• Sandiford could avoid the death penalty under new Indonesian law
• She is held in Kerobokan Prison in Bali and is known as the ‘queen’ of the prison

By Ryan Prosser

Published: 02:13 EDT, March 22, 2024 | Updated: 12:19 EDT, March 22, 2024

I was on top of the world. Literally. The summit of Everest, 8,848-metres high. It had taken six gruelling days and nights to get there after leaving base camp and the final hours along the summit ridge had been terrifying – the rocky track as thin as thread with a vertical drop either side. Dead bodies littered the way.

When I finally reached the prayer flags fluttering in the wind at the top, I sat down exhausted.

The view was unarguably magnificent – blue sky against white snow, surrounded by the most glorious mountains in the world. I hadn’t expected to feel triumphant. But I thought there would be a sense of relief that I’d finally made it.

Instead, I just felt numb. And I knew I still had to get down. Descending high mountains is just as difficult and dangerous as climbing up them. As it turns out, I was right to be anxious, something terrible was yet to happen.

I wondered how I got there. A 51-year-old woman from north London who is the most unlikely athlete.

At school, I was the arty one, not the sporty one. I never wanted to be a mountaineer. But somehow I had become a record-breaking adventurer. The first woman in the world to achieve ‘The Sea, Street, Summit Challenge’ – which is to swim the English Channel, run a road marathon and summit Mount Everest.

However, this wasn’t what I had always wanted. What I always wanted was to be a mother.

My long, hard journey to the summit of Everest started when I was 34. The day my partner, Peter, and I looked at each other and said: ‘Let’s make a family.’ We had been together for several years. We both had successful careers in the arts world. I had recently become Chief Executive of a London theatre – the Lyric Hammersmith – and I mistakenly thought I was one of the women who could ‘have it all’.

So we threw away the contraception and started trying. It was fun at first – making love for a purpose as well as for pleasure. Like so many couples we thought that soon we’d see a double line on a pregnancy test.

But after a year nothing had happened. We went to our first fertility clinic and were diagnosed with ‘unexplained infertility’. Around a third of all couples who struggle to conceive receive this frustrating diagnosis. We started on IVF. We got pregnant first time. But lost the baby early on. We went through another round. The same thing happened.

IVF was the first gruelling physical and mental endurance journey I undertook. It was a rollercoaster I rode for ten years, mostly in secret. Infertility is shrouded in shame. I didn’t tell family, friends or colleagues.

My job was often glamorous, mixing with famous directors and actors. But at first night theatre parties, behind my smiles for the camera, I was going through the saddest years of my life.

Miscarrying my babies in public toilets, sometimes tying a jumper around my waist to hide the blood and carrying on as if nothing had happened.

The façade cracked when a pregnancy was discovered as ectopic at three months. A perfect baby but not in my womb: in my stomach. An emergency operation saved my life. But pregnancy loss and infertility is barely recognised as an injury, illness or bereavement. As soon as I was discharged from hospital I went back to work.

The worst part of all was what it did to my mental health. I felt like a failure as a woman. I grew distant from my friends as they had their own families. The pain of their happiness too much to bear. I thought I would never be happy.

In total we spent over £70,000 in our pursuit of parenthood and got into debt to pay for it. But in the end the closest I ever came to becoming a biological mother was a cluster of cells. The only evidence the scars across my tummy from my ectopic emergency.

Aged 43, I instinctively knew it was time to give up on my own eggs. Around the same time my relationship with my partner, Peter, started to break down. Perhaps if we had stayed together we could have explored an alternative route to parenthood – adoption, egg or sperm donation, surrogacy. But we separated. It broke me: I fell into the abyss.

I was in my forties. Childless, single and alone. I didn’t know what I wanted from life anymore.

I had a fabulous career, but it wasn’t making me happy. So I gave up my job. I moved back to my childhood home to live, and care for my elderly mum. That’s when I started to exercise my way out of heartbreak.

