Penulis: Agus S

Millions of people are taking weight-loss drugs like Mounjaro and off-label Ozempic. But with so many unanswered questions, are we in the middle of a giant human experiment? In this episode, journalist Neelam Tailor asks two doctors what these drugs are really doing to our bodies, our minds, and our society – from muscle loss and mental health to beauty standards and the blurred line between medicine and aesthetics.

Seventeen years ago Nathan Dunne was locked out of his body, or at least that’s how it felt. He talks about his battle with depersonalisation disorder – and his sudden fear of water

On a cold winter’s night, in a “fit of spontaneity”, Nathan Dunne and his girlfriend went for a midnight swim on Hampstead Heath in London. They had been living together for a few months and, although it was dark and chilly, they “had a summer feeling in that first flush of the relationship”, Dunne says. They shed their clothes and waded into the shallows. After diving into the icy water, Dunne’s girlfriend put her lips to his cheek, and as they pulled apart, his life changed beyond all recognition. “It was like being struck. Like something came down,” he says, slicing the air with his hand. “The flip of a switch.”

Dunne’s transformation sounds like a fairytale in reverse: one kiss, and his life turned into a nightmare. Seventeen years have passed since that night, and he still mostly explains the change in himself in metaphors and similes. His eyes filled with soot. His voice was a robot’s. He felt as if he were locked outside his body, which became a sort of “second body”. Any form of water, from a raindrop to a warm bath, made everything worse. His terror and panic were so great that the next day he smashed a vase and used a shard to cut himself. An “attempt to not live any more”, is how he describes it.

It would take Dunne three-and-a-half years to learn that what he had experienced was the onset of depersonalisation disorder, adissociative disorderbelieved to affect about 1.3 million people in the UK, a similar number to those with bipolar disorder, though the condition is far less known. When Dunne became ill, in 2008, the wait for a diagnosis on the NHS was thought to be between eight and 12 years. Awareness has since increased; in 2017 the MP Lyn Brownbrought a constituent’s experience of depersonalisation to the attention of parliament. A charity,Unreal, was launched two years later. Now Dunne, 45, has written a book, When Nothing Feels Real: A Journey Into the Mystery Illness of Depersonalisation.

It is an eye-watering and disorienting account of a condition that Dunne evokes so vividly, it doesn’t always appear to be behind him. “Truth be told, I still have ‘second body symptoms’,” he says. “I don’t know if they will ever leave.”

Indeed, the book’s awful twist is that although researching the history of the illness felt intensely validating, and writing brought a sense of coherence to fragments of memory, it also triggered a relapse. In 2022, Dunne had a nervous breakdown. “I was not able to function in any reasonable way,” he says. “It was about as bad as it can get.” It’s fair to say that healing is very much a continuing process.

We are speaking on a video call. Dunne, who was in London studying for a PhD in art history when he fell ill, now lives in Sydney with his wife, a professor of philosophy. Last month they became parents to a baby girl. Dunne works as a freelance writer, specialising in film and art, and is sufficiently recovered that he sometimes goes for a swim. “I hope to take my daughter to the beach. Something really super-normal. That thought fills me with joy and hope for the future,” he says.

One of the greatest challenges has been the mysteriousness and unrelatability of his illness. While he knew something terrible had happened to him, he couldn’t say what. The “second body symptoms” felt impossible to convey without resorting to hyperbole and abstraction, which seemed to discredit his illness even as he described it.

Each morning, he watched himself get up, dress, make his breakfast, all from above himself – this should be taken literally, he says – looking down on the top of his own head, his foreshortened body, from within the confines of a vessel that to him resembled a waterlogged black box. He knew something of bipolar disorder, having been very troubled by a visit to a family member in a psychiatric ward. But he knew he didn’t have it, because unlike them, he says: “I had an acute sense of what was happening to me.” He kept looking at his hands for reassurance, but saw only “the hands of a ghost”.

He Googled: “Why do I feel outside my body?” “What is happening to me when I see myself from above?” “Am I going mad?” Doctor after doctor raised their eyebrows. His girlfriend despaired of him, and soon moved out.

In the weeks and months that followed, Dunne underwent many diagnostic tests including an MRI, a chest X-ray and checks on his eyesight, blood and stool samples. All came back normal. Depersonalisation is commonly misdiagnosed as depression and before long Dunne was prescribed antidepressants. Although he sensed the error, he didn’t argue. “I felt as if I needed medicine. I could take a pill and think: ‘Maybe tomorrow will be different.’”

On less symptomatic days, he continued to study, but his quest to heal himself became more desperate. He went to stay with a friend in Los Angeles and drove into the Mojave desert, looking for “a more expansive space, to try to open up this narrow view”. But he saw it all from the damp black box above his head. Some things helped briefly: listening to Dylan Thomas’ Under Milk Wood on repeat; drawing pictures of himself in the womb; making a mosaic of a Rubens painting; picking at the skin of his palms, to know where his edges were, something he found “very grounding, very physical”.

Back in London, feeling outside himself and the world, and increasingly obsessive about his ex-girlfriend, he made business cards that said “Call me”, with his phone number on. A sex worker, whose card he took down from a phone box to make space for his own, was one angry respondent. Another was a man who felt suicidal; he and Dunne spoke for hours, and afterwards, Dunne changed his phone number. In the book, he appears to do this without qualms. Alongside his self-estrangement was an intense self-absorption that often creates an empathy gap between Dunne and the reader. When, for instance, his mother told him on his birthday how wonderful it had been to carry him, he replied: “That’s not how it was for me … I was trapped.”

