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On Tuesday morning, Democratic socialist Senator Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy for president in 2020, joining an already crowded field of candidates that includes the most women and people of colour in history.

As part of his announcement interview with Vermont Public Radio, Sanders said the following in response to concerns that he is no longer the best representative of “the face of the new Democratic Party”:

“We have got to look at candidates, you know, not by the colour of their skin, not by their sexual orientation or their gender and not by their age. I mean, I think we have got to try to move us toward a non-discriminatory society which looks at people based on their abilities, based on what they stand for.”

Democratic women erupted with anger at him on Twitter, calling the statement tone-deaf. “At a time where folks feel under attack because of who they are, saying race or gender or sexual orientation or identity doesn’t matter is not off, it’s simply wrong,” wrote Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.

With several prominent women senators — Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren — in the Democratic race, many are hoping that the 46th time is the charm and we will finally have a female president. We've already seen what a difference it makes in terms of policy proposals and strategy. Warren unveiled her ambitious plan for universal child care on Tuesday, paid in part through her “ultra-millionaire tax.” Gillibrand is running what the New York Times called an “unabashedly feminist” campaign, discussing her experiences as a mother and making issues such as paid family leave and affordable child care front-and-centre. She's also talked candidly about the impostor syndrome she felt that almost kept her from running for president, which resonated with many women.

But self-described “Sanders sisters” say they're willing to wait for a female president in exchange for someone with whom they align ideologically. They also believe that while Sanders has helped push Democrats to the left on issues like Medicare for All, it's his temperament that will help him actually achieve his grand ideas. “[Warren] plays politics too much, she calculates too much, she doesn't go hard enough on the rich,” Andrea Rovenski, a 22-year-old self-employed video-game streamer from Maryland, said about the other prominent left-wing candidate, echoing 2016 concerns about Hillary Clinton. “We need fearless strength, this isn't a contest about anything else.” Fearless strength is not a trait that women have historically been encouraged to project.

Rovenski, who identifies as an intersectional feminist, said she thinks identity markers like gender shouldn't make a difference in choosing a presidential candidate. “Anyone who judges candidates based on arbitrary characteristics isn't a serious person and are severely harmful to everyone in the country,” Rovenski told Refinery29. Like other women who support Sanders, Rovenski noted what she sees as the big ideological difference between Sanders and Warren, despite their similar economic policies: While she has proposed making changes within the framework of capitalism, he wants to “Bern” it all down.

“The reason I don't support Liz over Bernie is because I don't think she's on the right side of the coin. She is a capitalist who wants to fix the system, whereas Bernie is a Democratic socialist who wants to move away from the murderous global economy that we currently live under. That fundamental difference is huge when discussing how they will go about bringing the political revolution to fruition,” she said.

The Democratic field is large, it's early in the game, and most voters are still undecided, so it's currently almost impossible to predict who will win the nomination. Sanders is the predicted front-runner (although Joe Biden could knock him off if, or when, he enters the race), but he also has more name recognition than most of the candidates, so this could very well change as voters get to know the others. And don't discount the fact that women are expected to make up about 60% of the Democratic primary vote. If the 2018 midterms are any indication, there is a ton of enthusiasm around electing someone who represents their values and is a woman.

Ashley Sullivan, 29, from Plymouth, MA, a social media strategist by day and bartender by night, is still on the fence about whether she'll be one of these voters. She said she voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 after backing Bernie in the primary, and remembers telling one of her two young daughters before she went to bed on election night that the country was about to choose its first female president. “I was scared to tell her what happened when she woke up,” she told Refinery29. However, this time around, she said there isn't a female candidate who is progressive enough for her, and she won't “blindly” support a woman.

Sullivan prefers Sanders over Warren — for now — primarily because, she said, of Warren has only said she supports the “idea” of the Green New Deal, the sweeping climate change proposal championed by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while Sanders has promised it would be one of his priorities. Nine senators and 60 House members support the plan, according to the Washington Post. These include several 2020 presidential contenders: Sens. Cory Booker, Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Warren, and Sanders. All of them had previously endorsed the Green New Deal.

Like Rovenski, Sullivan believes it's time for a large-scale change in the system. “I identify as a Democratic socialist and I know Warren is unequivocally a capitalist. I will be keeping close eyes on town halls and to their platforms. A lot can change between now and 2020,” she said.

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When Connie Britton is not working, she’s spending time with her seven-year-old son, Eyob. When she’s not doing either of those things, she’s “usually fast asleep.” Britton pauses as she tells me this over the phone from Los Angeles, before she laughs and delivers her punchline: “Because Mommy’s tired!” It’s a line you could imagine both Tami Taylor (Friday Night Lights) or Rayna James (Nashville) delivering in their signature southern drawls, but Britton isn’t playing a part, she’s just trying to explain to me why she’s a “terrible TV watcher.” Because she’s Connie Britton, the admission comes off as endearing instead of pretentious. She’s just a single mom who's been too busy making great television to binge it. Understandable.

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The 51-year-old actress has portrayed multiple beloved characters that will go down in small-screen history, like Taylor and James, but her latest role is her first foray into true crime peak TV, and this character is a Britton we’ve never seen: ingenuous. We’re used to a Connie Britton character that has their sh-t together, at least one that's more wise than the people around her. But in Dirty John, Britton plays Debra Newell, a beautiful, well-to-do interior designer who seemingly has it all, until she meets John (Eric Bana), a charismatic con man.

I talked to Britton about the “unromantic” thriller, Debra’s perceived naivety, and Julia Roberts’ lacklustre matchmaking skills.

Dirty John is the perfect show to binge. So, Netflix is the perfect forum for it, but it's interesting to me that they released it on Valentine's Day [Editor's Note: After debuting on Bravo in late 2018, the series hit Netflix Canada on February 14].

I know. How hilarious is that? Isn't that funny? When I saw that, I was like, that's somebody's twisted joke. It's perfect.

Just give a warning for viewers who haven’t seen it yet: This is not a romantic show, right?

Right, right. But listen, if you are just feeling lovey-dovey with your partner and you want to cozy up and watch something super scary, that will make you feel good about your happy relationship, this is the thing for you. [Laughs.]

Good sell. Let's talk about Debra. You say you were drawn to the role because it was a way to explore what makes us tick as women. How does she do that?

I think this is a very interesting moment for women in terms of the #MeToo Movement. Here in the U.S., there's so much conversation now about what it is to feel empowered as a woman. I just think it's always important to look at ourselves honestly and ask difficult questions. In this story, and specifically in getting to know Debra a little bit, I thought this was a really perfect opportunity to ask some of those questions. Debra is an incredibly intelligent, incredibly successful woman. On so many levels, she has what many of us as women strive to have. She's got a successful business that she created on her own, from her own talents. And she has children who she adores, she has a family she adores. And she's financially very successful. But there's this one part of her life that she feels is missing something. I wanted to look at the things that, in her life and in the culture she lives in, shaped her to think that having a man is so important.

I do believe there is a cultural tradition of choosing to see what we want to see for the sake of maintaining our own ideas of ourselves.

Connie Britton

One of the hard questions I think you have to ask about Debra is whether she's being wilfully ignorant — do you think that's the case? Were there times when that was hard to reconcile?

Yes and no. Because to some degree — I recognise this in a lot of women and in a lot of men — you could call it wilful ignorance, you could call it denial, you could call it a survival mechanism. I do believe there is a cultural tradition of choosing to see what we want to see for the sake of maintaining our own ideas of ourselves or maintaining a belief system that we want to have. When we find Debra meeting John, she's kind of at a crossroads where she's trying to move away from some of the history that she has in her family where she doesn't feel like she puts her relationships or herself first. She's always taking care of everybody else. So, it's a kind of weird, twisted situation. The big umbrella of all that for me is that as women, so frequently, we are the nurturers and caretakers and we need to make sure that everybody's happy and everybody's being taken care of. And somewhere in the midst of that, we also want to find our own happiness. Sometimes, that's a messy prospect.

One of the things we’ve written about the show is that it “gives you permission to hate your friend's boyfriend.” There’s so much of it that goes back to trusting your gut and listening to the people around you. Should the takeaway be to listen to your friends and family if they hate your boyfriend?

I would not advise anyone to take their life lessons solely from this story. [Laughs.] My takeaway from this is only to keep asking questions. Just keep asking questions and keep opening your eyes. We can't just listen to our family and friends because they all have their own agendas. And if we as women are so compelled to make sure that everybody's happy, that's not going to be the answer either.

It’s a lot easier than anybody thinks for very smart, very capable women to fall into these kinds of relationships because of some of the baggage that we carry.

Connie Britton

We shouldn't take life lessons from the show but if I were single, the lesson I would take would be to not online date. At all. Did it make you a little wearier when dating?

Yes and no. I've never been a fan of online dating. What has been interesting to me is the number of women who — people who I've known for years! — have come up and said, “Oh my gosh, I never told you this, but I dated a sociopath once.” I have a friend right now, who I think is kind of having a relationship that there are elements of this to it, and she can't say it. She has girlfriends telling her.

What do you say to her?

Well, I think there was a lot of impulse for people after the podcast and even from watching the show, to jump to blame the victim. “Oh my gosh. She's so stupid. She's not listening to everybody.” It's blame, blame, blame her. It's her fault. However, look around. This goes back to the whole feminist aspect of it and the whole idea of being a woman. It's a lot easier than anybody thinks for very smart, very capable women to fall into these kinds of relationships because of some of the baggage that we carry as women.

You don’t online date but you do like being set up by friends. Julia Roberts has set you up on a date before but it didn’t work out, right? Are you saying that Julia Roberts is a bad match-maker?

Never. I would never say that, no. [Laughing.] My gosh, first of all, I appreciate any friend who has somebody that they think, “Hey, this might work out with you guys.” As far as I'm concerned, nobody's responsible for a good break up or a bad break up. Actually no, I give full credit if it ends up being a good set up. And if it ends up not working out, there's nobody to blame.

I'm a huge Friday Night Lights fan. And Tami Taylor gives incredible advice — probably better advice than any character in the history of television. If Tami were Debra’s friend, what advice do you think she would give her?

I think she would say, “Girlfriend, you deserve better.” I think she would be like, “We need to get you a man like Coach.”

Everybody needs a man like Coach.

Right. Everybody needs a man like Coach.

I have one rule about the cast of Friday Night Lights, especially you. If anyone from the cast is in anything, I'll watch it. I think, they were in Friday Night Lights, they've got great taste.

That's a good rule.

Do you keep up with the projects of your former cast mates?

I try. I certainly root them on. I'm always enthusiastic and supportive. I did watch Game Night the other day. Of course, Kyle [Chandler, who played Coach Eric Taylor] was in Game Night and Jason Bateman, who I've worked with. And then Jesse Plemons [who played Landry]. I was on a plane and I was like, “Hey! They're my friends!” I'm was like a kid in a candy shop. “There they are!”

