We were supposed to be done with skinny.

After years of body positivity, body neutrality and seemingly endless conversations about rejecting impossible beauty standards, thinness is finding its way back to the centre of our culture.

Only this time, it looks a little different.

In September’s In Bloom, we look at the return of skinny, the rise of GLP-1s, our complicated relationship with women’s bodies and one uncomfortable question: did we actually learn anything?

We often focus on everything that's still missing in women's health. But what if we paused for a moment to appreciate how extraordinary this moment really is? This month's In Bloom reflects on the remarkable shift happening in how women understand their bodies, and why this may just be the beginning of the golden age of the female cycle.

Women are not small men.

It's a simple sentence, but the more I sat with it, the more I realised how many women spend their lives trying to fit into systems, routines and expectations that were never designed with them in mind.

For years, women have compared themselves to men. More recently, many women have found themselves comparing themselves to other women.

This month's In Bloom explores what happens when we stop searching for somebody else's blueprint and start building one of our own.

Built for Someone Else — July edition.

Women have always been taught to perform for men. To be desirable, agreeable, beautiful, easy to love.

What interests me more is the way women perform for other women.

The carefully curated “day in my life”. The polished vulnerability. The way struggle is softened into something productive, aesthetic or digestible before it is shared. Women quietly carrying the same fears, pains and insecurities whilst trying to convince one another they are coping just a little better than they really are.

This month’s In Bloom explores the quiet performance of modern womanhood, and what it might look like to finally step off the stage.

Women Watching Women — June edition.

Somewhere along the way, the idea of laziness began to take on a different meaning. Not as an unwillingness to work, but as a quiet, persistent feeling that no matter how much you do, it never quite feels like enough.

It’s not always obvious where that feeling comes from, but it seems to build over time. In the way we learn to define a “good” day. In the standards we hold ourselves to. And in how quickly effort can be dismissed if it doesn’t look a certain way.

This month’s In Bloom explores the way productivity has come to shape identity, and what happens when rest no longer feels neutral, but something to question or justify.

Because for many women, the problem has never been a lack of effort. It’s been the way that effort is seen, measured, and understood.

I can’t remember the first time I felt ashamed of being a girl, but I do remember the first time I realised I was supposed to be.

It started as a small moment when I was fourteen, something I didn’t think twice about at the time, but one that quietly stayed with me. From there, it became something bigger.

This month’s In Bloom explores the cultural side of girlhood, the things we learn to soften, the things we don’t say, and the subtle ways shame is carried over time.

Because for something so biologically ordinary, the experience of being a woman has never just been personal. It’s been shaped by what we’ve been taught is acceptable to say, and what is easier to keep to ourselves.

For decades, women have whispered about their cycles syncing. Sisters notice it first. Roommates swear it happens. Friends laugh about how it “always” aligns eventually.

In the 1970s, science attempted to study it. The findings were limited. The evidence, inconsistent. Nearly half a century later, research remains unconvinced.

And yet the belief persists. Across generations. Across cultures. Across shared apartments and shared lives.

Perhaps cycle synchrony was never about calendars or statistics.
Perhaps it was about closeness.

This month’s edition of In Bloom explores why the myth endures, what it reveals about female friendship, and why some stories linger even when the data does not.

This month’s edition of In Bloom explores how our relationship with our bodies is shaped long before we realise it is being shaped at all.

It reflects on the quiet ways women are taught to monitor, manage, and interpret themselves, and how that awareness can slowly turn into self-surveillance rather than self-trust.

Through stories, observation, and the lens of the menstrual cycle, The body, as learned invites a shift.
Not away from sensitivity, but toward using it as guidance rather than control.
Not toward fixing the body, but toward listening to it.

February’s edition is an invitation to notice what has been learned, and to consider what might now be softened, questioned, or reshaped.

In this first edition of In Bloom, the idea of new beginnings is explored beyond January. It reflects on why we reserve softness, forgiveness, and permission to start again for one moment of the year, and what it might look like to reclaim that feeling more often. Through the lens of the female cycle, New Beginnings invites a quieter way of beginning again: not as a rule to follow, but as something our bodies already know how to do.