EXCLUSIVE I felt an 'electric shock' kissing my husband one morning. It was the only symptom of a silent cancer no one talks about
Sarah Susak was getting ready for work one morning, applying her makeup in the bathroom mirror, when her husband Halan popped his head around the door.
As he gave Sarah a goodbye kiss, a zap startled her.
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Daily Mail
31 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE MAUREEN CALLAHAN: An insider has revealed the Royal verdict on THAT Meghan twerking video. It's so devastatingly cutting, she may never recover
It's the twerk seen round the world — and regrettably, there is no unseeing it. Truly: what's more royal, more regal — more befitting an American woman who married into her title and never lets us forget that she is a duchess — than releasing a home movie of yourself lifting up your dress, spreading your legs and gyrating while on the verge of giving birth?
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Online ‘guru girlies' promise a better life, but is it too good to be true?
About two years ago, a self-professed 'goddess coach' called Jaelyn posted an eight hour-long 'sleep affirmation' video which, according to many a satisfied viewer, has worked wonders for them. In a somewhat sultry, meditative voice she repeats mantras and welcomes her listeners to attract 'the kind of men and people who will always treat you like a goddess'. The video, boldly titled Attract Men Who Spend Money, Provide and Love You! is one of many in a genre of content that is booming on YouTube and social media. I call them 'guru girlies', and they are proving a force to be reckoned with. In their rather austere imparting of wisdom, guru girlies have become many young women's go-to guide for all manner of modern conundrums. The spectrum of gurus is vast, but their advice is mainly focused on the idea of 'levelling up'. From your diet to dressing better to your choice in friends or men, if you want to live your dream life, self-improvement is the prerequisite; the comprehensive physical, financial and spiritual sine qua non that any woman needs to become her best and dream self. When it comes to the physical, gurus give detailed insight on how to glow up and rebrand your life, often using themselves as examples of how, given the right mindset and Pinterest boards, they were able to lose weight, reduce acne, stay on trend and become a modern standard of beauty that social media sits before in awe. Spiritually, guru girlies are invariably enamoured with manifestation techniques, subliminal messaging and the universe's seeming interest in giving us every abundance if only we'd ask it to. If you are feeling unfulfilled, it's time to access your divine feminine energy. One guru describes this energy as 'self-prioritisation', performing ritualistic (and often costly) tasks of feminine self-care such as gratitude journaling, healthy eating and skincare routines, all in a bid to get back from the world what you put into it. How conveniently straightforward this all seems, and yet how odd that these young guru girlies are lauded as bringers of divine secrets in all matters feminine. Financially, gurus typically see men as a means to a life of wealth and abundance. Creators such as Leticia Padua, known by her devoted following as SheraSeven, claims that because all men cheat ('it's just a matter of time'), it's important for women to find the cheater with the most money. This financial levelling up – a mindset that involves distinguishing between high-value, provider men and what Shera calls 'dusties' – has proved highly popular. And that's because at the root of all this content is a brewing disappointment that many a young woman, scrolling through her social media and navigating a rapidly changing modern world, is bound to feel. A disappointment with modern love and prospects, with our unfiltered face and appearance, and with the fact that real life isn't nearly as ideal as it is online. Guru girlies are there to bridge the gap between your disappointing reality and the ideal they purport to embody, right before you onscreen. This is done by submitting to the system, not as an act of defeat but as empowerment. Arguably the most well-known guru, Thewizardliz (known as Liz) is a case in point. 'Start expecting good treatment, start expecting to be spoiled, start expecting him to give you money,' she instructs in a video. 'Princess treatment' isn't so much seen as infantilising or disempowering as it is heralded by many guru girlies as a righteous investment in becoming your highest, most feminine self, courtesy of a provider man. However just last week, a four-months pregnant Liz accused her 'provider' husband, YouTuber and software CEO Landon Nickerson of messaging another woman. In all of this, there is no doubt an addictive nature to self-improvement that explains why a new guru, delivering the same old message, seems to blow up every other week. In an age where ever-changing trends dictate our dreams and ideals, where there is always some undiscovered aspect of ourselves to improve on, we are conveniently primed to keep going back to these gurus in a vain attempt to change who we fundamentally are. 'The internet is making us feel like there is always something we could be improving, and there's a sense that we feel no choice but to try and keep up sometimes,' says former guru follower Just a Girl in Paris in a video critique. What's fortunate for these gurus is that, because the onus of failing to self-improve is always placed on you, your misery and dissatisfaction perfectly places you to keep returning to her either for advice or, increasingly it would seem, for comfort. Because the truth is, much of what makes these guru girlies convincing isn't the success rate of their advice, it is the parasocial relationship they bring to the already toxic world of self-improvement and wellness culture. Audiences see their favourite influencer less as a guru than as a kind of ideal friend: the pretty, rich, self-confident and inaccessible woman who, in real life, would never actually be our friend. Many gurus have fostered a false intimacy with their audience that has become a given. 