Latest news with #selfesteem
Yahoo
20 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Woman Wonders How to Handle Sister's 'Body Odor': 'It's Something Everyone in My Family Has Noticed, but No One Addresses'
A woman wrote on Reddit that she is struggling with how to tell her younger sister about her body odor 'It's something everyone in my family has noticed, but no one addresses directly," she said The woman explained that her sibling's self-esteem "is already very low," so she is trying to handle the situation delicatelyA woman is struggling with how to tell her younger sister about her body odor. 'It's something everyone in my family has noticed, but no one addresses directly," the woman wrote in a post on Reddit's "Am I the A------?" forum about her sister. Detailing that their "parents occasionally hint that she should shower or they give her new soaps,'the woman continued, 'I'm not sure if she realizes it, but the odor is strong enough that her entire room smells, and my mom has to use a special detergent just to get the scent out of her clothes.' The PEOPLE Puzzler crossword is here! How quickly can you solve it? Play now! According to the woman, she thought her sister's body odor was 'a puberty phase' since it started when her sibling was in middle school. However, she is now about to start college, and the woman said the smell remains. 'It's still a major issue, maybe even worse,' she explained. As for what she thinks could be the cause of the body odor, the woman wrote of her sister, 'I know she deals with anxiety and depression, and it's likely this is a hygiene issue tied to her mental health." "I understand that struggle and really don't want to come across as mean or judgmental," she continued, adding that she feels compelled to address the issue since her sister is about to start college and will be living with roommates in a dorm. 'I'm genuinely worried that people won't be kind about it or that she'll have a hard time socially because of the smell,' she wrote. The woman also said she feels the truth about her sister's scent would be better coming from 'someone who cares, than from a roommate or stranger in a cruel or embarrassing way." "But at the same time, I don't want to hurt her feelings or damage her self-esteem since it is already very low," she continued. Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. In the comments section of the post, many other Reddit users told the woman she should tell her sister the truth, but to proceed gently. 'How you say it matters more than anything. This is one of those conversations that could either help her or scar her — so it's all about delivery,' one user wrote. They added that the woman's sister may not be aware of her own hygiene, or she could be ashamed to admit to it. 'Don't just tell her. If possible, try to get her to see a doctor and check for hormonal or other physical causes of the odor," one Redditor wrote. "She might need to treat the medical cause first, in order to reduce the odor,' they added. Read the original article on People
ABC News
4 days ago
- Business
- ABC News
Wigmaker Rachel Walker spends up to 450 hours on wigs for medical hair loss
Master wigmaker Rachel Walker can spend up to 450 hours painstakingly attaching human hair, strand by strand, to a Swiss lace base to create a single wig. The time-consuming process has become a passion for her after seeing the impact a wig can have on the self-esteem of people experiencing medical hair loss. Ms Walker, who has been a hairdresser for 36 years, expanded her skills to wig-making 10 years ago, when she became frustrated by the lack of options available to her clients. She largely relies on hair donations to keep wig costs as low as possible, but her wigs still cost thousands of dollars because of the skill and time required to make them. Even the simplest wigs can take close to 100 hours to complete. "Sometimes I get in a real zone and can ventilate [the process of hand-tying hair strands] for five to six hours," Ms Walker said. Other options are available for people experiencing medical hair loss, including a service by the Cancer Council, which provides free wigs for people suffering hair loss due to cancer treatment. Ms Walker, one of just a handful of human-hair wigmakers in Australia, was inspired to learn the skill when she realised the range of wigs available to her clients did not reflect their identities before they started losing their hair for medical reasons. Seeing no training opportunities in Australia at the time, she relocated to New York, where she studied under two master wigmakers. "I've been going