What is his understanding now of why he became ill? “I thought I was far more robust than I was,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve ever found life very easy.” He was born in Brisbane, Australia, and grew up in Bengaluru, India, where his parents were Protestant missionaries. “That makes for a particular kind of intensity in the family,” he says. Rather than look for a single cause of his depersonalisation, he has found it more fruitful to think of it as a buildup of traumas – “neurological, biological, and just life experience”.

Each day he wondered who he was, and whether he would ever go back to being the whole person he had been. The first big turning point came when he locked eyes with a woman at a Rodin lecture. She was in her 60s. “We didn’t fall in love in a romantic way, but it was an understanding of one another at first sight,” Dunne says. “Something about our experiences of life [made us] instantly trust each other.”

They went back to her house, and in one of the book’s most moving sequences, she asked him: “What’s your greatest fear?” “Having a bath,” Dunne replied. At this, she rose and turned on the hot tap in the bathroom, then sat in the room while he undressed and climbed in the tub. “To take off your clothes and get into a bath with an older woman you’ve just met is not a very normal thing to do,” Dunne says. “But something in her personality fostered an atmosphere where that was possible.” And something in Dunne’s illness, his foreshortened view of the world, created an openness to oddity.

A friendship grew that “helped to rebuild my capacity to love”, Dunne says. She told him: “You think of this thing you have as for ever. But I’ve lived long enough to know that there are just bad seasons in life. And then, one day … The world is new again.”

In 2011, with no money, job, or strength to study, Dunne complied with his mother’s suggestion to return home to Sydney. He moved into his parents’ garage, and she pointed out a number for a specialist she had stuck on the fridge. After a few weeks, he got a referral, and it was in this doctor’s office that Dunne was diagnosed with depersonalisation. “It was amazing when he said the word. Relief – and scepticism: ‘I can’t really hope this much, can I?’”

Dunne left the consultation with three objects: a bottle of water, a towel and a hessian bag to keep them in – an exposure and response prevention (ERP) kit. Each morning he was to dip his fingers in the water, and each afternoon wrap the wet towel around his hand. The idea being that a person who carries a small piece of their greatest fear will dilute that fear over time. “You are allowed to cry, but not to whine,” the doctor told him. “It can make you treatment-resistant.”

Dunne combined his ERP with repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation at a private clinic – something else his mother came across – in which a magnetic coil is placed on a patient’s head so that magnetic pulses can target parts of the brain impaired by illness; in Dunne’s case, the parietal lobe, which helps to maintain a unified sense of the body. Six months later, he emerged from his parents’ garage for breakfast one morning, and told his mum: “I’m becoming myself again.”

Dunne completed his PhD, and is no longer on the specialist’s books. He continues to take medication and attend therapy. Most importantly, he knows which tools to use when symptoms recur. “When you’re looking down on yourself, I’ve been taught to speak to it. You live with it, you write with it. You help to diminish its hold over you. You accept this distorted perception, this minor confinement,” he says.

Though, in truth, more than acceptance, it is the idea of “surrender” that he has found most helpful. “Ideas of radical acceptance – I’ve tried all of those things, I can’t relate to that language. Perhaps ‘surrender’ works because it’s the last thing I want to do,” he says. “To surrender means this thing will have its way with you. When I’m in the thick of difficult symptoms, I imagine myself being steamrolled over, and being OK with that. The other word that really helped me over the years is ‘float’. The last thing I want to do is float with the second body symptoms. But the word itself, the sensation – it allows you to surrender to it, by joining it.”

He holds up his palms, flaky after all these years with picked skin. Sometimes, the wounds get so bad he has to go to the doctor. But he finds it “very pleasant to go for something ordinary”.

The emotional legacy is perhaps harder to confront. When Dunne started dating again, he worried he had “limited love” to give. He and his wife have been together for 11 years now. “I do think I am more limited than I was, and I wish that wasn’t the case,” he says. “My daughter is a week old. I wonder about how much I can give, and I hope I can give everything.

“Maybe lots of people doubt whether they can give enough to the people they love. However, I feel the illness has limited me. Like, I won’t be able to recognise when I need to give more. I have to have faith in others who have been able to do it.”

He and his wife have developed a phrase to support themselves through the hardest times. “There’s alwaysthe core us,” they tell each other. “It is,” Dunne says, “both a memory of our love and an acknowledgment of our efforts to sustain it.”

When Nothing Feels Real: A Journey Into the Mystery Illness of Depersonalisation by Nathan Dunne is published byMurdoch Books(£16.99, A$34.99).

In the UK and Ireland,Samaritanscan be contacted on freephone 116 123, or emailjo@samaritans.orgorjo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text theNational Suicide Prevention Lifelineon 988, chat on988lifeline.org, ortext HOMEto 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support serviceLifelineis 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found atbefrienders.org

From a copper pot passed down generations to a simple serving dish, the emotional ties to seemingly everyday objects

A few weeks ago, Bee Wilson wrote about how people sometimes invest kitchen items withstrong meaningsas they pass through generations.

Here, four readers share stories of such treasured heirlooms, from copper pots from India to a cast-iron spatula from Italy.

Priya Deshingkar, Brighton and Hove

This handmade, hammered copper pot belonged to my grandmother on my father’s side and was probably made for her by the local coppersmith in her village in southern Maharashtra in the 1920s.

Shirol, which is now a town, is around 1,000 miles (1,705km) from Delhi, where I lived with my parents. We sometimes visited for our summer holidays in the 70s, which took at least two days by train. The pace of life there was slow.