'She's literally like every girl's older sister,' says one of Thewizardliz's followers. 'Sometimes I forget she is a famous influencer and not my best friend who gives me advice on FaceTime,' reads another of the countless adoring comments. Viewers find comfort and ease in a superficial albeit meaningful relationship that isn't rooted in the messy ups and downs of a real friendship. Their guru friend tells them everything they want to hear about creating their dream life, which only requires intangibles such as affirmations, cutting off disappointing people or a mindset shift. So even if taking all these steps proves to be joyless and wanting, at least your guru, ready with her next upload, will be there to be your ideal friend, all over again. Zandile Powell is a video essayist and writer. A version of this essay first appeared on her YouTube channel Kidology
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Beth: Channel 4's first ‘digital drama' is so snoozy that no young people will watch it
In 1964, Andy Warhol shot the Empire State Building then turned it into an art film called Empire, which is more than eight hours long. I was reminded of this last Christmas when I let my nine-year-old niece choose what to watch on TV. She went straight to the YouTube app and pressed play on a video comparing US and UK chocolate bars. It went into such a tremendous amount of detail that I was mesmerised, not by the content but by how brazenly boring it was. It went on for what felt like hours. It might still be going on now. I wonder if this is what television natives get wrong about YouTube. In all the discussions about disappearing attention spans and 'second screen' viewing – ie scrolling on your phone while leaving a single brain cell free to drool at whatever product placement Emily in Paris has just dropped into the 'plot' – there is an assumption that online content has to be short and snappy. That might be more true of TikTok or Reels, but YouTube is a place that chews up time then swallows it. Do I know this because I have watched lengthy self-produced documentaries about complete strangers' walking holidays? Look, in the 60s, it would have been art. This is what Beth, Channel 4's 'digital original drama', is trying to contend with. TV has long been worried about the internet coming for its audience, and it's true that you are about as likely to get a young person watching live terrestrial TV as you are to get them to pick up the phone and have a conversation with you. How can old-fashioned television begin to compete? Should it even bother trying? Channel 4 is giving it a go. It has already made Hollyoaks a 'streaming-first' soap, sticking episodes online a day before they appear on E4. Now it is trying a new approach with drama. Beth will appear on YouTube in three 15-minute chunks from Monday 9 June, and on the actual telly as a single 45-minute episode, making it the skorts of the screen: why be one thing when you can be two? Beth is about a glamorous couple called Joe and Molly, played by Nicholas Pinnock and Abbey Lee, who are going through IVF treatment. We see the buildup to a much desired pregnancy, skip forward to the birth, then jump to a few years later, for reasons that would definitely spoil it if they were to be revealed here. This is a family drama. There are brief fantasy sequences, of the children the couple might have, and discussions about what it means for Joe, a Black man, and Molly, a white woman, to have a child who resembles them both. It is also a low-key thriller. There are tensions between the couple, both obvious and implied. Their IVF doctor is overfamiliar and too tactile. Molly's mother is disproportionately rattled by a child's simple drawing. To add to the genre pile-on, Beth is being billed as science fiction, but knowing this doesn't do it any favours, because without that knowledge, it looks like a straightforward, if slightly stagey, drama for almost the entire duration. If you do know that it is science fiction, you're left to constantly anticipate exactly when the science fiction will kick in. For me, that undermines the more weighty emotional scenes, because as Joe and Molly endure both hope and devastation, a nagging voice in my head is wondering if they are going to turn out to be aliens. It's good that it doesn't patronise viewers by assuming they won't have more than five seconds of focus to spare. In fact, it's so far from giddy that it is almost sedate. Nor does it go for the endless stretch that can afflict online content, where the time restrictions of traditional TV mean nothing, and you watch a man chew a Curly Wurly for what seems like many days. But that does mean that, ultimately, Beth feels like a one-off television drama, albeit one with an eyebrow-raising pivot towards the end. I can't see what makes it so specifically digital. If one of the existential issues facing TV is how to get young people to pay attention to it, then a meditative drama about IVF, identity and parenthood isn't necessarily going to solve the problem. But if the idea is to win back some of the older eyeballs who have been distracted by, let's say (just plucking this out of thin air) an in-depth documentary about a niche ultramarathon, then it might be on to something.
