Zara Hanawalt
Stop whispering, start talking: sharp, sassy takes on life in a female body.
Alex vs. Alix and the ‘Girls are Fighting’ Narrative
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard about the long-running feud between Alex Cooper and Alix Earle.
If not, a 101: Alex Cooper is the founder of the wildly popular podcast Call Her Daddy; Alix Earle is a mega-influencer. Cooper signed Earle to host a podcast on the network she created, the Unwell Network. But people quickly picked up on the fact that there seemed to be a rift between the two women…and recently, Cooper confirmed the feud in a social media post.
And in doing so, she kind of set the internet on fire. But this isn’t about their feud, because ultimately, we have no idea what actually went down. What this is about is the cultural fascination with a "catfight". A female frenemy story. With two women who are more successful and powerful than the world believes women have any right to be going after one another.
It’s not just Alex vs. Alix proves this. Recently, people began buzzing about a potential feud between reality stars Kaitlyn Bristowe and Jessi Draper. Bristowe immediately poured water on the flames to show that this feud was actually completely fabricated, and in doing so, she (correctly) pointed out that the public is constantly “feral” and “foaming at the mouth” to find a fight between two women. And you know what? Yeah. She’s right.
Think about all the female frenemy stories we’ve been fed. Think of the chokehold they’ve had on the masses. Even in cases like this one, where there’s not much there there, the public is just transfixed by stories of women fighting…and it all goes back to the way we as a society love to gleefully take down a woman, any woman.
And when we get to pit two women against each other? Well, that's practically our national pastime. Even if we don’t have all the information (in cases like Alex v. Alix, we really know almost nothing), we run with what we have, we spin narratives, and we assign blame and labels. This cultural fascination doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon…but isn’t our energy better used for more important things? So if you were looking for my take on who is the hero and who is the villain, you won’t find that here. What you will find is the question: What are we really accomplishing with this never-ending string of female rivalries that turn into entertainment?
Call it Cringe, But I Say Infertility Awareness Week Still Matters.
Last week, I was at a mom conference where I met several other women who have twins (in case you didn’t know — Rescripted was founded by two amazing twin moms and I happen to be one as well!).
What struck me about this experience, aside from just the sheer volume of other moms of multiples? Some of the follow-up questions we received. “Were they all IVF twins?” one person asked. And listen: I’m really happy we’re talking about these things…but that still feels to me like a strange, slightly invasive question. Because while normalization of these issues is really important, so is sensitivity around them.
Some of the moms shared that they’d had their babies via IVF, while I added that mine were born via IUI. What came after that were lots of follow up questions about what these processes actually entail, with lots of comments along the lines of “oh, I had no idea about this!”.
I get that most people don’t understand the intricacies of infertility. But when you’re in a room full of mothers, women who have been through pregnancy and postpartum, (though not necessarily infertility, of course), the lack of larger cultural awareness around what infertility truly looks like is a bit staggering.
Increasing infertility awareness is so important. When you actually go through infertility, the amount of information that is thrown your way is incredible. The mental load of it is incredibly heavy, and when I was going through it, I kept thinking “thank god I came into this experience with a base of knowledge — this would have been even more overwhelming if I hadn't.”
That base of knowledge didn’t come from public awareness of infertility issues (because that doesn’t exist), it came from working as a journalist who wrote about reproductive health. Thanks to that, I didn’t have to learn all about this wild testing process, all my treatment options, and about a million acronyms on the fly. I could just sit in the incredible emotional overwhelm of it all as opposed to feeling like I had to take detailed notes at every appointment.
But the value of infertility awareness isn’t just about serving people who will one day go through infertility, it’s also about cultivating more sensitivity around these issues, which is so desperately needed.
I know a lot of people roll their eyes at things like "Infertility Awareness Week”. But here’s the thing: Awareness campaigns can work. See: How incredibly far we’ve come where infertility awareness goes.
Ten years ago, nobody really talked about infertility at all. Now, we’re in a place where a room full of mothers can meet for the first time and openly talk about what it really took for them to have their families. We’re in a place where celebrities are openly sharing their stories. We’re in a place where sites Rescripted exist.
We’re getting somewhere. We’re just not there yet.
Emma Grede's Comments are Going Viral and I Don't Know How to Feel
Emma Grede is an incredibly impressive woman. Let’s just get that out of the way. She’s a boss by any measure. And she’s getting really honest about something women have historically been punished for saying: That you actually can’t have it all.
