Category Opinion

There is no one untouched by crises of mental health. And yet, when you or someone you love is going through it, it can often feel like you’re alone in the dark, searching for a light. In honor of World Mental Health Day, we are publishing a series of essays, starting today and running through the weekend, that tackle this topic through a personal lens. We hope these essays offer a little insight into the many ways that people struggle, and how they can come out the other side with dignity and grace.

When I was six weeks pregnant, I went hiking with a friend. Halfway up the mountain, I paused to catch my breath. I knew what I needed to say but I found myself struggling to say it. There was a heavy knot of dread in my stomach.

“I have some news,” I told her. “I’m pregnant.”

My friend was ecstatic. She started jumping up and down and shrieking with joy. I forced myself to smile but when she grabbed me for a hug, my face drooped. It felt like my lips weighed 50 pounds. I couldn’t even really remember how to smile properly. I held on to the hug for too long so she wouldn’t see my face and ask me what was wrong.

Because, what was wrong? I was married, had a career I loved, was healthy, and now was going to be a mother. I should have been thrilled to be pregnant; I had wanted to have a child for years. Why did I feel so awful?

Prenatal depression hit me fast. One night I went to bed, excited to have a baby. The next morning, I woke up and I didn’t want a child anymore. A dark cloud of dread hung over me. It felt like I had just gotten terrible news.

That first week, I canceled plans and spent afternoons curled up on the couch. Then, I stopped answering emails and checking my phone. I told myself I was just tired, or just nauseous. One day I was driving home on the freeway and my eyes kept flickering to the concrete median in the middle of the road. Would it be so bad, I thought, if I just drove into it? At least I wouldn’t have to feel this way anymore. In that moment, the idea of never waking up again sounded like a relief.

Greek mythology has nothing on the epic tale of Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, who finally filed for divorce in August after a broken engagement, a decades-long friendship arc, a rekindling, a second engagement, a Vegas wedding, and then a bigger Georgia wedding. (In case you were wondering: yes, I was able to recite all of that off the top of my head.) Now, Lopez has addressed the aftermath of her second split from Affleck for the first time, telling comedian Nikki Glaser in Interview magazine: “Being in a relationship doesn’t define me. I can’t be looking for happiness in other people. I have to have happiness within myself. I used to say I’m a happy person, but was still looking for something for somebody else to fill, and it’s just like, ‘No, I’m actually good.’” Later, when Glaser asked if Lopez had set a “new bar for the next person that comes along,” Lopez replied, “Here’s the thing: There’s no new bar because I’m not looking for anybody.”

Lopez also referenced her epic, white-pants-and-bike-rides-filled Nancy Meyers girl summer in the Hamptons in the interview, saying: “This summer, I had to be like, ‘I need to go off and be on my own. I want to prove to myself that I can do that.’” Important as that experience was, it was also, Lopez acknowledged, “fucking hard.” (Real as hell, Jen; even if you’re truly and deeply enjoying life on your own, it’s still completely normal to occasionally dissolve into tears when the fire alarm is chirping and you have no idea how to make it stop.)

While Affleck has been busy dyeing his beard and experimenting with faux hawks (no shade: breakup makeovers—breakovers?—are also real, regardless of gender), it’s nice to know that the two newly divorced stars are still civil enough to hang out with one another’s kids and exes from time to time. Not to play favorites (I love all my parasocial celebrity relationships equally!), but I do love to hear that Lopez is on the road to recovery and enjoying her singledom to some degree. After all, how are Ben and Jen ever going to get to Engagement #3 if they don’t take some time apart to rediscover themselves?

Wicked mania has officially hit, and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to escape constant pop-cultural references to the Land of Oz, Elphaba, Galinda, and the great Bowen Yang in arguably the gayest supporting role of all time. (Let me be clear: This is a major compliment.) While the moviegoing experience itself is obviously the pinnacle of the whole Wicked thing, there’s also plenty of fun to be had in participating in the online discourse; below, find a roundup of our very favorite Wicked memes.

Holding space for ‘Defying Gravity’

This particular meme is drawn from an interview between Wicked stars Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo and Out reporter Tracy E. Gilchrist, who said to Erivo: “I’ve seen this week, people are taking the lyrics of ‘Defying Gravity’ and really holding space with that and feeling power in that.” Is this a nutso way to refer to…people listening to a song? Yes. Am I going to be repeating “really holding space with that and feeling power in that” for the rest of the holiday season? Of course. I am in queer media, after all!

Gaylinda

I would watch a two-hour compilation of Nicole Kidman taking out the trash, so maybe I’m not the best judge of whether her upcoming film Babygirl—an A24 production that also stars Harris Dickinson and Antonio Banderas—actually looks good or is just horny enough to get the Carol-loving audience filing into theaters on Christmas Day. (For what it’s worth, its reviews out of Venice were quite good!) One thing’s for sure, though: Babygirl is already inspiring discourse.

