Half of the UK's women really aren't keen on the word "housewife", according to new research.

A survey of 2,000 British women found that 38% think the term is outdated, while a further 12% believe it's sexist or embarrassing.

The survey by My Nametags also asked women to specify what they consider to be an accomplishment for the modern woman. More than half (54%) said having financial security, while a shade under half (49%) said being happy.

Hearteningly, 39% cited empowering other women as an accomplishment – nearly as many as the 44% who said being happy to live on your own, and the 40% who specified having a well-paid job.

Check out the top ten accomplishments below.

1. Having financial security (54%)

2. Being happy 49 percent (49%)

3. Being happy to live on your own (44%)

4. Having a well-paid job (40%)

5. Empowering other woman (39%)

6. Owning a house (39%)

7. Having a good group of friends (32%)

8. Having a clean home (32%)

9. Being well read (32%)

10. A career with responsibility (29%)

My Nametags' managing director Lars B. Andersen said in response to the results: "The results show that priorities have changed over time, as modern women are not as interested in learning traditional skills, such as knitting or sewing. Nearly 80% said they would rather pay for convenience when it comes to things like buying costumes for school plays, rather than making them by hand, or buying birthday cakes instead of baking them at home.

Andersen added: "It seems we place less importance on these skills as being an accomplished woman today is much more about being happy, financially independent and having a good group of friends."

Given the importance modern women place on having financial security and having a well-paid job, it's especially disappointing to look back at the results of this year's government-enforced gender pay gap data.

It was found that men earn more than women in 78% of companies with 250 employers or more. By contrast, women earn more than men in just 14% of companies, and there's no gender pay gap in just 8% of companies.

Meanwhile, the Office for National Statistics revealed in April 2017 that men earn an average of 18.4% more than women – which definitely is an outdated, sexist and embarrassing state of affairs.

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It’s my first day at psychic school. Rows of glossy highlights, bouncy blow-dries and artfully mussed topknots stretch ahead of me. Earnest frowns, shy smiles and rapt gazes punctuate chat of chakras, spirit guides and bio-energy. And my inner Scully is raising a manicured brow to the heavens.

I'm not completely closed off to the idea of spirituality; a couple of heart-healing rose quartz crystals might currently be gathering dust on my windowsill. And I might be one of the fifth of Brits who reckon they’ve been given an accurate prediction by a psychic medium. But did she really 'know' I’d end up going white wafter rafting in New Zealand the following summer – or did she plant the idea in my head?

I’m on the fence. I want to believe, but I also want cold, hard proof. As luck would have it, a new review of research on 'psi' – the official term for anything the mind can do that can't be explained by science as we know it – has just been published. Its conclusion? There IS evidence for psychic phenomena.

Digging through the archives, Etzel Cardeña, the director of Sweden’s Centre for Research on Consciousness and Anomalous Psychology, found scientific support for anomalous cognition, precognition and presentiment. For the uninitiated, 'anomalous cognition' means knowing something you couldn’t have figured out with your 'normal' senses – what’s printed on a concealed card, for instance. Precognition is knowing the future, e.g. the plot of a film clip you’re only shown AFTER you’re asked to describe it. And presentiment is 'feeling' the future – having an emotional or physical reaction to something that hasn’t happened – yet. "The evidence provides cumulative support for the reality of psi, which cannot be readily explained away," Cardeña declared.

TBH, the figures weren’t all that impressive. But according to Cardeña, that’s because certain people do so much better than others in this field (extroverts perform best, but being open to new experiences goes a long way, too). London medium, hypnotherapist, crystal healer and teacher Kim Alexis agrees that some of us are more psychic than others. "A highly sensitive person will feel how another person feels, and sense the atmosphere in a room," she adds. Kim honed her own psychic powers on clients like Kate Moss. Now, she’s offered to help me develop mine.

So I’ve either got it or I haven’t? Not necessarily. "Intuition is like a muscle," says Kim. "With specific exercises, I can train anyone to be psychic." She leads weekly psychic development classes in north London and biannual 'awakening' retreats in Sardinia. Will you see dead people? Probably not: not everyone is cut out to be a spiritual medium. But with practice, Kim reckons, anyone can learn to see, sense and 'know' things – about themselves, friends, partners and even perfect strangers. "Developing your intuition can transform your life," she says. "It helps you let go of old behaviours and ways of thinking and feeling."

Class begins with a guided meditation: we’re off to the 'soul library' to meet our spirit guides. "Use your imaginations," Kim urges. Hold up – shouldn’t we be waiting for divine inspiration, or something? I conjure up a bearded Gandalf-alike. Consciously? I’m honestly not sure. "Listen to what they have to tell you," Kim instructs. This time, I don’t do anything. Purple mist floods my mind’s eye. The result of random retinal impulses? Or something else? One of my fellow students sees blue. "Your guides want you to open your throat chakra," Kim tells her. "Perhaps you’re holding onto something you need to say?" She nods significantly in response. How about purple? "Purple signifies that you are a divine being," Kim tells me. Aha! I knew it. Purple is also the colour of the third eye chakra, which is associated with visionary clairvoyance. Does Gandalf want me to open my third eye?

I get my chance soon enough. "I’m not going to do any more work today," Kim announces. "You’re going to be giving the readings – for each other." Paired off at random, we exchange first names and nervous giggles, pull our chairs together and close our eyes. "This isn’t about you," Kim reminds us. "You are sitting in your partner’s aura. Any feelings, thoughts or images you receive are about them – for them." An intense sensation of heat begins to build in my throat. Performance anxiety? Or something more? It’s not a feeling I’m familiar with. And now my scalp is prickling with the same sensation. "I used to be a singer, so I used my throat chakra to communicate," my partner nods, when I describe my experience. "But now I’m trying to develop my intuition, so I’m using my crown chakra more." She’s just returned from one of Kim’s Sardinian retreats. "It was a real Eat Pray Love experience," she tells me.

Time to step things up a gear. Half of us sit with our eyes closed. The others circulate, each picking a new partner to stand behind. When Kim says the word, they place their hands on our shoulders: this time, we’re reading blind. My partner has a light, tentative touch. The pressure fluctuates subtly from moment to moment. It feels like she’s testing the water – or contemplating a dash for the nearest exit. I moot that she’s weighing a decision in her mind. She’s not allowed to respond, but I think I feel her nod. "Maybe you’re thinking about going on a journey?" I venture. More nodding. "So much of that was spot-on," she beams when we finally come face to face. "I’ve been trying to decide whether to move to America!"

A sceptic would put my success down to 'cold reading' – picking information up using my ordinary senses – in this case, touch. But I find myself wondering whether my 'sixth sense' might somehow be working in concert with the other five. Is it just a question of tuning out the noise and tuning in to the things that ordinarily pass us by? Parapsychology researcher Dean Radin, who published Real Magic earlier this year, thinks so. "What we call the sixth sense is actually the first sense," he argues. It’s the job of the other five to make sense of it, to repackage it into a form we can understand, something we can call 'intuition' or 'gut instinct'.

One day, physicists will be able to explain how psychic links bind us to the rest of the universe across time and space, Radin and Cardeña reckon. Quantum mechanics have proven that particles can affect one another 'from a distance' – meaning that everything (and everyone) in the universe may be connected. It’s an idea that’s starting to make sense to me – we already know that our bodies soak up particles from the ground we stand on and the air we breathe in. Why wouldn’t we absorb energy from other people, too?

The day ends with a chakra closing meditation. Leave them open and we’ll be swamped by other people’s energies, Kim warns. I might have closed my third eye, but I leave determined to pay more heed to my gut. "You can intuit whether to trust someone," Kim advises. "You might have a sense that driving down a certain road will get you there faster, or not to get in a cab or train because something feels wrong. This is using your intuition."