Grede admitted that she’s a “three-hour mom”. If you want an extraordinary life, you have to get comfortable with the fact that you just can’t be there for every single moment, she says.
And you know what? She’s not wrong.
As women, we have to make choices. Because while the world would probably function better if women could clone themselves, and while we do tend to be fantastic multi-taskers, we are bound by the laws of…you know, physics.
So yeah, I like that Emma Grede admitted this. I imagine many women, especially moms, breathed a sigh of relief when they heard it. At the same, her comments are calling into question what it means to be an “ambitious woman”.
Ambition in women is already a fraught idea (see: The absolutely bonkers “ambition gap” discourse). Women still do disproportionate amounts of unpaid labor. It’s a nice thought to say you can subvert the norms, but it’s also not always realistic — and when we allow the kind of hustle culture Grede exemplifies crawl back into the conversation, we end of up with a population of exhausted, overworked women — because they’re doing more to be taken seriously in the office, and more to stay afloat out of it.
It’s also worth noting that Grede is skeptical of remote or flexible work, which are especially good for women, and even more so women of color. She argues that visibility and proximity are key to success, and she’s not all wrong. But she’s also dragging us back rather than propelling us forward to a place where we can embrace the idea that women can still crush it even if they’re afforded more autonomy and flexibility. We have enough data and commentary to point out that these things are good for women.
So yeah, I like the honesty from Grede. And I get it: If a man said these things, especially about how much time he spends with his kids, nobody would bat an eye. Ultimately, Grede is talking about massive success, the kind that requires major sacrifice.
My take? The comments about how she runs her own life are good. But some of the large-scale cultural things she touches on? Well, I could do without them.
Ask Clara:
"Is remote work good for women?"
A Certain Online 'Academy' and What it Reveals About the Objectification of Women's Bodies
By now, you've probably heard about some of the darkest corners of the internet — the ones where men converge to trade tips and boast about...well, I'm just going to say it. Sexually assaulting women. Even their own wives. Yes, really. I mean...there are just no words.
While Giséle Pelicot became the face of marital sexual abuse when she went public to reveal that her own husband had been instigating widespread abuse against herm it turns out, this is far form the only case of this kind. To really learn about what's going on — and how men are banding together to quite literally share tips on how to abuse women's bodies, even the bodies of the women closest to them — read CNN's investigation.
I'll warn you, though: It's going to make you feel absolutely sick to your stomach.
Listen, if you've been around, you know we like to keep it fun over here on BODYTALK. This is, without question, the darkest, heaviest thing you'll read here, at least to date.
It's a tonal shift for sure, but it would also be doing this space a disservice if I didn't address this. Because how can I talk about women's bodies, the reality of what it means to live in one, without referencing this? This story is, of course, about the victims first and foremost. But also...it's about all of us. It affects all of us. Because it gives us yet another data point to better understand how the world views women's bodies, and what the dangers of that truly are. As I always say: Information is power, and there's no such thing as too much of it.
This story is about so many things: Violence, misogyny, patriarchy, evil, supremacy, power, control..and how all these things converge to create this deep, dark objectification of women's bodies.
When we think of the term "objectification", we think of reducing women's value to their looks, and all the dangerous stuff that comes with that (like punishing beauty standards, body insecurity, and constant sexualization).
In reality? It goes even deeper than that. It goes to a place where we think of women's bodies as public property — things to be claimed and conquered. Because yes, that’s what is happening here. This story isn’t about sex or desire at all. It's about taking power over a woman's bodies away from her and claiming it for yourself. It's about how deep the hate and violence towards our bodies truly is....deep enough that even the person you're supposed to trust most in this world isn't a safe space to view your body as your body, rather than a thing they can just control, pillage, and abuse.
This objectification of women's bodies is at the root of so much of what we face as women. It's a factor in the normalization of women's pain. It's the force that leads the world to view our physical beings as vessels, rather than homes for us to live. It’s at the root of the medical community's frequent dismissal of women’s symptoms and lack of research around women’s health. It's why women are so completely, wholly unsafe navigating the world in these bodies, which are always seen as things we don't deserve to have agency or control over.
