👋🏼 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”.

Did you watch the Laguna Beach reunion this past weekend? I feel like it was the Super Bowl for millennial women: A feel-good, nostalgic retrospective that took us 🎶 back, back to the beginning 🎶.

It was everything I needed…and it also made me so emotional. We will never get our youth back, but what really struck me is this realization: We’ll also never get the world we lived in back, and that hurts. More on that below.

Also below: Lots of talk about the decision to have children. Who is making this decision? How old are these people? How do we feel about the women who don’t choose to have children? How do those women feel about the people who do opt into parenthood? And what about the people who don’t plan to get pregnant…but do anyway?

We’re unpacking it all below.

Let’s get this party started 🗣️

I recently read an article in The Atlantic that kind of altered my brain chemistry — and by “altered my brain chemistry”, I really just mean it pointed out something I haven’t considered about reproductive health despite literally thinking about reproduction like it’s my job (because it kind of is my job as a journalist who covers the topic).

The article is about accidental pregnancies after 40, which are surprisingly common (like, around one in three pregnancies among women over 40 are unplanned, according to data from a few years ago).

That’s not to say fertility doesn’t decline with age. It does. We do lose eggs as we get older; that’s a scientific fact. But what we need to remember is this: Your fertility doesn’t just completely leave the chat when you turn 35, as narratives around “advanced maternal age” (a terrible term, as we’ve discussed) might suggest. 

The root of accidental pregnancies after 40, as this article touches on, seems to be more about approach and lifestyle. People may lower their guard where pregnancy prevention is concerned. They experience symptoms of perimenopause and assume “hey, I’m in the clear — I won’t get pregnant now” and maybe they stop really paying attention to contraception.

We also are still very much learning about the realities of perimenopause and menopause — to the point that we really never spoke publicly about these topics up until very recently. As a result, people don’t really know what’s happening in our bodies.

They also may not know that perimenopause affects, but doesn't completely wipe out, your fertility. It's not until you've reached menopause, which is clinically defined as one year without a period, that your ability to get pregnant is gone, according to Mayo Clinic materials. You should use birth control until then if you want to avoid pregnancy.

And that’s what it all comes down to: We don’t have the information we need to truly take control of our reproductive destinies. Read more.

🔎 Ask Clara: What are my odds of getting pregnant at 40?

I recently came across a TikTok that went viral. In it, a woman shares that she automatically unfollows any woman once she announces a pregnancy or engagement.

The post has since been deleted, but it’s not the only one of its kind. Across my feeds, I frequently see takes from people saying that once a woman gets married or has a child, she becomes unrelatable and uninteresting. And they click that “unfollow" button.

Listen, I get that it’s easier to relate to someone who is in a similar phase of life to your own. I understand that single and childfree women, who have historically been criticized by the public and deemed “selfish” or "incomplete" should be entitled to find community.

But this idea that once a woman makes more traditional choices (marriage, motherhood), she becomes boring, dull, uninspiring, uncool— that’s also a real piece of the womanhood experience. Many of the people saying they hit unfollow when a women online takes this path are framing it as a progressive choice. But removing your support when a woman makes a choice that looks different than your own…well, that doesn’t feel like true feminism, at least to me. Especially when you consider that hitting "unfollow" isn't just a personal move, but one that can ultimately affect a creator's business. 

On my feeds, I’ve seen real beef pop up between childfree-by-choice people and parents. On the childfree side, people will boast about the things they can do because they’re not “shackled” by children; on the parent side, people (many mothers) will declare that anyone who has never experienced parenthood just simply doesn’t know love or purpose. 

But girls, come on. We have to stick together here! We have to have each other’s backs. And when we let this divide come between us, all we do is decrease our collective strength as women. Read more.

 🔎 Ask Clara: What is the tension between mothers childfree women?

Like so many millennials, I spent this past weekend tuned in to the Laguna Beach 20 year (!!!) reunion. And I found myself feeling strangely emotional about the whole thing.

A quick note: Laguna Beach was one of the OG reality shows about a group of high school students in a beautiful, affluent beach town. It hinged on a central love triangle between Kristin Cavallari, Stephen Colletti, and Lauren Conrad. Much of the buzz around the show was about pitting Conrad and Cavallari against on another, but Laguna Beach actually showcased a lot of beautiful friendships — and we don't talk about that enough!

Anyway, back to me getting full emotional during the reunion. It stands to reason, I guess: I am almost the same age as the cast, and the first season of Laguna Beach premiered when I was in high school. Watching this show feels like a time capsule. I dressed the same way as the kids onscreen (the chokehold that layered tanks, Uggs, and denim skirts had on us!), listened to the same music, and spoke in a similar way (less beach slang for sure, but pretty sure I said “like” as much as they did). 

While I was watching, I had a realization: The reason I, and so many of my fellow millennials, are so hopelessly nostalgic all the time, is because nothing today feels quite as accessible. Watching Laguna Beach felt like getting invited to a high school party hosted by the popular kids. You had this sense that you were in the room with them, and that’s what felt so game-changing about the early days of reality TV.

But today, nothing feels this authentic. Not TV, not social media, not even real life. 

We’re living in this disconnected world and experiencing so much of it through the screen. And on those screens, we see filtered, edited, spliced content. We see altered faces everywhere today — on Laguna Beach, it is striking to see how normal everyone looks. How much character and expression their faces had. Every single person on the cast was beautiful, but in a “they look like the hottest person I went to high school with” way. Now, I see teenagers who have perfected their makeup routines (thanks, I'm sure, to social media tutorials), and I wonder when we all lost the privilege of just...stumbling through it all. 

And I think that’s what we are longing for right now: Something that feels real. Content that feels relatable. Simplicity. Kids just being kids: Messing up, being imperfect, caring only about the small worlds they inhabit. Read more.

🔎 Ask Clara: Why are millennial women so nostalgic?

Well, here’s a big piece of news: The United States fertility rate fell to a new low in 2025. According to data from the CDC, fertility rates fell about 1 percent from 2024 to 2025. This follows a general decline we’ve been seeing for years now. According to the data, fertility rates in the US peaked in 2007 — and researcher Brady Hamilton tells NPR that the general fertility rate has declined by 23 percent since then.

This is a really significant shift. But we can’t talk about it without talking about what’s driving fertility rates down. 

Moms First founder Reshma Saujani puts it best: “I would argue that our fertility rates are a scorecard on how America is doing to support families,” she says during an appearance on CNN. “And guess what? We’re failing. We are pricing people out of parenthood.”

And she’s right. Let’s face it: Getting pregnant feels terrifying when reproductive choice is being taken away, leaving pregnant women vulnerable to life-threatening complications.

Giving birth is terrifying when you’re poised to do it in a country with a maternal mortality crisis.

Having a baby is terrifying when you may have to return to work just weeks or even days postpartum.

Raising a child is terrifying when you can’t afford quality childcare.

And the list goes on and on. Fertility rates are dropping because our system hasn’t done enough to make having children less impossible. Read more.

🔎 Ask Clara: What is happening to the birth rate in the U.S.?

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