Winter calls for rituals that actually make you feel amazing—and Pique’s Sun Goddess Matcha is mine. It delivers clean, focused energy with zero jitters, supports glowing skin and gentle detox, and feels deeply grounding on cold mornings. Smooth, ceremonial-grade, and crave-worthy, it’s the easiest way to start winter days clear, energized, and glowing from the inside out

Get Up To 20% Off

👋🏼 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”.

James Van Der Beek died last week, and with him, a little piece of our childhood went too.

I was on the young side when Dawson’s Creek came out, but I of course knew of the actor and his incredible popularity. I went back and rewatched the iconic teen drama years later, and it is truly worth a watch. I even wrote a bit about what I learned from Van Der Beek’s character here.

It feels really parasocial to say that the late actor has been on my mind since I heard the news, but it’s the truth, and I think there’s a lot wrapped up in this. For us millennials, losing a star we grew up watching hits close to home.

I’m talking about that — plus the absolute audacity some random man had to body-shame Rihanna, Valentine’s Day let down, and more.

Anyway, let’s do this 🗣️

Earlier this month, the New York Times opinion section ran a headline that made many parents — myself included — balk. "The Secret to Marriage Equality is Baby Formula," the headline reads. 

Listen, there is a tiny kernel of something to this. As a mom who exclusively breastfed twins, I can absolutely attest to the fact that for a baby's first year, a breastfeeding parent is always on call, while formula-feeding is a job either parent (or an outside caregiver) can take on. But there are certainly ways to redistribute the load, even if it's never exactly equal.

But parenting aside, here's the issue I've always found with conversations like this one: They completely minimize the role breastfeeding plays in maternal health.

Most of the time, when people talk about the benefits of breastfeeding, they're focused on the benefits they provide the baby. But what we need to remember is that breastfeeding also benefits moms in many ways. According to the CDC, breastfeeding can reduce the mother's risk of breast and ovarian cancer, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure. There's also evidence to suggest mental health benefits for mothers who breastfeed.

Am I saying that breastfeeding is the way to circumvent all these issues, or is even the superior feeding choice for new mothers? No, not at all. In a country that requires women to return to work bleeding and leaking immediately after giving birth, the notion that we "should" breastfeed is especially flawed. Even with paid leave, it doesn't work out for everyone.

But what's interesting is how minimized the maternal benefit piece of the breastfeeding conversation has been. Read more.

🔎 Ask Clara: How does breastfeeding benefit mothers?

When I first heard of James Van Der Beek’s passing, I felt like I had been punched in the gut. Obviously, I didn’t know the actor. I wasn’t even a big fan of his, though I do find the way he spoke about being a husband and father quite beautiful. For a few minutes, I couldn’t wonder why I — and so many of the gen X-ers and millennials I follow online — were so affected by this news. Is it just textbook parasocial behavior…or something more?

A few hours after the news broke, I saw a post that immediately clarified those feelings. “Losing James Van Der Beek is really like losing a classmate for Millennials,” @philantrophygal posted on Threads. The post resonated with many, and for me, it makes perfect sense.

Celebrity deaths hit hard, but now that we’ve started losing more and more of the stars we grew up watching — Shannen Doherty, Luke Perry, Dustin Diamond, Aaron Carter, Michelle Trachtenberg, to name a few — it doesn’t just feel sad to see a star succumb to an untimely death. It reminds us of our own mortality.

It puts into perspective just how fast life moves, and it makes us acutely aware that we are transitioning into a new phase of our own lives. Read more.

 🔎 Ask Clara: Why is colon cancer rising in young people?

I’m in a Facebook group full of smart, kind, successful women. And every year, after a holiday like Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day — a day meant to center women — the discourse is the same.

Someone will get vulnerable and post something about how disappointed she was on the holiday. She will express that her partner failed to get her flowers or a gift, or even acknowledge the day. 

Inevitably, someone will reply with something along the lines of: “That sucks, but you really should have communicated your wants to him. He can’t read your mind.”

But I’m here to tell you: If you were let down on Valentine’s Day, it’s not your fault.

Women are expected to anticipate everyone’s needs — essentially, to read everybody’s minds. But when they dare to have expectations from someone else, even if those expectations are as simple as “I would like to receive flowers and a nice card on Valentine’s Day,” they’re asked  to do all the emotional heavy lifting. If they don't (or, quite honestly, even if they do) they're told they are the problem. 

You shouldn’t have to communicate to someone that you want them to be thoughtful. And while we’ve been fed narratives that having expectations around “Hallmark holidays” is “cringe” or “immature”, I say screw that! It’s okay to want to be showered with love every single day, and a little extra on special holidays. Read more.

🔎 Ask Clara: What is emotional labor?

Rihanna is a music icon, a beauty mogul, a mom of three and a self-made billionaire…but she’s also a woman, which means no matter what she does or accomplishes, the world seems to think the most interesting thing about her is her body. And the world also seems to think that body is a thing they’re allowed to comment on publicly.

An account recently shared a photo of the singer at the airport carrying her son. It’s bad enough that someone snapped a photo of a mom in the wild just trying to get from point A to point B with her child in her arms. But what came next is just….blood boiling, at least to me. 

“I can see why people leave their partners after birth,” a commenter wrote. Seriously?!?! The woman had a baby five months ago, but that’s not even the point here. The point is that speaking about a woman — any woman — this way is just beyond ugly. 

Seriously, this is exhausting. Did we all just collectively forget that having a child is meant to change a woman’s body? Did we forget that even in the absence of pregnancy and childbirth, bodies change over time? Did we forget that people are going to look different at an airport as opposed to all done up and airbrushed in red carpet photos?  Did we forget that aging is a normal thing?

We have always held women to impossible standards, and people have always felt entitled to comment on women’s bodies and looks. But with the rise of Botox, fillers, plastic surgery, filtering photos, and the like, I feel we’ve created an even more unrealistic set of beauty and physical standards…and these comments are proof.

One commenter said it best: “She looks like a mom who is having a great time with her son. A father should see this as thr [sic] ultimate picture of beauty”.

🔎 Ask Clara: What is bounce back culture?