You've never been shy about speaking up on issues that are important to you, like gender equality and alleviating poverty. We're living in a time when speaking up doesn't really feel like an option anymore, but a necessity. Do you feel that way?

Yeah, I do. Before I had any kind of career, I was really interested in how you give voice to the voiceless. And part of the reason why I wanted to pursue this career was because I thought it might be an opportunity to do that on a bigger scale. There are those who say, “Oh, shut up and sing.” Well, I don't listen to those people because they are clearly misinformed and have agendas. At this point, I think it's about human compassion. I take that on very seriously. I would do that if I wasn't an actor. If I was just in my community, I would still be doing this.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Dirty John is out on Netflix now.

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When Stefanie, a customer service representative from San Jose, CA, heard about Kesha Cruise, she knew immediately that she was going to go. “I was and still am anxious about going on a cruise, but it's Kesha so I had to do it. This is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” she tells me. “It's funny, before this cruise was announced someone asked me if I would ever want to go on a cruise, and I had said ‘not really.’ But I'm willing to do pretty much anything to see Kesha.”

Kesha Cruise: Kesha’s Weird And Wonderful Rainbow Ride set sail on February 17 from Tampa, FL, and will last until February 21, traveling to the Bahamas. It will also feature performances by Girl Talk, Matt & Kim, and Superfruit, and an appearance by Jonathan Van Ness. Stefanie, who runs Kesha fan accounts on Instagram and Twitter and says she “loves to support Kesha in all that she does,” will be sharing a room with three friends to help keep costs down, and says being able to pay for the trip in monthly instalments has allowed her to afford it. (There’s a range of pricing levels; ticket packages start at £725 per person.) “There is no guarantee that I or anyone attending will be able to meet Kesha. She is, however, hosting and participating in various events on the boat throughout the trip, so, never say never,” she says.

Stefanie is one of a growing number of customers shelling out hundreds and even thousands for these kinds of thematic sea-bound adventures. The list of cruises catering to relatively niche obsessions — not just Star Wars, but stuff like jam bands, public broadcasting, craft beer, The Walking Dead, Golden Girls, and veganism — is dizzying. Celebrities like Oprah, KISS, David Hasselhoff, Pitbull, The Backstreet Boys, and of course, Kesha, are creating and headlining their own cruises too, often with a mix of performances, on- and off-ship activities, and meet-and-greets. Or, just an opportunity to stand mere feet from your favourite performer in the middle of the ocean.

All of this represents a turning point for the cruising industry. While the popularity of cruise tourism has been steadily risingover the past ten years, there’s still the perception that the passtime is for fuddy-duddies — retirees or families with kids, not young adults who could just as easily backpack through Europe or spend a week exploring Thailand.

“Cruises have never gone out of fashion with the audience they’re most associated with — my parents recently retired, and are in their early 60s and they’ve quickly embraced the cruise as their new favourite type of holiday,” says Sarah Housley, a senior editor in the lifestyle division at trend forecasting firm WGSN. “What’s new is that younger generations are starting to buy in too — millennials, but also Gen Xers.”

It’s worth noting that, as in so many things, gay culture paved the way here. Gay and LGBT cruises, which often feature theme nights and celebrity guests, have been around since the late ‘80s. In fact, there are now several companies dedicated to producing them exclusively, and it’s not hard to see how the breakout success of these events may have inspired cruise companies to get more creative.

Housley posits that the formerly cruise-averse have realised that pre-planned trips and tours, all-inclusive pricing, and the chance to meet new friends and romantic prospects make ship life an easy, fun vacation alternative. But the explosion in popularity of themed cruises speaks to much more than just convenience.

Such offerings promise, as Stefanie noted, the potential “trip of a lifetime.” After all, they’re unholy amalgamations of warm weather, high seas adventure, open bars, and celebrity guests. It’s like Rock n’ Roll Fantasy Camp, but on a boat, and with a significantly lower number of middle-aged men reliving their glory days. It’s like Fyre Fest, but not a total scam. And no matter how seemingly idiosyncratic your own personal ultimate cruise fantasy, there either is or will probably soon be a sea vessel dedicated to it.

If you’ve ever dreamed about attending New York Fashion Week, for example, but lack the credentials or connections, consider Transatlantic Fashion Week. Cunard’s annual fashion-filled journey from New York to Southampton, England, will take place this July, and while most fashion shows and events on land are invite-only, all you need to participate in TFW is at least £1,150 (though ticket packages can reach £4,600). Previous iterations have seen special guests like Iris Apfel; this year’s lineup includes former model Pat Cleveland, shoe designer Stuart Weitzman, and actor Alan Cumming. There's also high-end shopping, panel discussions, runway shows, and cocktail-attire dinners not unlike the ones influencers might attend during NYFW.

The cruise, which first debuted in 2016, is the brainchild of Lee Powell, Cunard’s VP of Brand and Product, and Gail Sackloff, a loyal Cunard guest who also happens to be a fashion consultant best known for introducing Jimmy Choo to buyers in the United States. Sackloff was traveling on the Queen Mary II from Britain to New York for NYFW, when the pair got into a conversation about what passengers enjoy doing on cruise ships, and what keeps them coming back. Cunard offers several other thematic cruises, including a literature, outer space, and Dance The Atlantic, a partnership with the English National Ballet, which debuts this year.

“We’re creating experiences around interests that people have. From a brand perspective, certainly from my perspective, this is an opportunity to talk to audiences about what we have to offer by showing them something they didn’t think they could get on a cruise ship,” says Powell.

Kimberly Mufferi, a photographer who was hired last year to document TFW and has been on at least 20 other cruises, calls it a “once-in-a-lifetime experience,” echoing Stefanie’s high expectations for Kesha Cruise. “I typically make friends with people on cruises in general, but adding in a common interest only makes it that much easier. I met a few other photographers, and many fashion designers, among others in the business,” Mufferi recalls. “Fern Mallis [the original creator of New York Fashion Week] even stopped me, handed me her phone, and asked me to take a photo of her while onboard. So here I am, sailing across the ocean with an icon.”

If traditional travel forces you out of your comfort zone to see something unfamiliar, and meet people from different walks of life, themed cruises aim to do the opposite. They’re about coming together with people who you share something in common with and revelling in an already-beloved passion. Sure, not everyone you meet on board is going to be exactly like you — Powell emphasises the diversity of age at TFW, noting, “You have everyone from a fantastic older lady in a fabulous dress to younger individuals in evening wear who are really embracing the idea of dressing for dinner.” But there is a level of ease when you know you’ll be surrounded by hundreds of people who, perhaps like you, also have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the top fashion collections of the past decade, or know Kesha’s discography by heart. Shared interests have always brought people together — the only difference is now they’re doing it at sea. And, well, you have to pay pretty handsomely for it.

“We are all seeking community at the moment like never before,” Housley hypothesises. “As the world feels more fractured and uncertain, it’s one of the things that can make us feel secure and valued. An experience that delivers ready-made community is a really valuable commodity.”

Be honest with yourself: If your favourite performer — or chef or veteran TV castor band — announced their very own cruise tomorrow, wouldn’t you feel like you had to do it, too?

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The family of Nick Sandmann, the Kentucky teen who was involved in a viral incident with an Indigenous elder at the Lincoln Memorial in mid-January, has sued the Washington Post over its reporting of the event. Ted and Julie Sandmann are seeking $250 million (£191 m) in damages on behalf of their 16-year-old son, alleging the Post published seven “false and defamatory” stories.

Sandmann emerged as the face of an encounter between students from Kentucky's Covington Catholic High School, which he attends, and activist Nathan Phillips. Sandmann and his fellow students were attending the anti-abortion March for Life, and Phillips was at the Indigenous Peoples March, which were both held in Washington, D.C., on 18th January.

A series of viral clips showed the students, some of whom wore red “Make America Great Again” hats, seemingly surrounding a small group of Indigenous protesters and mocking Phillips. As more information emerged, Sandmann and his classmates argued that they were actually being harassed by another group of protesters, members of the fringe Black Israelite movement, and that in the process of defending themselves they came across the Indigenous demonstrators. The incident led to a heated, longstanding national debate over the behaviour of everyone involved and whether the media had fairly reported on the developments.

Sandmann's family seems to think that was not the case, and that the Post specifically targeted the teen as part of its “liberal media” agenda. “In a span of three days in January of this year commencing on January 19, the Post engaged in a modern-day form of McCarthyism by competing with CNN and NBC, among others, to claim leadership of a mainstream and social media mob of bullies which attacked, vilified, and threatened Nicholas Sandmann, an innocent secondary school child,” reads the complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court in Covington, KY. It continues: “The Post ignored basic journalist standards because it wanted to advance its well-known and easily documented, biased agenda against President Donald J. Trump by impugning individuals perceived to be supporters of the President.”

In a statement to Reuters, a Post spokesperson said: “We are reviewing a copy of the lawsuit, and we plan to mount a vigorous defense.” What the family is seeking in damages — $250 million — is the same amount Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos paid when he acquired the Post in 2013. It's unclear why the Post specifically is being sued while many other outlets covered the incident and its aftermath. But it seems like the Sandmann family has considered bringing litigation against other outlets as well: Fox News reported that Sandmann’s attorneys sent preservation letters, i.e. a warning that a lawsuit might come, to over 50 news organisations, celebrities, and lawmakers such as the New York Times and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

Trump, who has often advocated for relaxing libel laws so it would be easier for him to sue news organisations, gleefully chimed in with a tweet supporting the lawsuit: “Covington student suing WAPO. Go get them Nick. Fake News!”

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When fashion people of my generation talk about the moment they first got hooked, it’s not unlike hearing a superhero origin story. Outcasts and othered, we discovered our true calling during a pivotal, private moment. When we slipped into our mom’s stilettos, and first felt our posture change, a stranger staring back in the mirror. Or, it might have been the moment we flipped through a million-dollar fashion photoshoot and the velvet colors of the editorial gave us the ability to see beyond the beige-ness of our suburban bedrooms and basements. Or, it was the first time we wore something that scared us, then exhilarated us, and allowed us to understand how transportive fashion could be. How escapist. How powerful.

Through choosing and wearing the right clothes in the right way, we learned that we could turn any fantasy into reality: To be taller than our natural height, to be richer than our actual means — worldly despite never having left home. Adding fuel to our fire was the knowledge that some people in the industry had actually made this transition. More myth than man, Karl Lagerfeld had willed his fantasy of Parisian-flavoured decadence and eccentricity into existence. Growing up normal and average in Germany, he spent the last few decades of his life living on the border between the real and the surreal. His fabled work ethic, coupled with his mastery of the craft, meant that his contributions to the fashion industry were unanimously revered, and also ubiquitous — Lagerfeld's sensibility affected fashion in its highest and lowest forms. When he died on Tuesday, critics and fans came together in a rare moment of consensus: You may like or dislike Karl Lagerfeld’s legacy, but it’s undeniable that he was a legend.

