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Priyanka Chopra Calls Out Press Treatment of Meghan Markle: 'It Has to Do With Racism'


Priyanka Chopra and Meghan Markle have been friends for a while, and they’re both used to being frequent tabloid fixtures (they’ve even had to deal with fake stories written about their relationship). But although Chopra knowns firsthand what it’s like to be unfairly scrutinized in the media, she made sure to point out that the British press has been especially “unfortunate” when it comes to Markle, saying that some of the portrayals of the Duchess of Sussex have been fueled by racism.

In an interview with the Sunday Times published this weekend, Chopra praised how resilient and strong Markle has been in the face of negative press. Still, she didn’t shy away from noting that racism has been a factor in what’s been written about the royal.

“Of course it has to do with racism, it’s an obvious reason. But the beauty of Meg is that she’s been herself through all of this,” Chopra told the Times. “A lot of people got to know her after everything [once she started dating Harry], but I knew her before, and she’s the same chick. Now that she’s got a real platform, she talks about the same things she always did. We spent hours speaking about the difference that influence and dialogue can make to the world before this whole thing happened, so what you see now is authentically her. She’s always been the girl wanting to move the needle.”

It’s not the first time someone close to Markle has blasted the racist harassment she’s received. When he was dating her in 2016, Prince Harry issued a public statement through Kensington Palace condoning the behavior toward her. “Some of this has been very public—the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments,” the statement read. “Prince Harry is worried about Ms. Markle’s safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her.”

Markle herself addressed the scrutiny around her ethnicity when she spoke about her engagement publicly for the first time. When asked how she’d dealt with scrutiny around her ethnicity, her response was self-aware and eloquent, showing off the grace Chopra mentioned in her interview.

“Of course it’s disheartening,” Markle said. “It’s a shame that that is the climate in this world, to focus that much on that…but at the end of the day, I’m really proud of who I am and where I come from.”



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I Tried Kim Kardashian's Favorite Laser Skin-Tightening Treatment


I tolerate pain pretty well, but those sharp twinges really hurt. “It’s actually the ultrasound gel popping,” he tells me. “Like if you put oil in a frying pan, and the oil pops.” I squirm, but I’m determined to be as tough as I can in the name of a firmer jaw line.

Thankfully, the pain lasts only for a moment, and by the time I feel like I can’t take much more of it, he’s moved the laser on to a different part of my face. I’m normally a talkative patient, but even I’m not up to being too chatty. This is new to me.

I know what you’re probably thinking: If you’re going to submit yourself to any kind of pain—what does it cost? The price differs depending on who you go to, but Dr. Dugar says it’s around $800 a session for your face (Exilis laser skin tightening can be performed on other body parts as well). Like with most procedures that recommend multiple treatments, the more you sign up for at a time, the lower the cost. So far I’m just doing one session, but if I notice a visible difference, I’ll consider coming back for more—pain be damned.

Dr. Dugar likens the frequency of visits to when you were a teenager and could go to the gym once a week and stay in shape. Of course, as we age and metabolism slows, it takes more effort to maintain your physique. Dr. Dugar says I’ll see results for a few weeks at least with one treatment. After that, “the key is repetitive treatments”—usually one a month, for anywhere up to six to 10 sessions. It’s costly, but perhaps not much more than if you swap out bi-weekly facials, regular blow-outs, and expensive skin creams.

About 20 minutes later, the whole thing was done. He says he spent eight minutes on each side of my face with the laser, applying the highest intensity of the wattage to treat my jowls and jaw line. This is done in order “to get a little bit more stimulation of the collage to tighten.” My face is pretty red, but Dr. Dugar says that will reduce dramatically over the next few hours.

While Exilis prides itself on no downtime, I also wouldn’t necessarily want to go out to a big event or on a date the same night. If there was ever an excuse to stay in and watch TV, this is it. Still, Dr. Dugar tells me that I shouldn’t be afraid of doing my nighttime skin routine. “You can do everything normal because this is not a resurfacing laser,” he says.

Puffing up my face so you can get a clearer look at the redness in the immediate aftermath.