Watch the first full Babygirl trailer for yourself, then see (literally) all my thoughts about it below.

1. Finally, a wig worthy of Nicole Kidman!
2. Wait, is that even a wig? Is that just her real hair? Will wonders never cease?
3. I’m choosing to believe the dog being called a good girl is actually Amy Adams in Nightbitch.
4. Ooh, a Christmas-themed A24 logo!
5. Do they make ornaments?
6. Okay, I was joking, but it seems they do.
7. Botox needles are the hottest accessory in film right now, apparently.
8. This whole busy, high-powered working-mom thing is a common Kidman trope, but that doesn’t mean I’m not excited to see her embrace it yet again.
9. This time with sexy-intern intrigue, apparently!
10. “I think you like to be told what to do.” Damn!
11. Is this yet another May-December movie?
12. This tracking shot of what I think is a fancy New York apartment is making me think of one of my favorite movie scenes of all time: the part where they rob Audrina’s house in The Bling Ring.
13. Is this not also kind of just…Fair Play, only less corporate?
14. Milk!
15. Okay, I don’t hate Harris Dickinson in a Connell–from–Normal People chain.
16. Pool games? Okay, that’s the kind of torrid affair I can get behind.
17. Hey, Antonio Banderas!
18. I’ve long said we need more sexy Christmas movies, so I’m going to be seated as hell for this one.

Wednesday morning, I woke up and the first thought that sprung to mind was: “I’m supposed to try on wedding dresses today, but I don’t know if I can legally get married next year.” I felt a tightness in my chest and the start of tears as I grappled with what my life as a gay, engaged woman would look like in Trump’s America.

I’ve always been a pragmatic optimist—realistic enough to do the work, yet always holding the hope that it could make a difference. I spent the weekend before the election canvassing in Pennsylvania and making calls to Wisconsin, where I felt uplifted by positive pro-Harris conversations I had with swing state voters. Women were coming out in droves, it seemed, saying they voted for her, and some lifelong Republicans were going to cross party lines. While I absolutely encountered a few fiery, flag-bearing MAGA supporters circling our canvassing headquarters in pickup trucks, they just seemed to want to make their presence appear bigger than it really was.

Today, the one thing that scares me most is I no longer feel like I can envision my future. Will a stacked Supreme Court overturn my right to marry? Would I ever be allowed to have children with my fiancée via IUI or IVF? Will I even be allowed to adopt a child? If we do have a child, would we both be able to be their legal parents? If we cross state lines, would our marriage not be recognized? Would I not be able to visit my future wife in the hospital if she gets hurt or sick? Will my family be recognized as a family by my country?

My fiancé Liv and I had planned our wedding for November 2025 in our Brooklyn neighborhood. As a weddings writer and editor with years of experience covering celebrations, it has been so overwhelmingly exciting to finally work on planning my own celebration. But when I woke up on Wednesday, the first thing I did was to turn to Liv and tell her that we should get legally married at City Hall in the next few months. I expected her to protest and say I was overreacting, but she agreed it was not a bad idea. Our text group chat with our parents agreed, too. We didn’t know the future, but we thought that if we had a legal marriage now, it would be harder to void it later. And, if we ever needed to move to another country, the immigration process together might be easier. I was not alone in this idea. After a quick DM check-in with another queer, engaged friend in the wedding industry Jove Meyer, he said he had the exact same conversation that morning with his fiancé. Clearly, the ticking clock was loud enough for us all to hear.

It was my favorite critical about-face in recent memory. Mike Hale, a TV critic at The New York Times (whose taste I have a lot of time for), initially panned Special Ops: Lioness when it debuted in July of 2023. He wasn’t alone. Critics had their knives out for this counterterrorism action series on Paramount+. The series stars Zoe Saldaña as a CIA operative named Joe who trains female assassins—among them, a badass marine named Cruz, played to the hilt by the relatively unknown Laysla De Oliveira.

Lioness was an easy target. Its creator and writer, Taylor Sheridan, is the man behind Yellowstone, television’s juggernaut Western, as well as a host of other series that offer nostalgic pro-military diversions (shows like Mayor of Kingstown, 1883, 1923, and Lawmen: Bass Reeves). Lioness hit familiar Sheridan beats. Strapping gunmen, noisy firefights, and solemn debriefings. The number of women in Lioness was perhaps notable—but so too was the peril they found themselves in and the violent deaths they were subject to. Critics like Hale were only shown one episode in advance—and it was a brutal one. The reviews, Hale’s included, were a bit contemptuous. Sheridan’s first female-centric show seemed…a little like exploitation?