strong ever since," she said. Sitting surrounded by boxes of hair in her home studio in southern Tasmania, Ms Walker said the only downside was finding strands of hair everywhere. "I have hair in my food, I have hair in my washing, I have hair in my hair — my house is full of hair," she said before laughing. Today, she is working on a topper, a piece made to blend with a client's existing hair. Looking through a magnifying glass, she skilfully adds a single strand of hair to the lace. This topper will take an estimated 98 hours to complete. The clock starts ticking before Ms Walker even picks up the Swiss lace, as she must first match donated hair to her client's existing or lost hair in density, texture and colour, if maintaining their former look is what they desire. For clients who had, or still have, the beginnings of white or grey hair, Ms Walker individually selects grey or white strands from her compendium of hair. She said silver and white hair was the most difficult to source because people with those hair types generally wear their hair short or colour it. Ms Walker receives "bunches of packages" of donated hair from all over Australia and New Zealand. A recent donation of a brown ponytail of hair was cut 37 years ago and kept by a parent, who was willing to part with their daughter's hair in the hope that it could help someone else. The donation arrived with its 1980s plastic, hair-bobble ties still intact. "For somebody to donate it and to willingly cut off that adornment … to share what they have and to give [it] out of the loveliness and generosity of their own heart … it's just beautiful," she said. Barb Jeffery of Western Australia bought one of Ms Walker's toppers after years of living with extensive scarring alopecia, a permanent type of hair loss. She and her friends call her topper Moira, after a character from the television show Schitt's Creek who has a wig for all occasions. Ms Jeffery says Moira is a celebrated member of her family and community, and is "known about town by lots of people … she has a personality". "I've noticed a huge difference. When I'm out with my normal hair, people will say hello and immediately look at the top of my head," Ms Jeffery said. "That used to upset me. I didn't want to be in family photographs — now I take a photo any time I have Moira. "It makes you feel good again." Ms Jeffery said wearing the topper for the first time was overwhelming for everyone. When unable to meet a client's needs through local donations, Ms Walker buys ethically harvested hair, but said she was facing difficulty in accessing ethical hair because of the war in Ukraine, where her supplier was based. Anthropologist Assa Doron, of the Australian National University, has spent more than a decade exploring the global trade of human hair as part of a larger project on waste. He said the trade was built on the exploitation of labour, primarily in the Global South, and was largely unregulated because of its "fragmented" and "informal" nature. In 2013, Professor Doron travelled to India, where he observed waste pickers, people who collect refuse from gutters, collecting hair in unsafe conditions and with minimal protection. He also traced the supply route of temple hair, which is cut by religious pilgrims as a sign of devotion but then collected and sold for profit, in his co-authored book Waste of a Nation. Professor Doron said there was no standardised certification, like the Fair Trade certification, that verified ethically sourced hair. Until such mechanisms existed for hair, ethical sourcing would remain difficult, and conditions would not improve for "the most vulnerable in this trade". Ms Walker said she refused to buy hair from temple hair sources and had a stance against unethically sourced hair. Free wigs are among options for those experiencing medical hair loss. The Cancer Council offers access to a wide range of synthetic wigs and turbans for free to anyone who has lost their hair due to cancer treatment. Claire Prior, the council's Tasmanian director of supportive care, said the wigs could be tailored to suit a client's face. The Cancer Council accepts donated wigs, and other organisations, such as Sustainable Salons — who sort and send hair to wigmakers and charities across Australia — accept donations of plaited natural or coloured hair ponytails of 20 centimetres or longer. The Australia Alopecia Areata Foundation offers wig advice online for children and adults living with alopecia. "You don't have to donate to me … you can donate to any wig-making charity that supports people who have medical hair loss," Ms Walker said.
