👋🏼 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”.

Well, we made it. Another winter — and a particularly brutal one at that — is in the books.

Spring is finally, finally here. It’s a time for new beginnings: Spring cleaning, maybe a few fun new wardrobe pieces to get you through the warmer months, perhaps even setting a spring resolution (we make a case for that below!).

But as nice as the warmer days are, spring is also a time for pesky seasonal allergies. I’m dealing with them now, and I’ve discovered something I never knew…

Intrigued? Let’s chat 🗣️

If you’ve been here for a while, you know I’m not into New Year’s resolutions. To me, they just feel like they put way too much pressure on self-improvement rather than life improvement. And in the dreary month of January, when I’m coming off of the exhausting marathon that is the holiday season, when the days are short and the months feel endless, the last thing I want to do is commit to going to the gym everyday or whatever.

But maybe we’ve had the concept of resolutions wrong all this time. Obviously, a new year does feel like a great time for a fresh start. But spring is also a time for new beginnings, a season of rebirth. And maybe…that makes spring the perfect time for a resolution instead.

This was brought to my attention by the late James Van Der Beek, who made a video arguing for spring to be considered our fresh start. “Why are we celebrating a new year in the dead of winter? Why are we celebrating new beginnings at a time when nature rests?” he said. “The time to celebrate a new beginning and a new you and a new resolution is spring.”

There’s research to support this, and a piece from The Conversation sums it up really well. It all begs the question…should we all just embrace the idea of March resolutions instead of New Year’s resolutions?

Of course, you don’t need a massive cultural shift to decide to do this on your own. You can wake up tomorrow and resolve to meet up with a friend once a week, or hit a step goal everyday, or take up a new hobby. And honestly? There’s a chance you may have more success. Read more.

🔎 Ask Clara: Should I make a New Year’s resolution in the spring?

If you were to ask me to explain why women tend to experience more prolonged periods of pain, I'd have a lot of theories. Women, after all, carry pregnancies (which don't just affect your body for nine-ish months, FYI)...and we tend to neglect our own needs in order to meet everybody else's, we face wild amounts of medical gaslighting...the list goes on.

But new research reveals that there may be another reason at work. According to the study, which was published in Science Immunology, women do experience slower pain resolution and are more prone to developing chronic pain (no, it's not just in your head). The study also points out that the reason for this has been unclear (which, you know, tends to be the case when it comes to matters of women's pain). 

The researchers observed male and female mice to learn more about why male mice tend to have quicker pain resolution, which has been shown in previous research. What they found when comparing these animal findings to data sets was that the reason for this may be molecular. 

The researchers observed that males were more likely to produce a molecule called interleukin-10+ (IL-10). In both sexes, the pain wasn’t resolved when IL-10 was deleted. Pain can certainly have a hormonal link, which may explain why women report greater pain during certain points in their cycles (menstrual migraines, anyone?). Read more.

 🔎 Ask Clara: Why is women’s pain often dismissed?

Winter is officially over and I am thrilled about that. But here's what I'm less thrilled about: The onset of allergy season. Yesterday we had beautiful warm weather for half of the day (before a torrential downpour started, of course), but my son and I both found ourselves unable to fully enjoy the sunshine we'd been waiting for for so long.

I typically only have a day or two of allergy symptoms every year. But when those allergy days hit? Oh man, they hit. I'm miserable for 24-ish hours, with itchy eyes, a super runny nose, headaches, and just a general feeling of…blah. Yesterday I was so confused about what I was feeling and I told my husband I almost felt fluish — I was just so exhausted and lethargic. First I wondered if I was coming down with something viral. And then I decided to hit up my trusty friend Google.

Apparently, allergies can do more than make your eyes itch and your nose run. According to material from the Cleveland Clinic, allergy fatigue is a real thing. Your immune system is working overtime to respond to those allergens, and that can cause that sense of exhaustion.

It's not surprising that I, like so many others, struggle to distinguish allergy symptoms from cold and flu symptoms. According to the material, your body produces cytokines, which are proteins released by the immune system, when dealing with allergies, just like it does when you're fighting off a cold, a virus, or bacteria. Read more.

🔎 Ask Clara: What is allergy fatigue?

Everyone and their mother is fawning over Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s iconic, effortless, minimalist ‘90s style…and many of the icon’s biggest admirers weren’t even alive to experience true ‘90s culture.

But those of us who are old enough to remember what the decade truly felt like seem to have some complicated feelings about the Carolyn Bessette effect. I know I do. When I watch Love Story, the show about Bessette’s real life love story with John F. Kennedy Jr., I feel a real sense of nostalgia for the time period…but because I was there, I don’t see it with rose-colored glasses.

So much of the Carolyn Bessette effect is about the time period as opposed to just the woman’s style (which was, to be clear, fabulous). There’s a sense of longing for something we can’t quite get back. 

There was a simplicity to ‘90s culture that was reflected in the style: Not everything was hyper trendy and there wasn’t this need to define your aesthetic. There also wasn’t the intense pressure of plastic surgery, Botox, and social media filtering…and so we had the privilege of growing up with expressive, character-filled beauty.

But let’s not pretend there weren’t other problematic beauty standards in the ‘90s. Carolyn Bessette became iconic in large part because she fit the mold: Tall, thin, blonde, white. We were told, through subtle and overt messages, that this was the only way to be beautiful as a woman. The standards then were also incredibly exclusive, though arguably in a different way than they are now.

The Carolyn Bessette effect invites us to look back on how our ideas about what an ‘it girl’ should be have shifted…for better and for worse. It sheds light on how the one thing that hasn't changed is this: We’ve always demanded that women fit into this narrow ideal. 

The Carolyn Bessette effect is all about longing for simple, natural, minimalist aesthetic…which feels impossible in 2026, when the pressure to do the most in the name of beauty, to be constantly on top of an ever-changing trend cycle, and to attempt every wellness hack under the sun loom large. 

People may be idolizing the late icon now, but anyone who is watching Love Story knows that wasn’t always the case. Even she was picked apart mercilessly. Because while we no longer have the simplicity of the ‘90s and the minimalist style it inspires, what we still have is a culture that expects too much of women…and punishes them too easily. That hasn't changed one bit.

🔎 Ask Clara: How do beauty standards change over time?

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