I didn’t take my first chance to vote. I was 18 in 2004. I was a virgin. I didn’t watch the news. I was probably at a party or popping in a pretentious VHS tape or kissing someone wearing Vans. It was hard to see the choice—between one white man in a suit who had started an endless war and another white man in a suit whose politics seemed only marginally less troubling—as a personal one. I could not have been more wrong.

We all have the issue that calls us to action, which hits close enough to home that we are inspired to participate politically. For some, it’s the changing climate destroying their homes; for others, their experience with college loans. For me, it was when my body began to fail me, a development that ultimately allowed me to understand how interlinked every crisis facing our nation really is. Our health care system is the place where the Venn diagram of every form of injustice meets. But, like so much in life, I had to see it to believe it, to really comprehend what second-wave feminists meant when they chanted, “The personal is political.”

It’s no secret that I have been a weary traveler through the medical-industrial complex. I’ve written extensively for this magazine about my history with endometriosis and chronic pain, the endless circles I walked just to get answers, the emergency-room visits all over the country when symptoms were out of control (I’ve often joked that I could write a book called A Doctor in Every Port), and the radical hysterectomy that was ultimately necessary. What I have written less about were the men—so many men—whom I met on that journey. (While roughly 85% of practicing ob-gyns are women, 62% of practicing physicians are men, and they make up roughly two thirds of the emergency medical field.) Some were established doctors, some were interns, some were anesthesiologists. There were ones who sent me home bleeding too much, explaining my period to me like I was in fifth-grade health ed. There were the ones who eyed me with skepticism when I rated my cramps as a 10 on the pain scale. There were the ones who carelessly reached inside me as if I were a car with a faulty engine and not a human woman gasping at the careless intrusion.

After my first endometriosis surgery, I was placed in the urology ward at a prominent New York hospital. The rooms were much nicer, explained my doctor (out of network, it should be stated, and found after turning over every rock and finally consulting the Endometriosis Foundation of America). A wealthy man with prostate cancer had made a generous donation that allowed for wood paneling and flat-screen TVs versus the peeling yellow walls and tiny televisions with three channels up in obstetrics and gynecology. I was told to walk every day after the surgery, up and down the hall eight times. I pulled my IV bag alongside men named Frank and Bob, who chatted easily about sports as the nurses guided them. I thought about the women upstairs, waiting to have their bedpans changed, wondering who had forgotten about them. I thought of the women in state hospitals and jails who would regard the ignored obstetrics wing as an incredible upgrade. I thought of the women waiting outside emergency rooms all over the country, too afraid to go in and face the cost. I thought of the women who wouldn’t even consider parking outside.

Despite the cold-blooded assassination of a father of two in Manhattan, it’s been a surprisingly and acutely erotic few days on the feeds. To refresh: Last week, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down outside the Hilton hotel in Midtown. Bullet casings left behind read deny, defend, and depose, a reference to how insurers dodge payouts on claims. After a five-day sweep of the tristate area (and at least one ill-advised lookalike contest), the alleged gunman, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, was apprehended having lunch at an Altoona McDonald’s, and the internet promptly erupted into backstory sleuthing, eyebrow comparing, and straight-up arousal.

I don’t think any of us are pro assassination. Let me just put that down in writing, because while scrolling the declarations of mug-shot thirst, you’d be mistaken for thinking broad-daylight murder was somehow secondary to a strong jawline. But so many things converge in this story—a fatal shooting, a broken health care system, the radicalization of a young man of privilege, the internet in detective mode, and plain ol’ sex appeal—that it’s difficult to totally separate the strands.

Ivy League graduate Mangione’s manifesto, discovered on his person at Mickey D’s, relatably bemoans the too-big-and-too-greedy American health care machine. (He reportedly lost family members to illness in recent years, and there’s speculation about the ongoing aftereffects of his lower-back surgery.) His (self-)calling was seemingly to avenge the millions of frustrated Americans brutalized by years of rocket-high expenses to simply get better and stay well. Long before Mangione was unmasked, the announcement of Thompson’s death online was met with hundreds of gloating laughing emojis. (I’m wondering if these commenters felt the death of a figurehead forecasts the fall of the system?) But in general, people sympathized with Mangione’s position…at about the same time they discovered he was hot.

And so emerged the familiar hot-felon narrative—Mangione a bang-able vigilante, an ideal ideologue—and tweets so graphically horny they can’t be quoted. The timeline pivoted sharply from Wicked to Luigi. His Italian-ness. His sweetness. Is he straight? Is he bi? Does he count as an incel? Has Ryan Murphy secured the story rights? Will Dave Franco pick up the phone? Mangione images reigned. Shirtless and blue. Tank topped and Happy Meal–ed. Orange jumpsuited and pensive. I’ve seen him in profile, being led into court by police. I’ve seen his valedictorian speech. For some unfathomable reason, I know he rated The Lorax five stars on Goodreads.