The Guardian
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Every time I meet someone new, I worry they'll find my scarred face hideous
Hi Ugly, I just turned 25. My long-term partner and I broke up recently, and I've been going on dates. My problem is I hate my skin. I have large pores, acne scarring, chicken pox scarring. Every time I meet someone new, I feel scared that they will find me hideous and think I catfished them. I've also been zooming in on pictures of my skin and looking at it in different lighting, which is worsening my insecurity. Rationally, I know men probably won't mind, because my previous partner – who had perfect skin! – still found me beautiful. And nobody I've gone on a date with has seemed to care so far. But I still criticize myself for it over and over again. How do I get over this? – Not A Catfish Back when I was on the apps, I'd upload slightly unflattering photos of myself: an up-close, no-makeup selfie; a wide shot in a muumuu the size of a small circus tent. I wanted to meet men who weren't primarily interested in looks. Bonus: in person, I exceeded all expectations! I've found love two, maybe even three times this way – the last one stuck – despite the fact that my skin, like yours, is marked by acne scars, visible pores and a smattering of old chicken pox pits (plus the burgeoning wrinkles of a woman 10 years your senior). I call this the Inverse Catfish Method. If it seems like I have a neurotic need to diminish myself first before a man does it, well … guilty as charged. After reading your question, Not A Catfish, I'd say we have this in common. How did we end up this way? Aside from, you know, living under patriarchy, internalizing the male gaze and unconsciously inhaling the lessons of beauty culture like so much secondhand smoke. For me, it was my ex-husband. A few months after we got married, he started making comments about my skin: suggesting I wear more makeup, telling me to 'go on medication already' when I broke out. This charming new habit coincided with his decision to join Donald Trump's mailing list and purchase a pack of 'Make America Great Again' plastic straws as a 'joke' to rile me up. Coincidence? I wonder if something similar is contributing to your insecurity. You're wading into the dating pool when the most powerful men in the world – and Kid Rock – are arguing that women exist to serve men; that our faces should be optimized for beauty, our bodies optimized for breeding. And it's working! Data shows gen Z men are embracing regressive gender roles and leaning right. The resulting dating scene is reportedly in a sorry state. There is a possibility that some men are looking for a barely sentient Stepford wife with skin like glass, like a screen, like an inanimate object under their thumbs. But there are also many men who want a real, live, regular partner. On subway seats, in coffee shops, across candlelit tables, I see people with scars and spots and dark under-eye circles being held and kissed and loved like it's the most natural thing in the world. Because it is! You don't have to fix a single thing about your face to find that. It strikes me that becoming obsessed with your skin started with a change in your romantic life. In Love: A New Understanding of an Ancient Emotion, philosopher Simon May writes that the loved one can give us something essential we can't generate alone, like the feeling of being truly understood or 'safety from a paralyzing source of insecurity'. Love 'empowers us by intensifying our sense of existence and also humbles us by bringing to light our ontological smallness', he says. It expands our world and puts the little things, like acne scars, in proportion. But when love is lost, it shrinks the world – to the size of a pore, perhaps. It may 'tear us from the familiar moorings of an 'attachment' or undermine our self-esteem', according to May, leaving us 'less able to be present' and scrambling to prove we still exist. We reach for something, anything, to anchor us. Cue: hyperfixation on your face. Which makes sense! Skin is solid. It senses the outside world and confirms you're in it and of it. It's also the focus of countless beauty industry ads that claim attaining clear, poreless perfection will finally make you the real you, the 'best version of you'. Sometimes, they even frame skincare as a replacement for love. See Cutocin, a brand that markets its Social Exchange Serum as an alternative to the oxytocin-releasing effects of, well, social exchange. Sign up to Well Actually Practical advice, expert insights and answers to your questions about how to live a good life after newsletter promotion But it isn't. More from Jessica DeFino's Ask Ugly: My father had plastic surgery. Now he wants me and my mother to get work done How should I be styling my pubic hair? How do I deal with imperfection? I want to ignore beauty culture. But I'll never get anywhere if I don't look a certain way I could tell you that making peace with every last epidermal divot is an inside job – to love yourself first, that no product or partner can help you. But I don't think we're meant to love, heal, or even become ourselves alone. Humans are communal creatures. We need each other. I'm not saying you're doomed to spiral about your selfies until a boyfriend appears. The perspective-shifting power of love that May describes applies to non-romantic relationships, too. Family, friends and communities can bring us a similar sense 'of an ethical home, of power over our sense of existing and of a call to our destiny', he says. 'A work of art, a vocation, a god, a new country, even a landscape' can inspire sublimity, too – that feeling of being both empowered and humbled. So stare at a sunset instead of the mirror. Put down the phone and pick up a guitar. Go to a museum! Volunteer! Take a mini road trip with your mom! Find God in the mosh pit of a punk show! Make your world bigger, and soon enough, your scars will seem appropriately small. One last tip: Data from Pew Research Center shows only one in five partnered adults under 30 first connected with their current partner online. Some of the above suggestions double as great ways to meet potential partners in real life – no anxiety-inducing online avatar necessary. Delete her. Be free. But if you continue online dating? Give the Inverse Catfish Method a go. Do you have a beauty question for Ask Ugly? Submit it anonymously here — and be as detailed as possible, please! Anonymous if you prefer Please be as detailed as possible Your contact details are helpful so we can contact you for more information. They will only be seen by the Guardian.
