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Philips Sonicare Toothbrush Review: I'll Never Use White Strips Again


I tried the Philips Sonicare toothbrush and, to my surprise, it has become one of my most beloved possessions. Let me explain: I’ve never been someone who enjoys oral hygiene. I’d probably rank it at the bottom of my “favorite things to do” list if it wasn’t for the obvious health benefits. As a child, I dreaded going to the dentist, dental floss was Enemy No. 1, and I stubbornly refused to brush my teeth twice a day (because IMHO once was totally enough). Even in my adult years, I always did just enough to have a nice smile and no cavities, but I never truly invested in the health of my teeth—until now.

Here’s how it all went down. I was scheduled to test what felt like hundreds of beauty products and one of them was the Philips Sonicare DiamondClean Smart 9500. At first glance, it looked super luxurious, but way too high maintenance for my taste. Still, I was curious and ended up taking it home and testing it out that night. As time crept on that evening, my anticipation kept building and I couldn’t wait until my normal wind-down routine started to try it. I tore open the box, found that it was (thankfully) fully-charged, ignored the directions, and put it to the test.

Can I just say, wow. The Philips Sonicare DiamondClean Smart is like the Superman of all toothbrushes. Instead of rotating like a traditional electric brush, it uses pulses and brushstrokes to clean in between the teeth and along the gum line all at the same time. It makes a whopping 62,000 brush movements per minute which resulted in my teeth feeling squeaky clean after a two-minute brush. The best way to describe it is how I feel when leaving a professional dental cleaning. You know when you run your tongue along the front of your teeth and it feels as smooth as a baby’s bum? Yep, that’s how it felt. And since my dental office won’t be open in the foreseeable future, I’m even more thankful I can achieve professional-feeling results in the comfort of my own bathroom. (It doesn’t hurt that I don’t have to worry about tools resembling a Pirate’s hook coming towards my mouth, either.)

The Philips Sonicare has five cleaning modes—clean, whiten, gum health, deep clean, and tongue care—and each mode has three levels of intensity that you can adjust while you brush. It’s truly a personalized clean. My go-to setting is the standard clean unless my mouth is feeling especially yucky, then I’ll switch to the deep clean. In the beginning, I gave the whitening mode a try and found that it was a bit aggressive on my gums so I’ll only use that mode for my front four teeth if they need a touch-up.



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Barry's Sarah Goldberg: I'll Never Get Used to the Red Carpet, But This Trick Helps


“What’s your name, honey?” someone yells.

“This way!”

“Over here.”

“Full frontal!”

“Over the shoulder. Smile!!!!!“

My retinas are burnt—I hope not permanently—but I can make out a wall of people, mainly men, screaming at me from behind the aggressive flashing of their bulbs. I know I’m not supposed to blink or smile too hard, but I can’t keep the face I rehearsed in the mirror in place. In fact, I think I’ve developed a facial twitch. My hands seem to have traveled up to my hips, where they are clutching tightly at my body in a vain search for some kind of eject button. I am confident I have the lip outline of the mother of the groom and my tit tape is threatening early retirement. I pray my sudden paralysis will read as composure. Then, suddenly, the conveyor belt moves and I’m chucked out the end, where a beautiful girl in blue hands me a Fiji water. I detect an ounce of pity on her face as she scratches in between her teeth, urgently suggesting I do the same.

When I decided to become an actor, I didn’t know I was going to have to “do carpets.” (“She’ll go. She’ll do the carpet.”) My concerns were much more immediate. Would I find work? Would I be able to pay my rent? Would I ever meet Dianne Wiest?

I went to drama school in London, where we rolled around like animals, found our inner clowns, laughed and cried into actual walls, climbed over imaginary ones, and played characters forty years older than us in accents we simply couldn’t do. The humiliation was bottomless. I have a degree in it. But no amount of roaming on all fours and no cacophony of faux Liverpudlian accents could have prepared me for the specific experience of the red carpet. Actually, they are rarely red these days. They come in an array of colors: blue, green, taupe….shame.