Jessica Radloff

Before I leave, Dr. Dugar applies a gold cooling mask to help calm my skin (which in all fairness, was breaking out pretty bad these last few days). The cooling sensation is so calming I’m tempted to stay here all day. Also, I look like C3-PO.

gold facial treatment mask
Jessica Radloff

I say my goodbyes and thank Dr. Dugar and his staff; he says to call or email with any questions, and instead of pushing a second treatment on me, he says to take a few weeks to see how I like the results. It’s up to me if I want to continue for more. By the time I get to my car, I notice the redness in my face has disappeared quite considerably. (I’m still sticking to my plan of ordering in and watching TV, though).

facial treatment makeupfree selfie
Jessica Radloff

The next day, aside from a patch of red skin near my chin, there’s barely any noticeable trace of the treatment. And if I forgot to mention, once the treatment was done, any sharp pain that I felt was gone. So if you can tolerate a few seconds of extreme heat, you’ll be OK.

facial treatment morning after selfie

The morning after the Exilis 360 laser, with just a bit of redness by my chin. The treatment is not recommended for anyone pregnant, or with a metal implant, like a pacemaker.

Jessica Radloff

Selfie one day after facial treatment

The next day, with makeup on

Jessica Radloff

By the afternoon, I’ve applied a full face of makeup and as crazy as it sounds, I actually feel that my face is a bit firmer. It looks it, too. I feel like I’ve gone off to some five-star resort and spa for the week, and I honestly can’t remember the last time I said that (or even meant it). In other words, I’m a fan.



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Postpartum Depression Treatment Made Me Feel Helpless—Women Deserve Better Options


When my son was born nine months ago, I was—like most new moms—a puddle of emotions. I was so eager to see my baby after giving birth, I tried to walk to the recovery room before my epidural had fully worn off. Spoiler alert: I collapsed on the tiled floor. But even on the ground, I was ecstatic. After hours of labor, I had emerged victorious. It felt like my greatest accomplishment.

But the new-mom high was short lived. My first attempts at breastfeeding were not so glorious, and when the unfriendly nurse on duty tried to “help” by grabbing my breast and shoving it into my son’s mouth, I started crying.

I didn’t really stop for the next two months.

I’ve struggled with depression my entire adult life, so I braced myself for the possibility of postpartum depression from the beginning. Most women experience the “baby blues” after delivery—mood swings, irritability, anxiety, sadness, and feeling overwhelmed—a therapist specializing in maternal mental health told me while I was pregnant, but if the blues lasted more than two weeks, it might be postpartum depression. I took note.

I made a mental health protection plan, monitoring my moods carefully, meditating frequently, and exercising regularly during pregnancy. Going into labor, I felt great.

After a smooth delivery and a standard 48-hour stay, we were discharged from the hospital. But I already knew in my gut that I wasn’t ready. As we were wheeling out to the parking lot, the scorching Miami sun suddenly felt unforgiving; tiny beads of sweat appeared on my nose, the humidity fogging my glasses. I held my baby, wrapped up in his layette set, to my chest. I was scared to put him in the car seat, so afraid that I’d break him. On the way home, I clutched his carseat on the verge of a panic attack, terrified we’d get into an accident.

The panic didn’t subside for months. Like all new parents, we documented all of the exciting firsts with our son—his first feeding, his first bath, his first diaper change. Often in these photos, I’m posing and smiling like I should be, but if you look closely, my eyes are pink and puffy and a stream of tears stains my cheeks. I really wanted to be present, but I felt myself starting to get lost.

Days of depression turned into weeks and then months. I felt as if someone had stuck a syringe into my enthusiasm to be a parent and sucked out every milliliter of joy and excitement until there was nothing left. I was empty.

My husband, being the supportive partner that he is, took on a large portion of the infant care and house work while I tried to tolerate just existing—a gargantuan task. Sometimes I lay in bed with an eye mask and headphones. Other times I would close the door, shut the lights off, and sit on the floor staring at a blank wall. I read articles about postpartum depression that left me feeling even more hopeless. I shut off communications with the outside world.

I became lost in the delusion that I was so incompetent as a mother that I was just getting in the way. I thought my family would be better off without me. I fantasized about packing a bag and flying to a far city and never coming back; I could send my family letters and maybe visit during the holidays. I needed to escape. I couldn’t tolerate what I was doing to my family. I couldn’t be the mom I had imagined myself being during the pregnancy. I felt like a failure. The negative thoughts became more insidious and blared on repeat in my mind, muting out any hope or happiness I had ever felt in the past.



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6 IVF Treatment Facts You Should Know Before Trying to Get Pregnant


In vitro fertilization—aka IVF treatment—has totally revolutionized the possibilities of pregnancy. And fittingly, it’s getting more and more common: since 1987, over 1 million babies have been born through the use of IVF or another assisted reproductive technology.

But IVF isn’t a silver bullet for infertility. While it is revolutionary, the process can be complicated and confusing to navigate. To get the facts on what you need to know about IVF before trying to get pregnant, we spoke with Elizabeth Fino, M.D., an assistant professor at the department of obstetrics and gynecology at NYU Langone’s Fertility Center and Hal Danzer, M.D., a reproductive endocrinologist and cofounder of the Southern California Reproductive Center, for tips on how to best prepare for your fertility future.