Is this the end of the line? "Everyone’s spiritual learning journey is unique," she tells me. Progress can be immediate, or take months of dedicated study. Meditation is the best way to boost your natural psychic awareness on a day-to-day basis, Kim advises. "It helps you slow down, go within and find peace. The more peaceful you are, the easier it is to listen to your intuition. But we can all be psychic. It’s innate." Time to think about clambering down from that fence.

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Swimwear is a tricky one; just when you find the perfect print or colour, you'll discover that it's made for Instagram only and has a leg cut up to your hips, à la The Sopranos, or reveals so much boob that when you dive into the pool, the poor lifeguard gets an eyeful they never asked for.

With this in mind, we set out to find the best-cut swimsuits for every body type, which work just as well for tanning on the beach as they do front crawl. Thanks to the renaissance of the one-piece, after years of the bikini's reign, there's plenty to choose from, whether you prefer a classic style or a ruffle detail and statement print.

Click through to find our favourite swimsuits for the season, to take you from Brockwell Lido to La Barceloneta.

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The blink-and-you'll-miss-it speed at which social media moves means you're unlikely to remember a tweet you sent in the last 48 hours, let alone one you sent two years ago. But if your account is public, it's time to dig up the time capsule and start sorting through, or, rather, deleting those messages you've already wiped from your memory.

Events in the last few weeks have made it clear that this approach is not extreme. Rather, it's an important protective measure against trolls who are using old tweets as weapons against the people they view as their enemies. In late July, Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn was fired by Disney for inappropriate jokes he made on Twitter 10 years prior. The tweets that led to Gunn's swift dismissal were dug up and spread by alt-right personality and conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich. The same approach has been used to target journalists.

Regardless of whether you consider yourself a potential target of internet trolls or not, these situations emphasise a couple of important things. First, it's difficult to convey tone on Twitter, so something intended as a joke or satire may not be read as a joke by others, especially when taken out of context. Second, you may no longer stand by something you wrote a decade ago. And, since background checks by employers now include a thorough review of your social media accounts in addition to your criminal background report, five to 10 misinterpreted or misguided words could prove costly. That's not to mention the harassment you could face online if you do become a target.

While Twitter does not operate on the same 24-hour lifecycle as Snapchat and Instagram Stories, there's no reason you can't — and shouldn't — approach it in a similar fashion.

First, go to Settings > Your Twitter data > Request data. This will allow you to save all of the old tweets you posted before removing them. Next, instead of going through each individual tweet and deleting them one-by-one (there is no mass delete option on Twitter), head to a third-party service, TweetDelete, and sign in with your Twitter credentials.

TweetDelete can delete up to 3,200 tweets at a time. You specify the time frame, and can set the service to delete tweets that are more than one week, two weeks, one month, two months, three months, six months, or one year old. Once activated, it will continue to automatically check and delete tweets from your account. You can always return to the site to turn it off.

Of course, you can also take a different route and set your account to private, but this doesn't prevent your current followers from taking screenshots and sharing your tweets that way.

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Disgraced film producer Harvey Weinstein, who faces rape charges in court from three separate women, is reportedly hoping to dismiss the criminal case against him.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Weinstein — who, following detailed exposes in the New York Times and The New Yorker this fall, has been accused of inappropriate and/or criminal behaviour by dozens of women — is seeking to dismiss one rape case on the basis on emails from his accuser. In a new brief, Weinstein's lawyer Benjamin Braff argues that the case should be dismissed because the District Attorney withheld the emails, which Braff suggests paint a different picture of Weinstein's relationship with the accuser, from the grand jury.

Per THR, the emails reportedly include messages in which the accuser jokes that she is a "booty call" to Weinstein. Braff argues that this implies that a sexual relationship between the two was, in fact, consensual.

"[The emails] signalled her desire for a fuller and more emotionally committed relationship," Brafman writes in the brief.

In other messages discussed within the brief, the unnamed woman asks to meet up with the producer for a drink.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the emails are governed by a protective order that makes them confidential. Weinstein's team hopes to revise that protective order.

The emails are not the only reason Weinstein wishes to dismiss the case against him. According to THR, Weinstein takes aim at the District Attorney's process, stating that he did not receive adequate notice that there were "new, far more serious charges" against him that would be presented to the grand jury. Weinstein also claims that the evidence in general is not sufficient enough to go to court.

Should Weinstein be convicted of predatory sexual assault, it is possible that he will receive the maximum sentence, which is life in prison.

Refinery29 has reached out to Weinstein's attorney Braff for comment.

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What do you know about North Korea? Probably, you’ve seen the almost Disney-like images of capital city Pyongyang, with its Pepto-Bismol pink architecture, military parades, empty mega-hotel and fake shops. In American film, it’s a punchline. Kim Jong-il is the camp, misunderstood and lonely dictator in Team America. His son, current leader Kim Jong-un, is mates (in real life) with eccentric former US basketball star Dennis Rodman, and he tried to ban a Seth Rogen film because it imagined his assassination. Releasing the film, Kim Jong-un said, would be considered an “act of war” and would be met with a “merciless” response. Of course, people loved this crazy news story. A deluded autocrat from a tin-pot dictatorship threatening the world’s largest superpower over a dumb comedy film! Incredible! And when Kim boasted of North Korea’s nuclear capacity last year, Donald Trump struck the same note, mocking him as “little rocket man” and a “sick puppy”.

So far, so extraordinary. But how much do you know about the lives of ordinary North Koreans? They live under a dictatorship, and go through a bizarre programme of indoctrination. Sometimes, thousands of them take part in big military parades in Pyongyang – a photo opportunity designed to show the world how well organised and dedicated they are to the leader, and to show off the state’s weapons arsenal. But ordinary North Koreans have no way to communicate with the outside world. Their stories are obscured by both propaganda (including state-sponsored press trips for Western journalists), and headline reports of the nuclear threat the country poses to the world. But some defectors do manage to escape North Korea, and they want us to know what ‘normal’ life is like under the brutal regime.

A new film, released online today, tells the story of Joong-wha Choi, a North Korean refugee living with his family in New Malden – a southwest London suburb dubbed ‘Little Pyongyang’ for having the highest number of North Koreans outside North and South Korea. The film, a stylised documentary short from young London director Roxy Rezvany, is also called Little Pyongyang, but places Joong-wha in a colourful, artificial set – reminiscent of the grand (but deceptive) architecture of Pyongyang. He tells us about his life, from his love of ice skating and childhood games to caring for his brother, who had a mental illness, and the desperate struggle for survival that made up his mind to escape.

When a famine swept North Korea – due to failed government food distribution, flooding destroying crops, and the fall of other ‘Communist’ countries, including, eventually, the Soviet Union in 1991 – Joong-wha explains that people were reduced to eating grass, “as if we were rabbits”. He and his brother were starving. “I agonised over one bowl of cooked rice,” Joong-wha says in the film. “It seemed right to give it to my brother, who had a disability. But if I didn’t eat and died, my brother would have died after me as he would have no one to look after him. So I ate it and survived, but my brother died of malnutrition afterwards.” Horrific instances like this, Joong-wha says, are what led him to question the regime, and think about escape.

At least 30,000 refugees have escaped from North Korea, prompted by the famine, human rights abuses, and political oppression. After the number soared in 2016, North Korea and China made the borders even harder to cross, and the numbers plummeted in 2017. Of those escapees, however, an extraordinary number are women: 83% in 2017. To find out why, Refinery29 met with Jihyun Park, a defector and human rights activist who has lived as a refugee in Manchester since 2008 – and who has been supporting the release of Little Pyongyang. The reasons Jihyun decribes are both fascinating and harrowing.