And as with any legend, Lagerfeld came with his own volume of tall tales. He drank ten Diet Cokes a day as his sole source of hydration. He employed a person whose only job was to manage his 300 iPods. He was a bibliophile with a photographic memory. He slept on the same pillow his childhood nanny had once made for him. As a kid, he liked to catfish pedophiles. As an adult, he had never voted. He had never been in love (except maybe with his cat), and he certainly never had sex with anyone he cared for. He designed clothes for Chanel that he knew Coco Chanel would despise. He had a secret American sister he hadn’t spoken to in decades because she reminds him (and perhaps all of us) of what he could have been if he were not fabulous. Whether these things were true or not didn’t matter — especially for Lagerfeld. Every other year or so, a new interview with him would drop where he’d gleefully perpetuate these myths, and jostle free some new ones peppered with endlessly quotable bon mots. They were earworms without a melody: “If you throw money out of the window, throw it out with joy.” “Vanity is the healthiest thing in life.” “Frustration is the mother of crime.”

I had my own origin story moment in the mid-2000s after I purchased a pair of drop-crotch pants that a boy I liked told me looked like a full diaper. Shortly after, I became obsessed with fashion eccentrics like Rei Kawakubo, Rick Owens, and Martin Margiela. They provided me with a decoder ring to distinguish interesting fashion from merely palatable fashion. But the most entertaining character among them was undoubtedly Lagerfeld. His rules may have been different than the girls who won “best dressed” at my high school, but they were just as exacting: Fashion is a language that only the imaginative can understand, and to be boring is a sin. Suddenly, I was obsessed with understanding the world through this dichotomy.

Nostalgia is the worst kind of luxury- it’s really poverty.

— fakekarl (@fakekarl) December 31, 2009

You can’t be a romantic in a Honda

— fakekarl (@fakekarl) March 28, 2010

Hungry for peers, I started following and eventually befriended a spoof Twitter account called @FakeKarl that weighed in on the minutiae of the day under the delightfully haughty tone of a cartoon Lagerfeld. Ironically, Real Karl famously eschewed social media even though he would have been great at it. It was easy to imagine Real Karl dictating to a shirtless man in tweed pants to dismiss and kvetch over anything from bad weather to a family car. The jokes could almost write themselves, but Fake Karl parroted Lagerfeld to perfection. Everything that wasn’t “fashion” was “demode, hmm?” The only drink chicer than Diet Coke was Diet Water. It was intoxicating. People flocked to Fake Karl, who topped every “who to follow in fashion” list during that era.

The best thing about Fake Karl was that the person behind the account would actually respond to you. And so, I’d hop online between classes and before nights out, and chat with Fake Karl on AIM about runway collections and designer interviews in obscure art magazines. We’d talk about the fashion internships I was applying to and whether “the recession” was going to be as bad as the news made it sound. We talked in awful, cringey ways about thinness and richness that only barely masked our own insecurities. If we couldn’t actually be a part of those worlds, then we could at least pretend to inhabit them online. I knew, obviously, that Fake Karl was not Karl Lagerfeld. But every time the avatar of a dark-bespectacled man with neat, snow-white ponytail popped up on my computer, I’d be transported to place where I was clever and sophisticated. Even while parodied as a caricature, Karl Lagerfeld’s worldview was so infectious that just his face alone would inspire a shift in consciousness.

But if you feel badly that Fake Karl may have marred Real Karl’s reputation, don’t. No matter how incendiary and provocative Fake Karl’s tweets were, Real Karl always went further. “Normal people think I’m insane,” Lagerfeld was quoted in his semi-biography, The World According to Karl. As with all geniuses, appearing weird to normies and unpalatable to the unimaginative was the goal. And to offend them was evidence that you were winning.

His quips also included some of the most awful things public figures (who still need to maintain their public figuredom!) have said about women’s bodies — reducing smart, talented women to their haircuts and BMI. He once told Vice he opposed gay marriage for the sheer fact that it was too boring a thing to do for people who are as inherently interesting as men who want to have sex with each other (“Yes, I’m against it for a very simple reason: In the '60s they all said we had the right to the difference. And now, suddenly, they want a bourgeois life.”). During the apex of the #MeToo movement, Lagerfeld famously told Numero that sexual misconduct was part of the job: “If you don’t want your pants pulled about, don’t become a model! Join a nunnery, there’ll always be a place for you in the convent.” In his fantasy world, women’s sex appeal was a uniquely valuable currency that, he believed, could be controlled and deployed — those who didn’t were self-sabotaging. In his fantasy, being interesting afforded you more opportunities and protections than actual legal rights. He spent his whole life willing his fantasies into existence. He had the audacity to believe he could here, too.

It might seem contradictory that Karl Lagerfeld would both choose to surround himself with interesting ideas and people, but also have odiously reductive opinions about the women and men who he clothed. But if Lagerfeld had no shame, he also had no presumptions. To him, an ideal life was something you made yourself that sheltered you against pain and ugliness. True power was a life where unpleasant things could be reduced to merely an intellectual exercise. It was just sad when those things turned emotional or physical. “I never met anything like [homophobic violence] in my life,” Lagerfeld told writer Bruce LaBruce in 2010. “I had an overprotected life. What can I fight about? I don’t know what to do. It never happened to me, and it never happened to people I know.” To him, those who fight for others’ rights were going about it the hard way. In his world, it’s more useful to present the formula for untouchability and the tools to get it, no matter how unfair it might be. To that end, Lagerfeld constantly pointed at the many ways to get power: money, connections, eccentricity, appearance.

So during the height of the recession when other designers pared down their runway shows to appear more austere and practical, Lagerfeld assembled carousels and a gigantic barn (in the tradition of the original icon of luxury who created a sanitised version of a working farm within the Versailles grounds so she could “play poor”). When brands and businesses were getting skewered for its environmentally unfriendly standards, Lagerfeld shipped a Swedish iceberg to Paris and installed a working waterfall within the Grand Palais as twisted, backwards commentaries on what will likely be the most exclusive luxury good in the future: nature. Even his renditions of “bourgeois” moments — a supermarket, an airport terminal, a literal march for women’s rights — became part of the fantasy. There’s a reason that a Chanel football sells for more on eBay than a Chanel handbag. It’s tangible proof that even the most basic, uninspired things can be powerful if they’re dressed in just the right way.

You can understand how that idea can feel like a trade secret, especially when you don’t see where the source of that borrowed power actually comes from. But to be able to understand reality in its abject ugliness and pain is a different type of superpower to fight a different kind of battle. Today, the most relevant designers are celebrated for reckoning with the repulsive. They’re Pyer Moss and Telfar Clemens, Raf Simons and Alessandro Michele. Like Lagerfeld, they provoke and challenge using fashion. But unlike Lagerfeld, their clothing tries to push back against the old rules about who has power, and who can’t access it. Lagerfeld has always excelled at nourishing our imagination and our souls. But when it feels like the floor is crumbling beneath you, you look for something to grab onto, not a pair of costume wings.

When I saw that Lagerfeld had died, I emailed FakeKarl for the first time in ten years. It turns out that the person who so perfectly embodied a 75-year-old European was a 15-year-old boy from New Zealand named Eden Bradfield. He started the account for the same reason I started reading the account: “To amuse myself while growing up in a small fashion-challenged town.”

Today, Eden is in his mid-20s and a writer and a musician. I asked him to describe Lagerfeld’s appeal: “I think our generation was the last 'maximalist' fashion generation. We still treated fashion as a spectacle. Blogs from that whole generation of fashion kids were often colourful and cluttered and unconcerned with a sleek aesthetic. Maybe this was because the internet was still pretty young and you could stage a show or write a blog and whether there'd be much evidence of it next year was debatable. This is the ethos of Lagerfeldian fashion — the need to change season to season, to play with a motif and then toss it. He got the fact that this was all an absurdist game. He understood the clothes weren't the point. The spectacle was.”

Between 2009 and 2019, Karl Lagerfeld remained as resolutely consistent as he had his entire life. But the world has changed. Lagerfeld was no longer alone in churning out provocative quotes; our country’s President does it every hour. Surely, life is a spectacle for many people. But rather than delight, this spectacle can feel chaotic and deranged. Not being normal can shorten your life. For many, predictability is a privilege.

Lagerfeld succeeded because he willed the most beautiful things into the world. I can admit that there’s something noble about his trying to brush away the ugliest things in life as unimportant — as if feeling unseen, unspecial, and unsafe is a personal choice. But dismissing them is allowing them to exist. Best to approach them like Lagerfeld tackled everything else in life: Creatively, unreservedly, and with the conviction that we are all capable of making impossible things happen.

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Update (14th February): Okay, Valentines Day isn't for everyone. At least, that was until BBC Three decided to swoop in and give it real meaning. That's right, February 14th is now the day Fleabag season 2 was put firmly on the horizon. Hit me with the heart emojis.

Over on their Twitter account, the broadcaster shared a digital Valentine's card inspired by one of everyone's favourite scenes from Fleabag season one – when our haphazard protagonist takes her boyfriend's request for more surprises a little too seriously and jumps on him while he's in the shower, while wearing a balaclava. Aka, the “ninja surprise”. Classic.

He freaks out, she finds it hilarious and the whole thing is as delightfully awkward as you'd expect. Watch the clip to the very end, though, and the real treat is in the final frame – they've finally given us an air date. And the series is going to be back on our screens very, very soon.

Happy Valentine’s from Fleabag. pic.twitter.com/weLJJk3NaN

— BBC Three (@bbcthree) February 14, 2019

Mark your diaries because Fleabag series 2 starts on Monday 4th March. Fans of the box will be able to watch on BBC One from 10:45pm in the channel's new BBC Three late night slot. But fear not, streaming fans – the show will be available on iPlayer too, but you will have to wait a week for each of the subsequent episodes.

This article was originally published on 24th January 2019

Warning! This article contains spoilers for series one of Fleabag

I don't know about you, but I've been sat twiddling my thumbs for a while, not quite knowing where to turn without a juicy Phoebe Waller-Bridge drama to keep me occupied. We devoured the first series of Fleabag a lifetime ago (give or take three years) and that sneak peak at Killing Eve season 2 could only hold us for so long. Thankfully, the TV gods have now bestowed upon us some more information, and it's pretty damn exciting.

Joining the already brilliant Fleabag cast (see: Olivia Colman, Sian Clifford and Phoebe Waller-Bridge herself) are two of our favourite actresses. Welcome, Fiona Shaw and Dame Kristin Scott Thomas.

You'll recognise Shaw from Waller-Bridge's other award-winning drama Killing Eve, in which she plays the irreverent MI6 agent Carolyn Martens. And Dame Scott Thomas, you'll remember from beloved film classics such as Four Weddings and a Funeral. At this point in time we don't quite know what fate has in store for their characters in Fleabag but what a treat it is to know that they'll be in the mix for our second helping of bleak, hilarious chaos.

