Making your first therapy appointment at age 35 can cause a certain level of embarrassment. It’s not the kind you’d readily acknowledge, but it’s there—a subtle, background sensation that you’ve somehow missed something that everyone else has figured out for years. One day at lunch, a coworker casually brought up her therapist, much like you would bring up a dentist. Since her mid-twenties, she had been going. That landed strangely for some reason. However, when you’re sitting in that waiting room for the first time, feeling a little overdressed and slightly convinced that you’re doing this incorrectly, no one tells…
Author: Michael Martinez
There is a specific type of fatigue that no blood test can detect. Around 33 or 34, it shows up with the face of a typical person. You have a job. Maybe in a partnership. functional in every way that matters to the public. However, there is a persistent low hum of barely managing—the Sunday-night anxiety, the sudden irritability, and the nagging feeling that you are handling everything while barely appreciating it. There isn’t a crisis here. It is more subdued and, in a sense, more difficult to deal with. The decade that most people spend acting as though they…
Living rooms in America and Britain are experiencing something subtly contradictory. Millennial parents, who are arguably the most emotionally intelligent, research-focused, and genuinely committed generation of parents in history, are witnessing their kids experience anxiety at rates that would have shocked their own parents. Anyone who is paying attention can see the irony. These individuals grew up with dial-up internet and experienced two recessions as adults. They already carried that burden into parenthood, with documented anxiety, record levels of burnout, and a deep-seated fear of repeating what had been done to them. They read the books as a result. They…
There is a certain cruelty in timing: an illness can strike right when everything you’ve worked for is finally coming together, rather than during a quiet period. Jayne Kennedy experienced that. She was one of the most well-known figures in fitness media in the early 1980s, coexisting peacefully with Richard Simmons and Jane Fonda as a key figure in the wellness movement of the time. One of her best-selling books was Love Your Body. She was watching it take off after writing it, producing it, and organizing every detail of its launch. She was then unable to perform a sit-up…
The way Josh Gad’s weight has followed his career—rising and falling in tandem with the roles Hollywood has chosen to give him or withhold—is almost too neat. For years, the Frozen star carried his size in a way that only some actors can: with humor, charm, and a kind of self-awareness that put everyone else at ease before they could become uncomfortable. Up until it broke down, it operated flawlessly. Gad relied on his size for many of the jokes that characterized his early career, building his early reputation on the chubby best-friend archetype. That’s simply a category Hollywood created…
A celebrity who won’t allow you to create a fantasy about them has an almost disarming quality. Most well-known people in Sia’s shoes—a Grammy-nominated pop songwriter whose voice has powered hits for Britney Spears, Rihanna, and Beyoncé—would discreetly vanish behind a stylist and reappear looking different without ever realizing it. Sia has never been the most well-known person. She acknowledges that she covers her face with an enormous wig when performing. Nevertheless, she speaks more than almost anyone about the condition of her body. Sia did not choose or expect to gain weight. She gained a substantial amount of weight…
The moment Perrie Edwards shared holiday pictures from her trip to celebrate her 26th birthday, and the internet reacted with scrutiny rather than warmth, is subtly telling. Her body caught the attention of both fans and tabloid accounts, who noted that she appeared different, fuller, and less like the polished pop product they had become accustomed to seeing on stage. Edwards, on the other hand, refrained from spiraling or issuing a statement that was written in terms of damage control. She just admitted that she had put on weight and moved on. It’s the kind of response that seems simple…
It was never intended for Mary Pierce to be so easily disregarded. She served the ball with an almost reckless aggression, won the French Open at the age of 19 in a city that values power and elegance equally, and dominated women’s tennis for well over ten years. Nevertheless, even at the height of her career, the subject of her body kept coming up in discussions about her. The remarks began early and didn’t really end. The bluntness of forum posts from the early 2000s is still shocking: “Sorry, but Mary Pierce is so fat.” The day after she played…