Back then it was routine to re-tin the inside of pots and pans because you couldn’t cook anything acidic in copper. Travelling kalaiwallahs, as they were called, would come around to do it every couple of months or so. At that time, the tinning of copper (kalai) was still common in India, even during my childhood. Now they’ve mostly disappeared and you only get a few left in every city as everyone is using aluminium or stainless steel.

I haven’t figured out how to tin here in the UK, so for now I can only use the pot for non-acidic foods. Tamarind, tomato or lime would eat away the copper and produce a toxic compound. I use it for a typically Maharashtrian dish my grandmother used to make called bharli vangi – aubergines stuffed with a mixture of spices and ground roasted peanuts, cooked with coriander and green chilies, and so on.

Cooking with it reminds me of her and the life she lived. Despite coming from a well-to-do family, she was married at 14 and spent the best part of her youth toiling away and bringing up five children.

She was a voracious reader and a thinker. Whenever she visited us in Delhi, my mother supplied her with reading material. The most common local language in Delhi is Hindi, but my grandmother read only in Marathi (the predominant language in Maharashtra), so my mother had to go to libraries and friends’ houses to find stacks of books. She got through so many that my mother got fed up, saying: “How much does this woman read?” I often think about how different my grandmother’s life might have been had she had the chance to pursue a career of her choice.

After my grandmother died in 1975, the pot travelled to my parents’ house in Delhi, where it was until I brought it with me to the UK in the mid-1980s. The pot sits proudly in my kitchen, waiting to receive another coating of tin. I will pass it on to my daughters and hope that it continues to keep memories alive in my family.

Thomas Pickett,Santa Cruz in California, US

When my mother died in 1987, at the age of 56, it was mostly junk that she left behind. She was too busy living to accumulate anything of much value. We were left with boxes of cooking utensils, camping gear, clothes and books. We sat among the tools of her life stunned that she was gone for ever. Mom was not terribly attached to the material aspects of life; she was more attached to people, to laughter and argument. I looked over the boxes for something that would keep her memory alive for me, and lifted out her old Wagner drip-drop baster Dutch oven.

When cooking, she would start by opening the pot cupboard. It usually came with a string of expletives as most of the pots fell off the shelf at once. She’d lift the Dutchy’s substantial weight on to the counter, get a cutting board, a knife and a cookbook and start chopping. She’d cook something up for anyone who was home and would open a bottle of wine and share conversation, stories and laughter.

The history of my mother’s life and her spirit was represented in that cast-iron pot. I’m a retired chef, and most cooks understand cast iron’s absorptive nature and its ability to retain an oily, non-stick finish. For me, Mom’s old Dutch oven not only had a well-oiled surface, it had the seasonings of her life.

I have used it to cook decades of comfort food for my family. Our kids have left the nest and in their absence I’ve found Mom’s pot wants to travel. Sometimes more than once a week, it’s been sent full of steaming-hot food to friends’ homes. Friends with the flu, friends living alone with memories of spouses lost to old age, or struggling with cancer who might like a friendly face and a shared meal.

The spatula, orrasaul, I use to shape orecchiette pasta was made in my home town of Andria, southern Italy, by local blacksmiths using wrought iron, a material chosen for its strength and longevity. The spatula is perfectly balanced: lightweight and easy to handle, with a rounded, non-sharp edge – ideal for shaping pasta without cutting it. This tool is essential for making orecchiette from small cylinders of pasta.

Therasaulis not only key to getting the right look, it is essential for the right texture that defines true orecchiette. This one belonged to my grandmother. I learned to make orecchiette as a child, sitting next to her and my mother in the kitchen. They were so good I’d even eat some of them raw.

I still use it, not out of nostalgia but because it is simply irreplaceable. While many in southern Italy now use a kitchen knife, I have never stopped using this tool, which allows me to shape orecchiette just as they used to be made.

Every time I hold it, I feel a direct connection with my roots and with the generations of women in my family who shaped pasta on wooden cutting boards in warm and lively kitchens.

I have a three-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter and she’s already started making orecchiette with me. She’s getting the gist – and of course she’s always asking if she can eat them raw, too.

When I got married in 1974, at the age of 19, my mum and dad gave me some things to start myself up. One of them was this plain, stainless steel dish, which my dad made. He worked for a company in Birmingham that made high-end, ornate gallery trays – but their bread and butter was the stainless steel serving dishes used by the curry and Balti restaurant trade.

The company had a problem with the dish’s curled rim, which would crease as it came off the jig – the tool holding components in place – creating lots of rejects. My dad redesigned the jig to make a perfect finish, and he brought home a couple of the prototypes he had made. They popped out thousands and thousands; we’d see them in Indian restaurants all the time.

My dad was very clever, polishing off the Guardian cryptic crossword in less than 10 minutes most days. I’m still using his dish several times a week, 50 years and three marriages later. For me, it is a testament to my wonderfully funny, innovative, loving dad and it will be left to the grandchild who likes cooking the most.

The practice that helped me to sleep also gave me the clarity to end my marriage, and to begin dating again

In the run-up to Christmas 2018, wobbly with delirium on a station platform packed with partygoers, I nearly fell under a train. Insomnia – not the “I woke at 3am for a bit” type, but the brutalising “I might have dropped off for a fretful 45 minutes at around 6am” kind – will do that to a person.

I have rarely slept well. But this particular stretch of insomnia was, almost literally, a killer. I’d tried every snake oil on the market. A Harley Street hypnotist gave up on me after two sessions. Prescription sleeping pills stopped working. As a last resort, I tried the eight-week NHS cognitive behavioural therapy course for insomnia. It involved a tedious sleep diary, increasing “sleep pressure” by forcing myself to stay up until 2am and strengthening the “bed-sleep connection” by sacrificing my bedtime read. Far from helping, these strategies ramped up my frustration. Then I found one thing that did work – something I had dismissed as the preserve of man buns and pseudo-spiritualists: meditation.