Jihyun was in her mid-20s when the famine began. “I saw many dead bodies in the street, in the market, at stations. I was a high school teacher, and, in my register, every day [children] were missing, missing,” she says. Sometimes, she found their dead bodies outside the school. But Jihyun was completely indoctrinated in the ideology of the regime – she taught it to her students every day. “I saw all the dead bodies, but I continued to believe the regime [which denied the famine],” Jihyun says, “I thought that maybe they would quickly solve the problems, and after that life would be normal.”

It wasn’t until Jihyun watched her uncle die of starvation in 1993 that she realised the regime was lying. “I saw what he did every day, every minute, every second. He would quickly eat lots of food, and then run out to the toilet, and have diarrhoea. In the night he didn’t sleep; he went to the kitchen to find food, but it was empty. He would shout, he was angry,” Jihyun says. “I had seen lots of dead bodies,” she explains, “but then I saw how the starving people live.” Children and the elderly were the first to die. Others continued to work, to keep society functioning on some level. “The government didn’t give us any rice, or any salary,” Jihyun says, “but people continued to work to death.”

In North Korea, every boy enters the military at 17, if he is physically able, and serves for 10 years. “So in companies and universities, it’s mainly women,” Jihyun explains. “We have lots more experience than men, because a man has only joined the military, but we are [working in the] economy, in agriculture, everywhere.” When the men come back from service, however, they are still put in positions of power over women workers. “North Korea never accepts our skills, our education,” Jihyun says. “And when we marry, we resign our job and become a housewife.” During the famine, men continued to work for no money and no food. But women were offered another way to financially support their family.

‘Brokers’ were able to smuggle people across the border into China, where they said there would be well paid jobs for women, working in restaurants or as housekeepers. Jihyun travelled over the border with one such ‘broker’, but he turned out to be a human trafficker and she was sold to a Chinese man as a domestic slave, and sex slave. Jihyun gave birth to his son before being discovered by the Chinese government and deported back to North Korea, where she was held in a hard labour camp. The guards beat her badly and she was working in sewage. Eventually, a leg injury became swollen with gangrene, and Jihyun could no longer work. Because she was useless to them, she was released.

No one was there to meet Jihyun when she left the prison camp, and she knew she had to escape once more. “I only thought about my son. That gave me the hope and the power,” she tells me. “The first time I thought about the politics, but the second time I only thought about my son. I just needed to survive, to escape North Korea once again.” Escaping again into China, Jihyun found her son, who was still living with his paternal grandmother. They then escaped into Mongolia, but Jihyun couldn’t run; a man saw them, picked up her child, and helped them to get away – he is now Jihyun’s husband. After a time working selling food, Jihyun was put in touch with a UN officer in Beijing, and eventually the family was granted asylum in the UK.

While filming Little Pyongyang, director Roxy Rezvany also spoke with Joong-wha’s wife Yun-Ah. Although her comments did not make it into the final film, Roxy gave Refinery29 exclusive access to the footage, so we could hear from another woman defector. While Jihyun is an outspoken activist, and has told her painful story many times over, other refugees, including Yun-Ah, don't feel comfortable talking about the details of their escape, which can often be traumatic. However, Yun-Ah’s story illustrates how many defectors feel about their homeland: they miss their old lives and their identities before they were refugees. Many hope that Korea will reunite and they will be able to return.

“I lived in North Korea longer than I have [lived] here,” Yun-Ah says in the film. “Here, [defectors] might make connections through similar burdens, but I had many friends when I lived in North Korea for almost 30 years. I miss them a lot.” Her friendship group was centred around a sports club, where they played a form of baseball. “I spent my youth in North Korea. If Korea reunifies, firstly I want to see my friends,” she says, adding that she would ask if they still have photographs taken in their youth. Working at the sports club, Yun-Ah earned 120 North Korean Won – “It had a value of about £1,200,” she says, “and with 10 Won you could get 2kg of rice.” – so she could afford to take pictures and have them developed. “I took a lot of pictures, especially when we used to visit Pyongyang twice a year,” Yun-Ah explains. “But when I was fleeing, I burned all my photographs, just in case I was caught. I don’t have a single photograph left of my memories.”

Living in London, North Koreans are free from the brutal regime, but the struggle continues for the people still living there. And bringing children up in the UK has its own issues. Jihyun couldn’t read the letter offering her son a private school scholarship, and so she didn’t know to accept. Both Jihyun and Joong-wha express their sadness at the language barrier with their own children. “My children don’t really understand the meaning of human rights yet,” Joong-wha says in the film, explaining: “It’s difficult for children to understand. They would ask: ‘Why did you live there?’ Because they grew up in the UK, the language barrier can make communicating difficult. It isn’t easy to have an in-depth conversation.” Jihyun’s son once asked why she had “abandoned” him in China. “When I heard this question I cried, because it was the first time I knew he had painful stories in his mind [too],” Jihyun tells me. “I saw a different person’s story. But it’s not just my story, my son’s story,” she says. “This is the story of all North Korean women and children.”

Speak out means if you hear our story, tell your family, your friends. That helps.

By telling the stories of their lives, from the joys of their childhood to their education and careers, their family stories and how they loved the countryside where they lived, these North Korean defectors are trying to show us their humanity. Their country might be a joke in parts of our culture, but the refugees don’t understand why their struggle, and the ongoing struggle of their people – which Jihyun considers a genocide – isn’t getting our attention. “English people only see newspaper and TV [coverage of] a military nation, they watch the discipline,” Jihyun says. “But North Koreans are the same [as us]. They are also humans. They are people who matter to us.”

Little Pyongyang is available to watch now on the Guardian website. For more information about Jihyun Park’s human rights work, visit connectnorthkorea.org.

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It's a typical refrain you hear from many women: they do all of the work but don't get the credit they feel they deserve. That feeling is backed by research, too: study after study after study shows that women receive less credit for their work than men do. But what if that dynamic — doing all of the work without getting the credit — was a lucrative career choice? What if you could monetise sexism? Turns out you can! It's called ghostwriting.

I met ghostwriter Jodi Lipper at a summer cocktail party. As we sipped ready-to-serve cocktails on a patio overlooking the New York City skyline, she told me about her life. She writes 3 books a year, she writes them from her home in New Jersey and she's in a ghostwriter group text with other ghosts. By the end of the conversation, I had to ask her: does she mind doing all the work but not getting the credit? Nope. As long as she gets paid.

But Jodi's first concern isn't money. "I work with a lot of female authors and a lot of authors who are people of colour. And I really make an effort to find those people and get their voices out there — that's really important to me."

Then Jodi told me that nearly every non-fiction book on New York Times bestseller list is ghostwritten, I was shocked. Literally. Look:

"Anyone with a big enough platform to sell that many books, they've got a lot of help," Jodi explained. Celebrities and public figures have great stories, but they usually aren't writers so they outsource it — mostly to women. Turns out, ghostwriting is a female dominated field. And the men who do it don't call them selves ghosts, because they want the credit on the front cover.

"Some of the male ghostwriters who are at the top of the field do fight more for cover credit — that's the 'with so-and-so,' more so than some of the top female ghostwriters." She explains that the men often shy away from the term "ghostwriter," instead choosing to call themselves "collaborative writers," or "co-writers."

"This is an option. It's something that people don't really know about because it is so secret and hidden, but meanwhile it's a lucrative career that I would say is strictly creative, it's just writing, that's something that is really important to women who want a career," Jodi explained.

So what does it take to be a ghost? "I think that's a big part of the skillset of actually being a ghostwriter is that ability to connect with different people. You have to earn that trust." For Jodi, it's not about credit. "To me it's not about getting credit or having my name on the book, it's about knowing that I have helped them tell their story."

