‘Run fatty – run!’
My face flushed red as I looked at my wide-fit trainers pounding the pavements. I could hear girls cackling nearby. I was 17, and I was a fat runner.
I’d just started running and it’s safe to say I didn’t look like your average runner. I was a size 14, with 36DD boobs. Yes, I had thunder thighs and enough support in my bra to cushion an earthquake – but why should it stop me?
Embarrassingly,… Read the full story
Vogue Arabia hasn’t been around for the longest time.
Since the Middle Eastern version of the fashion bible had its first cover shoot with Gigi Hadid in 2017, all the models that followed were similarly sized.
Ashley Graham and rising star Paloma Elesser have now covered the July/August issue of the esteemed magazine, making them the first plus-size models to grace the front page of the Arab edition.
As part of its Body Revolution issue, the magazine said it’s celebrating all body shapes and finding summer looks for all sizes.
Noone really wants to schlep it to the gym in this sizzling heat.
Why waste the precious sun, sweating inside with loads of other sweaty beasts?
No, on days like today, you really just want to workout at home/in your garden. But what if you don’t have any fancy home gym equipment?
Well as long as you have a pillow, you’ve got all the equipment you need.
Celebrity PT Jeannette Jenkins (she trains Mindy Kaling, for one) has been showing just how much of a killer ab workout you can get from your humble sofa pillow.
She’s been sharing a nine-exercise routine to really get your core fired up, and recommends doing each for 30 seconds for three sets. That’s just 15 minutes to blast your abs, so time really isn’t an excuse not to get involved.
The only surefire way to help your kid get ahead in life is to be a right pain in the arse on their behalf.
Alright, obviously, everybody hates an overbearing parent.
Popular culture is littered with grim tales of their interfering ilk, from the creepy mum in Carrie, to Robert De Niro’s naff turn… Read the full story
I used to think illness was something that happened to other people.
I was a regular kid, from a normal family; nothing extraordinary ever happened to us. Then, around my ninth birthday, I started having headaches, and weeks later I was vomiting every evening after school. Then I started weeing blood. And then my legs swelled up, the first sign I was drowning in my own body, and suddenly illness was no longer something that happened to other people.
Were it not for the NHS, I would be dead. I say this without sentiment or hyperbole; it’s just a… Read the full story
ICYMI, the word hoejabi is a portmanteau of ‘hoe’ and ‘hijabi’, a Muslim woman who wears a headscarf.
More often than not, it is used derogatorily to describe a woman who transgresses the rules of Islamic etiquette and behaviour.
While it’s mostly used as a slur or, to some, a joke, within the Muslim community, an opinion piece in the New York Times has given it mainstream traction.
Many weren’t happy with the account for several reasons.
In the article, a young Muslim woman wrote about her experience of having her sexuality prescribed to her; she’s either a virgin or wife.
She said that the term hoejabi is a… Read the full story
When you have power and influence, you might have luxury gifts and complimentary offers thrown at you.
But if you have to ask for the gifts then, well, you might not be as influential as you think.
The Maldives resort Dusit Thani has had to keep telling young Instagrammers exactly that. The five-star hotel is overwhelmed by requests from social media users asking about free rooms.
If you have a following of below 2,000, however, you’re not big enough, and Dusit Thani doesn’t want to give you a free booking.
Recently, preparing for my holiday (which obviously meant getting rid of every trace of body hair), I went perusing around an indoor mall to find a bikini, specifically a bikini top.
After traipsing around the likes of Topshop, Zara, H&M, and New Look, I admitted defeat.
Even at the airport, I made one last-ditch attempt to find something at Accessorize to see if they could come through for me. After waiting for the assistant to search out back for ages, she came out empty-handed.
The issue?
My big boobs.
As someone with F cups, I’ve been resigned to wearing one-pieces because high street brands refuse to acknowledge that women with bigger… Read the full story
For many people, the commute to work involves any combination of cars, buses, trains or the dreaded underground.
There are the lucky few who cycle, run or walk – or even better, work from the home office.
But what if there was a more fun way to get to work?
Well, that’s exactly the thought that crossed my mind when I saw a… Read the full story
Go on apps like Grindr and you’ll soon realise that the gay community has an issue with race.
It’s not hard to find profiles with bios boasting racist language to make it clear that users don’t want to meet any ethnic minorities.
And now Stonewall, the UK’s leading LGBT charity, says that the community here in Britain has a problem with racism – both online and in real life.
It’s released a report based on YouGov’s polling of over 5,000 LGBT people and its results are pretty damning.
‘(The report) highlights…alarming levels of racism experienced by black, Asian and minority ethnic LGBT people, and a significant proportion of trans people, bi people, LGBT disabled people and LGBT people of faith feeling excluded within the LGBT community,’ it reads.
51% of LGBTQ and trans people of colour say they’ve faced racial discrimination in the wider gay community, with three in five black people reporting to have experienced poor treatment… Read the full story
The gowns. The shoes. The New Look – 50s fashion was the epitome of glamour.