I’d never swum in open water before so swimming the 21 miles that separated England from France was an odd choice. I couldn’t even swim very well. But I had enjoyed going to our local pool as a child – and it was a memory from then that sparked the idea.

Back in the 1970s and 80s swimming the English Channel made headline news. When I failed to get a place in my school swimming gala I told my disappointed dad that it didn’t matter because one day I was going to swim the Channel instead.

I loved my dad so much and I wanted to make him proud. He would have made a wonderful grandfather but after suffering a series of strokes he died in 2012 on the day I received the negative result of one of my final rounds of IVF.

I trained for two years – hours and hours doing drills in the pool throughout the winter, and then in the summer in Dover Harbour. When I achieved my qualifying swim of six hours in water below 16 degrees – I was ready to make an attempt.

I began my swim out of sadness on 2 September 2015 at 1.30am. It became my own version of giving birth – 17 hours 44 minutes and 30 seconds of labour in the sea. I suffered with violent vomiting, jellyfish stings all over my body and face. But when my feet finally touched the sand in France, all the pain was eclipsed by euphoria.

The adrenalin buzz of achieving something so big had got me, so I then set out to run the London Marathon. It had been on my bucket list but I had never seriously considered it because I am a rubbish runner.

When I started training a stranger shouted out at me that I must get exhausted running so slowly. On 23 April 2017, every step of the 26.2 miles from Greenwich to the Mall was a slog and I eventually finished in 5 hours and 27 minutes. There will never be a sub four in me.

But on the positive side, I had started using my challenges to raise awareness for fertility causes – writing books and touring to schools across the country to tell my story.

I want young people today to learn more than ‘how not to get pregnant’. They need to know the warning signs of fertility problems; the impact of age on pregnancy success; the limits, costs and ethics of reproductive science.

And then, finally, I embarked on the biggest journey of my life: to the top of the world. I had heard that very few people had swum the Channel and summitted Everest and that no woman had achieved the ‘Sea, Street, Summit Challenge’ – running a marathon as well. I wanted to give it a go.

I was under no illusion about the dangers. Every year a few hundred people attempt to climb the mountain and several die.

It was going to be especially hard for a middle-aged woman who knew nothing about mountaineering. I had never put on a harness, or tied myself to a rope. I started training – climbing all the highest mountains in the UK, and around the world.

I spent hours going up hills with a pack on my back. This inspired me to take on another endurance challenge far more suited to an arty girl – listening to every single episode of my favourite radio programme – Desert Island Discs.

The show’s castaways became my companions – their wisdom and music fuelling me. They inspired me to start creating playlists for every aspect of life. For the mountains; for the mornings; for the sun, wind and rain. Music to cheer me up when I was feeling down. To push me through a final mile.

I also start creating playlists for my family – my parents, grandparents, Peter. And I created a playlist for ‘Molly’ our longed for, imagined child. For her I chose Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ because all every mother wants is for their child to be happy. Creating these playlists brought me joy and has enabled me to cherish my family – including those I’ve lost and never had at all.

It took me six years of training and three attempts to summit Everest – whom I now call Chomolungma which is her original Tibetan Sherpa name and means ‘Mother Goddess of the World’.

The first try was a non attempt – in 2020 two weeks before I was due to fly to Nepal the mountain was closed due to Covid. I went back in 2021 but was unable to summit. I got sick but also wasn’t fit enough.

I returned for a final time in 2022. My six-day climb began with crossing the Khumbu Icefall. A tumbling cascade of giant blocks of ice, which at any moment can crash down and obliterate you. You have to cross cavernous crevasses with hundreds of metres of blackness below you on lightweight wobbly metal ladders wearing crampons. It’s like treading a tightrope in stilettos. I projectile vomited for 11 hours until we reached Camp 1.

The sickness weakened me and when we reached Camp 2, I had to rest and recover for two days. And from there we still had to reach Camp 3 up the legendary Lhotse Face, a near verticle ice wall, and to Camp 4 on the South Col from where you commence the final ascent – which for me was another 13 long hours upwards through the night.