Things are set to take a surprising turn this time around. We're reunited with Fleabag one year on from where the first series left off – she has been rejected by her entire family, we finally understand what really happened with her best mate Boo, and Fleabag comes a bit too close to throwing herself in front of a car. In this series she meets a priest (played by Andrew Scott), which obviously nudges our haphazard protagonist into taking a completely different perspective on life, thus catapulting her into a load of brand new trouble in what quickly becomes Fleabag vs God.

Don't worry, not everything is set to change. Godmother (Olivia Colman) maintains an unfortunate presence, Fleabag's dad still can't bear to be around her and Claire is reluctantly forced into spending time with her sister to fix another unexpected problem. Yep, we're impatiently counting down the days to episode one as well.

Fleabag Season 2 airs on BBC One on Monday 4th March

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We're all familiar with the publicity shitshow of celebrity scandal. We could take it way back to the Clinton affair, or Kim Kardashian's sex tape, or the time Cheryl (née Tweedy) assaulted a toilet attendant at a nightclub. As I type, the internet is currently riled by Khloe Kardashian's cheating husband and Malia Obama's penchant for rosé wine. Like it or loathe it, news of what the rich and famous have been up to – the salacious or the inconsequential – is part of the pop culture fabric. But have you ever considered the stories we don't hear about?

Enter Robyn, an American woman working at a female-run London PR firm and the protagonist of the wild new drama Flack. Robyn's speciality is celebrity crisis management. It's her job to make sure the press doesn't get wind of a pro footballer's coke-fuelled sexual exploits with his secret gay lover. She's the one who makes sure that the beloved TV chef's affair doesn't make the front page of the tabloids. She's no Olivia Pope (oh, we miss you Scandal) but she packs a terrifyingly effective punch.

When we first meet our leading lady (played by Anna Paquin), she's giving the aforementioned footballer's 'friend' CPR in a fancy hotel room, after being called in to clean up the mess that her client was one 999 call away from. She revives him, ushers them on their way and takes a hit of their coke on the way out. Just another day at the office.

Soon she's assigned another charge: Anthony Henderson, the television chef and national treasure who has slept with 99% of the young women he has encountered. Robyn's solution? Conjure up some sympathy from the public and bury the news of the affair. She plans to trick Henderson's wife into getting a mammogram, leak it to the press and paint Henderson as the world's most supportive husband. Appalling, yes, but it kind of works.

There's no doubt that Robyn is good at her job. She's respected by her hedonistic colleague Eve (Lydia Wilson) and despotic boss Caroline (Sophie Okonedo). But there's a lot going on in her personal life that fuels her fierce commitment to the job and challenges her relationships outside of work.

In a standout scene from the first episode, she delivers an impassioned monologue to Henderson, who she has taken to a hotel room to calm down as the threat of his affair going public looms. He's moaning about how his fucking around and having affairs is “a disease like diabetes” which he shouldn't be crucified (by the press) for, because he's a “decent” bloke. “It goes both ways. I've had my fair share of clumsy passes from drunken women,” he pines. “If I were a woman we wouldn't be having this conversation, what's the difference?”

While you rage in disbelief from the other side of the TV screen, Robyn scolds him for his predatorial behaviour and gives him the full lowdown on what it's like to be a woman. How “every male you encounter has the potential to rape and murder you, followed by a life of pre-sexualisation, catcalling and slut shaming that fills you with so much guilt and fear that when you're 16 and some kid starts choking you during sex, either with hands or his penis because he saw that in a bunch of porn, you assume that it must be you who got it wrong. So every time there’s an inappropriate comment or a hand on your thigh, you swallow it.”

You'll exhale in a strange wash of relief at watching someone put a complicated feeling we've all experienced into such ball-punching words. And they have sex in the bathroom after a brief but strange back and forth about Robyn's inner demons when she questions why he hasn't made a move on her yet. No, the whole interaction doesn't seem to make immediate sense to Robyn, either. But it happens and Robyn swiftly heads back to the office to clean up some other messes.

Though the show circulates around heavy, timely topics, there are moments when it feels like a bit of a parody of what many imagine celebrity PR management to have looked like back in the '00s. It's not glam at all – a lot of what Robyn has to do is pretty compromising and you'll be incredibly fascinated by her character development. As for how far it mirrors the IRL goings on in the crisis management world, we can't really tell you. It's wild, fascinating and a little bit ridiculous. But there are a few standout moments that, at the very least, will make you cringe, chuckle and gawp in disbelief.

Flack is on W from 21st February at 9pm

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When I was a child I thought the word 'clitoris' was slang. I had heard it talked about on TV and in the movies and some girls at school had mentioned it, but because I’d never seen it written in a textbook or heard it discussed in the classroom, I presumed it was a colloquial term, rather than an anatomical description. I was a teenager before I realised that it was a proper word, included in the Oxford English Dictionary and everything.

I’d had sex education – a single day towards the end of primary school that crammed in instructions about wearing deodorant alongside segments about periods – when I was 11 but the clitoris didn’t come up then. Neither did masturbation or female orgasm. A few years later, when teachers showed us videos featuring anti-choice, pro-abstinence Americans as part of our sex education, any talk of female pleasure was similarly absent.

I am Irish and I had always assumed that the dire sex education I received was an anomaly in the developed West, a symptom of how the Catholic church was intertwined in the Irish education system. However, when I started writing a book about female health and sexuality, I realised that it wasn’t just me. It turns out that children and teenagers all over the world, including in the UK, are let down by educators who are too squeamish, too nervous and too unsupported to properly deliver a robust sex education. In 2012, the last time Ofsted carried out an analysis of sex education in UK schools, inspectors found that it required improvement in more than a third.

Last year I spoke to Lucy Emmerson, director of the UK’s Sex Education Forum, a group that works to achieve good relationships and sex education (RSE) for British children and teenagers. She confirmed that the standard is still patchy throughout the UK.

“I think you would find some examples of schools where they’re teaching RSE in a sex-positive way, where they have good lessons on anatomy, where they are talking about pleasure, female as much as male,” she told me. But when pushed to guess at the proportion of schools providing an excellent standard of sex education, her verdict was bleak. “One in 10 or one in 20.”

When researching this piece, I spoke to 10 women in their 20s and 30s, all London-based but from various parts of the UK as well as Ireland and Australia, and each one recalled an abysmal sex education, especially pertaining to female pleasure. “Lol, no,” was the standard response when I asked, “Were you told about the female orgasm at school?”

So much of sex education focuses on pregnancy – and how to avoid it – at the expense of all the other aspects of sex and sensuality, and that’s a situation that disempowers women, minimising their desires and needs while prioritising the straight male experience.

Laura, a 38-year-old marketing director from Berkshire, described how her sex education “explained sex as a penetrative linear experience culminating in male climax”. Catherine, a 35-year-old working in the charity sector, said: “The approach I encountered definitely set up the boys-want-sex-your-job-is-to-avoid-it discourse.”

It’s important to educate everyone about their own pleasure and what they themselves enjoy – we’re all our own primary sexual partner ultimately.

The women I spoke to grew up being taught that pleasure was something you give to boys or men, not something you strive for – on your own or with a partner. That message was reinforced by the pop culture of the 1990s, too. Britney Spears was a virgin, we were told, and yet she also was a sex symbol. A girl’s desire didn’t matter; it was all about desirability. Clare, a 33-year-old producer, recalled growing up alongside The Rules, the 1990s US dating book that discouraged women from “aggressively pursuing” men, telling them instead to “slow down the courtship process” by making themselves “seem unattainable”. “Sex became a weaponised commodity to trade with men for gifts and affection,” she said.

When female pleasure is absent from the sex-ed curriculum, girls begin having sex with warped notions of what is expected of them and what they can expect. One 36-year-old producer told me recently: “I wish I'd been taught that sex can hurt, but it doesn't have to.” It took her years to learn that lesson herself.

I’m in my mid 30s now and many of my peers have young children. There is an assumption that the sex education they’ll receive will be better than ours but it’s not guaranteed. A new RSE curriculum will be made compulsory in UK schools in September 2020 and, crucially, there will be an increased focus on consent and LGBTQ+ relationships. But looking at the draft guidelines for the overhaul, it’s not clear whether female pleasure and orgasm will be highlighted. It seems absurd, as the issue of pleasure for everyone – female, non-binary, male – is surely integral to both consent and queer relationships. If we are going to actually challenge the male orgasm-focused status quo, we have got to start talking about – and teaching others about – female pleasure.

Clare put it this way: “It’s important to educate everyone about their own pleasure and about what they themselves enjoy – male and female, gay, straight, bisexual, we're all our own primary sexual partner ultimately.” Laura agreed: “Everyone should understand that pleasure is something to learn to cultivate for yourself and to learn to give to others. It's a conversation with yourself and your body and then in time with another self and another body and so on.”

For half of us that conversation begins with the clitoris. In some French schools, children and teenagers are being shown 3D models of the clitoris – including not just the visible head but the clitoral bulbs and legs that extend inside the body, too. It’s an initiative that should be rolled out everywhere; educating girls about how their bodies work must be the basis of any education that tackles issues like consent and gender inequality. Every child should know what the word clitoris means. And every child should know what it’s there for.

*Some names have been changed

Vagina: A Re-Education is published by Allen & Unwin on 7th March 2019.

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London Fashion Week has come to a close once again and AW19 wasn’t short of heart-stopping moments. Molly Goddard’s larger-than-life hot pink dress had everyone aflutter, Vivienne Westwood enlisted activists and environmentalists to spread the word about sustainability, while Richard Quinn’s breathtaking show closed the week with live music and confetti.

While there was sartorial inspiration aplenty outside the shows, the real magic took place on the catwalks. Ahead, we’ve rounded up our favourite trends to emerge this season, from homespun knits to power puffers.

Return Of The Mac

How many times can a classic trench coat be reinvented? We’ve surely had every iteration possible by now, but there’s something so enduring about the staple outerwear that whenever a designer refreshes it for the zeitgeist, we take note. That’s not to say, though, that all trenches are made equal. There were plenty on offer this season, from A.W.A.K.E’s pleated number to Eudon Choi’s bus red piece (Burberry, of course, had no fewer than 12 iterations in varying styles, from its signature check to contrast piping). But there were three brands that nailed the 2019 trench.

JW Anderson’s show was pure brilliance and all anyone could talk about afterwards were the two trench coats: one beige, one black, both with heavily ballooned sleeves and checked lapels, both near-perfect. Editor and influencer favourite Rejina Pyo also gave us a refreshing take on the classic style, with a rustic brown patent leather finish (think Chesterfield sofa) that was also seen across trousers, skirts and cropped jackets. Expect to see these pieces all over Instagram next season. Finally, there was Simone Rocha’s romantic rendition, all translucent cream and lilac gauze; paired with a blush bag and frosted crown, it was fit for a royal.