Whether you want to get pregnant now or wait a little longer, it’s a good idea to know where your fertility stands. Luckily, proactive fertility testing is easier to access than ever, with companies like Modern Fertility and Future Family offering affordable, at-home hormone tests.

These tests, among other things, typically measure your levels of Anti-Mullerian Hormone (AMH), which is a good indication of your ovarian reserves (aka how many eggs you have). “If you have a low reserve at 33, then you’re certainly going to have a lower reserve when you’re older,” says Dr. Danzer. It’s not a perfect predictor of fertility—plenty of women with low ovarian reserves go on to get pregnant naturally—but it does give you some insight into potential problems down the road. If your AMH test shows a high ovarian reserve one year and a follow-up test a year later shows a drastic drop, for example, that can be an indicator it’s a good time to talk to a fertility specialist.

Many women think IVF is their first option if they want it, but the reality is many fertility doctors will tell you to try natural pregnancy first. “If you’re 30 to 35, you should try for at least six months and if it’s not working, then you do a work-up to see what to target,” says Dr. Fino.

Even after that, your doctor will most likely try oral or injectable fertility medication before IVF. Of course, there’s always exceptions: super low AMH levels, low sperm count, multiple miscarriages and potential for certain genetic disorders may all influence how quickly a doctor recommends IVF.

IVF is often talked about in the context of women over 35 trying to conceive (that’s considered “geriatric” in fertility years). But like all things related to fertility, your chances of getting pregnant with IVF are better the younger you are—success rates start to decline after your mid 30s. “IVF doesn’t really fix the age of your eggs so you have to think about that early,” Dr. Fino says.

You’ve likely heard that IVF can be expensive. It’s true. And while there are financing plans to make treatment more accessible, you’ll still be looking at a steep price tag.

“Package rates for IVF run about $9,000 to $10,000, while the medications to stimulate the ovaries can be $2,000 to $4,000,” says Dr. Danzer. “So you’re looking at $12,000 to $15,000 overall.” Then there’s the cost of additional testing. “The big add-on that people are taking advantage of is genetic testing of the embryos. There’s also freezing of embryos—that’s an add-on price of about $400 or $500.”

One of the biggest misconceptions about IVF is that it works right away, but the reality is, most women need to do more than one cycle of IVF to get pregnant. “The average is about two to three cycles,” Dr. Fino says. Even with all the revolutionary technology we have at our fingertips, there are still a lot of genetic factors we (or doctors, for that matter) can’t control. “Most IVF failures are not something that a couple can fix, even if a woman has a good, healthy diet and exercises—those are important, but it’s very age dependent,” says Dr. Fino.

The most important fact to know about IVF is it’s not 100 percent successful—the process can take time, money, and even an emotional toll on your life. “There’s a significant emotional drain on the couple and the relationship,” says Dr. Fino. “I encourage couples to find alternative outlets like exercise or therapy to find balance throughout the treatment process.”



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Rahua Legendary Amazon Oil Is the Best Hair Conditioning Treatment


People always ask what I do to my hair, staring me down with extreme focus as if they’re getting ready to commit 20 products and a multi-step regimen to memory. I, on the other hand, have a history of providing the same unhelpful answer every time. “Nothing.” This is true: Aside from washing it every other day, I just let it air-dry and then roll out of bed in the morning and go. During New York winters, I used my blow-dryer to keep warm on the many nights when my building’s heat and hot water simultaneously went out—that high-end appliance seldom went anywhere near my actual head. I once owned a drugstore hair brush for about three days before I lost patience and also lost the brush in question.

This all worked out perfectly fine until I moved to Germany and my hair care routine, like many other things in my life, suddenly changed. Berlin has extremely hard water, meaning that what comes out of the showerhead has a high mineral content and leaves my hair much drier and more tangled than I’m used to. While my bleached and color-treated hair was doing just fine stateside (my colorist, Bumble and bumble salon’s Diaz, took me from black to fire-engine red to the richest brunette shade without ever damaging a single strand), it started feeling a little parched a mere week after I settled into my new flat.

I had already managed to find a sulfate-free shampoo. After hours spent Google Translating labels and feeling lied to by all the brands that promised color-safe on the front and then revealed their sulfate-carrying contents on the back, I made a detour to the baby aisle and picked up a bottle of Bübchen Kinder Shampoo. While the formula didn’t strip my color, it didn’t exactly hydrate either. And that was proving to be a bigger issue than I had expected—because I loathe conditioner.