At 7.30am on the 14 May 2022, I finally made it. But reaching the top of a mountain is only half of the journey. My descent was to become the biggest test of all. Several hours later, at 8,000 metres in the Death Zone – so called because it is too high for helicopter rescue and there isn’t enough air to survive for more than a few hours – I was involved in a freak accident.

Somebody’s oxygen cylinder came hurtling down the mountain, knocking me over and breaking my left leg. Most climbers need at least two bottles of oxygen to reach the summit. The extra bottles are carried on the back of your bag or, sometimes, shamefully thrown away when finished.

I’ll never know whether the bottle was dislodged or discarded. But the result was the darkest two days of my life in which I looked death in the face.

Everyone who climbs Everest is attached in single file to the same safety rope (without it the blow would have knocked me off the mountain). There was someone from my team in front of me and someone behind, and for a while they did what they could to help.

They took off my pack and carried it for me. But the situation was highly stressful for all of us as the injury had made me a life-threatening liability and everyone’s oxygen was running out. I could hardly move and at one point told them to leave me there to die and save themselves.

I crawled to Camp 4 where I passed out and when I woke up I discovered I had lost my sight due to snow and altitude blindness. This added an extra layer of terror.

Thankfully it returned after a couple of hours but even then the ordeal was far from over. I still had get down to Camp 2 where I could be rescued by helicopter. A descent that might usually take a few hours took a whole day – every slow painful step a game of Russian Roulette, my only support in that time Ibuprofen.

When I finally got to the relative safety of Camp 2, I collapsed and all I remember after that is lying in a tent vomiting.

The next day the weather was terrible and it was touch and go whether a helicopter would be able to land but suddenly I heard its thrum. I was carried to it in a frantic blur of sherpa, ice and pain and flown to hospital in Kathmandu.

My accident is not something I’d ever wish on anyone. But nor would I change it. Facing death has made me want to live. And one of the greatest gifts of my adventure from sea to summit is the renewed and profound relationship it has given me with Nature.

For a long time, I felt like she (Nature) didn’t love me because she wouldn’t give me a baby. Now I believe she does and saved my life – because all my injuries were man-made and if the weather hadn’t remained clement I would have surely died.

My adventures have turned the negative experiences of my life into positive. They have given me something else to focus on and the hardness of them has given me more strength to face everyday ups and downs.

I have become an activist for the power of adventure to improve your mental and physical health (including micro adventures closer to home and less dangerous).

The key is doing something new that requires effort. It makes you feel energised and ‘alive’. So I may never be a mother. I think I will always be carrying the grief of my personal life in my rucksack.

But in the words of Louis Armstrong, in one of the most selected Desert Island Discs songs of all time, I truly believe that it is (mostly) a ‘Wonderful World’.

• Save Me from the Waves: An Adventure from Sea to Summit by Jessica Hepburn (£17.99, Aurum) is published this Thursday 7 March

She’s been nominated for a Tony Award, is an alumna of the Yale School of Drama and had her big screen break starring opposite Eddie Murphy in the Netflix film Dolemite Is My Name… yet Da’Vine Joy Randolph is hardly a household name.

However, that will likely change starting today after the 37-year-old Philadelphia-born actress won Best Supporting Actress at the 96th annual Academy Awards on Sunday.

She’s been working in the industry for more than a decade, but Da’Vine is now the toast of Hollywood for her turn as grieving chef Mary Lamb in boarding school drama The Holdovers, in which co-star Paul Giamatti plays grumpy teacher Paul Hunham.

The actress – who beat Oppenheimer’s Emily Blunt and Barbie’s America Ferrera to her gong – has proven unbeatable this awards season after big wins at the Screen Actors Guild, Golden Globes, BAFTA and Critics’ Choice Awards.

But performing as an actor on stage and screen was never a lifelong dream for Da’Vine, who trained as an opera singer before her mother urged her to take acting lessons.