Mellow Yellow

Yellow hues have been going strong since this time last year, but what began as a vibrant Gen Z yellow has morphed into natural, softer shades: less sherbet lemon, more marigold and buttercup. Last season saw the likes of Erdem, Richard Malone and Roksanda explore yellow, and designers brought the typically summery shade into their collections for AW19 (perhaps to lift our mood during the dreariest months?).

Molly Goddard’s show was brimming with paintbox brights but this daffodil number was a standout, as was her dress in a deeper yellow – with consistent ruffles and a belted waist, it felt like an homage to Big Bird. JW Anderson also explored the sunny shade, contrasting a flowing sleeveless dress with black trousers, while Emilia Wickstead created one of the prettiest dresses of the season in an egg yolk hue, with a full '50s skirt, fitted bodice and ruched décolletage.

Power Puffer

The demand for puffer jackets shows no sign of waning this season. While padded outerwear has been popular from catwalk to high street for the past few winters, the focus has moved from neat cropped pieces to XXL power puffers. Think of it like wearing your duvet to work and you’ll find the trend hard to resist.

Burberry led the charge with an ultra futuristic-meets-sportswear silver, red and black number, which featured extended sleeves and trailed on the floor behind the model. If that’s too much of a statement, Christopher Kane’s oil-slick black puffer was pitch perfect (think goth Michelin Man). Over at ASAI, whose first catwalk show independent of the Fashion East family was mighty impressive, the general aesthetic was homespun Withnail and I fabrications, but the oversized puffer jacket was actually the most minimal of all the looks. It ticked three trend boxes: oversized, beige, and cosy as they come.

Head Girl

Hair accessories have become the smartest way to upgrade your get-up in recent seasons, from Shrimps' and Ashley Williams' embellished hair slides to Simone Rocha's and Erdem’s SS19 veiled hats. Perhaps a throwback to the kitsch butterfly clips we wore to school discos in the '90s (trends re-emerge every 20 years, after all) or maybe an extension of the hyper-feminine aesthetic we’ve seen reign supreme over the last few years, we’ve been diving headfirst into this trend. Prada’s SS19 XXL headband only confirmed our suspicions that hair accessories are going nowhere fast.

AW19’s catwalks moved on from the pearly slides that have dominated Instagram though, starting with Erdem’s graceful netted headbands. Less widow at the funeral and more lady of the house, the hair accessories made the elevated looks all the more playful. Going all-out on the impish accessories was Shrimps’ Hannah Weiland, who paired yellow dresses with fuzzy faux fur headbands, while Molly Goddard gave her girls a pared down take on the trend, with simple black Alice bands on scraped-back hairstyles.

Fresh Legs

The annual debate between tights and bare legs in winter rages on, but where once the only viable option was a pair of Marks & Spencer’s trusty 60 deniers, designers have presented us with a world of brightly coloured, patterned tights that – while quite the statement – actually work. This season, Burberry gave us pastel pairs in pink, orange and green, worn with strappy heels, and Huishan Zhang emphasised the prettiness of his frocks with doll-like white pairs.

But it was the more out-there aesthetics that caught our eye and convinced us that, when it comes to your hosiery, it’s go hard or go home. Ashley Williams, who always pays homage to punk details in her collections, gave us pillar-box red tights with pink leopard print dresses, Preen paired the cornflower blue hues in dresses with matching tights (layering fishnets over the top, which we’re trying when the cold snap hits), and Shrimps took a brown, orange, yellow and blue check to the extreme by coordinating a full look in the print – tights included. Consider us converted.

Grandad's Jumper

It’s time to don your best old man knit, because according to fashion search engine Tagwalk, the keyword with the biggest percentage increase on this time last year is 'argyle knit pattern'. Twenty-three looks at AW19 featured the style, ranging from Molly Goddard’s homespun take to Pringle of Scotland’s more sleek diamond pattern. While the golfer’s favourite was also seen at SS19 shows like TOGA, this time around they felt all the more wearable IRL.

As well as his trench coats, the piece that got people talking post-show was JW Anderson’s blown-up paisley knit, complete with sweet Peter Pan collar. With extra long sleeves and nipped in with a waist belt, the Sunday pub knit just got upgraded to workwear. Victoria Beckham took the grown-up vibe even further by pairing her argyle knit with a tweed skirt and shirt with pointed collar, while Preen got us thinking about hitting the slopes with its multilayered, multi-patterned take. Suddenly, we’re no longer wishing for spring.

BDE (Big Dress Energy)

If AW19’s shows were anything to go by, the way to make an entrance is by donning the biggest dress imaginable. Thanks to brands like Reformation, Ganni and Rixo, dresses have been given the kind of airtime once lavished on bags and coats – that one item that makes the look, rather than just adding to it – but this season, things got ruffled, plumped and pouffed to the extreme.

Molly Goddard showed us what Killing Eve’s Villanelle would be wearing next with her larger-than-life hot pink tulle gown – the dress that sparked a thousand Instagram Stories on day three of London Fashion Week – while Roksanda’s regal, rust-hued beauty was the highlight of the collection. Richard Quinn closed the season with his breathtaking show on Tuesday, sending out dreamy dresses with a twist. Giving 'high neck' a new meaning, collars were taken up to model’s ears, while black latex gloves tempered the saccharine floral prints.

Country Pursuits

A checked coat is a perennial classic but we’ve seen new life breathed into the wardrobe staple over the past few years. We’re only halfway through AW19’s Fashion Month and there’s already been a host of styles and shapes on offer. At Vivienne Westwood we saw mannish pieces in heritage checks; at Victoria Beckham, work-appropriate pieces that feel relevant for seasons to come; and at Peter Pilotto, patent pieces that combine two trends at once.

What we loved about LFW's checked pieces was the number of designers paying homage to the countryside. With Brexit looming large, the fashion industry has made clear its feelings about Britain leaving the EU, and many used their collections as a love letter to the aesthetics, traditions and craftsmanship of England. ASAI paired gone-for-a-ramble chunky socks with brown boots and oversized coats, Alexachung’s signature blazers got an escape-to-the-country refresh with tweeds and contrasting lapels, and JW Anderson went full-on equine with his riding hats and accompanying checked capes.

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On the twentieth anniversary of the subversive teen movie, star and author of Brave, Rose McGowan, remembers the making of a cult classic.

The only prom I've ever been to in my lifetime was the one in my 1999 movie, Jawbreaker. You know, the one where my classmates threw corsages at me… and screamed at me… and heckled me. It would prepare me for my later life, I suppose, but despite the projectiles and insults that I associate with my one and only prom — I look back on the set of that brash, punk, sardonic, wild movie with love. Everybody, from the director down to the extras, was in it together. We knew that it was really special, what it meant to the LGBT community, to have an out director, Darren Stein, creating his vision for a studio. A lot of movies are done by committee, and this one definitely wasn’t. We all knew we were doing something that the establishment wouldn’t like, but we weren’t afraid. We weren’t afraid of anybody.

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It was slightly shocking that a studio backed the movie in the first place, though, considering the concept (mean girl remorselessly kills teen beauty queen with an iconic piece of sweet candy) and the fact that most gay directors at the time were considered “fringe.” But they did, and they let Darren go for it… on a meager budget (the average studio film cost about $50 million in the mid-90s; our budget didn’t even break $10 million). With limited budget came limited time, so we only shot for 30 far-too-short days with almost no oversight (meaning the studio did not appear to interfere with the content). But it was a great place and state to work in. There was nobody on set telling us not to do something; there was nobody telling us we went too far. We had a feeling back then that it was kind of the Wild West; Darren created this environment in which we could just be our wicked, delicious selves, and what came out of it was something that can’t be replicated — this genuinely punk sensibility — because we were actually able to say, “Fuck it. Let's do this.”

It’s the only environment in which my character Courtney Shayne could have been born. Here is a young woman who says, hours after killing her best friend (Charlotte Ayanna), with no struggle or doubt in her eyes, “I killed Liz. I killed the teen dream. Deal with it.” I don't know if you could create someone like Courtney, exactly as she is, now. I think that's in some ways a pity, because she was an absurdly heightened reflection, but a reflection nonetheless, of real life. We all know who the mean girls were. I had them at my school, you probably had them at your school, and in reality, they’re not necessarily the most PC people. They don’t always know they’re mean people; they just are. And so I studied them for a long time, and I took Courtney a little further. I played her like a bit of a sociopath, because sociopaths don't really know that they're sociopaths. They just are.

And while Courtney could have been created today, she wouldn’t be the same. It would need to be clear that Courtney has sociopathy, and that there’s something wrong with her. There would have to be a reason. Scalding, female anger isn’t something we are generally allowed to express on screen or in life unless it’s attached to a man. I'm angry because my man cheated on me, or I'm angry because I’ve been wronged by a man. But it's a rarity that a woman is just angry or bitchy because she just is. It’s rare that a movie doesn’t try to fix her anger, that lets her stay exactly as she is.

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Jawbreaker, like Courtney, is angry, dark, and ruthless simply because it is, and because that’s what Darren wanted it to be. It’s why the movie got to be so punk-meets-sociopathy-meets-Bette-Davis-meets-hell-on-wheels. It’s why we were able to break boundaries and make the lead handsome guy (Ethan Erickson) give a blowjob to a Popsicle while my character holds a position of sexual dominance over him. It’s also probably why the studio caved at the last minute and promoted Can’t Hardly Wait (a classic in its own way, but it’s no Jawbreaker) instead of our movie. But it’s also why it broke through, anyway, and why we’re still talking about it 20 years later.

The love that exists for Jawbreaker isn’t classic, sweet nostalgia. It’s cooler, a little scarier, and a dangerous twist on that concept. Fitting, for the movie turned a sweet, classic candy into a murder weapon.

But even as that darker nostalgia opens the path for a TV series revival (co-written by Darren himself), it’s also what drives me to offer this to whoever fills Courtney’s shoes next: I wish you the best of luck, but nobody will ever be me.

And that's a very Courtney Alice Shayne thing to say, but it’s true.

As told to Kelsea Stahler.

Jawbreaker is available to stream on YouTube Google Play and Amazon Video.

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It's been an unusual week in politics – for the first time in what feels like forever, Theresa May's dismal attempts to secure a Brexit deal hasn't been the main thing on commentators' lips. Instead, “The Independent Group”, a breakaway group of anti-Brexit MPs from Labour and now the Conservatives too, has been front and centre – and the new party's numbers look set to grow over the coming days, according to reports on Thursday morning. So, who are these people, what do they stand for and, most importantly, do they actually have any sway over the direction of Brexit? Here goes…

Who are the Independent Group?

So far, there are 11 people in the group, of various generations and backgrounds: eight former Labour MPs and three former Conservatives. The seven ex-Labour members – Chuka Umunna, Luciana Berger, Angela Smith, Ann Coffey, Gavin Shuker, Mike Gapes and Chris Leslie – announced their historic move away from their party in a joint press conference on Monday morning; while the eighth former Labour member, Joan Ryan, and the three former Conservatives – Anna Soubry, Sarah Wollaston and Heidi Allen – joined them on Wednesday.