With help from an app, I started turning my maddening night-time thought loops into innocuous clouds that passed through the sky of my mind. I discovered that mentally scanning my body from head to toe while focusing on each part without judgment could ease my ever-present tension. And by noticing how thoughts vanish as quickly as they appear, I came to realise this crippling phase would eventually pass.

With my cynicism on hold, I started following the standard advice of meditating during the day, rather than reaching for it as an emergency sleep aid. Nothing hardcore. A simple 10-minute bolt-on after brushing my teeth.

Over time, I started dreading bedtime less, found it easier to drop off and stay asleep longer. Sometimes for as long as six hours. Horror for some. Bliss for me. So the sleep diaries got binned, but the meditation did not.

By regularly stilling my mind, I was able to step back and appraise problems from a distance. “Respond, not react”, to use the correct meditation parlance. In fact, I was able to look at my entire life from a distance. This clarity helped me see that my marriage was beyond repair. Divorce soon followed, a stressful but ultimately positive process made more manageable by daily meditation. Then came the lion’s den of dating. I honestly don’t know how I would have survived dating apps without meditation apps. They helped me stay grounded, observing the chaotic thrills and rejections with detached awareness.

Best of all, meditation has made me a better parent. With patience not being one of my virtues, I had a habit of snapping at my child. Throw my menopause and their teendom into the mix, and you get something more explosive than fireworks on New Year’s Eve. But meditation helps defuse things. If I let the habit slip, the tetchiness – and insomnia – creep back in.

Meditation has not only calmed my mind, but also expanded it, making me more open to the things I once dismissed: vulnerability, therapy and perhaps even spiritualism. It’s been such a salve that I’m (almost) grateful to my sleepless nights for forcing it on me.

I love her and find her sexy but can’t climax when we have sex, and am getting increasingly worried about it. Is treatment available?

I think I have a problem sexually. I can ejaculate alonewhen I masturbate, but not with a partner. This is becoming a problem as my partneris complaining about my inability to ejaculate when Iam with her. I am now over30 and it is starting to get me worried. Is there any treatment or help I can get? I really love this woman andfind her sexy, but Iam notable to get to the point of ejaculation.

The transition from solo sex to satisfying partner sex is not always easy. Some people become so accustomed to particular types of touch, pressure or strokes during masturbation that they find switching to the different sensations with another person extremely challenging. In addition, some people require intense focus to achieve orgasm or ejaculation, and the anxiety or distraction of intimacy with a partner interrupts their usual process.

It is possible to retrain your sexual style to accommodate a partner – and although this can best be done with the help of a sexual therapist, you could start by considering your exact needs in terms of the mechanics of your sexual response and encourage your partner to help by trying to replicate it. For example, perhaps you need to ask her to use a firmer or lighter touch during foreplay.

If you find that intercourse does not provide you with sufficient stimulation, one strategy is to employ more erotic play that will increase your arousal before penetration. If you think your problem is distractibility or anxiety, you will have to find calming mechanisms that work for you.

Essentially, the worry you are feeling about your partner’s complaints is making it more difficult for you to ejaculate and taking the fun out of sex. Hopefully, you can both stop thinking of lovemaking as a task and simply focus on giving and receiving pleasure.

Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.

If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns toprivate.lives@theguardian.com(please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to ourterms and conditions.

Chemicals found in the braiding hair have been linked to increased cancer risk and organ damage

In recent years, personal care products marketed at Black women have received increased scrutiny for their toxicity, specifically chemical hair straighteners. These perms, also known as “relaxers”, have been condemned for causing severe health problems, including fertility issues, scalp irritations and increased risk of cancer.

In light of this, many Black women have turned to natural hairstyles, including braids, as a way to avoid toxic chemicals. But recent research has revealed that popular brands of synthetic braiding hair, human-made extensions that are used in these protective styles, contain dangerous carcinogens, heavy metals and other toxins. Tested brands included in a recent study from Consumer Reports (CR) were Magic Fingers, The Sassy Collection, Shake-N-Go, Darling, Debut, Hbegant and Sensationnel, all mass producers of synthetic braiding hair.Accordingto the CR study, all tested samples of braiding hair containedvolatile organic compounds (VOCs), human-made chemicals found in paints, industrial solvents and other products. Exposure to VOCs can cause health problems, including respiratory issues, nausea and fatigue. Long-term exposure has been associated with increased cancer risk and organ damage.

Contact with chemicals in synthetic hair doesn’t only occur when the hair is installed – exposure can take place under a variety of circumstances. For instance, synthetic braiding hair can be “brittle”, causing smaller pieces of hair to break off on to hands and be accidentally consumed, said Dr James Rogers, director and head of product safety testing at CR. “Even ingesting just a small amount of braiding hair material could possibly give you enough lead exposure to push you over the limit of what is considered safe,” Rogers said.

For Black people globally, braids are among the most common and beloved hairstyles. Some braided hairstyles involve plaiting extensions into one’s natural hair to achieve a range of styles, such as box braids, knotless braids, twists, goddess braids and more. These styles, worn by people of all ages, typically remain installed for weeks at a time, acting as a low-maintenance hairstyle that can promote hair growth and combat breakage.

Beyond convenience, braids carry cultural significance. Since the advent of the 1960s natural hair movement, braided styles represented an embrace of one’s afro-textured hair and Black identity more broadly, a political stance amid the popularization of relaxers.