“I didn’t think I should do this as a career. I started out as a singer,” a tearful Randolph told the crowd at the Dolby Theater.

“And my mother said to me, ‘Go across that street to that theater department.’ There’s something for you.’ And I thank my mother for that.

“I thank all the people who have come my way and guided and guided me. I’m so grateful for all you beautiful people there.’

Da’Vine was born on May 21, 1986. As a youth, she attended the prestigious Interlochen summer arts camp in Michigan for theater.

At Temple University in Philadelphia, she initially focused on classical music and opera performance before switching to a musical theater major.

She refined those skills at the Yale School of Drama, where she received her master’s degree.

A year later, Da’Vine turned heads on Broadway and received a 2012 Tony nomination for her portrayal of psychic Oda Mae Brown in “Ghost: The Musical.”

She made her big screen debut in 2013 in “Mother of George,” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and starred Danai Gurira.

On television, she appeared in the cult favorite “Selfie” and guest-starred on several shows, including “The Good Wife,” “Veep,” “This Is Us” and the musical drama “Empire.”

Da’Vine’s film breakthrough came in the well-received 2019 Netflix film “Dolemite Is My Name,” starring Eddie Murphy.

Voice work in several animated films followed, along with appearances in ‘The United States vs. Billie Holiday” opposite Andra Day, and “The Lost City” starring Sandra Bullock.

On television, she scored recurring roles on “High Fidelity” and “Only Murders in the Building.”

And then director and screenwriter Alexander Payne called about The Holdovers. I find that actors who are skilled in comedy can play dramatic roles without being somber about it,” Alexander told USA Today. “She can laugh a lot and also make you cry.”

Da’Vine also appeared in another Oscar-nominated film last year, “Rustin,” starring Colman Domingo, in which she played gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who sang at the March on Washington.

Upcoming projects include the action thriller “Shadow Force” starring Kerry Washington and Omar Sy, and the action comedy “Bride Hard” starring Rebel Wilson.

“I’m very grateful for people’s appreciation of my talent, but in no way have I shown my potential,” she told The New York Times ahead of the Oscars. “I’m now starting to have a growing platform to do this. Let’s do it!’

She was all along favored to win Best Supporting Actress for The Holdovers, but she brought many to tears with a moving speech about her path to victory.

“I always wanted to be different for so long,” Da’Vine said. “And now I realize that I just have to be myself.”

Thanking a mentor, she said, “When I was the only black girl in class, you saw me and told me I was enough.”

And she thanked her publicist and said she knew that was unusual “but you don’t have a publicist like I have a publicist!” Da’Vine added near the end, “I pray to God I can do this more than once.”

Da’Vine’s tears first began to flow as she sat in her seat as Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o stood on stage and paid tribute to the actress. Lupita spoke about the amazing performance of Da’Vine, who wore her grandmother’s glasses in the film.

“What an honor to see the world through her eyes and yours,” Lupita said.

Along with her grandmother’s glasses, Da’Vine said she used other accessories in the film as a “love letter to black women.”

‘I knew this would be a difficult role. It would take a lot of vulnerability on my part,” she said.

“I knew that (my grandmother) was someone in my life who would allow me to return to my center. But it was a lot of other women.

‘I did a lot of research and some subliminal messages with hairstyles, details and accessories beyond the glasses, paying tribute to women – from (American sitcom) The Jeffersons, (American singer and actress) Phyllis Hyman, things like that.

“So I included all these women who were ‘impressed’ by me… and that meant a lot because it felt like a love letter to black women.”

Her The Holdovers character Mary is one of the few black faces on the New England campus, where the film is set in the 1970s.

She mourns her son, one of the school’s few black graduates who died in the Vietnam War and was stuck on campus at Christmas.

One of Da’Vine’s big moments in the film comes when Mary unexpectedly attends a family party with moody teacher Paul Hunham (Paul Giamatti) and anxious student Angus Tully (Dominic Sessa), and catharstically releases some of her grief.

