. A gym membership. An expensive hand soap, because the skin on your hands ages faster than the rest of you. Millions of these now, all delivered with the same steady confidence, and the premise underneath every one of them is that the correct purchase can be identified, named and handed to a stranger. It's a generous format, and that's exactly what makes it wo

Watching Tony made me think about Anthony Bourdain, and the uncomfortable truth that someone can be deeply loved, wildly successful, constantly smiling, and still be fighting something nobody around them can see. I have been thinking about Anthony Bourdain since I watched Tony, and frankly, I didn't expect a film about a 19-year-old chef I knew almost nothing about to move me this much.

I’m not sure how anyone manages anymore without completely shutting down, and I think that’s what a lot of people end up doing, because it’s all too much. I feel like a crazy person even writing this all out because it’s so scatterbrained, but that’s exactly what keeping up with the news feels like. Nowadays, it is so hard to find good and enlightening conversation. Instead, we’re stuck doomscrolling through the suffering of people overseas; the political turmoil that surroun