👋🏼 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”.

Happy New Year, friends! I hope you had a healthy, relaxing holiday season.

Here’s my hot take: I low-key hate this time of year. Not only is it so cold and dreary, it also feels like the pressure of self-improvement is absolutely everywhere, and it’s especially heavy for women. More below on why I think that’s not ~the vibe~, especially this year.

Also below: An ode to the late Tatiana Schlossberg, who continued to fight for health causes while fighting for her life…and more.

Now let’s chat 🗣️

Have you seen the “butter dish” discourse on TikTok? If not, a TL;DR: A woman went viral after posting that she bought her partner an XBOX for Christmas…and he bought her a butter dish. I can’t say I’m surprised.

Immediately after a holiday that involves a woman receiving a gift, the discourse is always the same. Women express frustration over the gift they received from a male partner being all wrong (or totally non-existent). And the response from the outside world is pretty much always the same: “Give him grace. He’s probably not a naturally good gift-giver”.

I see this happen after Mother’s Day, Valentine’s Day, birthdays, and yes, Christmas. A woman will say “it’s not that I wanted something wildly expensive, I just wanted something that felt really thoughtful”. Yet in many cases (especially when the gift-giver is a man), they’re made to feel guilty for not being satisfied with what they receive.

But here’s the thing: Nobody is a "naturally good gift giver".

Women tend to be better at it, sure — not because we were simply born with this innate ability to choose a bespoke gift for everyone on our lists, but because we’ve been socialized to spend a lot of time and emotional energy on thinking about other people’s wants and needs.

Gift-giving is work. Yes, it’s often a labor of love, but it’s labor all the same. It takes time and effort to think about a gift that is tailored to the recipient, procure said gift, wrap it and present it — and too often, all this labor falls solely on women.

That’s (part of) why women are even more exhausted than usual from November through January. We spend so much time doing this labor. Read more.

🔎 Ask Clara: What is emotional labor?

2025 was…well, a lot. Especially for women. The manosphere grew. Bodies shrank. Beauty standards became even more exclusive. Speaking of exclusive: DEI programs were rolled back. Women left the traditional work force in droves, the wage gap widened, and discourse about the “ambition gap” just completely missed the mark.

And in light of all that, I’m going to say it: This is not the year we need to be putting unnecessary pressure on ourselves via New Year’s resolutions.

Now, if you love a resolution? You do you. If you want to vow to, say, write in your gratitude journal every morning, be kinder to yourself, spend more time with friends, or adopt another habit that would truly make you feel better, that’s great!

But so often, New Year’s resolutions are about self-improvement, not life-improvement. We vow to lose ten pounds, or get promoted, or wake up even earlier. But right now, it’s pretty clear: The odds are stacked against women. There are messages everywhere that are designed to make us feel like we’re failing, when in reality, we are being failed by systems and standards that don’t match up with reality. 

We work to put more inclusive beauty standards into place, only for that progress to be largely undone by Skinnytok and the Ozempic boom. We work to be taken seriously by the medical community, only to be routinely gaslit and dismissed. We work hard to achieve professional success — not just to gain financial independence, but also to promote the causes we believe in. But we’re doing it all with the weight of caregiving in a system that doesn’t view care work as work on our backs, so we fall flat on our faces, time and time again. But instead of understanding our reality, we’re told women are “ruining the workforce” or that we are just “not ambitious”.

I’m not suggesting we take this as a sign to stop trying. But I am saying that maybe this year, we take a moment to think about all the ways we’ve been convinced that we need fixing, when the truth is, we are navigating our world that doesn’t want us to ever feel good enough. Read more.

 🔎 Ask Clara: What were the major events for women in 2025?

We saw some wins in the world of women’s health in 2025, but the fact of the matter is…well, 2025 also brought a lot of tough moments for women.

We have a lot of work to do — work that will, once again, fall directly on women.

Of course, we want to see more breakthroughs, more access, more women securing diagnoses, and more destigmatization of women's health issues. But it's about more than that.

Here’s what I hope to see in the world of women’s health as we move into a new year. Read more.

🔎 Ask Clara: What were the major breakthroughs in women’s health in 2025?

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has thought about Tatiana Schlossberg a lot since learning of her tragic death.

On December 30, the environmental journalist died of acute myeloid leukemia. She was just 35 years old, and she passed just over a month after sharing an essay about her diagnosis and battle with the disease.

After I heard about Schlossberg's passing, I went back and read the entire essay. I suggest you do as well. Because even in near-death sickness, this tremendous woman took the time to use her voice as a tool.

In her essay, Schlossberg recounted postpartum complications. She talked about vaccine access, particularly how it affects immunocompromised people. She gave us a real look at what it is to be a patient as the health care system undergoes major changes — many at the hands of her own cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, whom she called "an embarrassment" to her and family. She detailed the treatments she tried, the access her fame and fortune provided, and the ways in which having a doctor spouse granted her answers. She shed light on the heroism and compassion of healthcare workers.

She gave the spotlight to so many others. And in addition to powerful commentary on the state of health care, she also shared all the ways she thought of others during her illness and the impact it would have on them.

How she thought of her mother, Caroline Kennedy, weathering another tragedy. How her sister donated stem cells to try and save her. And, perhaps most poignantly, how, when she received her terminal sentence, her first thought was that her children wouldn't remember her.

It's a testament to what women do, every day. Read more.  

🔎 Ask Clara: How is information access being restricted?