Check out the latest Strong Opinions Loosely Held episode on ghostwriting above and for more on Jodi's career on a ghost, make sure you watch this extended interview. New episodes of Strong Opinions Loosely Held come out weekly: Are you subscribed?

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A post shared by Yin Fung 馮慧賢 (@yin.stagram) on May 30, 2018 at 11:03pm PDT

You may have noticed that Instagram's most influential have been seen with a rather colourful plus-one of late. Whether it's Blanca Miró and her semolina yellow square leather bag, or Marta a.k.a. The Style Thesaurus, with her tomato red mini suede backpack, the playful pieces from Istanbul design duo Manu Atelier are the accessory du jour. First spotted in editors' hands on the streets of fashion month last September, the brand's artisanal skill and eye for colour-clashing have seen it grow from a local secret to industry must-have since its launch in 2014.

Merve and Beste Manastir, the sisters and creative force behind Manu Atelier, are no strangers to the craftsmanship needed to create a cult bag brand. "Our father is one of Turkey's oldest artisans, and he's been making leather goods by hand at his atelier in Istanbul since he was 11 years old," Merve and Beste explain.

Having grown up seeing their father at work, the idea for Manu Atelier had been germinating for some time, but it wasn't until Merve's graduation that the business plan kicked into action. Wanting to fill a gap in the market for exclusive accessories at more inclusive prices (compared to It bags that can cost thousands), the brand launched 18 months later.

Now, Merve and Beste's joyous designs have been seen on everyone from Eva Chen, Instagram's head of fashion partnerships, to Sarah Jessica Parker, and were included in Net-A-Porter's 10 best performing bag brands for SS18. Bold, offbeat footwear is next on the agenda, along with a presentation slot at Paris Fashion Week in October.

With international success – particularly in London – meaning more eyes on Manu Atelier's eye-catching designs, the brand continues to represent Istanbul's fashion scene. We caught up with Merve and Beste to see what the Turkish city has to offer, from Grand Bazaar trinkets to the best vintage stores.

A post shared by Jessie Bush (@wethepeoplestyle) on Jul 18, 2018 at 8:14am PDT

Where should we stay?

The George Hotel and The Pera Palace are in Beyoğlu area, which is right at the heart of Istanbul. The Four Seasons is in the old city, surrounded by historical monuments and authentic shops and restaurants.

Where should we head for a nightcap?

When you want to go out, no matter what your mood, you can find a spot in the Arnavutköy and Karaköy areas. They both have so many cool bars and clubs that you can dance to good music in, from pop and jazz to R&B and house. Lucca (a secret spot not known by many people) and Back Bar both play nu-jazz and lounge, and have delicious food and fresh cocktails. If you are not in the mood to dance, head to Rakı&Fish – they have a rooftop bar and fresh seafood.

Where is the best place to enjoy the sunshine?

In any of the neighbourhoods on the Bosphorus strait. On the European side, Beşiktaş, Ortaköy, Kuruçeşme, and on the Asia side, Moda, Kanlıca, and Çengelköy. You should take a walk and eat fresh corn from a street vendor while you watch the sea. If you love green spaces, Maçka Demokrasi Parkı is ideal for sunbathing, stroking a dog and reading your book in peace. If you have time to escape from the city for a day, you can go to Prince Islands. They are all nice old-timey places an hour away from the city by ferry. Büyükada is our favourite.

A post shared by @istanbul (@istanbul) on Sep 9, 2017 at 12:06pm PDT

Is there a tourist trap that's actually worth the queues?

Sultanahmet is walking distance to all of Istanbul's historical sights – Hagia Sophia and Basilica Cistern are a must. To beat the crowd, you should visit them in the morning before taking a break in Gülhane Park (House of Roses Park), which is close by. It has colourful flowers with incredible scents.

Where can we find the best interiors for Instagram?

You can find really cool and authentic interiors in the Çukurcuma area. As well as the antique shops themselves, there are places with fabulous interiors such as those at the Corinne Hotel, Cafe Cuma, and Clock Cafe (decorated with antique clocks gathered from all around the world from different centuries).

A post shared by Corinne Art & Boutique Hotel (@corinnehotel) on Jul 12, 2016 at 8:58am PDT

Where can we pick up some vintage treasures?

You should definitely check out Pied de Poule. The owner, Selale is a very cool woman. She has a great knowhow about vintage clothing, so while you are shopping you can learn more about every decade's fashion. The second largest vintage store in Istanbul, in a passage called Suriye Pasajı, is Retro.

We want to get back to nature – where should we visit?

We'd say the Black Sea beaches, such as Riva or Agva. You can take a picnic to the Polonezköy neighbourhood, then head to the hiking trails nearby, and then Belgrad Forest. It's famous for its spring-water reservoirs that you can still drink from.

The city's best cup of coffee?

You can go to Bebek Kahve which is an amazing spot on the Bosphorus and a very local oldie. Or, after some antique shopping, you can go to the Cafe Faik Paşa in Çukurcuma for a delicious Turkish coffee.

A post shared by Faik Paşa Cafe “ÖZEL TESİS” (@faik_pasa_kafe) on Oct 23, 2017 at 11:49pm PDT

What is Istanbul's best-kept secret?

The Asitane restaurant, and the Çınaraltı Tea Place. Also, Agatha Christie wrote her novel Murder on the Orient Express in room 411 of the Pera Palace Hotel – a must-visit.

What should we bring back in our suitcase?

Turkish delight! Small finds from the Grand Bazaar too. It has such cool things like colourful peştamel (bath towel), herbal soaps, porcelain teapots, silk scarfs… remember, you have to haggle!

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"Anyone else feel like they’ve been hit by a truck?" my friend’s message read. "Yep, I think it’s the full moon," another chimed in. It’s 2018, and when my group of female friends on WhatsApp aren’t dissecting the aftermath of Love Island or trying to organise a date for dinner in October, chatting about the moon has become commonplace. It's hardly surprising when you consider the renewed interest in spirituality and how the mystical is now mainstream for many millennial women.

"Astrology is becoming more popular, and as one of the celestial bodies that's actually visible to us, studying the cycles of the moon is an easy way to connect to this ancient science," Ruby Warrington, founder of The Moon Club and author of Material Girl, Mystical World, explains. "On a more mystical level, the moon represents our feminine, ‘yin’ emotional side, and the surge in interest around lunar practices reflects more awareness being brought to this part of ourselves and our societies," she added.

Much like the crystal -infused skincare and zodiac-inspired makeup that came before, lunar-inspired beauty is now on the rise. On Instagram, women are documenting their moon-motivated self-care rituals and a flurry of new launches have cited lunar inspirations. Paolo Lai, a reflexologist who works out of Neville Hair & Beauty in Belgravia, has seen his Moon Mist Aura Spray fly off the virtual shelves (Victoria Beckham is a fan) since its launch earlier this year, and The Organic Pharmacy has recently added the Lunar Cleanse, a "total body and mind renewal" inspired by the moon, to their treatment list.

While the cynical might dismiss this as another woo-woo trend, the science behind the influence of the moon is more convincing. As Merilyn Keskula, founder of Mylky Moon Lab, explained, when you think about the moon’s control of the tides, it makes sense it can impact our bodies too. "The gravitational force of the moon pulls the water in the oceans upwards, creating high tides in the areas of Earth facing the moon, and low tides elsewhere," she said. "Adult humans have around 70% of fluid in our bodies so the moon also causes shifts within our physical body."

