Turning 23 is truly one of the great tragedies every person must face.
It is soul-destroying. It is so, so hard to go on.
Because now you are old. So old.
Everything is terrible. Your metabolism is slowing down. You just found your first grey hair and power-sobbed underneath a blanket for three hours and twenty minutes.
And yet, everyone around you keeps saying how young you are.
You receive no sympathy for your pain. Nobody understands you. Apart from us. We know your struggles.
A bunch of new collagen-infused products said to give you younger skin are on the market.
It started with collagen drinks and has now spread to face creams, serums, (very expensive) lip balms, eye masks and more.
There’s even a spray said to infuse the skin with collagen that costs (wait for it…) £100 per 50ml bottle.
Carol Joy, the firm behind the ‘miracle’ spritz, released clinical tests that showed visible results 15 minutes after application.
Users said they saw an increase in skin hydration (by up to 60%), reduction of skin irritation and redness (by up to 28%), and reduction of wrinkle depth (by up to 15%).
But consultant dermatologist Dr Anjali Mahto at Cadogan Cosmetics is wary.
When it comes to long-term results from topical collagen in the form of sprays, masks, creams and lip balms – ‘i.e. anything applied directly to the skin’ – she advises people to err on the side of caution.
MORE: Read the full story
Someone’s imagined what it would be like to work on the IT helpdesk at Hogwarts as a muggle, from having to set up Wifi under a lake, to dealing with emo Slytherin kids.
The Setup Wizard Tumblr page shares diary entries from an exasperated ‘muggle IT guy’ called Jonathan Dart.
Jonathan is the only IT guy at Hogwarts and it’s fair to say he’s finding his new job at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry a little challenging.
Day one: ‘For the record, I’m typing this on my iPhone while I ride a magic staircase.’
It’s the dream: hand-making the ridiculously delicious, perfectly moist, just-a-hint-of-crumbly cake you usually only find in fancy bakeries. So we can have incredible cake ALL THE TIME.
We thought our failure was down to our oven temperatures and our sub-par cooking skills.
We may have been right, to be fair. But it turns out there’s a much easier way to give our cake that melt in the mouth texture.
It’s all down to one secret ingredient: mayonnaise.
Quick reminder: don’t believe everything you see on Instagram.
To elaborate, earlier this month, Orlando-based fitness blogger Jess (PlankingforPizza – she planks so she can eat pizza) shared a classic fitspiration post on Instagram.
But the twist was, the before and after pics were taken only 30 seconds apart. She did it to show that those transformation pictures aren’t always all they seem.
Jess, a keen follower of Kayla Itsines‘ Bikini Body Guide (Kayla encourages followers to share their fitness progress pictures), wrote: ‘These pics were taken second apart this morning. On the left my posture is poor,… Read the full story
Distraught over your lack of right swipes and super likes?
Don’t stress. Your Tinder failure might not be down to any general unattractiveness (although you might want to work on that bio). It could be down to your job.
You may have noticed a new feature popping up on Tinder in the last few months, allowing you to add your job and education details to your profile. Kind of like LinkedIn, but for sexing.
Since then, Tinder’s been analysing the swiping data of those who’ve gone ahead and updated their profiles with their job info, and they’ve found out the professions… Read the full story
A series of captivating, eerie landscape photographs is on show in London.
Taken by British photographer Chris Floyd over 16 years, The Inifinity Degree series features absorbing, gothic scenery you can lose yourself in: fog for miles, beat up cars and rickety barns, wild weather and unyielding trees.
It is a far cry from Chris’s usual work of celebrity portraiture. He’s shot Paul McCartney, Gwyneth Paltrow, Robert De Niro and more, as well as numerous fashion spreads for glossy magazines.
But it’s also this kind of off-the-record stuff, taken during stolen moments on location, that can hold people still.
Black labrador Qiaoqiao has been with her blind owner Tian Fengbo for five years. She is, Tian says, his ‘eyes’, so he was absolutely devastated when she was stolen on February 22.
The masseur from Beijing, China, put up notices and family and friends searched for the dog for two days, with no success.
But, on Tuesday, the seven-year-old guide dog was returned to Tian, along with a note which had been sealed in a plastic bag and tied around her neck.
‘We are sorry,’ the note read. ‘We are sending the dog back and beg your pardon. We have also been under great pressure these… Read the full story
With itchy brains and dinosaurs on the loose, is it any wonder kids wake up during the night?
With the help of the parents over at Surviving A Sleep Thief – a Facebook page for the sleep-deprived – I have compiled a list of the most common reasons toddlers wake up at night!
1. Itchiness
‘My hair is itchy’, ‘my leg is itchy’ or even ‘my bum is itchy’. Being summoned to perform a 4am bum scratch was certainly not what I expected when I was expecting. My daughter once woke me up to tell me… Read the full story
All the parents on the internet are currently freaking out over two women’s Facebook posts about children’s sippy cups – for good reason.
Last week, Marie-Pier L’Hostie and Penny Powell shared posts on Facebook warning other parents of the hidden health risk of their children’s sippy cups.