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Then there were 11…. #ChangePolitics

A post shared by The Independent Group (@theindgroup) on Feb 20, 2019 at 11:04pm PST

Everyone has their own reasons for leaving their party, but several common themes have emerged, with some citing the scourge of antisemitism within the party, Jeremy Corbyn's “weak” leadership, his wishy-washy stance on Brexit. The ex-Tories were more ill at ease due to the power of the “hard-line anti-EU awkward squad” (Anna Soubry's words) over the party (that's Jacob Rees-Mogg and the rest of the pro-Leave European Research Group). Both sets of MPs have said it's not them as individual politicians that have “changed” in recent times, but their parties.

It's worth noting that the group isn't a political party yet, but a registered company, meaning it can't yet field candidates in elections and doesn't have to disclose its financial backers (although its members have left the door open to changing its status in future).

What do they stand for?

We know what the Independent Group is against – Brexit, antisemitism, the “old” politics of left and right – but, at the moment at least, it's less clear what they're for, other than a “new” way of doing things. “Politics is broken. Let’s change it,” is their slogan, and they're using the hashtag #ChangePolitics. The group's values, which are broadly centrist, are vaguely outlined on its website (which briefly crashed during Monday's press conference), but it's nowhere close to having fully fleshed-out policies yet.

“Our aim is to pursue policies that are evidence-based, not led by ideology, taking a long-term perspective to the challenges of the 21st century in the national interest, rather than locked in the old politics of the 20th century in the party’s interests,” the group says, adding that it “aim[s] to recognise the value of healthy debate, show tolerance towards different opinions and seek to reach across outdated divides and build consensus to tackle Britain’s problems.”

As for who will lead the group, Chuka Umunna is a strong contender. In an interview on Tuesday, he said he wanted as much sway over the group's future as possible. When it comes to future elections, success looks unlikely while the group has the UK's first-past-the-post electoral system (which advantages the two main parties) to contend with, despite a snap poll by Sky News on Tuesday suggesting it was already more popular than the Lib Dems. It's a struggle for smaller parties to convert votes into Parliamentary seats, something that UKIP, which won over 900,000 votes in the 2010 general election and not a single seat in the House of Commons, knows all too well. But Parliamentary seats aren't the only way to affect political change these days – as UKIP's long battle for a referendum on EU membership, despite having no MPs, highlights.

What does The Independent Group mean for Brexit?

Its members all support a second referendum Brexit, or People's Vote, but given that there are just 36 days until the UK officially leaves the EU, the chance of it having much impact before then are slim. It's unlikely to affect Theresa May's Brexit deal negotiations in the short-term, commentators predict. However, the group's formation is a boon for the wider campaign for another public vote, particularly if it finally manages to encourage Labour to decisively back a second referendum, which is the most the most realistic way for this to happen.

There's speculation that, by creating a splinter group so late in the day, The Independent Group is hoping to encourage Labour's front bench to change its non-committal stance on Brexit, by demonstrating that a sizeable number of voters would consider leaving Labour to support them. As journalist Charlie Cooper writes in Politico, however: “It’s a risky strategy and its chance of success — like so much in Brexit politics over the coming weeks — profoundly uncertain.”

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Update (21st February): Jussie Smollett has turned himself in to Chicago authorities, according to a tweet from The Associated Press. Anthony Guglielmi, the Chief Communications Officer for the Chicago Police Department, also confirmed that police currently have Smollett in custody. Wednesday evening, the Chicago Police Department confirmed on Twitter that charges of disorderly conduct had been brought against Smollett for allegedly filing a false police report.

“Felony criminal charges have been approved by @CookCountySAO against Jussie Smollett for Disorderly Conduct / Filing a False Police Report,” reads the tweet. “Detectives will make contact with his legal team to negotiate a reasonable surrender for his arrest.”

Representation for Smollett gave the following statement Wednesday evening: “Like any other citizen, Mr. Smollett enjoys the presumption of innocence, particularly when there has been an investigation like this one where information, both true and false, has been repeatedly leaked.”

If found guilty, Smollett could face up to three years in prison.

This post was originally published on February 20, 2019.

According to a tweet from the Chief Communications Officer at the Chicago Police Department, Empire star Jussie Smollett is officially considered a suspect in connection to his alleged attack in the city earlier this month.

Per the tweet, Smollett — who previously claimed that he was attacked by two men who doused him in bleach, threw racial and homophobic slurs at him, and put a rope around his neck — is now a suspect for the crime of filing a false police report.

“Case Update: Jussie Smollett is now officially classified as a suspect in a criminal investigation by #ChicagoPolice for filing a false police report (Class 4 felony),” the tweet reads. “Detectives are currently presenting evidence before a Cook County Grand Jury.”

Case Update: Jussie Smollett is now officially classified as a suspect in a criminal investigation by #ChicagoPolice for filing a false police report (Class 4 felony). Detectives are currently presenting evidence before a Cook County Grand Jury. pic.twitter.com/FhDcbBKsuU

— Anthony Guglielmi (@AJGuglielmi) February 20, 2019

This news comes after brothers Olabinjo Osundairo and Abimbola Osundairo were arrested in connection to the alleged attack last week and then released Friday. New reports about the brothers’ alleged involvement have surfaced in the days since they were cleared.

Smollett has maintained his innocence in the situation. A statement from his lawyer last week reads, per Variety:

“As a victim of a hate crime who has cooperated with the police investigation, Jussie Smollett is angered and devastated by recent reports that the perpetrators are individuals he is familiar with. He has now been further victimized by claims attributed to these alleged perpetrators that Jussie played a role in his own attack. Nothing is further from the truth and anyone claiming otherwise is lying.”

Refinery29 has reached out to Smollett and the Chicago Police Department for comment.

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Lily Allen posted an Instagram story showing herself getting ready in the bathroom for a Brit awards after-party on Wednesday night: pretty routine behaviour for a #relatable singer in 2019. Less ordinary, though, was the candid and taboo-busting glimpse it gave into her beauty regime.

“Literally lightening my nipples right now…” the topless 33-year-old told her 1 million followers, as a makeup artist applied body makeup to Allen's breasts, before briefing viewers even more intimately about her body hair. “Georgie is literally plucking hairs out of my nipples and I didn’t even know they were there,” she added. “Because I obviously haven’t looked at my nipples in so long.”

The singer, having taken off the semi-sheer black Coach dress she wore for the ceremony, was changing into a flesh-coloured leotard and sheer dress with platinum wig for the Warner Music party. Presumably Georgie just wanted to ensure Lily avoided a (what-would-have-been-widely-deemed) “wardrobe malfunction” but by publicly plucking the star's nipple hair, she shed light on a regular, yet undiscussed, part of many women's beauty regimes. Nipple hair is common, normal, annoying at times, but also kind of hilarious – so why is it still so taboo?

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Nowadays, certain types of body hair aren't just accepted among certain feminist milieu – they're a badge of honour. Furry armpits, fuzzy legs and silky forearms are now considered “cool” and even enviable by many women (and some men) – even if they still don't comply with mainstream women's body and beauty standards. But nipple hair? Have you ever heard another woman in the public eye talk about theirs (let alone be as laissez-faire about the situation as Allen)? Us neither. Not all body hair is considered equal (and then there's the whole separate issue of women's facial hair).

Even body-positive campaigns and pro-body hair movements rarely mention, let alone celebrate, nipple hair. The focus of this year's “Januhairy” campaign, which saw women ditch their razors and cancel their wax appointments for the first month of the year, was largely on the more socially palatable leg and arm hair. “I just want women to feel more comfortable in their own beautifully unique bodies,” Laura Jackson, the 21-year-old Exeter University student who founded the movement, told the BBC, making no mention, for example, of toe hair, belly hair or, indeed, nipple hair. But maybe we shouldn't be surprised; we're living in a world where the world's first razor advertising campaign depicting a woman with actual body hair went live only last year.

Women's nipple hair is dubbed “an awkward and embarrassing problem” by the tabloid press, while Allen has been since been deemed a “scrote” by a Twitter troll following her Story, and accused of revealing “TMI” by a Canadian showbiz website. Yet based on anecdotal evidence, it's common: just look at all the medicalised articles answering “yes” to the question “Is women's body hair normal?” on Google. So why isn't it simply considered a standard part of being a woman, with all the hormonal changes and imbalances that that can entail over one's lifetime?

Hairy nipples can sometimes be a sign of medical conditions including polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which affects an estimated fifth of women in the UK, and Cushing's syndrome, a rarer condition caused by too much cortisol in the body. If anything, your nipple hair could be a helpful hint to get yourself medically checked out. And if you get rid of it, that's cool too (it's perfectly safe to remove your nipple hair). But the option is always there to shout about it on social media, too.

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Warning: This story contains spoilers for Leaving Neverland, as well as graphic details about alleged sexual assaults.

I was three years old when the first allegations of sexual abuse surfaced against Michael Jackson in 1993, 13 when he was arrested on a new batch of charges in 2003, and 15 when his highly publicised trial began in 2005. I vividly remember the day he died in June 2009. I was at my summer job at a shoe store in Montreal, and my boss cried.

That timeline means two things: First, that I missed the peak of the pop superstar’s fame (circa 1982 to, roughly, 1991), that moment when he was well and truly untouchable, on top of the world. But also, that for the near entirety of my life, Jackson has been a suspected pedophile. For me, it’s an enormous asterisk to his legend, the caveat that lurks in the back of my mind whenever “Thriller” plays.

As a result, I felt like I knew what I was getting into when I started Leaving Neverland, Dan Reed’s controversial documentary in which two men recount their personal experiences with Jackson as children, including alleged sexual abuse that they kept hidden until adulthood. But nothing — not Sundance hype, not news about Jackson fans protesting the content, or even Paris Jackson’s rumoured meltdown — can prepare you for 236 minutes (roughly four hours) of virtually uninterrupted, brutal testimony by James Safechuck and Wade Robson about the years of alleged abuse (starting at age 11 and 7, respectively) that has largely derailed their lives, and that of their families.

Both men met Jackson during the same year, in 1987. California native Safechuck wasn’t a fan but booked a job as Jackson’s counterpart on a Pepsi commercial when he was 10 years old. Australian-born Robson was mesmerised by the “Thriller” video, and taught himself to dance like Jackson so convincingly that he won at lookalike contest at the age of 5. The prize? A meeting with Jackson during his tour in Australia which morphed into a stage appearance for Robson. In both cases, the singer kept in touch, turning the boys into mascots of sorts, and inviting them on tour with him, and to his multiple residences, including Neverland Ranch, his massive, amusement-park-like property near Santa Barbara.

Ironically, neither Robson nor Safechuck had heard of each other until 2013, when the latter filed a lawsuit (four years after Jackson’s death) against MJJ Productions and MJJ Ventures for hosting the dance competition that led him to Jackson, and the ensuing alleged abuse. Robson’s admission prompted Safechuck to file his own suit against Jackson’s estate in 2014. (In the U.S., a person seeking damages for emotional trauma or personal injury has legal recourse even after the person allegedly responsible has died.) Both cases were dismissed in 2017. (For a complete timeline, head to Spin.)