People are Split on the ‘Back to Business’ Post-Baby Body Trend. Here’s My Take
If you spend any time on the mom side of TikTok, you’ve probably heard a lot of Beyonce’s iconic line “strong enough to bear the children…then get back to business” recently.
The line from “Run The World” is trending as moms online use it to showcase images of themselves pregnant before morphing into a clip of them once they’ve “returned to business”.
For some moms getting in on the trend, this means showcasing their super fit postpartum bodies. Others are using the trend to showcase themselves working out in impressive ways (lifting heavy, dancing, rock climbing)...basically, they’re showing the things they and their bodies are capable of doing.
But not everyone online is on board with the trend. And you know what? I get it.
A lot of creators feel it perpetuates bounce back culture, and I certainly see where this take in coming from. We grew up in a world that would plaster edited images of new moms on magazine covers to showcase their post-baby bodies…and we never got to see visible representation of the ways having a baby changes your body, both in the short and the long term (my C-section shelf, for example? Still there).
This trend does sort of feel like a celebration of the “snap back”, which represents such a heavy, unrealistic set of expectations we place on women to look like they’ve never carried pregnancies.
But maybe this trend doesn’t have to be a celebration of bounce back culture. Maybe it can be a reclamation of it instead.
The truth is, we get to decide what getting “back to business” is for us.
Is it literally getting back to business as a working mom? Is it learning a new skill in adulthood and motherhood? Is it crushing a personal fitness goal? Is it healing from postpartum depression? Is it learning to let yourself carve out time for a hobby? It’s up to you.
For me, when I hear that line, I immediately think of myself nursing my twins, one on each breast, as I interviewed a major celebrity for a story I was writing. I remember just feeling like such a bad*ss…and it had nothing to do with what my body looked like at the time.
With that being said, I’m seven years out from my own postpartum period. Maybe this would have struck me in a different way if I were freshly post-baby and feeling self-conscious about how much my own body had changed. That’s why I’d love for the focus of this trend to showcase the power of women and what their bodies can do, rather than what they look like.
The TL;DR? I like this trend…and I also fully see why some others don’t. We need to undo the standards our world holds women to…but it’s also okay to celebrate ourselves once in a while.
Bouncing back isn’t the point. But when you spring forward? You’re allowed to clap for yourself.
Ask Clara:
"What is bounce back culture?"
What is Fibermaxxing — and Should You Try It?
If you spend a lot of time on social media (it’s meee, hi!), you’ve probably heard of “fibermaxxing”, a wellness trend some creators are swearing by.
Fibermaxxing is essentially a viral trend that’s all about consuming as much fiber as possible. People claim this can boost your gut health and help with regularity and weight loss, which is why many of them are replacing their protein goals with fiber goals (though, to be clear, protein and fiber aren’t an either/or situation). In an attempt to reap these benefits, people are loading up on things like chia seeds, raspberries, beans (so many beans), and such to ramp their fiber intake all the way up.
As we’ve discussed, most Americans aren’t getting enough fiber. But is this social media driven fad a healthy way to counteract this….or a great way to overdo it and irritate your stomach?
Perhaps a bit of both, per registered dietician Anna Bohnengel, who is on hand to weigh in on the trend’s safety and validity.
"Dramatically boosting your fiber intake is rooted in sound science,” she says. “Fiber plays a critical role in slowing carb digestion, feeding beneficial gut bacteria, and supporting regularity, all of which translate to more stable blood sugar, hormone balance, and metabolic health.”
But going too hard can bring some icky side effects (think bloating, gas, and an upset stomach).
To get the benefits of fibermaxxing while minimizing the GI effects, Bohnengel offers up a few tips: Get fiber from whole foods like beans, lentils, vegetables, fruits, and whole grains. Be careful of fiber additives (like inulin, chicory root, xanthan and guar gums).
It's also a good idea to increase your fiber intake gradually. "Add [about] 5 grams of fiber per day every 3–7 days, not all at once," says Bohnengel.
Finally, increase your hydration too. For every 5 to 10 grams of fiber you add a day, you’ll also want to add 8 to 16 extra ounces of fluid.
So fibermaxxing? It can be a good thing. But maybe it’s worthwhile to think of it as being mindful of increasing your fiber intake rather than “maxxing” in an extreme way.
Ask Clara:
"Do Americans eat enough fiber?"
The U.S. Birth Rate Hits a New Low. Can We Finally Talk About the Why?