In recent years, new research looking into the health effects of chemical straighteners only boosted the popularity of braids. A 2022 National Institute of Environmental Health Sciencesstudyfound that perms increased the risk of uterine cancer. The revelatory study followed 33,497 US women between the ages of 35 and 74 for 11 years and assessed their cancer risks. For women who used hair straightening products frequently – more than four times in a year – their cancer risk more than doubled.

The investigation unleashed a flood of public outcry and calls for federal regulation of chemical straighteners. Thousands of women who had used such productsjoined class-action lawsuits, alleging that they had contracted cancer from the hazardous hair products. But worries about synthetic hair raise new concerns about how Black women – both hair braiders and customers – can still be exposed to dangerous chemicals even when they opt for chemical-free hairstyles.

The latest CR study first tested 10 of the most popular brands of synthetic braiding hair, said Rogers. Of the 10 brands tested, three contained benzene, a chemical linked to an increased risk of leukemia. Nine samples contained lead above the level deemed safe by experts. At least five samples contained more than 500,000 measurable VOCs; four samples had over 1m.

Researchers then considered how exposure to chemicals on synthetic hair might take place to better understand the posed health risks. In addition to ingestion of the hair, a likely scenario with the most intense form of exposure, braids are typically dipped in hot water or singed with an open flame to seal in the style, offering another opportunity for chemical exposure.

The CR report builds on limited research on toxins in synthetic braiding hair. A pilot studypublished in 2020by scientists at the University of Colorado Boulder identified at least nine types of VOCs in emissions produced by heated synthetic hair.

Chrystal Thomas, a medical student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, previouslypublished an articleon the topic in the Lancet, a peer-reviewed medical journal. Her particular interest stemmed from an adverse reaction she suffered after getting braids in 2023. Thomas said she immediately noticed that her braids had an odor, similar to “new car or mattress”. Thomas attempted to wash her hair multiple times, but could not get rid of the smell. She also began to experience a host of alarming symptoms. “I would have trouble breathing,” she said, after getting braids. “I thought my throat would be very dry and it would feel like it was [tightening] up.” Within a week, Thomas decided to take her braids out to gain some relief.

Research on the subject was hard to come by, said Thomas, even asdozens of Black womenhave written about negative, physical reactions they had to synthetic hair. “Representation [in science] matters a lot. My experience is not unique,” said Thomas. “People who have been using synthetic braids have been speaking about this, but researchers haven’t necessarily had access to those voices.”

The CR study results were unsurprising to Dr Kristian Edwards, a former public health professor at George Washington University. Edwards has tracked chemicals in Black beauty products for years, and in 2017,she founded BLK+GRN, a marketplace for Black-owned, non-toxic products.

Ingredients listed on beauty products, including braiding hair, lack “transparency”, said Edwards, with consumers assuming that products being sold in stores must be safe. “It requires diligence on consumers to check and make sure that all products they are using are safe, which is disheartening,” she said.

There has also been a stark increase in “undisclosed ingredients”, Edwards added. Ananalysis published last monthby the Environmental Working Group found that 80% of more than 4,000 beauty products geared towards Black women have at least one moderate hazard, with many brands not disclosing what was in their products.

Current methods of regulation also aren’t as effective, Edwards said. Focusing solely on what ingredients are toxic “gives the manufacturer space to keep using ingredients that haven’t been researched as much, but may be just as toxic”, she said.

Overall, researchers are calling for more research on the health impacts of braiding hair and testing of more products, including plant-based extensions and human hair. With investigations into synthetic braiding hair, many consumers have gravitated towards those options, but synthetic braiding hair alternatives still involve some chemical process.

Social media will tell you that all millennials dress one way to work out, while gen Z dresses another. The truth is more complex and far more interesting

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Around me, a group of women in skintight gym sets areside planking. Some are wearing full-coverage unitards, others leave slices of midriff bare. No one is wearing a baggy T-shirt from 2008with a naked Rufus Wainwright on it, and hardened flecks of damp-proof paint. Except me.

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If TikTok is to be believed, my gym-mates must be millennials, born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s; gen Z would find such skin-tightness a bit retro, or basic, or even“jurassic fitness”.Another generational schism has opened online– to add tosocks,jeansandboundaries– this time over what millennials and gen Z are wearing to work out in. Tight-on-tight outfits supposedly single you out as a millennial – it is “giving middle school”, said one gen Z user witheringly – while gen Z prefers something baggier. Looking around me at pilates and in the park, though, I suspect some of the women wearing a second, seal-like skin are younger than 30. And here I am, days after turning 40 – squarely a millennial – wearing an enormous T-shirt. It is a muddled picture.

Kelechi Okafor – at 38, a millennial – is a fitness professional, a former personal trainer and the owner of a pole dance studio. She used to wear tighter clothes to exercise but now wears baggy joggers and tops, in the reverse of what TikTok might have you believe. “The way that the tailoring is done for a lot of gymwear does not have my body size in mind,” she says. “There was something liberating about saying: ‘Actually, I’m not wearing this any more. I’m going to wear baggy things.’”

Michelle Carroll, a 29-year-old (millennial) body image coach and nutritionist based in Edinburgh, who typically wears leggings and a vest or cropped top, says that at her gym: “Younger people tend to wear brighter, shorter and tighter clothes.” She sees it as “in part, influenced by ‘fitness culture’ we see online – it’s almost a uniform”.