There are a few reasons why my shower routine usually doesn’t include conditioner. It’s tough to find a formula without silicones or dimethicone, which cause acne around my hairline and on my back. I also dislike the slick, residue-coated feeling my hair has after conditioning, as if I could rinse and rinse and still never quite get it out. And while most formulas I’d tried in the past did make my hair feel a little smoother, they also seemed to weigh down my natural waves. As for hair masks, forget it; I am both notoriously lazy and notoriously impatient when it comes to my beauty routine, and the likelihood that I will stand around for 20 minutes waiting for a deep treatment to work its magic on a weekly basis is rock-bottom low.

Salvation came into my life in the form of an unexpected invite: an afternoon at Berlin’s ridiculously swanky Soho House, where Rahua by Amazon Beauty founder Fabian Lliguin was presenting his new Legendary Amazon Oil. As he proffered the golden bottle, a ray of sunlight descended from the heavens and illuminated its contents, and within the first five minutes we were all hooked.

As we passed the bottle and around and tested it, we all murmured in surprise at how light the formula was and how quickly it seemed to vanish into nothing, leaving only shine and hydration behind. This, Lliguin says, is because he deliberately designed the mixture to leave out any heavier particles, meaning it gets deep down to repair and strengthen your hair from the inside out. “Pure oils are wonderful for hair and skin and naturally contain blocks of fat and particles of heavy waxes,” he says. “Hair oil is meant for replenishing oils that are lost due to many factors such as coloring and heat.”

The result, which he adds can be used on all hair types, is a combination of rahua, sacha inchi, and morete oils. “Sacha inchi is also known as the Inca peanut; the seeds are rich in omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins A and E, wonderful antioxidants,” he says. “It locks in moisture and has wonderful soothing benefits.” Morete oil is rich in vitamins A and E as well, and also contains a dose of vitamin C.

The trick is applying the treatment to damp hair, like a conditioner, so it gets through your hair more evenly—making sure to focus it on the lower part of your hair, which tends to be drier. If your hair still needs more moisture, you can always add more oil on after it dries, says Lliguin.

Ever since I left Soho House clutching my prized new possession, the $42 bottle hasn’t left its place of honor (right next to my favorite lotion) at my desk. After showering, I rake it through my hair with my fingers, concentrating on the ends as advised. Occasionally, for extra gloss, I rub a few drops between my palms and smooth them over dry hair. While Lliguin adds that conditioners have the added benefit of detangling, which I won’t get from oils, I find that the formula does a good enough job of injecting hydration back into my hair where it sort of just…detangles itself. Plus, it smells like a balmy vacation and restores equilibrium to my minimal-effort world—I really couldn’t ask for more.

Rahua Legendary Amazon Oil, $42, spacenk.com

Related Stories:
–I Finally Found a Shampoo That Makes Conditioner Optional—And It’s Cheap
–This $12 Coconut Oil Saved Me on My Two-Week Honeymoon Abroad
–This Magic Oil Saved My Hair After Years of Relaxers





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Selena Gomez Is Reportedly Seeking Treatment Following an 'Emotional Breakdown'


Selena Gomez is reportedly taking time to focus on her mental health. People reports that the singer is currently seeking treatment after experiencing an “emotional breakdown” during a hospital visit.

Gomez reportedly visited the hospital twice in recent weeks due to a low white blood cell count, which was likely a side effect from her recent kidney transplant. According to a source, the “breakdown” occurred during the second hospital visit. This singer is now reportedly in the care of a recovery facility.

“She has had a tough few weeks and the panic attack in the hospital was the tipping point,” a source told People. “She realized she needed to seek additional help for her ongoing emotional issues. She’s surrounded by close family and has a lot of support. She’s doing better now and is seeking treatment on the East Coast.” Specifically, People reports she’s undergoing dialectical behavior therapy, which aims to identify and change negative thinking patterns.

This news, first reported by TMZ, comes after Gomez decided to take a hiatus from social media. “Update: taking a social media break. Again. As much as I am grateful for the voice that social media gives each of us, I am equally grateful to be able to step back and live my life present to the moment I have been given,” she wrote in September. “Kindness and encouragement only for a bit! Just remember-negative comments can hurt anybody’s feelings. Obvi.”

She previously hinted during the summer that she might take a break with a reflective comment: “Trust me, my life isn’t always this filtered and flowery… We are all on our own journey.”

Regardless, we hope Gomez gets the treatment she needs and a speedy recovery is on the horizon.

Related Stories:

Selena Gomez Is Taking a Social Media Hiatus: “Negative Comments Can Hurt Anybody’s Feelings”



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