Well, here’s a big piece of news: The United States fertility rate fell to a new low in 2025. According to data from the CDC, fertility rates fell about 1 percent from 2024 to 2025. This follows a general decline we’ve been seeing for years now. According to the data, fertility rates in the US peaked in 2007 — and researcher Brady Hamilton tells NPR that the general fertility rate has declined by 23 percent since then.
This is a really significant shift. But we can’t talk about it without talking about what’s driving fertility rates down.
Moms First founder Reshma Saujani puts it best: “I would argue that our fertility rates are a scorecard on how America is doing to support families,” she says during an appearance on CNN. “And guess what? We’re failing. We are pricing people out of parenthood.”
And she’s right. Let’s face it: Getting pregnant feels terrifying when reproductive choice is being taken away, leaving pregnant women vulnerable to life-threatening complications.
Giving birth is terrifying when you’re poised to do it in a country with a maternal mortality crisis.
Having a baby is terrifying when you may have to return to work just weeks or even days postpartum.
Raising a child is terrifying when you can’t afford quality childcare.
And the list goes on and on. Fertility rates are dropping because our system hasn’t done enough to make having children less scary…or even less impossible.
What a lot of people hear when they see that the fertility rate has declined is that fewer people are having kids. What it actually means is that people are having fewer children. So some families may stop at 2 kids instead of 3 because having a 3-child family has become a real luxury — some people are even saying that a third baby is a status symbol along the lines of a Birkin bag. Because guess what? Raising children is incredibly expensive, now more than ever — even after the daycare days, because guess what? The school day and the work day still don't line up. It's just another way the system makes parenthood impossible for American parents.
So yeah. Fertility rates are down. That’s a real thing. But what’s just as important is the context of why people are having fewer children. Because one is a reflection of the other.
The 'Laguna Beach' Reunion and While We're All So Nostalgic
Like so many millennials, I spent this past weekend tuned in to the Laguna Beach 20 year (!!!) reunion. And I found myself feeling strangely emotional about the whole thing. A quick note: Laguna Beach was one of the OG reality shows about a group of high school students in a beautiful, affluent beach town. It hinged on a central love triangle between Kristin Cavallari, Stephen Colletti, and Lauren Conrad. Much of the buzz around the show was about pitting Conrad and Cavallari against on another, but Laguna Beach actually showcased a lot of beautiful friendships — and we don't talk about that enough!
Anyway, back to me getting full emotional during the reunion. It stands to reason, I guess: I am almost the same age as the cast, and the first season of Laguna Beach premiered when I was in high school. Watching this show feels like a time capsule. I dressed the same way as the kids onscreen (the chokehold that layered tanks, Uggs, and denim skirts had on us!), listened to the same music, and spoke in a similar way (less beach slang for sure, but pretty sure I said “like” as much as they did).
While I was watching, I had a realization: The reason I, and so many of my fellow millennials, are so hopelessly nostalgic all the time, is because nothing today feels quite as accessible.
Watching Laguna Beach felt like getting invited to a high school party hosted by the popular kids. You had this sense that you were in the room with them, and that’s what felt so game-changing about the early days of reality TV.
But today, nothing feels this authentic. Not TV, not social media, not even real life.
We’re living in this disconnected world and experiencing so much of it through the screen. And on those screens, we see filtered, edited, spliced content. We see altered faces everywhere today — on Laguna Beach, it is striking to see how normal everyone looks. How much character and expression their faces had. Every single person on the cast was beautiful, but in a “they look like the hottest person I went to high school with” way. Now, I see teenagers who have perfected their makeup routines (thanks, I'm sure, to social media tutorials), and I wonder when we all lost the privilege of just...stumbling through it all.
And I think that’s what we are longing for right now: Something that feels real. Content that feels relatable. Simplicity. Kids just being kids: Messing up, being imperfect, caring only about the small worlds they inhabit. Being a teen in the aughts, it felt like your friends, the parties, the music, the Friday night plans...they were everything. For better or worse, nothing else really mattered.
I don’t know if teens today get to experience this in our digitally connected world. But here’s what I do know: I don’t feel this same sense simplicity in my life anymore. At all.
I am young enough to remember the feeling of that era in my own life and in pop culture, yet old enough to feel totally removed from it…and to long for a little piece of that world.
Ask Clara:
"Why are millennial women so nostalgic?"