“I was pleasantly surprised to see how much context Mary had, the emotion of a completed storyline,” Da’Vine told the Los Angeles Times late last year. “That may sound trivial and silly, but it’s not always available, especially to people of color.”

‘Mary, oh Mary. You’ve changed my life. You made me feel seen in so many ways that I could never have imagined,” the actress said in her Golden Globes acceptance speech.

An Australian actress best known for her role in Neighbors has opened up about her ongoing health battle with an invisible illness that left her suffering in silence until she was finally diagnosed.

Jordy Lucas, 32, revealed that after landing her dream role on the Aussie soap as a teenager, she started experiencing unbearable and irregular periods.

However, due to the common misconception that painful periods are normal, Ms Lucas’ concerns were dismissed by doctors.

The actress recalls an episode where she was rushed to hospital after finishing a scene for Neighbors because she had been bleeding for weeks.

“I felt like I was going to faint,” she said News.com.au.

Once again her pain and bleeding disappeared and Mrs Lucas was prescribed the contraceptive pill.

To some extent, the pill helped her control her symptoms, and she continued taking it for several years, including during her time in America.

In 2020, she made the difficult choice to stop taking the pill after suffering from migraines and discovering that the contraceptive had only masked her original symptoms.

She started experiencing chronic pain and heavy periods again, but was still turned away by the doctors because nothing looked abnormal on the ultrasounds.

Even though her symptoms were a textbook example of endometriosis, a disease that an estimated one million Aussies will suffer from in their lifetime, she found it difficult to diagnose.

On average, it takes an Australian seven years to be diagnosed with endometriosis, often because the pain is written off as menstrual cramps.

Mrs. Lucas did her best to continue with her daily life, but the pain became increasingly debilitating and her heavy periods left her anemic.

It was during this time that she realized she was lucky to be working as an actress as she would not be able to keep up with the pressures of a nine to five job.

She was eventually given the green flag to undergo keyhole surgery, but admitted she was paranoid. Doctors would find nothing wrong and label her as melodramatic.

However, the medical team were able to confirm in May 2023 that Ms Lucas had endometriosis, and she burst into tears with relief at being ‘validated’.

‘I had to fight for years to be taken seriously; by the time I was taken seriously I was in stage four and all [internal organs] had merged,” she said.

Ms Lucas underwent excisional surgery to remove excess endometrial tissue in January 2024 and shared pathological findings from the procedure in February.

‘Extensive, deeply infiltrating endometriosis, adenomyosis and ovarian cysts. Things that definitely didn’t belong together were literally stuck together,” she said.

‘I feel vindicated, but I am also extremely angry. Angry that this diagnosis took more than ten years. Angry because I was made to feel like a drug-seeking hypochondriac.

“What I’m most angry about is that I started questioning myself, my own body, my own pain.”

Since her diagnosis, Ms Lucas has shared her endometriosis journey online in an attempt to overcome the ‘shame’ and ’embarrassment’ she used to feel.

She also encourages women to advocate for their health and trust their instincts.

“I hope I can help women better advocate for themselves during the diagnosis and treatment of this horrible disease,” she said.

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By Sameer Suri for Dailymail.com

Published: 1:24 PM EST, March 9, 2024 | Updated: 1:25 PM EST, March 9, 2024

Sue Cleaver has revealed she has ‘come out of hiding’ after revealing her incredible transformation, as she shared insight into her three stone weight loss to Lorraine on Wednesday.

The Coronation Street star, 60, showed off her slimmer body as a result of being ‘seriously ill’ last year and quitting alcohol.

Sue told Lorraine that after turning 60, she has decided that this decade ‘is for her’, and she wants to embrace ‘going out and having fun’.

She sad: ‘I feel very much on a journey. I raised my son and my priority was always my son. And then I thought: once he’s gone, it’s my time. This is my decade. So he’s gone, he’s 28 now. I love you Elliott, but don’t come back.’

