Archives 2023

As soon as the temperature dropped and the leaves began changing colors, something strange came over me. I bought a new mattress, my old one suddenly seemed disgusting and ancient. I gave away at least 30% of my clothes—it’s a mystery as to why I ever thought all that matching linen made me look “cultured” and not like Nigel Thornberry. I booked an urgent hair appointment—I don’t remember asking the hairdresser to help me channel the spirit of Rod Stewart last time, but that must have somehow occurred. It was as though, along with the advent of autumn, came the desire to completely overhaul my life for the better. Enter something I swear by: the big autumn reset.

Spring has traditionally been the season in which we’re supposed to sort our lives out, which does make sense in theory. It’s a time of new beginnings and warmth, and you no longer feel like some sort of half-frozen, shuffling medieval hag every time you move from the bedroom to the kitchen and back again. But I’ve always found that, in practice, fall is the superior season for reworking your entire existence. Your wardrobe completely changes during this season. The waning temperature means that you can actually think for once (in summer, “waking up” is enough to make me want an Aperol Spritz and exactly one cigarette). And it’s probably also because a lot of us still associate autumn with a new school year. I can barely remember being at school, but I still inexplicably get the urge to purchase a new pencil case every September. So, it has served me well to harness that very specific energy as an adult.

I also feel like autumn makes the most sense for a big life reset because you’re not going to be going anywhere come winter. The season is long, and cold, and involves a lot of staying in bed on your laptop until 1 pm and also mainlining Oreos while half-watching The Holiday on your mum’s sofa and scrolling Instagram. That’s not the time for a total overhaul. Obviously, there are New Year’s resolutions to be made, and I do like the neat circularity of starting afresh on January 1st, but life changes are hard to implement in the dead of winter when every time you open the curtains it looks like the trailer for Silent Hill. Indeed, all signs point to autumn as the ideal time for resetting the clock.

To be clear, when I say “big autumn reset,” I don’t necessarily mean handwringing over bodily or psychological improvements, which often just make us feel shit about ourselves (although I am trying to generally care less what others think of me, and I would like to have really strong arms). I’m talking more about admin and lifestyle-based changes. Investing in a proper winter coat. Doing a deep clean of the fridge. Gathering up all the books that aren’t serving you anymore and donating them to charity. Over the years, I’ve learned that actually decluttering your life tends to have a mind-body ripple effect anyway. You won’t need to make vague promises to “be a more positive person” or “prioritize sleep” when having a nice new mattress will make you feel like you’re doing those things already.

Ultimately, of course, you don’t have to do any big reset at any point in the year if you don’t want to (which, fair). When we’re constantly bombarded with tips and tricks that promise to finally turn us into a more perfect version of ourselves, à la The Substance, it can feel refreshing to just watch YouTube videos with a big bowl of pasta like we wanted to instead. But if you’re considering revamping your bedroom, trying out a new hairstyle, becoming the sort of woman who wears a trench coat and leather gloves, or finally emptying that weird “everything” drawer in the kitchen, then don’t wait until spring. Just give it a go now—you won’t regret it.

World AIDS Day arrives every year on December 1 and yet it remains one of the more confusing—and I’ll add, often dreaded—markers in the AIDS community. Advocates are often forced to choose between mourning the loss of loved ones or using the globally recognized day to highlight the persisting struggles holding us back from seeing an AIDS-free generation. As we face an incoming administration that campaigned on promises to “reshape” our healthcare with guidance from one of the loudest leaders in the anti-science and denialist movement, our impulse to resist has never been more clear or urgent. If the early AIDS movement and our ACT UP veterans taught us anything, it is how to collectively and fiercely fight for each other and never give up in times of despair.

I’m sometimes asked how I started in AIDS organizing. Although it’s hard to pin when it happened, I will always remember where I was when I did—Room 207 at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center at an ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) meeting in New York City. Right away, I knew I was at home. There is a lot of romantic historicization and depictions of ACT UP out there in the media, but I always hear surprise when people learn that ACT UP still exists and continues vital work across chapters.

When I joined ACT UP NY, we were a few years into the FDA’s approval of oral PrEP (pre-exposure prophylaxis). Although we had a drug on the market that, when taken daily, can effectively prevent people from acquiring HIV, its pharmaceutical manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, was marking up the price by 66%, potentially having users pay up to $24,000 out-of-pocket for an annual supply. This news of price gouging only became more disturbing when we discovered that the funding for the trials were sourced from US taxpayer dollars.

Almost a decade later, there are now several generic forms of oral PrEP on the market—but equality still isn’t here. According to the US CDC and referenced in PrEP in Black America’s For Us By US report, 91% of Black Americans who could benefit from PrEP have never received a prescription. This is especially important as we reflect on the recent (and exciting) results from the PURPOSE 1 and 2 trials for lenacapavir, a twice-yearly injectable PrEP that proved highly effective among cisgender women (PURPOSE 1) and gay men, trans, and nonbinary people (PURPOSE 2) in preventing HIV (it’s currently approved as a treatment for the disease, not a preventative measure equal to the daily oral pill). While the price is uncertain, we know that the cost of lenacapapir as treatment is currently a whopping $42,250 for the first year—when it could be incredibly profitable at the price of just $40 annually. We also know that lenacapavir’s manufacturer, once again Gilead Sciences (seeing a trend here?), announced they would license generic forms of the drug in 120 countries—excluding Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru—all countries that helped make the trial a success by participating.