Is Automatically Unfollowing Women Who Get Married or Pregnant a Form of Misogyny?
I recently came across a TikTok that went viral. In it, a woman shares that she automatically unfollows any woman once she announces a pregnancy or engagement.
The post has since been deleted, but it’s not the only one of its kind. Across my feeds, I frequently see takes from people saying that once a woman gets married or has a child, she becomes unrelatable and uninteresting. And they click that “unfollow" button.
Listen, I get that it’s easier to relate to someone who is in a similar phase of life to your own. I understand that single and childfree women, who have historically been criticized by the public and deemed “selfish” or "incomplete" should be entitled to find community.
But this idea that once a woman makes more traditional choices (marriage, motherhood), she becomes boring, dull, uninspiring, uncool— that’s also a real piece of the womanhood experience. Many of the people saying they hit unfollow when a women online takes this path are framing it as a progressive choice. But removing your support when a woman makes a choice that looks different than your own…well, that doesn’t feel like true feminism, at least to me. Especially when you consider that hitting "unfollow" isn't just a personal move, but one that can ultimately affect a creator's business.
On my feeds, I’ve seen real beef pop up between childfree-by-choice people and parents. On the childfree side, people will boast about the things they can do because they’re not “shackled” by children; on the parent side, people (many mothers) will declare that anyone who has never experienced parenthood just simply doesn’t know love or purpose.
But girls, come on. We have to stick together here! We have to have each other’s backs. And when we let this divide come between us, all we do is decrease our collective strength as women.
I am a married woman and a mother. And you know what? Maybe that does make me uninteresting to some. I spend most of my nights at home, reading books and sipping herbal tea and watching all my shows because...that's what I want out of life right now. Peace, calm, relaxation (with a side of vicarious chaos via the shows I watch).
But marriage and motherhood didn’t erase all of me. I am still who I was before.
I get that if an influencer you follow starts only posting content about marriage and motherhood, you may feel compelled to leave the chat because those aren’t topics that appeal to you. That’s totally fine!
But to assume that a woman is going to become consumed by those things, that she is going to cross over to this place of banal unrelatability, that everything she’s brought to the table will suddenly vanish as she adds new pieces to her identity? That doesn’t feel cool or revolutionary or fresh at all, at least to me. It actually feels a bit like misogyny.
Because let's face it: We don't let chocies around marriage and motherhood define men.
Accidental Pregnancies in Your 40s Are Common. Let’s Talk About Why
I recently read an article in The Atlantic that kind of altered my brain chemistry — and by “altered my brain chemistry”, I really just mean it pointed out something I haven’t considered about reproductive health despite literally thinking about reproduction like it’s my job (because it kind of is my job as a journalist who covers the topic).
The article is about accidental pregnancies after 40, which are surprisingly common (like, around one in three pregnancies among women over 40 are unplanned, according to data from a few years ago).
That’s not to say fertility doesn’t decline with age. It does. We do lose eggs as we get older; that’s a scientific fact. But what we need to remember is this: Your fertility doesn’t just completely leave the chat when you turn 35, as narratives around “advanced maternal age” (a terrible term, as we’ve discussed) might suggest.
The root of accidental pregnancies after 40, as this article touches on, seems to be more about approach and lifestyle. People may lower their guard where pregnancy prevention is concerned. They experience symptoms of perimenopause and assume “hey, I’m in the clear — I won’t get pregnant now” and maybe they stop really paying attention to contraception.
We also are still very much learning about the realities of perimenopause and menopause — to the point that we really never spoke publicly about these topics up until very recently, and as a result, people don’t really know what’s happening in our bodies. They also may not know that perimenopause affects, but doesn't completely wipe out, your fertility. It's not until you've reached menopause, which is clinically defined as one year without a period, that your ability to get pregnant is gone, according to Mayo Clinic materials. You should use birth control until then if you want to avoid pregnancy.
And that’s what it all comes down to: We don’t have the information about how to identify perimenopause and menopause, and we don’t have the information of how our fertility fares in those life stages…so we’re vulnerable to loss of reproductive control.
And then, we don’t have a sense of what is truly happening in our bodies, so maybe we miss a few periods or gain a few pounds and think “oh, this is just perimenopause changing my body”, not realizing you’re actually pregnant until you’re far along.
The bottom line? We need more information about our bodies. And this is yet another example of that.