‘So now I have decided: I have turned sixty, this decade is for me.

‘And I’m going to have fun. I’m going to do what I want to do and I’m going to emerge from hiding and just being a mom who was very much like, ‘This is my number one priority,’ and I just want to do things that are fun. It started with me going into the jungle.’

Sue is set to star in the touring stage production of Sister Act, and has taken a short break from Corrie to appear in the show.

When asked if she would return to the soap, she said: ‘I have a few months’ grace from Corrie to do this show and then I will get right back into it. I think George and Eileen should have a big Corrie wedding.’

Sue previously shared that after completing Dry January she decided to give up booze altogether.

She said, “I lost 18 pounds [in I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here]. I had already lost a stone and a half that year because I had given up drinking. I did Dry January and then I decided to continue.

‘I know it sounds ridiculous at my age, but I never really thought about how many calories I was consuming if I drank a glass of red wine while cooking and then a few more while eating it.

“If you do that four or five nights a week, that’s a lot of calories.”

Last year, Sue admitted she had been drinking ‘too much red wine’ during the pandemic and had piled on the pounds, which inspired her to quit.

Despite her Corrie character Eileen Grimshaw spending a lot of time in The Rovers, she admitted pubs are her ‘idea of ​​hell’.

Speaking to Kaye Adams on her How to be 60 podcast, Sue said: ‘During the pandemic we’ve all been doing too many things. I spent a lot of it drinking a lot of delicious red wine and I gained a lot of weight doing it.

‘Then I did January dry and I thought. “I wonder what life would be like if I quit completely?”

The actress added her husband Brian Owen, shares different views and ‘love pub culture’.

“It was my idea of ​​hell when I drank, and especially now that I don’t drink,” she said.

In January, Sue revealed she felt ‘ashamed and judged’ before losing three stone.

The soap star appeared as a guest panelist on Loose Women and revealed she was treated differently while being at different weights.

She explained: ‘My weight has gone up all over and most of it was helped by red wine.

‘At the moment I’m a lot thinner, but I’ve been ill this year and for some reason my metabolism seems to have changed and because I don’t drink. But I’ve been the other way and may be going the other way.”

Sue continued, “What I hate about it is the shame that comes with being bigger. The judgments that were made often came from other women.

‘I find it very difficult to accept. We are not stupid, we know we are big, we know we have a problem, we know we have an addiction, don’t treat us like we are idiots.

‘Other women are shocked by it. It’s so ingrained in us. Examples of this are when I’ve lost weight, I go into a room and someone says ‘oh my god, you look great, you’ve lost weight’. All I hear is ‘you looked like an absolute dog when you grew up’.

“It’s the way we talk about it that makes a big difference.”

Last year, Sue insisted she is ‘not obsessed with diets’ as she reflected on the unfair expectations placed on women while reporting on the March issue of Prima magazine.

She stated that she would never promote weight-related products because women “have enough problems as it is.”

Speaking about not being caught up in diet culture, Sue told the publication: ‘I lost some weight in the jungle, but I’m not obsessed with dieting – life is hard enough!

‘There will always be external pressure and unfair expectations for women, but I refuse to get caught up in that.

“That’s why I will never advertise anything related to weight, and that’s why I’d always rather compliment someone on their smile or their outfit than on their weight.”

She continued: ‘Let’s just let women be women – we have enough difficulties and struggles already.’

It comes after Sue warned her followers after diet companies used her image without consent while claiming she had lost weight using their gummies.

She warned her 148,000 Instagram followers about the scam and apologized to anyone who thought she was promoting it.

In the clip, she shared, “I’m really sad that I actually have to make this video. But I’ve had quite a few messages over the past few weeks asking about…keto dummies.

“There’s clearly a scam going around saying I lost weight with keto gummies. Dummies? Don’t know. Well, it’s c**p. It’s a scam. And if it caught you off guard, I’m so, so sorry.”