A post shared by MOON JUICE (@moonjuice) on Jun 28, 2018 at 5:06pm PDT

Throughout history farmers have used lunar cycles as a guide for growing crops, and today the moon still plays a big part in the practices of biodynamic agriculture. For instance, natural beauty brands such as Weleda and Dr. Hauschka use ingredients sourced from farmers that operate in this way. "By 'plugging into' these naturally occurring planetary rhythms, the biodynamic farmer or gardener can enhance seed germination, plant growth and harvest quality," Claire Hattersley, garden manager at Weleda, explained. "At Weleda we use The Maria Thun Biodynamic Calendar to plan our gardening work in order to grow and harvest the best possible quality plants that we can. So, for our calendula crop (found in Weleda's Calendula Face Cream, £9.95, and Calendula Shampoo & Body Wash, £7.95), we aim to sow the seeds on a flower day before full moon, plant on a flower day in descending moon and harvest on a flower day in ascending moon," she adds.

Brands like Jurlique and Kjaer Weis also grow their ingredients biodynamically, in keeping with the rhythm of the atmosphere and cosmos, something which Rebecca Nicholls, global education director for Jurlique International, expands on. "As well as allowing us to grow skincare ingredients that are naturally potent and pure, biodynamic farming helps make the soil on our farm healthier and more fertile year after year," she said. "This means you can keep enjoying the purest skincare on Earth. It involves working in harmony with nature – not only the changing seasons, but also lunar and astrological influences – to create the very best conditions for healthy, pure and potent plants."

Simultaneously, as the lines between beauty and wellness become more blurred, the importance of cyclical patterns within skincare are starting to be acknowledged. We have already seen beauty brands attempting to work with our menstrual cycles and circadian rhythms, but maximising chronobiological ones, such as the lunar cycle, is the next step. While the science around the influence of the moon on our skin is still not understood, it’s intriguing when you contemplate that the menstrual, skin renewal and lunar cycles are all 28 days.

A post shared by Maria Laura (@beautytipsbyml) on Jul 25, 2018 at 7:22pm PDT

On a more mystical level, aligning your routine with the moon provides a new way to approach beauty. As Tamara Driessen, Wolf Sister and soon-to-be author of The Crystal Code told Refinery29 UK, the four stages of the lunar cycle all serve different purposes – you can identify these using an app like Moon. "The new moon represents beginnings and is the ideal time to introduce something new to a daily routine, either a product or ritual. The waxing moon is believed to be a time when we can absorb nutrients most easily and therefore calls for a deep conditioning hair treatment or a hydrating face mask whereas the waning moon is all about detoxing so prioritise salt scrub exfoliation or body brushing."

It’s the full moon, though, that’s arguably the most powerful time in the cycle. "The full moon can be a disruptive period," said Driessen, "so I love to create ritual baths filled with essential oils, salts, crystals and flower petals to help me relax and induce a deep slumber. I always book massages during this time to help feel grounded and balanced and if I don’t see a therapist I’ll use my jade roller at home to do some calming facial massage."

Whether you’re sold or a total sceptic, it seems the moon’s power is becoming influential in beauty. "The moon helps us feel more aligned with something bigger than us, which is deeply affirming," Driessen notes. "It doesn't have to be dogmatic or religious and it's a captivating gateway to more spiritual exploration and personal development."

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In middle school, my father would leave Post-It notes in my lunch box with a cliché (and if I was really lucky, a quote) about being myself. Most would encourage me to be a leader, dance to the beat of my own drum, and — remember! — "be yourself; everyone else is already taken." As a 12-year-old, this all made me blush with embarrassment, but at 24, I get it — and embracing your unique perspective goes beyond social awareness. You could apply my father's sage, albeit cheesy parental advice to beauty trends, too.

These days, the lipstick you wear, the haircut you get, and the style in which you wear it are basically an act of rebellion. And while some beauty choices, like Lipslut's F*ck Trump initiative, are more outwardly so than others, the beauty industry knows how to help you stand out while sending a message in all the right ways. If you're looking for a more subtle trend that celebrates individuality while looking surprisingly chic and not one thing about it fits in, consider mismatched nails.

We don't know exactly why it's been the social standard to match your nail polish, but that's the way it's been for as long as we can remember. Now, status quo be damned, Instagram is all over mismatched nail polish, whether that's alternating colours on every finger or Technicolor nail art — either way, it's good and perfect for fall. Our favourite inspo looks, ahead.

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After 10 months of investigation attempting to make some sense of what happened last October at the Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police department is closing the case, leaving one big question unanswered – why?

The investigation did answer other key questions that arose immediately following the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, namely whether this "act of pure evil," as President Donald Trump described it, was an act of international terrorism or carried out by multiple people. Vegas police have concluded that the shooter, Stephen Paddock, acted alone, unaffiliated with any terrorist organisation. According to Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, no one else will be charged in connection to the tragedy.

As for his motive, police are left without answers after hundreds of interviews and thousands of hours of investigative work. Despite an early claim from the Islamic State, the FBI ruled out the theory that Paddock was a "soldier" who had recently been radicalised. Though there are no links to international terrorism, MGM Resorts International wants federal courts to qualify the shooting as an act of terrorism and absolve the company of any liability to the survivors and families of the victims, reports the Associated Press.

Lombardo was asked early on in the investigation about a motive for the attack, to which he answered: "I can't get into the mind of a psychopath at this point." While psychopathy is not the official motive, there is some truth to Lombardo's original assessment. Truly wrapping our minds around this chaotic tragedy would be near-impossible, even with all the answers.

With country singer Jason Aldean performing onstage, Paddock – a 64-year-old retiree from Mesquite, Nevada – fired an assault-style weapon fitted with rapid-fire "bump stock" device into the audience of 22,000 people attending the music festival from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel. In the blink of an eye, 59 people were dead and another 527 people were injured. Police found Paddock dead in his hotel room of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

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Sick and tired of hearing about Mercury retrograde? We're right there with you — but the end is near! The communication planet goes direct next week and, until then, just try to ride it out.

This week, Venus has a solstice from Sunday to Thursday. She's asking us to slow down and take a look at where we want to be going forward. The third eclipse of the summer (and the second solar one) will urge us to create better versions of ourselves as it highlights the areas of our lives that need the most attention. Sure, that might sound less than pleasant, but you'll love the new and improved you once you've done the necessary work.

Mars is out of bounds and retrograde until the end of the month. Take a deep breath — this movement may increase feelings of frustration and even sexual tension. Uranus goes retrograde on Tuesday and will stay that way until early 2019. Maintain your cool and watch out for heightened anxiety. Read on to find out how these (many, many) movements will affect your sign for the week.

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Sometimes celebrities are just like the rest of us on Instagram, posting mirror selfies and photos of meals that never look quite as appetising as they did IRL.

But at other times, they're not like us at all. This roundup of the week's best celebrity 'grams features a pop star performing in front of 57,000 fans, a super-freaky magazine cover shoot and a Duchess sharing a laugh with a Queen.

Oh, and there's also a snap of Karlie Kloss and Harry Styles hanging out with a legendary fashion designer.

Click through to see them all – and don't worry, we've included a mirror selfie, too.

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It was only a few years ago that a mention of "K-beauty " would leave you with blank stares, but now, Korean beauty has swept through the cosmetics industry like a splash-mask tidal wave. With an emphasis on natural ingredients, nourishing formulas, and whimsical packaging, K-beauty not only promises to give you dewy, healthy radiance; it also makes self-care a fun, indulgent experience.

While K-beauty sections have sprung up at countless UK retailers, nothing beats the authentic experience of shopping at the origin of it all: Seoul, South Korea (the city’s famed shopping district, Myeongdong, is known as the Times Square of beauty). So, with that in mind, we put together a beauty-editor-approved Seoul shopping guide.

Of course, not all of the must-have products coming out of South Korea require touching down on the peninsula before you can bring them home; you can shop plenty of the best things K-beauty has to offer online. But should you have a visit on the horizon, or are considering booking one, our complete guide to the very best of Seoul beauty has everything you need to know. Don’t be surprised if you need an extra suitcase for the way home.