And no one did it better than Dior.
Which is why anyone who has even the remotest interest in beautiful dressing needs to make sure they’re free next February, for the V&A’s massive retrospective.
In fact, Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams is going to be the largest ever Dior exhibition to come to the UK.
Based around the fashion house’s 70th anniversary exhibition held last year at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, this show will feature looks dating back to 1947 and will take visitors from designed penned by Dior himself, to the designers who followed him… Read the full story
If you’ve always looked at the special edition Cadbury Dairy Milk bars and thought that you could come up with a better flavour, now’s your chance.
Because the chocolate giant wanst you to invent its next dairy milk offering.
With over 90,000 combinations of flavours to choose from, chocolate fans are being asked to name their bar for the chance to be one of three finalists whose creations will be sold in-store nationwide.
The country will then vote for their favourite option and the winning bar will be added to the Cadbury Dairy Milk range.
It’s the first time Cadbury has opened its doors to invite the nation to get involved in… Read the full story
Most of us follow the same morning routine.
We wake up, wash and then apply some kind of deodorant before getting dressed.
And for the most part, we’ve never doubted the validity of that process…until now. Because a doctor is now claiming that we should all be applying our antiperspirant in the evening, rather than the morning.
Given that it’s 30’c outside and travelling on public transport is like being in a particularly pungent circle of hell, that seems like a bad thing to advise people to do.
But Doctor Dawn Harper maintains that we’re all applying deodorant the wrong way.
She says that by applying it at night, you give deodorant time to… Read the full story
When is an investment really an investment?
At this fashion moment in time, we are surrounded by shifting discourses like never before. It’s not just trends — which segue into each other in a seemingly ceaseless rhythm dictated by demand for constant availability — but also concepts. Questions like, ‘is fake fur more ethical than real fur?’, ‘should I go vegan?’ and ‘should I boycott a brand if I disagree with its practices?’ are being constantly asked.
One question in particular that takes prominent place in the fashion conversation is, ‘should I stop… Read the full story
Body hair has been a prickly subject since the first women’s razor commercial came out in the US over a hundred years ago.
The category was founded in shaming women for having body hair – of course, this was a marketing tactic to encourage more women to buy razors.
Female body hair has been so stigmatised in today’s society that we rarely see it in mass media.
What’s even stranger is that women’s razor companies, whose entire business revolves around body hair, refuse to even acknowledge it exists.
We couldn’t help but notice the overwhelming amount of hairless skin in razor advertising. It was… Read the full story
When it comes to dubious dieting products, Instagram is a hotbed of activity.
Detox teas, slimming supplements, amateur dieting advice – you’ll find it all on there, being pushed by influencers with no scientific knowledge or nutritional background.
Skinny Spinkles, a weight loss supplement company, is the latest company to get a blogger to post something undeniably irresponsible online.
Sharing a post by social media manager @midsummeranna, the caption read: ‘NINE calories per serving? I must be dreaming. @skinnysprinkles has been dubbed by the press as a “gastric band in a glass”,’ after which, she inserts a heart-eyed emoji.
Anna goes on to say that the gastric band promise has made… Read the full story
This hot weather is making us wish we had a pool.
We would fill our imaginary pool with overpriced pool floats, because if we had enough money to have and maintain a pool, that would mean we had a lot of money to burn.
Being incredibly stylish specimens of human, we wouldn’t want just any overpriced inflatables – we’d want overpriced designer inflatables.
Like this Missoni x Fun Boy butterfly pool float.
It’s the world’s first ever designer pool float. Fancy that.
As a kid, few things are quite as tedious as being made to repeat scales and arpeggios on the piano.
All these years later, how many of us would want to repeat the hours spent hammering away on the ivories?
Even if we didn’t become concert pianists, however, that time spent on the piano may have helped us more than we think, because a new study claims that it helps kids to built up their language skills.
Published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, co-author John Gabrieli, a cognitive neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research, says: ‘There’s evidence that… Read the full story
Imagine being a dog, abandoned in the twilight years of your life, and left to die in the pound.
Heartbreaking, isn’t it?
Dog lover Nicola Coyle thinks so, which is why she set up The Grey Muzzle Canine Hospice Project – a hospice for dying, abandoned dogs.
46-year-old Nicola runs the hospice from her home and gives dogs the end of life they deserve by looking after them and helping them complete their bucket lists.
She takes in dogs from pounds and animal shelters, rescuing dogs who would otherwise be left to die there, or put down.
The retired nurse takes up to two dogs… Read the full story
Charli Crowe was only 27 when she battled with breast cancer and won.
Now 30, the mum-of-two is preparing to give birth to a ‘miracle’ baby girl after doctors warned her it was more than likely she was never going to conceive again.
After battling an aggressive form of breast cancer, Charli, from Somerset, had to undergo chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and a mastectomy which drastically affected her chances of becoming a mum again.
But she didn’t stop hoping for a third child. Charli, an events worker, said no to further medication, saying they were going to completely kill off any little hopes she had for another baby.