‘It’s outrageous. And I want you to know that I would never, ever advocate anything like that. I am absolutely outraged.

‘Yes, I lost some weight last year. I gave up drinking and went into the jungle. Yes, I lost weight this year. But not from any diet.’

Sue went on to reveal that she had ‘female health issues’ that contributed to the weight loss, concluding: ‘Life is too short to worry about dieting and finding quick fixes. Just be happy with yourself.’

Watch Lorraine weekdays from 9am on ITV1 and ITVX.

How do you solve a problem like masculinity? All that anger! All that violence! All that inherent misogyny that every young boy has within him!

According to Labor, you install male ‘influencers’ in classrooms in the hope that they can teach other boys how to behave towards women.

Bridget Phillipson, the party’s education spokesperson, has pledged to introduce the plan in response to the post-pandemic rise in sexual harassment in British classrooms; as it were, a response to the Andrew Tate-ification of modern man.

In case you don’t know, Andrew Tate is a 6-foot-4 former kickboxing champion and social media personality who has ironically been kicked off almost every social media platform for his abhorrent views.

He has been hailed as the “king of toxic masculinity” and recognized as one of the loudest voices in the “manosphere” – the collective term for blogs, forums and websites that promote masculinity and, in some cases, encourage violence against women.

Make no mistake, Andrew Tate is not a good guy; After all, he is currently languishing in Romania awaiting trial for rape and human trafficking, charges he denies.

The Luton-born 37-year-old is by all accounts a self-confessed misogynist, routinely shocking and titillating with such ridiculous comments as suggesting women should ‘take responsibility’ for sexual abuse.

So how is it that he has become a figurehead for thousands of men around the world? The answer, I think, is because men – and especially schoolboys – are tired of looking more and more like women. And Andrew Tate, with his six-pack and flashy cars and his ability to execute a near-perfect tornado kick, is one of the few male voices unafraid to defend masculinity.

From what I can tell, masculinity has been under attack for the past decade; seen by many as a problem that needs to be solved. The MeToo movement has spawned a fourth wave of feminists with zero tolerance for “boys will be boys” behavior, leading an entire generation of young men to question any interaction with the opposite sex.

Just before Christmas, I was at a party talking to a young male friend. He is a decent sort: smart, kind and deeply respectful of women. He explained to me how confused he feels while dating.

Like more and more people in their twenties, there is something consciously unmanly about him. There is a sweetness in their voices, a delicacy that was never there when I was growing up with boys.

When I brought up the subject, he said to me, “This is what we think women want us to be. More like them…” He then explained how so many men he knows feel like they can no longer be themselves; masculinity has such a bad reputation in 2024. They do everything they can to present less as a ‘classic man’.

I lay in bed that night feeling desperately conflicted. On the one hand, shouldn’t we celebrate the fact that men are more in touch with their feelings? On the other hand, I thought about all the times I’d heard the phrase “toxic masculinity” spoken about by young women in the presence of men.

I thought about the characteristics that society currently assigns to “good men”: vulnerable men, men in touch with their emotions, men who choose book club over martial arts. Men who actually look a bit more like women.

And this, I think, is what really worries me. Because the more we point the finger at male identity as the problem, as opposed to specific examples of criminal behavior, the more some men will shy away and turn to characters like Andrew Tate.

So what’s the answer? Well, I would start by suggesting that compassion is needed, not anger. And celebrating what is good about men – ambition, drive, strength (yes, I know, women have these qualities too) rather than admonishing them for what is bad.

But most of all, I think understanding that men either feel lost and rejected or extremely angry should be the start of the solution. Imposing a government-trained “influencer” on them to explain why everything they do is wrong is probably not the case.

No one buys your vulnerable side, J-Lo!

They have money. They have looks. They have power. But the one thing celebrities still crave in 2020? Vulnerability.

First there was Beyoncé’s Renaissance documentary (hey, she’s just a tough 40-year-old, just like you – well, apart from the £600 million in the bank).