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First Lady Melania Trump does not appear to be in step with her husband when it comes to LeBron James.

Melania Trump’s office issued a statement this weekend in support of James’ newly-launched public elementary school, the I Promise School in Akron, OH for at-risk children. The release comes on the heels of President Donald Trump's Friday night fiasco, when he live-tweeted his reaction to an interview between James and CNN’s Don Lemon. During the interview, the NBA star observed that Trump is “using sports to kinda divide people.”

“LeBron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon,” the president wrote in response. “He made LeBron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!”

Lebron James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 4, 2018

While he’s been an outspoken critic of the president before, James hasn’t yet responded publicly to this tweet. But, for the record, Mike himself likes James just fine. Michael Jordan released a statement shortly after, expressing his support for James’ community-oriented work. Lemon’s response to the president echoed the sentiment and also put the first lady in the hot seat by calling out her anti-bullying campaign, tweeting, “Who’s the real dummy? A man who puts kids in classrooms or one who puts kids in cages? #BeBest.”

NEW: Jordan sides with James over Trump tweet. NBA legend Michael Jordan tells NBC News through a spokesperson: "I support LJ. He’s doing an amazing job for his community.”

— Geoff Bennett (@GeoffRBennett) August 4, 2018

Who’s the real dummy? A man who puts kids in classrooms or one who puts kids in cages? #BeBest https://t.co/XO50qVksnR

— Don Lemon (@donlemon) August 4, 2018

Compared to her husband, it would seem Melania Trump is taking a different view of James’ I Promise initiative altogether.

"It looks like LeBron James is working to do good things on behalf of our next generation and just as she always has, the first lady encourages everyone to have an open dialogue about issues facing children today,” her statement read. In addition, it said that Melania Trump would be open to visiting the I Promise School.

The statement took a positive approach to James’ work — and notably kept the president’s contentious rhetoric out of it. A senior White House official since told ABC News that Melania Trump is not “taking sides” against the president. "That wasn't her taking sides — that was her office [sticking] to what she is focused on, which is using Be Best for what it's intended — to help children," the official said.

A stream of fellow NBA players, athletes, and journalists, including Lemon, Steph Curry, Adam Rippon, and Jemele Hill, also rallied in support of James, criticising the president’s inaction on this and other issues and questioning the barely-veiled racism behind his attack.

Melania Trump, who has developed a reputation as a silent, uncomfortable, and private first lady, has rarely taken a stance against any of Donald Trump’s controversial policies or tweets. She released a statement saying she ”hates to see children separated from their families” at the border as a result of the administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy and was criticised for doing too little, too late. Her visit to detention centres at the border stoked further controversy about her stance on the issue when she was photographed wearing a jacket reading, “I REALLY DON’T CARE, DO U?”.

Her true opinions remain hard to pin down, but various outlets report that Melania Trump’s priorities still widely differ from her husband’s, and the apparent dissonance between the pair serves to reinforce the strangeness of this administration — one in which the president uses his Twitter account to issue both policy announcements and personal opinions, and it’s not always clear which is which. With the first lady jumping into the fray, translating a celebrity feud into political action, it becomes even more difficult to tell the difference.

This story has added reporting throughout as new information became available after publication.

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“And they wonder why those of us in our twenties refuse to work an 80-hour week just so we can afford to buy their BMWs...Why we aren't interested in the counterculture that they invented...as if we did not see them disembowel their revolution for a pair of running shoes.

But the question remains: what are we going to do now?”

In the iconic opening scene of Reality Bites, Winona Ryder makes an impassioned speech about just how screwed her generation of college grads is. Things suck, and the movie makes it the task of her and her friends to resist the commercial forces waiting at the wings to profit from their work.

Reality Bites is both a time capsule and a generational touchstone, a portrayal of the defiance of certain Gen Xers resistance to professionalism. As I understood it then, selling out was some kind of crime — not the illegal kind of crime, but a crime against yourself. It would slowly but surely corrupt your work and your spirit and soul, and only when you’re spitting out disingenuous, phony work will you realise how you robbed yourself of your own talent. And if you didn’t see the problem with selling out to the man, your flannel-wearing peers would definitely keep you in check. The movie pitted trust and artistic integrity in the face of corporate interests. Sure, it sometimes meant you were broke, but you were demonstrating the most valuable trait of all: keeping it very real.

The reason these characters seem ridiculous 24 years later is because we now know that the 1990s was one of the happiest and most economically prosperous decades America has seen: Household income was going up, poverty and crime were decreasing, real estate prices hadn’t yet rocketed, and a recession wouldn’t land for another 10 years. (In 1998 and 1999, there was a federal government surplus, which means extra money, something millennials have never experienced in their adult years.)

The characters in Reality Bites, who don’t want to accept their parent’s hand-me-down BMW because of what it symbolises or dream about selling a documentary to a giant media company, now seem like complete aliens who don’t want to one day live without roommates. They weren’t even hiding their rich parents from view, even while nobly resisting their help. Who were these privileged hipsters? Forget adulting. These people would never become adults.

The romanticism of that time and its zeitgeist has worn off in a time of extreme wealth inequality, with millennials struggling to pay for the things their parents had even while they work full time with side hustles. Living the unpaid “authentic” life were the values of a different time. And this is what most millennials have to say about it: Not in this economy.

This economy is weird, distorted, and extreme. Millions of young people who graduated in the throes of the Great Recession are saddled by debt and stagnating wages. This is all while fed a diet of “inspirational” stories of entrepreneurship — i.e. lucrative careers forged from “influencing” on Instagram feeds and flush unicorn startups of electric scooters to juice packs raking in millions in venture capital funds. They call us the brokest generation, and yet we’re ever so optimistic in these dark economic times that 53% of Americans expect to become millionaires. The rising costs of education, healthcare, and rent are eating into our monthly paycheques — all making it hard for middle class millennials to achieve the kind of financial stability our predecessors expected as long as they sold out to the man. Those boring, but steadily paying 9-to-5 cubicle jobs with benefits that the Gen Xers detested are disappearing, replaced by a gig economy and permanent freelance jobs that offers freedom but irregular hours, instability, and no benefits.

These dichotomies are at the heart of some very big problems, not least of which is an eroding middle class in a booming economy where all the wealth sits at the top with some vague promise that somehow it’s going to trickle down if we just stopped taxing rich people and corporations so much. This hollowing of the middle creates a strange kind of pressure: if only you can figure out what it is you’ve got to sell so you don’t end up at the bottom, and once you do — cash in. That divide has brought with it the birth of a new ethos: Get that money. That sch’money. Get those #lifestylegoals. Monetise everything.

Millennials are all about hustling. In the meantime, the glorification of the slacker died. To be a slacker millennial is to be a loser. A non-starter. Not getting that money. Not doing you. Being unemployed isn’t glamorous if you’ve experienced it, and that was the case in 2008 for too many people.

There’s been a change on the other side too though: “The man” who Gen Xers fought against has evolved, too.

Selling out has gotten friendlier, with companies (some of which founded by 20 somethings, who the man now works for) wholeheartedly saying: We can’t wait to hire that local artist nobody has heard of to do a mural or installation. (Supporting the local art scene has become synonymous with “Don’t worry, we’re not the bad kind of gentrifiers!”). Corporations decided it was time for a new formula: Buy in early instead of asking people who’ve made it to sell out. (It’s cheaper and “more authentic.”) Show your loyalty to the artist, then ask them to show loyalty to you in return. Find the nobody that has a cult following, not the somebody who has their own brand already. Then give them equity instead of money, and if you’re lucky, you can be like David Choe and make £150 million for an early graffiti mural in Facebook’s office.