As many of his fans have already pointed out, this means Jackson has thus far been cleared of all charges ever brought against him. (His 1993 case was settled for roughly $23 million, with amounts paid out in a trust fund for accuser Jordan Chandler, and lump sums for each of his parents, among others.) Still, those cold facts lose their potency when faced with the sheer amount of clinical, precise recollections by both Safechuck and Robson, many of which echo each other in unsettling ways.

The documentary will air on Channel 4 on March 6 and 7 in two parts.. And if you’re planning on watching, here’s a preview of what you can expect.

Graphic details of sexual assault

I cannot stress this enough. There’s a reason this will air in two separate parts. It is gruelling, and difficult to sit through. Sundance screenings featured mandated counsellors on call in the lobby for viewers who might need them, a luxury those watching at home won’t have. So, if you are worried you might be triggered, trust your gut.

Both Safechuck (now 40), and Robson (now 36), go into great detail about what they claim the singer asked of them sexually. A particularly gutting scene features Safechuck narrating a photo tour of the Neverland Ranch, listing the many, many rooms in which he and Jackson had sexual contact, and exactly what they did there. In another memory, of the first time Jackson showed him how to masturbate — at the age of 11 — he describes how his pre-pubescent penis became so inflamed from use that he had to dip it in warm water to soothe the pain. As for Robson, his memories of abuse begin even earlier, when, as a 7-year-old, he was invited to the Neverland Ranch after traveling to Hollywood from Australia. Robson describes Jackson sending him to a far corner of the bed, and then telling him to bend over and spread his butt cheeks so he could masturbate. His voice gets hoarse when he talks about the feeling of having an adult man’s penis inside his eight-year-old mouth. And it only escalates from there.

Voicemails and phone calls from Jackson to Safechuck and Robson

A guiding thread throughout the documentary is that Jackson would go through very intense phases of being infatuated with a boy — and in Safechuck and Robson’s case, their families — during which he would remain in near-constant contact. Take Robson, for example. He first met Jackson in 1987, after winning a dancing contest in Australia. (He would later become a sought-after choreographer, working with Britney Spears and N’Sync among others.) The singer, in Brisbane for his Bad tour, brought him up on stage for a dance routine. For the next two years, he called Robson nearly every day, keeping him on the phone for up to seven hours. He even asked the family to get a fax machine so that he could send them handwritten messages, and left heartfelt voicemails ending with “I love you.”

Reed includes a lot of these in the documentary, and, when presented in the context of Safechuck and Robson’s interviews, they are damning. (The high-pitched, sing-songy timber of Jackson’s voice doesn’t help to allay any feelings of discomfort.) Regardless of what you think of the validity of the sexual abuse claims, it’s hard to dispute that this international superstar comes off as a lonely and disturbed grown man seeking inappropriate solace in the attention of young boys.

Disturbing and candid footage and photos of the icon with small children

Reed purposefully kept the interview circle pretty closed off, which means that we get little context beyond Safechuck and Robson’s immediate experience, combined with the perspective of some close family members and their own spouses. (Jackson’s estate has issued a statement denying the allegations as false, and questioning the motives of Safechuck, Robson and Reed.)

But while that technique does immerse the viewer in their world, I’d argue it also limits the film’s ability to give a real sense of what it meant to be Michael Jackson in the late 80s and into the early 90s. Think Beyoncé + Taylor Swift + Ariana Grande + Rihanna, and then multiply that by a hundred. For people like myself, who grew up during his controversy-filled years, it can be difficult to fathom.

As a result, the sheer amount of public footage of the singer holding hands or in close contact with little boys — including child star Macaulay Culkin, who denies any abuse took place — really comes as a shock. The kind of behaviour depicted even in the film’s more innocent moments, like Jackson palling around on the set of a Pepsi ad with Safechuck in the late 80s, feels wrong. And without fully grasping just how powerful and beloved of a public figure Jackson was, it’s impossible not to constantly wonder how this was ever considered harmless.

The same goes for Jackson’s own childhood, which is alluded to by many, but never explained. It might be easier to understand the collective acceptance of a grown man wanting to “play” and spending his evenings watching movies and bingeing on popcorn, if his behaviour was put in the context of his early fame with the Jackson Five, and the rough treatment and physical abuse he was subjected to by his father, Joe Jackson.

That kind of context might also help elucidate why both families were so eager to host the man they viewed as a kind of lost boy. Safechuck and Robson’s mothers describe regarding Jackson as their son, and he clearly viewed these adults as the parental figures he lacked himself. Unposed pictures of him with both families appear like potential Christmas cards upon first viewing — but as the boys’ tales unfold, those same candid moments take on a much darker nature.

Interviews with the mothers and wives of both alleged victims

What makes Robson and Safechucks’s memories even more difficult to sit through is the fact that their mothers were often within earshot of what was going on. Joy Robson and Stephanie Safechuck are brutally honest in the roles they unknowingly played in their sons’ alleged abuse. At one point, Stephanie even describes sneaking up to the door of the hotel room where James was staying with Jackson, and trying to hear what was going on. “They were playing,” she recalls.

The gut reaction to such testimony is disgust. How could these parents allow their young sons to be put in such situations? How could they fail their children in this way? The film doesn’t let them off the hook (and it shouldn’t) but it also tries to answer those difficult questions. One of the most interesting aspects of Leaving Neverland is the way it exposes the dangerous lure of fame by proxy. You get the sense that neither Joy nor Stephanie would have gone along with the kind of requests Jackson made had it been anyone else. They’re very candid about how special he made them feel, and how excited they were at the idea of what he could make happen for their sons, but also for them. Both claim they knew nothing of what was really going on. And yet, as the film reaches its second hour, they’re forced to grapple with their own failings, especially when confronted with interviews with Safechuck and Robson’s respective wives, who act as impartial observers, having not witnessed any of this firsthand.

Messy, complicated emotions

Neither of the men, nor their families, conceal the real affection and feelings they held for Jackson. Robson’s sister, who also grew up in Jackson’s orbit, tearfully describes how upset she was when she learned from a newscast that her “friend” had died in June 2009. Joy and Stephanie described Jackson as a surrogate child at multiple points throughout the film. When he died, Joy kept to her bed for weeks. (Stephanie, who was aware of her son’s story by then, says she celebrated.)

Describing the constant sexual contact of his early years with the singer, Safechuck says: “It sounds sick but it’s like when you’re first dating somebody, you do it a lot.”

Both men describe being in love with the singer, and wanting to participate in sexual acts to please him. It’s a jolting reminder of the insidious nature of child sexual abuse, so deftly portrayed in HBO’s The Tale just last year: victims often don’t consider that what they are experiencing as abuse until years later. For Robson and Safechuck, the turning point arrived when they themselves became fathers, and realised just how young they really were when all of this was allegedly taking place.

All of this is made even messier by the fact that Safechuck and Robson both testified in favour of Jackson at various points in his history of legal troubles — and forcefully denied that they were themselves abused — making them feel complicit in his alleged pattern of abuse, which they claim extended far beyond themselves.

The second half of the film is largely devoted to Safechuck and Robson coming to terms with their trauma, and the impact that Jackson has had on their lives. And regardless of what you as a viewer end up believing, Leaving Neverland is a powerful indictment of the perils of fame, and those who come too close to its glare.

If you have experienced sexual violence of any kind, please visit Rape Crisis or call 0808 802 9999.

Leaving Neverland will air on Channel 4 on March 6 and 7 in two parts.

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The success of movies like A Star is Born and Bohemian Rhapsody in 2018 are sure signs that moviegoers are hungry for music-themed films right now. Enter Rocketman, the Elton John biopic that, by the looks of its newest trailer, promises to be full of heart, high-drama, and larger-than-life glam.

Rocketman stars Taron Egerton as Elton John and follows the British rock legend through his teens and early career up to the pinnacle of his success in the 1970s. But perhaps “biopic” is the wrong word. Compared to other films about the lives of major musicians, Rocketman is much more fantastical, according to Egerton.

“Everyone thinks it’s a bio-pic,” told Collider last year. “It isn’t. It’s a fantasy musical, so it’s actually his songs used to express important beats in his life at emotional moments. He’s not the only character that sings. It’s going to be fun.”

In the trailer, elements of this surrealism jump out, including images of John swimming to his younger self underwater and a scene in which he, as a child, conducts a full orchestra in his bedroom.

The trailer also highlights the moments of strife and tension that plagued John in his career, including his sexuality, feelings of loneliness, as well as his drug use.

Rocketman will hit UK cinemas on May 17.

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Many young girls dream about their wedding day — they think about their dress and their partner. They imagine the venue where they’ll dance and the smiling people who'll fill the space. But as a child, all I used to dream about was being a mum. When I was younger, I wanted five kids. I couldn't wait until it was my turn. I’ve wanted to be a mother for as long as I can remember.

And then it happened.

When I was 29, I became pregnant for the first time. It wasn't planned, but it was more than welcome, and I was confident that life was unfolding just as I had planned. But amidst the anticipation, in the sixth month of my pregnancy, we lost our baby. We found out around the fifth month that she was very sick and was most likely not going to make it. I was 25 weeks when I lost her. I've never experienced anything like that feeling in my life, and I had a very hard time recovering from it.

In the aftermath, I felt that the only thing that would make me feel better was getting pregnant again, but we soon found out it was going to be difficult because I had a genetic issue that would likely complicate any future pregnancies or cause my babies to be sick. My doctors advised against getting pregnant naturally, and suggested I do IVF, in-vitro fertilisation. That process took over a year and a half, but after tons of emotional ups and downs, I finally found out I was expecting a healthy miracle baby girl due February 21, 2017. I felt like my turn had finally come.

Other than severe morning sickness during the first trimester, it was relatively smooth sailing up until around six months of pregnancy. I remember it so vividly: I was getting a pedicure and I looked down at my feet, only to realise they were abnormally swollen. They didn't look like they belonged to me.

That's strange, I thought as I stared at them. See, based on my pre-natal reading and research, I thought swollen feet only happened in the eighth month of pregnancy, towards the very end. And the next day, when I told my doctor, she said I must’ve eaten something salty. She said that salty foods, and the current heat (it was 90 degrees that week), meant that I was experiencing some edema, which is intense swelling and inflammation.

“Nothing to worry about at all,” she replied.

But when the temperature dropped, my swelling didn’t wane.

But when the temperature dropped, my swelling didn’t wane. The next few weeks went by, and I started to slow down. Walking, even up a small set of stairs, started to become more difficult. Even walking on a flat surface was hard. I didn’t want to move, I didn't want to go anywhere at all. I kept thinking, So many of my friends who were pregnant were able to get around just fine. That's when I started to realise something might not be right.