Lauren Crowder, managing director ofELEVEN:ELEVEN Studiosin Liverpool city centre, says clients in their 20s and early 30s “tend to embrace the trend of matching activewear sets – brands such as Adanola, Bo+Tee, or Gymshark are really popular” – whereas clients in their late 30s and up “generally prefer a more relaxed fit”. Georgie Burke, founder ofthe Barre Fitness Studio in Bristol, says the younger clients there like “plain colours, white grip ankle socks and tight vest tops” – what she calls the “Adanola aesthetic”, referencing the British activewear brand that seems to be everywhere now, while the 30-plus crowd opt for “a print legging but with a looser style top”.

Farther afield, in the Canadian city of Guelph, Samantha Brennan, a professor of philosophy and co-author ofFit at Mid-Life: A Feminist Fitness Journey, has also noticed young women wearing beautiful sets –the kind of “workout bikinis” that some men have been complaining are “intimidating”. It is not so much that they are tight that Brennan notices – though they probably are – but that they all match. Where she sees the gym as “a place where you get to take a break from fashion”, she says, “they’re wearing things I recognise as outfits, and they’re specifically bought for wearing at the gym”.

It makes a lot of sense that gym wear is being given as much attention as it is. The gym now has such gravitational pull that for many it is seen as – and this is very much gen Z’s sentiment, not mine – “the new club”.It is a place for socialising and dating; some are calling it “workout-wooing”.

Araft of newer brands, such as Toronto’sLiterary Sport, founded by creatives Deirdre Matthews and M Bechara, and Los Angeles’s Everybody.World, set up by former American Apparel employees, may be behind the looser lines, popularising casually-fitting track pants, among other items. Some more longstanding, millennial-coded brands, such as Lululemon, are also now offering baggier fits or“away-from-body styles”, as Lululemon’s chief merchandising officer put it. But, given the often hefty price tags, they appear to be aimed at older exercisers, who are generally more able to afford them. Meanwhile, other brands, such as Sweaty Betty, have been explicitly marketing the idea of wearing tighter, skimpier clothes, at least as part of an exercise ensemble, and disregarding body hang-ups:“Wear the damn shorts” is the tagline from a campaign last year.

While the generational divide may feel over-egged, what we wear to exercise reveals a lot about where we are at with body image. Several brands, for example, now dobottoms with “scrunch” designs at the bum, to accentuate curves, because Kardashian-esque glutes remain idealised. It is a style that unites twentysomething “TikTok gym girlies” and celebritiessuch as J-Lo.

What you wear to exercise also depends on what exercise you are doing. Reformer pilates – the hyper-expensive and highly engineered full-body workout – makes more sense in cinched styles that won’t get stuck in equipment. A jog in the park, less so. Subtle flares are becoming a thing for yoga, but they would be annoying on a treadmill, and a trip hazard on a squash court.

There are also other, shall we say, external factors. “There’s a fear of people taking advantage and hypersexualising and dehumanising folks, particularly women, in these spaces,” saysSamantha Noelle Sheppard, a Cornell professor who writes about sport. What she often sees is a “mix of tight and baggy, like really tight shorts” with an oversized shirt, as a way to keep unwanted eyes off bodies not looking to be objectified. Shakaila Forbes-Bell, a fashion psychologist, has been seeing more conversations among gen Z about wearing baggier clothing for the gym tied to “what is for the male gaze and what is for me”.

Again, though, this doesn’t have to be generational. Navi Ahluwalia, an editor at fashion and sportswear site Hypebae, is a millennial who typically goes for “leggings with a baggier top”. While she loves “the way the tighter gym clothes look”, she also hates “the feeling of people looking at me while I exercise, so I personally don’t want to draw any attention to myself – particularly not from creepy men”. I would hazard that most, if not all, women who exercise in public will have had similar thoughts.

Burke says: “A fair few of our clients will stay in activewear all day, for coffee, work and the school run, due to our studio being less on the sweaty side.” That tallies with the continued march of gymwear as everyday wear. At least part of this is about comfort; activewear is forgiving when working from home and, at least in my case, practical, when combined with the hope that a trip to the gym (or a 20-minuteYoga with Adriene) is just moments away.

It also, consciously or not, broadcasts status. “You think it shows fitness and the idea of an athletic body and a healthy mind,” says Sheppard. “But what it shows is a healthy bank account.” “[It is] meant to be performative in all these different kinds of ways,” she says. “Not only do you look like you have the time to work out, you have the resources to work out – go do your pilates, go do your Peloton class – in a very expensive set.” Looking like a “gym person”, then, perhaps particularly for a younger gen Z crowd, comes with cultural capital.

It is not the first time gym gear has been loaded with meaning. Inan article in 2019, New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino posited athleisure as a uniform that represented the principle of “optimisation”: “the process of making something, as the dictionary puts it, ‘as fully perfect, functional, or effective as possible’”.

Athleisure, she said, was designed to optimise your appearance at the same time as your performance. But not on everybody.Lululemon founder Chip Wilson made this explicit. “The definition of a brand is that you’re not everything to everybody … You’ve got to be clear that you don’t want certain customers coming in,” he said in a 2013 interview.

As Tolentino wrote: “Athleisure broadcasts your commitment to controlling your body through working out.” You create – if indeed you can and you want to – a body that fits athleisure rather than the athleisure moulding to fit you.

Okafor looks back to her days of trying to make ill-fitting, tight gymwear work. No matter “how high I pull up the waistband, no matter how much I try to shuffle about with the sports bra, it still doesn’t look right to me”. Clothes seemed to have been designed in a way that wasn’t “honouring” her shape. “It’s just like: ‘Oh, you’re not skinny?’ It’s the thoughtlessness of how these things are made that reinforces that I wasn’t being considered.”