Marie wrote on Facebook: ‘My friend Simon O’kanada wondered why his son was always sick. He broke the anti-spill top of his “Tommee Tippee” bottle and discovered mold inside the mouthpiece.
‘It doesn’t wash and can’t be seen unless it is broken open.’
Penny Powell shared the same story, and was soon… Read the full story
We didn’t think there was a way a classic ice cream cone could be improved. Other than more ice cream. Or chocolate.
But some food geniuses have managed it.
Presenting trdelníks. Also known as chimney cakes or, as we’re calling them, doughnut cones.
They’re a traditional Czech cinnamon-flavoured pastry shaped like a spiraled cone, often coated in chocolate on the inside.
Good Food Coffee and Bakery in Prague has made trdelníks their specialty, and are using them as ice cream cones to take sweet treats to a whole new level (H/T EliteDaily).
Leather is one fashion statement that we can all do without.
Besides, with so many fantastic fashion alternatives these days, why bring animals into the equation at all?
Here’s 10 reasons to kick leather out of your wardrobe for good.
1. Leather is hairless fur
Most of us know fur production often involves cruelty.
The leather industry is equally ugly, so it only makes sense to go the whole way and ditch leather too.
2. You could be wearing dog skin
PETA recently exposed a thriving dog leather trade in China, in which workers club dogs, slit their throats and peel off their skin to make gloves and other products that are often mislabelled as… Read the full story
It might be the flashiest face oil on the market.
The celestial black diamond retinol oil from 111SKIN is said to brighten and rejuvenate the skin with one squeeze of a pipette.
It contains 1% retinol – the most you can get on the market without prescription – ‘to rapidly resurface uneven skin texture and minimise age spots, fine lines and wrinkles’.
It is also infused with black diamond microspheres that are there to help key ingredients penetrate deeper, as well as soothing, hydrating oils.
The oil is part of a new six-item range of anti-ageing skincare developed by Dr Yannis Alexandrides, plastic surgeon and owner of London’s 111 Harley St.
His company 111SKIN say black diamond microspheres penetrate deeper dermal layers of the skin, so are an effective way to transport ingredients.
MORE: Collagen face sprays, masks, creams, lip balms and drinks. Do they work?
All products in the celestial black diamond range contain the so-called NAC Y² formula –… Read the full story
So you’ve heard about how your preference of wine and your choice of biscuit can separate us – but you and I know there is one thing that can cause the most conflict and the most heated pub arguments.
And that is, of course, the classic North/South divide.
Economically, culturally, geographically – we may be on one big island, but there’s so much between us that Northerners and Southerners would appear to be separate breeds.
MORE: 25 reasons the North of the UK is way better than the South
We’ve been… Read the full story
If you’ve ever had difficulty deciding which film to watch in your private cinema room, then this is the million-pound property for you.
This very shiny, very sleek, three-bed London penthouse in Cabbell Street, Marylebone is currently on the market for a cool £3.5m, and boasts two spacious home cinemas (one has a 200″ screen and the other 100″) with 11,000 watts surround sound.
So, if you don’t fancy what’s showing in screen one, you can simply decamp to the equally luxurious second screen.
Despite being counted as one of the most common types of mental illness around the world, there’s still a lack of awareness about eating disorders: what they actually are, who can have them, and how we should talk about them.
Eating disorders are still treated as a punchline to jokes about models. They’re still viewed as something only young women have. And we still fail to talk about anorexia, bulimia, and other patterns of disordered eating in a sensitive way.
It can be difficult. Especially when you… Read the full story
Here’s photographic proof, if you still needed it, that we will all eventually become our parents – at some point.
Shaylyn Gibson recently shared a picture online of her as she looks now, aged 25, alongside a picture of her mum at the same age, and they look like twins – not only because Shaylyn has inherited many of her mum’s facial features, but also because they were dressed almost identically.
Shaylyn, who currently lives in Italy, although she’s originally from Massachusetts, told Metro.co.uk she was sent the photo by her sister a few weeks ago.
‘My sister was sending me a bunch of old photos via text message (I live… Read the full story
When we heard about a lipgloss that promises the effects of lip injections (think slightly less full-on Kylie Jenner lips) with ZERO pain, we’ll admit: we were pretty excited.
Especially when we read that the effects could last between four hours and two whole weeks after just one application.
It’s called Instant Lip by Instant Effects, costs £24.99, and we had to try it for ourselves.
So two of us did. And we waited. And we assessed.
And we had some very interesting, very different results.
I had pretty… Read the full story
It seems one girl has finally had enough of the long process involved in rejecting guys on a night out.
What should be a simple ‘Sorry, I’m not interested’ often turns into a lengthy attempt of explaining you either have a boyfriend, are engaged or even that you swing the other way.
Sometimes it’s because the guy interested in you is incredibly persistent but often it’s just because – in definite British fashion – we’re just too damn polite and scared of hurting someone’s feelings.
But this girl, however, is sick and tired of being polite and making excuses. So, she’s opted for for another way to reject their fellow clubber.
In a video posted to Imgur by user Tausif007, a girl can be seen turning a guy away with the use of sign language.
A brave move, but one that most definitely worked.
But it turns… Read the full story