Independent Singapore
26-05-2025
- General
- Independent Singapore
'Should I break up?' — Woman upset that her boyfriend keeps 'liking and following random girls on Instagram' because 'they're pretty'
SINGAPORE: A Singaporean woman recently took to Reddit to ask if she should break up and move on from her boyfriend of two years, who continues to 'like and follow random girls' on Instagram despite knowing how much it hurts her. According to her post on the r/SGexams subreddit, they've had multiple arguments about the issue. Each time she opens up about how his actions affect her self-esteem and make her feel insecure in the relationship, he dismisses her feelings and accuses her of being 'immature' or 'overreacting.' She also noticed that the girls he follows look nothing like her. Over time, she said, this has made her wonder if she's even his type anymore. On top of that, he's stopped giving her compliments and barely makes her feel appreciated these days. 'I am so tired of feeling so unhappy, so insecure, and always having to have my guard up when any pretty girl walks by. This is not how I should be feeling if I am in a healthy relationship, right?' What makes it worse is that her friends have noticed his Instagram activity too. She admitted feeling 'embarrassed' by it and said it's starting to feel like he's behaving more like someone single than someone in a committed relationship. She confessed, 'It makes me feel like he doesn't respect me as his girlfriend, and he thinks liking or following random girls is more important than my feelings. '[He would say] it's my own fault I feel insecure.' Looking for advice, she turned to the community and asked, 'Is it time for me to move on since our values don't match? It's so difficult to end things when we share so many beautiful memories together. But my only choices now are to continue seeing him do it and feeling bad, or a break up.' 'He won't respect you in the future either, so you have to move on…' In the comment section, many Singaporean Redditors strongly encouraged the woman to walk away from the relationship, emphasising that she deserves better. See also Co-dependent relationship warning signs! One Redditor wrote that she should move on because her boyfriend clearly doesn't respect her, adding, 'He will gaslight you, saying it's no big deal – that you are overreacting. But you are not. You are communicating your thoughts, feelings, and needs, and he is not respecting you – he won't respect you in the future either, so you have to move on,' they said. Another Redditor shared her own experience, saying that she had gone through something similar with an ex-boyfriend. 'I was in this exact situation with my ex. He still didn't stop even after we broke up. Just leave him; if he wanted to, he would. His actions just show that he doesn't care about you, probably lost interest in you.' Meanwhile, a third warned her not to let nostalgia cloud her judgment. 'Don't let the so-called beautiful memories stop you from making an important decision for your future. If he truly respected or loved you, he wouldn't keep doing something that makes you feel this way. Let him go.' In other news, a diner claimed on social media that he was charged for a pricier chicken rice set meal even though he never requested it, and was later blamed by the stall staff for not being clear with his order. In a post shared on the r/askSingapore subreddit on Saturday (May 24), the diner said the incident occurred at a chicken rice stall in a local kopitiam where he had been a regular for the past two years. He wrote, 'I simply said 白鸡饭 打包 (white-skinned chicken rice takeaway). The menu says it's $4.30. He then charged me $5.30, and I asked why.' In response, the staff told him, 'You didn't say normal or set, so I made the set.'' Read more: Diner got charged $5.30 for chicken rice instead of $4.30 for not being 'clear' with his order Featured image by Depositphotos (for illustration purposes only)
South China Morning Post
26-05-2025
- General
- South China Morning Post
Do you often put things off? A Hong Kong hypnotherapist can help you find out why
It is hard to picture Sonia Samtani as a painfully shy teenager with self-esteem so low that she was too scared to speak up, even when ordering a meal at a restaurant. For years, Hong Kong-born Samtani felt she was inadequate: at home her sibling was more important, while at school her peers were. 'At school, there were not many Indians and I knew that my family was different, my culture was different, my upbringing was different. I remember thinking, 'Oh, if only I had white skin and blue eyes, I'd be happier,'' Samtani recalls. 'Everyone around me seemed more confident and articulate, and there was something stopping me from feeling that way. I was unconsciously looking for a better coping mechanism.' I'm avoiding something, so what is that? … Is it my mother's voice when I was young telling me that even if I got 98 per cent, that was not good enough? Sonia Samtani on procrastination She changed her looks and behaviour before realising that it was her beliefs that needed modifying.