Then Posh and Becks revealed (almost) everything in Netflix’s Beckham.

Now J-Lo has spent $20 million on a mash-up of a documentary titled The Greatest Love Story Never Told, which is about aging, insecurities and her two-decade love affair with husband Ben Affleck.

J-Lo has always struck me as the most capable woman, so attempting to weave an alternative story feels somewhat hollow to me.

Can you remember your PIN code?

Last week I was shopping with my card when the cashier handed me the merchant’s keypad and asked me to enter my PIN.

Send a chill down the spine. I have been contactless for years and it turns out that I am one of almost one in five people who can no longer remember their PIN code.

So yeah, I walked out empty-handed – and with a red face.

Is it just me or is the whole world ‘triggered’ or ‘exploring their limits’? Therapy speaking is the language of choice for Generation Z, for those who put feelings above all else – is it any wonder that a new study shows that 5 percent of young adults are now unemployed for mental health reasons? When someone else tells me that he or she is “sharing their truth,” I run to the nearest therapist’s couch.

The real message behind Anya snap

This week, Hollywood star Anya Taylor-Joy was criticized for sharing a photo on her Instagram account of her tiny, tiny waist further constricted by a corset (pictured).

While some came to her defense, the overall message was clear: After a decade of body positivity, we should very well know better than to praise thinness.

But still… last week’s Milan Fashion Week saw a noticeable return to slim on the catwalks, with few medium and plus models making it to the show. Then there’s the fact that Ozempic use is widespread.

If the culture is going one way, the only certainty is that over time it will go the other way.

A hairy lady has revealed that even though people are constantly staring at her bushy pins, men are supposedly obsessed with them.

Aria Loca from Mexico is fed up with society reinforcing the idea that women need a hairless body. That’s why she rebels against the norms.

The 34-year-old has opted for a low-maintenance look, and she doesn’t care who can see her blurry bits.

Although her hairy appearance sometimes draws surprised looks, Aria says men online are completely enamored with her rugged style.

But despite receiving daily messages from men professing their love for her fluffy pins and armpits, her natural looks have still brought excitement to her dating life.

‘I once had a relationship with someone who didn’t feel like it. I kept shaving to please them, but I would never do that again now,” Aria revealed.

“If they can’t fully accept me, they’re not for me, and I’m not for them.”

But after building her TikTok page – @vivalahippieloca – around her frizzy body hair, the electric travel woman is now often showered with compliments from men.

“Now I get comments every day from men saying they love hairy legs and armpits on women,” she said.

Aria, who started growing her body hair at the age of 21, was initially inspired by the cover of Patti Smith’s Easter album, which showed the singer showing off her hairy armpits.

Explaining why she ditched the shaving cream over a decade ago, she said: ‘I saw other women showing off their body hair and it seemed so rebellious and cool.

“Many of us don’t realize that we have been brainwashed from birth to conform to societal norms.”

She added: ‘Women with smooth, hairless skin are plastered everywhere and this is what we think women should look like.’

The 34-year-old claims her friends are jealous of her confidence as they too wish they could embrace their natural vagueness.

“I’ve received some responses from friends saying they’d like to stop shaving like me, but they’re too afraid of what others will say,” she said.

Aria’s journey to embracing her natural self hasn’t been a walk in the park, however, as she often finds herself on the receiving end of online hate – but she doesn’t let it deter her.

‘Negative reactions come from online. There will always be haters, there’s not much you can do about that,” she joked.

‘I don’t think much about what other people might think.

“However, I like to spread awareness and like to think that I could change my perspective just as mine was changed.

“I may get some looks in public, but I’ve never had a negative comment in person.”

The content creator believes that everyone should be more accepting of their natural self.

‘We are all beautiful just the way we are and if women weren’t meant to have body hair we wouldn’t have body hair either, but it’s there for a reason.

“I like to embrace my femininity by embracing my body hair.”