As I got bigger, things got much worse. Towards the very end of my pregnancy, I was unable to walk at all. My feet were in so much pain. They looked like elephant feet. But at every visit, I asked my doctor, “Can you please look at my feet? They hurt. They're not okay. I'm not okay. What is going on here?” And my doctor kept saying, “Oh honey, that's just pregnancy!” So I trusted her. Even though I was worried, I knew that swollen feet and moving slower than usual were symptoms that happened at some point during pregnancy. I told myself that I was just experiencing them more intensely than most.

My doctor kept saying, “Oh honey, that’s just pregnancy!” So I trusted her.

The week before my baby shower, I felt what I thought were contractions — I was in pain all over. But this time, my doctor didn’t dismiss my symptoms. She suspected I had developed late onset gestational diabetes. So she told me that after the weekend, I should come in and get my blood sugar tested. I had my baby shower that Sunday, and on Monday I had my husband take me to get the blood test. I had a meeting at the office that morning, so I figured I'd pop in to get the test and go straight there. Little did I know, we wouldn't be going anywhere that day.

When I got to the doctor’s office, the nurse took my blood pressure and a urine sample, which is protocol when you're pregnant. We didn’t even have to get the blood test done — right away, the nurse noticed my blood pressure was high and that I had protein in my urine. Those are the two main signs of the pregnancy condition preeclampsia, which is marked by high blood pressure and protein in urine. She told me I had to rush to the hospital to get monitored. She also told me there was a 75% chance that they were going to have to induce my labour that day.

I was three weeks early, so beyond the shock of having my baby early, I was logistically unprepared. I remember thinking, What? The baby's furniture hadn't even been delivered yet, and I didn't have my hospital bag packed.

I got to the hospital and was hooked up to monitors right away. The nurses there monitored me for four hours to see if I had another high blood pressure reading. If I did, then I definitely had preeclampsia, and they were going to have to take the baby out right away. It turned out that I didn't end up having another high blood pressure, but I wasn't leaving. I told my doctor I wouldn't go home. I felt sick and I couldn't imagine going one more day (let alone three weeks) living like this. Every part of my body hurt. She spoke to my high risk doctor, and they decided that it was probably best to induce me.

I got induced at 7 p.m. that Monday — the day after my beautiful baby shower and just hours after my doctor told me to come in for blood sugar testing.

I got induced at 7 p.m. that Monday — the day after my beautiful baby shower and just hours after my doctor told me to come in for blood sugar testing. The labor wasn’t easy. I hurt everywhere. It was hard for me to hold my breath during contractions when they told me to, and I just felt so sick inside. My gut, as it had been for a while, was telling me something was not right. But what did I know, really? I had never been through this. I guess that's just what labor is. It’s not supposed to be fun, I told myself. But deep inside I wasn’t entirely convinced.

After 17 hours of labor I gave birth to a beautiful baby girl named Kate Kasher. My husband and I were in heaven. Our little miracle that we had been waiting for was finally here. The nightmare was behind us, and we were so relieved.

A few hours after she was born, I was moved to my postpartum room. Some family and friends came by the hospital. During that time, one of the nurses came in and told me that Kate was breathing a bit too fast and would be taken up to the neonatal intensive unit. Immediately, my husband threw up. I started having a panic attack. All I could think was, how is this happening? I thought we were in the clear and the nightmare was over. I need my baby girl to be ok. I cannot go through this again.

The nurses took her to the NICU. They soon told us that Kate had extra fluid in her lungs and had to be hooked up to oxygen. The doctors told me she that this was something they'd seen before, and it's often reversed itself.

I barely slept that night. When I woke up the next day, I felt a bit lightheaded. I also forgot to take my antidepressant the day before. I usually get lightheaded and a bit nauseous if I miss a dose, so I kept telling myself that was the problem. I took my medicine and shortly after my nurse took me to go see Kate in the NICU. As he was wheeling me to the elevator, the entire room started spinning. I began seeing spots. I told him he needed to turn back around and bring me to my bed, and that I wasn't feeling okay.

My Ob/Gyn called my room and asked me about my symptoms. After I described them, she told me she thought I had a blood clot on my lungs. She ordered a CT scan for me, and they sent me downstairs to get it. The CT scan didn't show a clot, but it did reveal some excess fluid surrounding my heart. My doctor called and said they were going to give me some medicine that would help me rid my system of the fluid and that I should start to feel better.

But when I got the medicine, I started to feel worse — not better.

But when I got the medicine, I started to feel worse — not better. I had been moved back into my postpartum room and was getting ready to go to bed when I really started to have difficulty breathing. I asked the nurse on-call if I could get some oxygen, since I had tightness in my chest. They hooked me up to oxygen under my nose and told me that I was probably just having a panic attack because of everything going on with the baby. I begged the nurse to stay close to me that night. I told her I really didn't feel well and that I was scared. She sat by my side until I fell asleep.

Around 5 a.m., I was woken up by a team of doctors — including my Ob/Gyn — standing around my bed. They told me my oxygen levels had dropped severely overnight and that they had to take me to the other part of the hospital to do some testing. They wheeled me to get an echocardiogram. As I was sitting there with the same six doctors around me, breathing got harder and harder. Before I knew it, I was gasping for air. I made a motion to the nurse to give me an oxygen mask.

Within seconds, I was moved to a gurney. About 10 more people rushed in as I was hooked up to a huge mask and taken to the intensive care unit. I remember the entire thing so vividly. When I got to the ICU, I was hooked up to an even bigger mask and had about five monitors behind me. A nurse came in, put a catheter in me, and started draining fluid from my body. Within about 30 minutes, five litres of fluid had been removed from me and I started breathing normally again. To put things into perspective, they drained about 25-40 pounds of fluid from my body. I gained 80 pounds during my entire pregnancy. Almost half of it was fluid.

The entire cardiac team at the hospital showed up in my room. I knew it wasn't good.

“Was I dying? What was happening? When can I see Kate?”

All I wanted was to be healthy and be with my baby. The doctors introduced themselves and told me that I had just experienced heart failure.

Just like that.

They said my lungs had filled up with all of the fluid that my body had retained during my pregnancy, and that my heart had to pump extra hard to keep me alive. As a result, my heart became weak. They said it's a condition called peripartum cardiomyopathy, which is a rare form of heart failure that happens during pregnancy. This was not related to preeclampsia, although the symptoms are extremely similar. They told me I was very lucky: if I'd had a home birth, or if I was at a different hospital, I may not have survived. I couldn't believe my ears. I looked at my mother and my husband who were in the room with us and started crying. I just kept thinking about them, about my sister, about Kate, and what would happen to them if I had died.

All I wanted to know was that I was going to be okay.

All I wanted to know was that I was going to be okay. The doctors told me that they couldn't really give me an answer. We had to take it minute by minute and see how I was recovering. I was so scared. They kept looking at my ankles and the back of my neck to make sure the swelling had gone down. And, in the middle of all this ambiguity and fear — when my hormones were in flux and I wasn’t able to see my own daughter — they told me that I could never have a baby again.

I stayed in the ICU for two days and then was moved to the cardiac ICU floor. Everyone there was about 60-years-old or older. What the hell was I doing here?

I still had not seen Kate. Jake, my husband, used FaceTime to keep me connected to her, and traversed the hospital to visit us both. She was hooked up to all of these machines and so was I, and we could only see each other through a phone screen. All I wanted to do was hold her and tell her that we were going to be okay. But I couldn’t give either of us that reassurance.

Over the next five days, I was put on four heart medications and started to show improvement. Kate got released and sent home on February 5 — she was luckily 100% okay and recovered. The day before my birthday, February 7, my doctors all decided that I was well enough to go home too. That was the best news I had ever gotten, because for a few days I thought I was never leaving that hospital and was never going to see my daughter again.

I can't even describe the feeling I had when I walked into my front door. I was home with my husband, my baby, my family, and my dog — the people I never thought I'd be with again. It was the best day ever, but the road to recovery wasn’t complete.

I was told I could only have a litre of fluid a day (including water, coffee, soup, etc.) I had to watch my salt intake as well and have less than 1000 mg a day. For the first month home, I was pretty much scared to eat or drink anything, because I thought it would kill me. I was honestly too scared to do anything. I had major, major PTSD. I couldn't sleep.

I was a new mom and I could barely hold my daughter or even walk up the steps with her. Instead, I had to attend cardiac rehab three times a week for three months. There, I would be hooked up to a heart monitor while walking on a treadmill or doing some sort of light exercise. I wasn’t allowed to work out on my own or do any activity anywhere else.

And, as if all of this wasn't bad enough, I was left with tiny fractures all across my feet and toes from all of the swelling. I had to wear a boot on each foot for two months, and my heart took six months total to heal.

My daughter is now 2 years old, and I'm only finally starting to take care of her the way I've always wanted to. I can hold her for long periods of time, walk up the steps with her, and put her carseat in the car —all of the things that I never thought I'd be able to do again. It's still a bit challenging for me to care for her on my own, but I’m getting better at it every day. As long as I keep up the work to stay healthy, it's only going to get better and easier.

I am one of the lucky ones. I know it. I thank god every single day for that.

I am still on my heart medications, but I am one of the lucky ones. I know it. I thank God every single day for that. If there is anything I want to do in my life moving forward, it's to educate people on this condition and raise awareness because it is ridiculous how few people really know about PPCM. If women were able to read about it leading up to their pregnancy in books like What To Expect, or even in pamphlets at the doctor’s office — it could save their lives. I have seen and was given a million pamphlets at the doctor during my pregnancy. Why on Earth was this not one of them?”

I would have probably diagnosed myself with PPCM or maybe would have asked my doctor about it, had I known it existed. It is said to affect around 1 in 5,000 to 1 in 10,000 women or 1 in every 2000 women who give birth. Most women who experience this never get their heart back to a normal ejection fraction. They continue to live their lives on tons of medications and need to be monitored regularly.

I want to help women who are going through it and let them know that they're going to be okay. When I was diagnosed and so scared, I kept searching for things online that would make me feel better. I wanted to read people’s stories, I wanted people to relate to because I felt like I couldn't relate to anyone at all. I wanted to read success stories and know that things were going to be fine. My biggest message for pregnant women is that you need to be your own best advocate and take that role of a doctor for yourself.

If something is not right, if you don’t feel like yourself, and if your gut is telling you something is wrong…trust it.

If something isn't right, if you don't feel like yourself, and if your gut is telling you something is wrong…trust it. We all look to our doctors because they're the ones who should know these things and “they” are educated and smart. But you’re the one who knows what you’re feeling. You can speak to what you’re going through better than anyone. So, speak up. Don’t wait. Say it, because YOU know it.

And your life could literally depend on it.

I feel like I got a second chance at life. I look at my daughter every day and think about how she is nothing short of a miracle. She was by no means easy for me to have and I consider her a true gift. I've accepted the fact that I can't ever have a baby myself again. We definitely want to have more kids. When we are ready, we'll consider every option.

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