I am confidently able to say that most girls grew up watching these movies. I remember being 12 years old watching The Notebook for the first time and thinking, ‘gosh i hope someone will build me a house with blue shutters one day’.

Back when rom-coms took the world by storm, they showed that love was something that just happened to you. You have a meet-cute and whether you’ve spilled your coffee on them, or just stumbled into them on the street, you’ve met the love of your life. Nowadays you’re endlessly scrolling through apps, checking heights and praying that under their pictures you see ‘Looking for: long-term relationship’. At this point all that’s missing is a section for shoe sizes. The meet-cute has been replaced by the mutual follow, it’s tragic really.

Romance used to be private, sensual. Now it’s considered wrong for your partner to not have an Instagram highlight for you, “he must not love you if he hasn’t posted you on his story”. But ladies, is it truly that serious? Does social media define your relationship that much? Instead of nurturing relationships that are right in front of you, you are chasing a figment of imagination that doesn’t even exist, except on your For You Page.

You do not need to spend days longing for a “boo basket”! Sure, receiving things that you like from your partner is great but there’s an ongoing trend going around where girls are either making one or receiving one nonstop. I apologise in advance because i am about to crush some dreams here but…

Your partner cannot read your mind. Do you really need another stuffed animal or a new body spray even though i know for a fact you probably have 20 in your room, ready to be used. Especially if you’re still young, a young partner does not need to be buying you expensive bags as a testament to your love.

Side note: there is no such thing as the ‘3 month rule’. The rabbit is not going to get you. Your partner is not cheating on you just because they need alone time.

I’ve seen a lot of couples break up because their connection ‘fizzles out’ and they claim the relationship got boring. But a relationship isn’t always going to be exciting. It’s okay to put a pair of heels on and go out for a nice dinner but it can also be fun to sit at home and do nothing together. When me and my partner had a day of nothing, we spent the next day on a 3 hour long road trip just to pick up some car parts he wanted. Even though my body went numb after the first hour and a half i didn’t complain much. I was just happy to be with him, even if we were sat in silence.

My piece of advice is to stop comparing yourself to couples online. Not everything is real, and not every relationship is the same. For any man reading this… flowers every once in a while are special, as well as conversations and reassurance about your future together.

However, people have been pointing out that a lot of women in their 20s are staring to look as if they are in their 40s. In 2024, a new season of Love Island aired and the responses were not entirely positive.

People online were confused, why did these young girls look a lot older than they actually were? The answer is very simple. Fillers.

The term pillow face is used to describe a puffy, unnatural and overfilled appearance of the face. Recently it’s been heavily used in regard to Kylie Jenner, who i guess you could say is the mascot. After her claim to fame starring on the reality show- Keeping Up With The Kardashians, she started selling lip kits which led to speculation on whether she had lip filler or not. This was a dramatic conversation that everyone was having, not necessarily because of the suspected filler but because she was denying it. Her denial led to the ‘Kylie Jenner lip challenge’ where people would put their lips over the airlock created in the opening of the bottle which increases the blood flow to the lips and causes them to swell. Doctors had to come to the internet and warn people of the effects this could have, such as bruises, soreness and even torn skin. In 2015, she finally came forward and revealed she has in fact received lip filler and from there it continued. Kylie and her sisters in general have had a huge impact on the cosmetic surgery world, with more people getting BBLs and breast augmentations.

But when does it stop being a positive thing and start being self-mutilation?

Why is it normal for a 14 year old to get a nose job? Why is it normal for young and older women to be getting the same work done? Why are people getting veneers that are bigger than their mouth and why on earth are people getting BBLs that don’t match their legs? The beauty standard has been all over the place recently.

There is also the scam of preventative botox that young women are falling for. They receive botox before they even have wrinkles and then continue getting it which eventually leads to a pillow face because their faces are overfilled. My guess is that insecurities lead to this. If i had a lot of money, i too would probably want to look my best. Especially if i was a celebrity and didn’t want people to see me not look my best.

Another thing that plays into the insecurities is that a lot of these women do it for the male population. It’s a widely known fact that men prefer the natural allure of effortlessness. That can link into the lip filler or botox so that they seem to never need to do their makeup, they just look that way “naturally”. It’s a whole different story when it comes to cosmetic surgery. Media representations and porn have announced women with larger breasts or a large bum to be associated with a symbol of sexual maturity or aesthetic ideals.

I don’t know, i can’t exactly speak on this subject entirely- i have had zero cosmetic fillers and while i can support people doing whatever they want to their bodies, sometimes it can get extremely out of hand. Are we thinking long-term? Recent articles have said that more women are starting to dissolve their fillers so maybe we’re heading in the right direction.

My whole family is from Poland. My parents met in my mama’s hometown, which later also became my hometown. They attended the same medical school, fell in love, married, had me and my dad decided to move us to the UK.