This past award season was my first. There were many surprises. (Failed tit tape was sadly not one of them.) There were the protestors with signs telling me to burn in hell, the vehicle bomb checks carried out by men with large machine guns, and the port-a-loos! (Big award season takeaway is that if you tell actors there’s a trophy we will queue in a parking lot and pee in a port-a-loo. Is Nicole Kidman really using the port-a-loo?) I don’t know what I was expecting when it came to the actual carpets, but the scale and volume of them were dizzying.

I felt vulnerable, anxious, and totally exposed. I resented the expectation of women to show up looking perfect after hours of preparation, while the men could simply throw on a suit. (An imbalance not unique to my profession, but the carpet acts like an exaggerated microcosm of the scrutiny women face on a daily basis.) Not to mention the sadomasochistic next day Google of cruel captions about a dress I can’t actually afford in real life.

I am one of the luckiest people alive to be able to pay my rent from a job I actually love doing, so if walking down a burnt orange rug in shoes designed by Beelzebub is the worst of it, I can’t complain. Nonetheless, the anxiety is real and I had to find a way to navigate—even enjoy—the whole circus. At one particularly intimidating event (after my eye sight returned and the shot of tequila I drank en route set in) I realized that the only way forward was to embrace the chaos and tie it to my real job as an actor: telling stories. So I started coming up with characters to match the evening’s attire. Now I let whoever I am playing that night “do” the carpet for me.

Below, a few of the women who got me through.



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'I'm 23 and I Know I Don't Want Kids. Stop Telling Me I'll Change My Mind.'


According to a new report from the CDC, the number of women age 20 to 24 giving birth has fallen 4 percent since 2016 to a record low of 71 per 1,000. While some millennials are putting off motherhood, others don’t want children now or later—and Khaliha Hawkins is one of them. Here’s her story, as told to Juno DeMelo.

My 11-year-old sister was born when I was a freshman in high school. Being around for her birth and watching my parents—who both had full-time, demanding jobs—raise her, I was like, yeah, that’s not for me.

Don’t get me wrong: Of course I love and care about my sister, and I still babysit her. But my parents were straight-up with me about how expensive childcare is, and I was flabbergasted. And even though my mom had great insurance when she was pregnant, I was in shock about how much my sister’s birth cost.

I also know that you have to have a lot of patience to be a parent, and my tolerance for bullshit is low! I have friends who stop what they’re doing when they see babies, who have always dreamt about being parents, and that’s just not me.

People ask me all the time whether I want kids. I’m usually hesitant to tell them I don’t, because then they ask why, and I don’t feel like I need to give them an explanation. If I do respond, I simply say “no” and leave it at that. If you’re not my partner or a close friend or family member, it’s none of your business.

“I know that you have to have a lot of patience to be a parent, and my tolerance for bullshit is low!”

I have a really large family, and they bring it up every Thanksgiving. My mom always says you should have kids early so it’s easier on you and your body and so you can grow together, and I’m like, no! I can’t imagine it happening, but if I somehow decide down the road that I want to be a mother, I would just adopt.

Even though I’ve been warned that supposedly every man wants a child, I’ve actually been set up with a guy based on the fact that he also didn’t want kids. I’m not dating anyone right now. If I did meet someone, I’d make sure to bring up the fact that I don’t want kids before things got serious.

Obviously I’m on birth control, the importance of which was drilled into me early on. I used to be on acne medication, and I didn’t want to have to remember to take multiple pills every day, so I use a hormonal birth control I don’t have to think about as often.

I know how much you have to sacrifice to be a parent. Some of my friends think I’d be a great mom because I’m so passionate, but I’m passionate about art and politics and my career, not children! People always say it’s selfish to not want kids, whereas I feel like it’s the exact opposite. It would be selfish of me to bring a child into this world knowing I’ve had these convictions for so long.



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