Top tier companies have been struggling to recruit millennials, confused by what they’re looking for beyond money. They need talented white collar workers, so they adapt by trying to make a more “meaningful” company and environment for millennials to work in. To show that they care about you, companies became locked in a perks arms race to take care of all your needs: they’re offering to do your laundry, help pay your student loans, give new parents a year of maternity leave, even buy insurance for your pets. Increasingly, companies are tailoring their culture to millennials, because they believe it’ll attract talent. This is what you get if you can get to the top: You don’t have to follow the man’s rules, he’s trying to play by yours so you don’t leave for his competitor. Selling out looks different, and maybe it feels different too.

It’s undeniable that paired with the acceptance of selling out is a new pride in being financially independent.

“If someone told me while I was in college that I could be making $60-80,000 goofing around in a really pretty office, having fun and coming up with great ideas — I can't imagine saying no to that. And that's partly because financial independence is so important to me: I don't have a trust fund, I don't rely on anyone, making my own money is what I think makes me me. I think that's more common in women of our generation,” said Sally Franson, the author of A Lady’s Guide to Selling Out, a novel about the perils and perks of that.

The undercurrent of financial responsibility is both pragmatic and a value millennials celebrate. We don’t want to rely on our parents or stay on the family cell phone plan and use our brother-in-law’s Netflix password forever. It’s precisely because we’ve seen such little fruit from our labor that the desire for a better safety net has emerged in calls for student loan forgiveness and universal basic income.

While we wait for these new policies, we have taken it upon ourselves to do anything necessary so we don’t wind up poor and with no savings, and maybe go on vacation without amassing credit card debt; or buy a house and have a family. On social media, we readily celebrate those who climb out of 6 figures of debt or manage to scrap together a down payment through sheer grit and extreme saving. The rapper Dee-1 celebrated the advance for his record deal by first paying off his student loans, then recording a song that could only exist post-recession: “I finish paying Sallie Mae back! Mae back!” he repeats in the chorus, as Dee pumps his fists into the air with a look of absolute joy.

The one problem here is perhaps a lack of awareness that there’s a problem in always playing to market forces: Growing up with shows like X Factor, millennials have been taught from a young age what it means to conform to mass appeal. As Douglas Rushkoff found in his documentary, Generation Like, many of the millennials he interviewed had no concept of what selling out even was. And herein lies the debate for Gen Z: How can you sell out if you don’t know what it is or why it’s bad?

For Gen X and older millennials pondering why selling out is now acceptable (or even, cool), the answers are everywhere. It’s not just the economy we live in, it’s the fact that the man sometimes works for millennials now (hello, all you tech unicorn founders).

The critics of selling out have largely disappeared, maybe because no one dares to criticise a generation so sold out by the economy and capitalism. But a lot of other things have changed too: It’s hard to stay underground in the internet age. Our everyday lives are becoming increasingly commercialised, our attention and private data sold for ad dollars. Our favourite coffee brands eventually become part of some other giant coffee brand. Some have even argued: Selling out might have saved the things we love.

The thing is, selling out has no guarantees. It should mean a prosperous life where you don’t have to change jobs every few years to get a decent raise, and don’t have to worry about ageism and being out of a job because you’ve hit middle age, and it sure doesn’t mean the financial security selling out should promise. But when selling out doesn’t seem like a choice, why not think of it as cool? Is that delusional? Maybe. When you think about what selling out gets you, there’s a reason you’re getting the money: It’s a job.

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Demi Lovato has released her first statement following her reported overdose on July 24. Lovato does not confirm an overdose or that she is entering rehab, but does reference needing "time to heal" and a focus on her sobriety as well as the "road to recovery."

Lovato begins by addressing her "journey with addiction," calling it an illness and saying, "It is something I must continue to overcome and have not done yet."

She then addresses her fans, thanking them for their love and support, along with their prayers and positive thoughts.

A post shared by Demi Lovato (@ddlovato) on Aug 5, 2018 at 1:53pm PDT

Lovato's statement does confirm she was in Cedars-Sinai, but does not confirm what if any drugs were in her system. Her family previously issued a statement on the day reports appeared, confirming she was "awake and with her family" but also requesting the media not speculate about what happened and that "[s]ome of the information being reported is incorrect."

Lovato finishes on a positive note, writing, "...I look forward to the day where I can say I came out on the other side. I will keep fighting."

Refinery29 has reached out to representatives for Lovato for any further comment.

If you are struggling with substance abuse, please visit FRANK or call 0300 123 6600 for friendly, confidential advice. Lines are open 24 hours a day.

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It’s a premise easily worth hours of dissection via true crime podcast or documentary TV series, the kind of story that takes the world by storm.

In the summer of 1974, a young woman’s body was unearthed in Provincetown, MA. She was unidentifiable then, and remains unidentified as of 2018. The only image of her we have to refer to is a 2010 forensic recreation of her face.

That is, until more than four decades after the murder case went cold, a sharp eye spotted a eerily similar face in the background of the 1975 classic thriller Jaws. Could this woman — an extra in the movie, which was filmed in nearby Martha’s Vineyard, about 100 miles from Provincetown — actually be her?

That’s the question that Joe Hillstrom King, son of Stephen King and author under the pen name Joe Hill, has been asking since first connecting the dots back in 2015. The case of the Lady in the Dunes is an infamous cold case that’s compelled true crime fans for years, namely because of the anonymity of it all. This woman, who was given the nickname after being found at Cape Cod, was estimated by Provincetown police to be between 20 and 40 years old with long auburn hair. She was killed by a blow to the head and, in an attempt to conceal her identity from authorities, the murderer cut off her hands, removed some of her teeth (she’d had extensive dental work done), and unsuccessfully tried to decapitate her.

Jaws was filming on location earlier that summer and sparked massive local interest. Hill’s theory suggests that this woman had been one of the many residents of Cape Cod who was interested in the shoot and went down there to check out the major Hollywood production for herself, becoming an extra in the process. After all, they needed plenty of people to fill up those beaches.

When he caught sight of the woman in Jaws — noting her strikingly similar face, hair, age, and build — Hill had the Lady in the Dunes on his mind after reading about the case in Deborah Halber’s The Skeleton Crew: How Amateur Sleuths Are Solving America’s Coldest Cases. Hill told Esquire up-front that he’s grown up with and made a career out of fantastic storytelling.

"I have the kind of imagination that churns out ghost stories almost automatically. I’ve just done it so much that I told myself, 'You’re telling yourself a ghost story!'" he told the magazine when recapping his theory.

Yet according to Esquire, the internet still latched on to the possibility, rekindling interest in the original investigation, with people even offering to do their own detective work. Most recently, Hill’s theory resurfaced on an episode of Inside Jaws, a podcast that explores the making and history of the film.

Police exhumed the victim’s body to create the 2010 composite image, and in 2014 told the Boston Globe they’ve tried everything from extracting DNA samples, consulting dentists and psychics, using ground-penetrating radar, and creating a three-dimensional plaster reconstruction of her face. Still, the case remains cold. Refinery29 has reached out to the Provincetown Police Department for comment.

Hill told Esquire he hopes that renewed interest might lead to breaks in the case, maybe even leading to its closure. He also notes that the very least, three years since first posting about it, his story has yet to be debunked: “I keep wondering how come that woman [in Jaws], if she's [not the Lady in the Dunes]... Why hasn’t she — or someone that knows her — come forward to say, 'This is me?’"

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I first used heroin at 26. By 30 I was a registered addict who would be on an ever-spinning roundabout of treatment, drug use and trouble for many years to come. I lost over 12 years of my life to my addiction; for at least 10 of those years, my daily routine was consumed solely with taking drugs and finding the money to buy drugs. Often it was easier for me to remain in a single spot on the street, say a phone box or doorway, where I could take drugs, make the money to buy drugs, then take more drugs, than it was to return home. My life was chaotic, incredibly tiring and each day was the same.