Growing up in the UK, i felt disconnected. I was embarrassed to speak Polish in front of kids at school because they made fun of me for sounding weird. I was picked on and told that i wouldn’t need any school qualifications because i would end up a cleaner like my mama. There were countless times where i would say “but my mum speaks two languages, she also has a medical degree!”. I wished for people to understand just how funny and smart my parents were in our native language, how brave they were to move to a country without knowing the language or anyone here. Although we had a life here, i couldn’t wait for summer in Poland. I was overly jealous hearing kids talk about how they couldn’t be asked to see their grandparents when i would’ve done absolutely anything just to be able to hug mine. We had a stable routine, we spent every summer and most Christmases together however when the pandemic started- i didn’t see my family for 3 years.

I started thinking more about moving away but i’ve been away for so long that i was overthinking it too much. When i was 19, my best friend moved back to her home country. To say i was lonely would be a huge understatement. I was jealous and angry at first, i wanted to go back to my culture too. The UK still doesn’t feel like home. I don’t have much family or friends here. I worry that one day i’ll lose the ability to speak my native language and, that is something i take pride in. However, i’m not sure whether Poland feels like home either. I didn’t properly grow up there. I also worry that when my grandparents pass, my kids will never spend summers and Christmases there. It’s all just a whole big worry. Sometimes i feel guilty wanting to move back after my parents sacrificed everything to move to the UK.

My parents went from having this strong support in this world filled with their friends and family to having to create their own support. I admire them endlessly for that. I saw the pride in their eyes when we all got our British passports. But I know my parents miss home. I see them searching for it in the foreign foods section at the shop and in the movies they watch. I am forever grateful for the choice they’ve given me between two homes.

We are at home in two different places at once. We’ve committed to one but long for the other.

Over the past year or so, dark romance or “spicy books” have rapidly gained popularity online. Dark romance is a subgenre of romance which often includes morally grey characters, mature content and potentially triggering or disturbing elements. Now, i want to make a quick disclaimer. I don’t want to be hypocritical, in the past i have fallen for the trap of this sort of literature. If you can even call it that. I picked up these books by sheer curiosity, wanting to be introduced to an enemies to lovers trope. Oh he’s bad, she’s good, they hate each other! Oh look now they’re in love at the end of the book. Instead i was met with sentences i don’t even want to think about.

Dark romance has been around for a while. I know a lot of older women were ecstatic when the 50 Shades of Grey series was released, my mother included. I read the books myself (sorry mama) and although they’re not my cup of tea- i understand the appeal. They’re supposed to be sexy and empowering for women yet TikTok managed to make this subgenre into a fetish. Originally BookTok was great for recommendations! Through them i discovered so many books that i now hold dear to my heart. But let’s be honest… literature is dead now. It’s okay to read books about sex and things of that nature but there’s a line when it comes to them. Now that i’ve ranted, let’s get into the more disturbing side of it. This is the front page of a book i decided to read for research:

As you can see, the content is literally not normal. I’d understand if these things were included for awareness but it’s the opposite. The story centres around a woman who is being stalked by a man she doesn’t know? Spoiler alert- they end up falling in love. People love talking about this book online, now it’s an outrage but a year ago it reached its peak with everyone recommending it. You may ask “what is the issue with this book?”. Maybe books about stalking excite you, i won’t really judge, i mean it’s just a book however let me give you the rundown of these content warnings.

• Somnophilia is the sexual interest of engaging with or having sex with a sleeping or unconscious person.

  If this wasn't bad enough-

• Non/dub con refers to non-consensual sexual situations.

The rest of the content warnings are pretty self explanatory. But why is rape glorified? Why is it seen as romantic? It’s media like this that young women consume and believe that this is real romance. I have personally fallen victim to this as well. Rape is not romantic. It will strip you down to your most vulnerable state and eat at you until you find a way to cope with it. It makes you feel dirty. Men on BookTok play into this belief of romance by posting videos of them dressed up as the “morally grey” character in this book and quoting him. I couldn’t even watch those videos when i was doing research because i found it so disturbing. They defend this by saying well the main character fell in love with him in the end. I would also like to note that the man in this book works as a “vigilante” who punishes evil and stops trafficking rings… but he still rapes and abuses the woman in the story multiple times. Right… because that makes sense. How romantic!

Straying away from this book… unsurprisingly, it’s not only the men who play into this. Women on TikTok have become a type of “cult”, creating symbiotic relationships with motorcyclists just because they wear a helmet, making them seem mysterious and they ride a motorcycle which must mean they’re “bad boys” am i right ladies??? Not only this but these women also started to do the same thing towards hockey players, recently sexualising and harassing Alexander Wenburg, a Seattle Kraken player which led to his WIFE having to make a statement asking them to stop- this just led to more harassment. Yet another reason why i’ve referred to these women as a cult is because they have power over the publishing industry. The industry is actively shaping itself around BookTok because of the large demand and books like these just take away from real literature. What happened to girls reading about men who make you breakfast and buy you flowers? Or is that considered boring now?

