👋🏼 Hey ladies!

Welcome to Bodytalk, where we discuss the realities of women’s health, culture, and more. This is our space: To unpack the double standards, to confront the misinformation, and to open up about the things we’ve been told are “TMI”.

Last week, I asked you if anyone else ever feels some nostalgia for the earliest days of the pandemic…and all of you said yes — you miss it on some level and so do I. It’s okay: We’re all in this together.

Speaking of being in this together…can we all just band together to fight the patriarchy? Finally? Because whew, do we have some news for you on the current state of it. We’ll get it into below.

Time to chat 🗣️

A recent study found something shocking: Nearly one-third of Gen Z men who responded to the survey believe women should “obey” their husbands.

Yes, obey. Not respect. Not love. Not trust. Obey. Their. Husbands.

The wildest part of all this? Gen Z men were found to be far more likely to hold these old-school ideas about decision-making power in a marriage than their baby boomer counterparts. So much for progress, right?

These findings come from IPSOS and the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at King’s Business School, King’s College London, and were released to align with — you can’t make this stuff up — International Women’s Day. It included a survey of 23,000 people in 29 countries….so yeah, that’s pretty comprehensive.

The findings are pretty alarming: Aside from the “obey your husband” of it all, the research also revealed that nearly a quarter of the men surveyed believe women should not appear too independent or self-sufficient, and 21 percent think women should never initiate sex (yes, really).

More than half of the Gen Z men surveyed believe they’re “expected to do too much” in the name of equality, and honestly that doesn’t even surprise me because…*gestures all around*.

Listen, anyone who spends any amount of time on TikTok knows that this type of ethos is out there. There’s the manosphere, there’s red pilling, and as a result, men are feeling some type of way about the role they’re expected to play in our world. Read more.

🔎 Ask Clara: How does the patriarchy harm men?

I became a mom in 2018, shortly after the tech boom in the baby care space. 

There were bassinets that auto-rocked your baby, heart rate monitors that strapped into those tiny newborn feet, rockers that stimulated the motion of a mother's womb...and so on and so forth. I totally fell for it, too. I bought the gadgets and I felt a level of gratitude for the modern-day conveniences of new motherhood.

But like...have we gone too far? Because now there's literally a way to get your baby's sleep score via AI thanks to Nanit's new offerings. And I don't know....it just feels like one more thing that'll stress out already exhausted and overwhelmed new parents. 

I find myself wondering if, by making new parenthood so modernized, we're simply making life harder and more stressful for new parents. And, of course, when I say "new parents", I mostly mean new mothers. They are, after all, the ones being fed constant ads and reminders of these products. 

It's natural for new moms to feel like they need to invest in all the things in order to make the transition to parenthood more seamless, or even to give your children the best start in life. It's also natural to seek validation that we're doing it right, to crave tangible representation of our performance in motherhood...and, in an attempt to do that, to seek out this type of data. But the truth is, the things that can make new parenthood easier aren't high-tech. Read more.

 🔎 Ask Clara: Are new moms prepared for postpartum?

If you're a millennial, you remember the days of Hathaway hate — when the mere mention of Anne Hathaway's name could send groups of people into diatribes about how "unlikable" the talented actress is.

Not surprisingly, the pit of Hathaway's likability came around the same time as the peak of her professional success. Because doesn't the likability paradox always go that way? 

So why is all the relevant now, a full 15-ish years after the height of Hathway hate? Well, I just came across a clip of the actress answering a series of incredibly sexist, invasive questions, and I was immediately reminded of how much the public panned this poor woman. And for what? She didn't do anything wildly offensive or commit a crime. When I saw this video and it all made sense: So much of the Hathaway hate was a byproduct of the star's refusal to let sexist BS fly.

Hathaway stands up for herself. And let's face it, we have a hard time with women who don't roll over and allow the world to walk all over them. In this clip, it's so obvious. The video features a series of interview questions directed towards Hathaway, Many are about her weight and her body. The zinger for me is when Hathaway is asked about a wardrobe malfunction she suffered.

"I was very sad that we live in an age when someone takes a picture of someone in a vulnerable moment and rather than delete it and do the decent thing, sells it... And I’m sorry that we live in a culture that commodifies sexuality of unwilling participants," she said. And then, like a consummate professional, she steered the conversation away from her body and her humiliation and back to her work, which was the whole reason for her press appearance.

MIC DROP MOMENT. Read more.

🔎 Ask Clara: What is the likability paradox?

I love to walk. Love it. I’d take three walks a day if I had the time, knocking out 15k steps each and every day. But I, like most people, don’t have the time for that.

On social media, you see a lot of narratives about discipline and fitness and lifestyle and how everyone has the same 24 hours in a dob”), they’ll frequently invalidate that claim. “I made time for this even when I had a desk job,” they’ll say.

But here’s the thing: There are so many factors that affect what people truly have time for. And while the 10k steps a day narrative is a popular one, I’d argue that getting in these steps is the most time-consuming wellness goal of all. It’s not always impossible to squeeze in a 30-minute workout or bake some chicken and veggies for dinner, but 10,000 steps require a lot of time devoted…and it’s time most people simply don’t have.

Yes, there are hacks available: You can invest in a walking pad to get more steps in when it’s too cold to walk outdoors. You can park really far away from every store when you’re running errands. You can take your kids out in the stroller and pound the pavement while they nap. These can help, but they can’t necessarily get you there every single day. And that’s okay.

As we’re finally starting to discuss, the 10k steps idea is really a myth.. Read more.

🔎 Ask Clara: Should I walk 10,000 steps every day?

Remember when the news was about what happened, not how to feel about it? 1440's Daily Digest is bringing that back. Every morning, they sift through 100+ sources to deliver a concise, unbiased briefing — no pundits, no paywalls, no politics. Just the facts, all in five minutes. For free.

Read the newsletter trusted by 4.5 million fact-seekers.