I think people who haven't struggled with addiction presume that an addict's day is spent slouched on a sofa or cardboard box, smashed or high, but after a few years of using, I only ever chased the highs – I never actually got high because I’d developed tolerance to the drugs. I did develop an incredible work ethic though.

My average day looked a little like this: wake up ill at 5am and use, only ever heroin or methadone – there'd never be any crack cocaine left over, that's not the nature of crack. Sometimes fall back to sleep, but be constantly thinking or dreaming about how I would earn money that day. Get up and start to make money. For me that meant any number of jobs in and around the sex or drugs trade. Throughout the day, I’d buy and take drugs to keep well, eat a yoghurt, work more, do more drugs. Sleep a little in the afternoon, then go to work on porn lines for the whole night while doing drugs every hour or so in the toilets. Leave work at 3am, work on the way home, buy drugs, sleep and wake at 5am to start again. I did that for at least 10 years.

The only respite from that painful and eroding existence was my interaction with different drug services, often walk-in, often holistic – I had acupuncture, reflexology and talking therapy in east and central London on an almost weekly or sometimes daily basis. At least three or four times towards the end of my drug use, I accessed residential rehab services outside London. The expectation was that you would stay for three months. I didn't stay, I left to use, but – and this really matters – in the time I was there, I'd eat properly, I'd sleep, often for days at a time, I'd cry, people hugged me and told me that I was okay and that it could get better. I was made to feel normal.

In those rehabs – often beautiful country houses I could only dream of living in, like a farmhouse in Lincolnshire, or an Edwardian manor house in Somerset – I started to put myself back together again. I had developed anorexia without realising, so a treatment plan was put in place that followed me back out again and over many more years of drug use I was given drink supplements that helped me to put on and maintain weight. This helped enormously with my newly discovered HIV status. In rehab I was also tied into therapy for addiction, anorexia and HIV, which continued for the remaining years of my addiction and beyond. In one of those sessions I uttered the words that would turn my life around: "I'm transgender."

Many people have said to me that I got clean from drugs and changed my life beyond recognition because somehow I'm stronger and more resilient than others. Bullshit.

I had great interwoven support from a variety of targeted services that helped me to develop a sense of self-worth that I could scaffold upon. I was supported by a system which understood that to treat addiction you almost have to ignore the drug use, lift the surface and hug and support the underlying causes and needs. Most people I met through my drug use, be it on the street, in crack dens or rehabs, had myriad reasons – some far too brutal to mention – why drug or alcohol addiction was, for them, a safer life than attempting to create a future from the pain of the past.

A report from last year titled "State of the Sector 2017: Beyond the Tipping Point ", lays out the fears of many in the drug and alcohol treatment sector that unless greater funding is put directly into services at a local level, and unless the punishing austerity cuts are halted, then treatment efficiency and availability will imminently be under severe pressure, services will have to close and one-to-one treatment, such as talking therapies, will be at risk.

This is a sector that has been chronically underfunded for many years, despite startling facts like the number of female deaths involving heroin and/or morphine hitting an all-time high in 2016.

The current policy and funding regime is not working. Our 'hard on drugs' mentality, which leads every successive government to maintain that they will stamp out drug use, runs parallel to the harsh truth that the average purity of street-level crack cocaine has risen from 26% in 2011 to a record high of 71% in 2016. That mentality isn't reducing the availability, usage or strength of the drugs being taken on our streets. We could, at the very least, develop a policy based on reality and kindness.

I'm still an addict; I always will be. I still need to look out for the signs when I start to slip into fear and dysfunction, only now I resolve that fear and dysfunction without drugs, utilising the strategies I acquired many years ago from the therapists and drug workers who valued my life before I did.

Those services enabled me to create the building blocks upon which I exist today. If and when I am in London and walk past someone just like me on the street asking for money, I will give them enough to score, without judgement, because I know that with all the cuts to localised and street level addiction services, my money will buy them some respite from what is an unceasingly hard life.

Somehow we have to look beyond our internal judgements and recognise that addiction rests in all of us. Hopefully it never becomes a reality, but we are no different from any addict. Cocaine use among 15 to 34-year-olds in the UK is the highest in Europe. Not all of those users, perhaps not even many, will go on to develop addictions – but some will and they will need support. Support which is rapidly disappearing.

@justjuno1

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Here in the UK, studies suggest plastic surgery is more popular than ever. Mintel reports that 37% of women would be interested in having a surgical cosmetic procedure in the future, and the number increases to 52% in women aged 18-34. The most common ones? Liposuction (14%) and tummy tucks (11%), with surgeons also counting rhinoplasty and facelifts among the surgeries women book in for often.

If you're considering plastic surgery of any kind, you've no doubt done your research, so you'll know that one step in particular is instrumental: the initial consultation. Whether it's 30 minutes or two hours, the time spent in front of your potential surgeon is an opportunity to ask every single question you've ever had about going under the knife – it's a chance to dispel fears, debunk myths and possibly take the next steps.

So what should you bring up? It may sound obvious, but check that they are actually a plastic surgeon first, says Mr Naveen Cavale, of Real Plastic Surgery London. "Are they on the GMC Specialist Register – the equivalent to board-certified? Are they a member of the 'proper' organisations such as BAAPS, BAPRAS, ISAPS?" Internationally certified plastic surgeon, Dr Roberto Viel agrees.

"Additionally, the Care Quality Commission (CQC) regulates all surgeries and clinics in the country. You want to be treated by a surgeon who specialises in your desired treatment," says Viel. "I would always ask your prospective surgeon how frequently they perform the procedure. If they perform it often, or specialise in the procedure, they will be more likely to be up to date with the latest technologies and will probably be more skilled." He continues: "Also, see if your doctor is confident they can give you the results you want. Before and after pictures are a good way to check this. Your doctor should always be honest with you about what they can, and more importantly can’t achieve – this will avoid complications in the future. And always ask if you’re a good candidate for the procedure, and if not, what else could they recommend?"

It's also important to ask yourself questions, suggests Cavale. "Did you feel properly informed? Did your surgeon tell you what was involved with your procedure and all the potential risks and complications? If not, then this isn’t a surgical consultation, it is a sales meeting," he says. "We are talking about surgery here, with real risks, not the equivalent of buying a new car – you can always swap a car for a better one, surgical scars are permanent. Then ask, did you feel pressured or rushed? Your consultation with your surgeon should never feel like this. It's also a bad sign if your surgeon tries to up-sell surgery. A surgeon who suggests 'While you're at it, have you thought of this, too?' or someone who says something like, 'You really could do with having this done' or 'You’ve definitely got a problem with this part of your body, haven’t you noticed?' is someone to be wary of," adds Cavale.

It's typical to pay anywhere between £150-300 for one consultation, so other important pointers Viel suggests remembering are: aftercare – being responsible with your recovery is key to a good result; cleanliness – you're well within your rights to ask about the surgical areas; qualifications – don't be afraid to ask to see them; and respect. "If a doctor doesn’t listen to you and respectfully answer any questions you have, you might want to look elsewhere. As long as you are comfortable with the conversation, one consultation is fine to have ahead of a procedure," he says, while Cavale suggests a two-week cooling-off period between your initial consultation and booking in, to make sure you don't rush into things.

Overall, both surgeons hit home the importance of trusting your gut feeling. "I am thinking about the same thing from my point of view, too," says Cavale. "Don’t have surgery with someone you don’t feel good about. I won’t operate on someone who I don’t feel I can help. I can technically operate on anyone, but if our 'relationship' isn’t right I will say no and suggest you find someone else who can make you happier."

Ahead, four women lift the lid on their experiences of surgical consultations.

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