Occasionally i read books that aren’t written very well and i enjoy them anyway. That’s okay! We don’t all need to read Kafka all the time or Orwell or even Bronte. However i think we as a society need to step back and recognise that these types of “dark romance” books are not empowering. Like i said before, i understand the appeal and the allure of books of sexual nature. Women are shamed for consuming media made by other women while men are deemed as being normal for the amounts of porn they consume. In conclusion, i just believe the dark romance community on TikTok is actually just damaging women more.

Now that i have your attention, these were just some comments made by men ranging from pre-teens to males in their mid-to-late twenties.

2 weeks from its initial release, the new-hit TV show, Adolescence, has amassed 66.3 million views. The series follows the story of 13-year-old, Jamie Miller after being arrested for murdering a schoolmate. Now, the message is simple. Teenage boys are in a crisis, and parents need to pay attention. However, there is a deeper meaning to this entire show. In one episode, they mention that Jamie was labelled an “incel”, this plays a large part in why he did what he did. So what is an incel?

In 1997 it was a woman who coined the term “invcel”, later shortened to “incel”. What started out as a website for singles with social anxiety connecting with others, soon took a misogynistic route. The subculture itself exists mainly online, on reddit and 4chan, with many incels expressing extreme hatred of women. A typical post on Reddit’s Incel page in 2017- now removed- calls women “pure and utter evil, who have no thoughts or feelings and should be seen as the malevolent creatures they truly are”. This is one of many posts and comments. If you thought that these forums are as bad as it gets, you are extremely mistaken.

A man by the name of Elliot Rodger uploaded 22 videos to his youtube, describing his frustration due to his unsuccessful attempts at attracting a girlfriend. He was also present in many manosphere forums and some of his online searches were about Hitler… yet it still doesn’t stop there. In the weeks leading up to April 14th 2014, he created a manifesto of 147 pages. He described women as plagues and planned a “day of retribution”. On May 24th 2014, Elliot Rodger killed 6 people and injured 14. Before doing so, he uploaded a youtube video talking about how his plan is to enter “the hottest sorority” and “slaughter every stuck-up blonde slut” he sees there. The reason why i have mentioned Elliot is very simple. His attack brought the incel community to mainstream attention. If you can even believe it, he ended up being praised and referred to as an “incel hero”.

Why is the incel ideology spreading so much more? Easy. Social media. I’m sure everyone has heard of Andrew Tate, known for promoting the manosphere. Tate was also mentioned in the Netflix series but we’ll get to that point in just a moment. There is a desperation to fit in amongst young boys, especially after COVID and prolonged loneliness. You find an echo chamber with many people saying the same ideology, you think you should believe it, and you internalise it. Although many incel forums have been taken down, their message spread to different socials such as TikTok and Instagram. Here are some comments i found under posts made about the TV show:

• “I never understood why men hate women until i grew up and reality showed me your bad side and i understood why you don’t deserve rights”.

• “No girls being slutty online is harming the way everyone behaves”.

• “Foid”. For clarification the meaning of this word is short for “femoid”, a pejorative used by incels to degrade women.

• “The TV show is just bullshit, 13-year-old boys don’t kill girls that reject them”. Women being killed after rejecting advances has happened more than you think.

Going back to Andrew Tate, he managed to build a huge following of men. These followers defended him when a video surfaced of him beating his girlfriend with a belt. They defended him when him and his brother were charged with rape and trafficking. They defended him when he revealed his preference of being intimate with girls aged 18-19. In my opinion he’s a narcissistic, egomaniacal prick with too much money and the mentality of a loser. This is an opinion and a fact. His followers also defended him when he said that women shouldn’t take self defence classes because they’re “incapable of violence” and “not built for fighting”. The truth is, women have fought for centuries just for the right to exist.

Now, i am NOT by any means trying to make a point that the problem is just men. It is not all men that believe these ideologies or act in these ways. The truth is that some women do in fact play along HOWEVER, most women have a story. Whether it’s a young one or an older one, each one has a story about a negative experience in regard to a man.

I’ve seen comments about how in Adolescence, the victim bullied Jamie. This shows that there is no such thing as a perfect victim. Nobody is perfect but this doesn’t excuse his actions in any way. An example from a real life situation would be individuals criticised for being raped or attacked after flirting and making advances towards their perpetrator. This does not equal that it was deserved in any way. It just doesn’t make sense. For you to note as well, Jamie was being bullied by boys from school. Did he murder them too? No. In the 3rd episode, Jamie tells his psychiatrist he could’ve done anything to Katie after he stabbed her. This makes him believe he is somewhat “good”. As if the absence of further violence somehow redeems the act itself, as if the bare minimum of restraint becomes a virtue, rather than just basic decency. The show is not a ‘whodunnit’, it’s about how disturbingly normal this all is. He’s shown as a normal 13-year-old boy, with friends and a normal functioning family. He is not some evil mastermind- he’s a normal teenage boy radicalised by the incel culture, the Manosphere, Andrew Tate and porn.

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