A host of brands now make exercise clothes constructed with different bodies in mind. Okafor citesGrrrl as one(tagline: “We make real clothes for real women who simply don’t care”). Forbes-Bell says the brandCurvy Katehas created “sports bras for larger-chested women at more affordable prices”, something that has been a battle for her since she was a teenager. And Gymshark is “creating a lot of more inclusive clothing: size-inclusive, more modest wear as well. For gym clothing, that was very scarce before.”

With all the new and improved tight gym gear out there, if younger women in their 20s are still opting for baggier styles, could it be for other reasons? Okafor sees “all manners of bodies and ages” at her pole studio and thinks that, in general, younger generations are “giving themselves more space”. Sheppard sees this as a response to our times. Young people “are living in a period of global crises that make the focus on themselves seem too indulgent … It’s like, just put on clothes. We’ve got bigger problems.”

Ultimately, if there is more room for divergence from a workout uniform, then it might have benefits for all generations. “How many people would probably want to go to the gym and work out if they could wear clothes that didn’t make them feel embarrassed?” asks Okafor.

“It’s about questioning the motivations,” says Forbes-Bell. “And I think that’s empowering, whether it’s baggy or whether it’s tight, that idea of: ‘Why am I actually wearing this? What am I trying to achieve?’”

The scents of the season are less Bounty ice-cream, more vanilla, spiced rum and driftwood with a glow of sunlounger

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Suntan fragrances hark back to more innocent times, when factor 8, 6 – or even 2! – oil seemed like a perfectly responsible course of action for a Brit on a fortnight’s Teletext holiday to Crete. Modern tributes draw on common olfactory themes in retro tanning oils, from warm vanilla and coconut to salt, citrus fruits, sexy amber and tropical flowers such as tiaré and frangipani. My favourites of the genre are either affordable or at leastrelativelyinexpensive, because while I’m disgruntled by many fragrance prices these days, there’s something particularly offensive about a three-figure scent got up to smell like Ambre Solaire.

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In case I haven’t already raved enough about French pharmacy perfumers Roger & Gallet, here’s more.VanilleSoleil(£20 for 30ml), is the latest in the lineup and continues their tradition for considered, high-quality and very wearable scents at an excellent price point. What we have here is a comforting, only delicately sweet vanilla, warm, mellow amber and a gentle blend of jasmine and ylang-ylang. A crunch of sea salt enlivens the whole thing. This is a sunny, cheerful and charming scent that can be spritzed on lavishly without guilt or fear of offending.

The most famous, and perhaps unbeatable tribute to suntan lotion is Estée Lauder’sBronze Goddess Eau Fraîche Skinscent(£58 for 50ml) – not to be confused with the eau de parfum, very different and not as lovely. Also check out their newerBronze Goddess Nuit(£70 for 50ml), which adds an almost creamy, woody note and more musk to the beauty of the original. If you like the original, I think you’ll appreciate this sexier night-time version.

Cos’s new fragrance line is strong andSolaireis a highlight (don’t be repelled by the £75 price – the 100ml bottle is two or three times the typical size). Less Bounty ice-cream, more spiced rum and driftwood, its holiday sun-lounger glow still shines through. It also lasts terrifically well for a high-street scent.

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Nivea Sun(£31.60 for 30ml), is the wonderful smell of Nivea sun lotion spray-bottled, and it’s addictive. It works alone, but also layers very nicely under something punchier, and gives a powdery, inviting feel.

Demeter’s Fragrance Library is a vast selection of deliberately literal fragrances mimicking beloved smells (dirt, baby powder, glue and petrichor – that earthy smell you get when rain falls on dry ground – are all exactly as you’d hope). TheirSuntan Lotion(£19 for 1oz) smells specifically of the old Coppertone lotion rather than coconutty Hawaiian Tropic, so if you’re clucking for a whiff of 1970s mum, do proceed to checkout.

The sloppy sartorial style of political insiders, from Musk to Dominic Cummings, reveals who has the privilege to be scruffy – but it may also signal their undoing

In case you missed it,Elon Muskand Donald Trump have fallen out.

For some – and in particular anyone looking at the tech billionaire’s White House wardrobe – this will come as little surprise. Long before anyone hit send on those inflammatory tweets, or tensions spilled out over Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBB), Musk’s political downfall was written in the stitching.

During his time in the White House, Musk shunned the sartorial rulebook of someone at the shoulder of a president, where suits and ties are the common code. He wore dark Maga baseball caps at the Oval Office and told a rally in New York: “I’m not just Maga, I’m dark gothic Maga.” Then there were the T-shirts with slogans such as “Occupy Mars”, “Tech Support” and “Dogefather”. At campaign rallies, commentatorsnotedhe looked “more like he belonged at a Magic: The Gathering tournament than a political event”, his dress sense the style equivalent of the k-holes that it is claimed Musk frequently disappeared into.

The more casual styles of Musk and his Silicon Valley tech bros – where stiff collars are eschewed in favour or crewnecks, tailored jackets softly pushed out the door by padded gilets – are light years away from those of the suited-and-booted US Capitol.

But if Musk’s clobber signalled a new DC power shift, it also spoke to different norms. “Disruption might be a badge of honour in the tech space,” says DC-based image coach and style strategistLauren A Rothman, “but in politics, chaos has a much shorter runway. The White House has been around for a long time. We’re not going to stop wearing suits … This is the uniform.”

All of this dressing down, dressing objectively badly and dressing “inappropriately” has form. Consider, if you can bear to, the case ofDominic Cummings. The former Boris Johnson aide subjected Westminster to dishevelment, Joules gilets, beanies, Billabong T-shirts and tote bags advertising the 1983 gothic-inspired horror novel The Woman in Black. He wasn’t just a Tory, he was a gothic horror Tory.

As Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian columnist and host of the Guardian’s Politics Weekly Americapodcast, notes: “Dressing down is usually a power move in politics, just as it is in the boardroom: only the most powerful can get away with it.” That was, he says, the message Cummings sent “when he roamed Number 10 in a gilet: ‘You lot are worker bees who have to wear a uniform, whereas I’m so indispensable to the man at the top, I can wear what I like’.”

It was the same with Musk, whose threads were a flipped bird to all those Oval Office stiffs in suits. As Rothman puts it: “His uniform of casual defiance stands in sharp contrast to that traditionally suited corridor of political power.” And that contrast screams out his different, special status.

Before him, there was “Sloppy Steve” Bannon, a man never knowinglyunder-shirted. On this side of the Atlantic, Freedland points to former David Cameron adviser Steve Hilton and his penchant for turning up to meetings barefoot: “ditching the shoes was an instant way of signalling his membership of the inner circle”.

It’s that age-old question: who has the privilege to be scruffy? As Freedland puts it: “Musk was happy to stand next to the Resolute desk of the president looking like he was dressed for a gamers’ convention. That was his way of reminding everyone of his superior wealth and unique status, outside conventional politics.”

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But what Cummings and Musk share in sartorial disorder, they also share in political trajectories. Scruffy Icaruses who flew too close to the sun; their clothes a foreshadowing of their fall. Trump might talk about draining the swamp, but his Brioni suits are very much swamp-coded – plus, while Johnson might have had strategically unruly hair and ill-fitting suits as crumpled as a chip wrapper, suits they still were.

Ultimately, nobody likes a bragger. Because dressing in a way in which your privilege is omnipresent if not outright stated, is a surefire way to piss people off. Not least Trump, who noted that Musk had “some very brilliant young people working for him that dress much worse than him, actually”, in an interview on Fox in February.

“The contrast between Musk’s garb and Trump’s cabinet,” according to Freedland, “made them look and seem inferior: servants of the president rather than his equal. It was one more reason why more than a few in Trumpworld are glad to see the (poorly tailored) back of Elon Musk.”

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Some dishes make a lasting impression, and this week two memorable creations from Rome and London meet to inspire a nutty salad of creamy gorgonzola and mixed leaves

Recently, I listened to the Italian chefsNiko RomitoandSalvatore Tassain conversation about Italian food culture, and in particular the role of the trattoria. During the warm conversation, Romito, who is one of Italy’s most visionary chefs and whoseRistorante Realein Abruzzo has three Michelin stars, spoke about the first time he ate at Tassa’sNu’ Trattoria Italiana dal 1960in Acuto, which is in the province of Frosinone about an hour south of Rome. Romito recalled the homely atmosphere and Tassa as an old-school host: welcoming, communicative and the conduit (which didn’t sound pretentious when he said it) between local traditions, producers and those who came to eat. But Romito also described a dish of onions, simply braised, but of such goodness that he couldn’t stop thinking about and imagining them. In fact, Romito credits those onions as being the starting point for one of his own most well-known dishes: “absolute” onion broth with parmesan-filled pasta and toasted saffron. Tassa returned the affection and respect, before both chefs reminded those of us listening that everything begins and ends with the ingredients.

On the bus on the way home, I kept thinking about Romito thinking about those braised onions, which led me to think about the times I have left a table in a trattoria, restaurant, cafe, pub, chip shop or friend’s housereallythinking about something. And how those thoughts are quite rare and completely different from simply remembering a dish or liking something; they are vivid and intrusive thoughts. The deep-fried mashed potato and mozzarella ball from the canteen just under our flat last week; the gravy around the liver and onions at a local trattoria; hazelnuts on the salad at the same trattoria; a plate of green beans that tasted like butter; the honey dressing on a salad that has been nagging me since January.

This week’s column is an attempt to deal with some of that nagging by combining elements of two salads that have stayed with me like an anxious memory. The first is the bitter greens and toasted hazelnut salad at a trattoria calledPiatto Romanohere in Testaccio, while the second is the radicchio, almond, gorgonzola and honey salad fromBocca di Lupoin Soho, London. I did feel a bit like Romito, taking the inspiration into my kitchen, although I can’t claim to have invented anything. I can confirm, though, that there is no better way to dress a salad than with hands (very clean or covered with those very thin rubber gloves), because it means every single leaf gets the benefit of the dressing. You can use any leaves, but a mixture of something crisp such as romaine, little gem or beluga chicory alongside the softer leaves of round radicchio all work well. And look out for creamiergorgonzola dolce(sweet) rather than the firmergorgonzolapiccante(sharp).

Alongside bread, and with the option of more cheese, this salad is a light meal for two; it also goes well with roast chicken, baked potatoes or alongside a couple of other salads. I would suggest putting it with deep-fried potato balls, but I have not worked through that thought yet.

1 romaine lettuce, or two little gems1 small headradicchio6 tbspextra-virgin olive oil1 tbsp honey1 tbspred-wine vinegar1 tspdijon mustardSalt100g toasted hazelnuts150ggorgonzola dolce,broken into small pieces

Break all the lettuce into leaves, wash them in cold water, dry thoroughly, then rip into bite-sized pieces.

Working in a large bowl, use a balloon whisk to mix the olive oil, honey, red-wine vinegar, dijon mustard, a teaspoon of warm water and a pinch of salt into an emulsified dressing, adjusting to taste.

Add the leaves to the bowl and toss really well so every leaf is coated – your hands are easily the best tool for this. Add half the nuts and half the cheese, then gently toss again.

Tip the dressed salad on to a large plate, scatter over the remaining cheese and nuts, and serve immediately.