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The Best Weekender Bag for Women: Away Weekender Review


Some families get to the airport early to avoid lines. My family gets to the airport early to avoid causing a scene and yet somehow, against all odds and even with all the necessary precautions taken, we manage to make one every. single. year. on our annual trip to Spain.

It’s always about the luggage—and the prosciutto, and the bottles of wine, and the cans of olives my grandmother somehow thinks are okay to pack in bulk in her carry-on luggage. She does it without fail every year even though my dad checks her bags the night before (our theory is that she sneaks the items in some time between the hours of midnight and 6:00 A.M.). After we watch in horror as the Spanish TSA asks us “WTF?” (or as they say in Spanish, ¿WTF?) and tells my grandmother that, no, he can’t accept her prohibited items as gifts, we lug our incredibly heavy and misshaped bags to the gate while my grandma curses quietly in the background. Sure, our bags aren’t stuffed with items every human being knows you can’t take on an airplane. But our luggage somehow always ends up overweight anyway, so we stuff items from them into every free pocket and corner of our purses and carry on bags. It’s never pretty. It’s always painful. I was being literal when I said lug.

It should go without saying that the mere thought of packing and luggage in general sends me into a state of absolute panic. I always wait until the night before I leave. I never take into account the weather of wherever it is that I’m going. I inevitably forget which toiletries are and are not permitted. I think about how somewhere off in the distance my grandmother is stuffing double bottles of wine into some too-small zippered interior compartments.

I am also vain and find almost all luggage to be an eyesore. Yes, suitcases are necessary and there is a real reason they look like armored boxes on wheels. But I am also someone who willingly carries around a teeny tiny PVC bag, that exposes my credit card number to the public and doesn’t even fit my phone, for the sake of appearances (it’s cute, okay!). So when Away first launched their suitcases, which were actually aesthetically pleasing, I was intrigued but also skeptical. I held off and carried on with the truly atrocious suitcase my mom had bought from an off-brand store near our home in Queens. Then every single podcast I listen to told me I needed an Away bag more than I needed a vacation, which made me wonder: luggage had made my life miserable for so many years, would something more thoughtfully designed really change that?

Buy Now: Away The Large Suitcase, $245, Away (left), Away The Weekender, $245, Away (right)

The answer is obviously yes, but it took until the new Away weekender was released for me to come to terms with that. As someone who is evidently luggage-averse, I never really understood what a weekender was and definitely never owned one. But I love weekends, so I wanted to give this bag a chance. Plus, my grandma had borrowed my old carry on and spilled olive juice all over it, so I definitely needed a new one.

My initial reaction was that the bag didn’t offend me, visually. Sure it didn’t look like any of my mini bags but it also didn’t look like any piece of carry on luggage I’ve ever had before. It’s sleek and minimal, which is great since I am incapable of packing just one bag and it has to accompany my very loud, very leopard print suitcase (like I said my suitcase is from Queens and consequently resembles Fran Drescher).

Away

Away The Weekender Bag in Black Canvas

Buy Now

The weekender is made of textured cotton canvas with leather accents, which also feels very nice. So even if I do have to lug it over my shoulder if I’m in a rush and moving quickly (or running away from the TSA agents my grandmother upset—kidding! Kinda) it doesn’t hurt or bother my shoulders or skin. Speaking of lugging, there is a flap on the weekender that helps secure it to any Away suitcase (but it also worked for mine, which isn’t Away) for a smooth ride. When I was running through the airport on a trip last week, I had the Away weekender sit atop my suitcase while I wheeled it rapidly past dozens of gates—and it didn’t slip once.



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Fertility Insurance Is the Workplace Benefit Women Deserve


Not all fertility treatments result in pregnancy. According to the European Society for Human Reproduction and Embryology, 77 percent of assisted reproductive cycles performed globally every year fail. Without coverage, women are left to cope with the bitter combination of not having a baby and the tremendous costs of trying for one. “IVF has helped a lot of people, but there is a silent majority of people who haven’t been helped by it and don’t talk about it,” says Miriam Zoll, author of Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility, and the Pursuit of High-Tech Babies, and a health and human rights advocate.

Kati, 32, from Columbia, Maryland, strategically maneuvered her career based on insurance coverage. “I was willing to downgrade what I was doing,” she says. “I was willing to do office work or work as an administrative assistant or do whatever I needed to do just to have that insurance.” She got lucky though, eventually landing a dream job with dream fertility benefits: 100 percent coverage for IVF up to three attempts per live birth.

But after three IVF retrievals and six embryo transfers, she hasn’t had a successful pregnancy. “I’ve had seven miscarriages. We’re exploring surrogacy or thinking about living child-free—it’s heartbreaking at this point,” she says. “I didn’t think we’d be here, but at the same time, I feel grateful for our insurance coverage. If I didn’t have it, we couldn’t even consider surrogacy—all of my money would have gone to one IVF cycle and that would be it.”

Fertility insurance does have its restrictions: Insurers require a medical diagnosis of infertility, which is defined as an inability for a heterosexual couple to conceive within 12 months. That excludes same-sex couples and single women who want to pursue IVF with donor sperm.

But some Silicon Valley companies are setting a new standard for fertility coverage. Female-founded benefits company Carrot works with companies like Foursquare and Coinbase to provide fertility benefits regardless of an employee’s diagnosis or treatment needed. Companies choose how much coverage they want to provide each employee (which could range from $10,000 to $50,000 or more per person) giving them full access to fertility testing, IUI (intrauterine insemination), IVF, egg freezing, sperm freezing, donor eggs, donor sperm, gestational carriers (surrogates), and adoption—regardless of age, gender, or sexual orientation.

A woman’s family planning goals should be respected just as much as her career goals, says Tammy Sun, CEO and co-founder of Carrot. She suggests that if you’re already in a role you love but your company doesn’t offer fertility benefits, advocate for them: “Go to leadership at your company or to your HR or benefits team and say, ‘Hey, here is the problem that we see with the lack of fertility coverage at work—we see fertility as a fundamental part of healthcare.’” If you’re job hunting, Fertility IQ, Glassdoor, and Monster compile lists of companies that offer remarkable fertility benefits. And when you’re in the negotiation phase for a new job, ask if fertility coverage is on the table. “We have many companies come to us and say that they have a candidate and she’s asking for fertility benefits but they have nothing, so they want to set something up right away,” Sun says. “Just by asking, you could get what you want.”

Fertility benefits should be considered as standard as any health insurance—treating infertility shouldn’t leave women broke or forced to derail their careers to find coverage, advocates say. “We are not choosing to be infertile, we’re not choosing to need this treatment,” Kati says. “The body is not working in the way it should be—that should be covered just like heart disease, diabetes, or any other illness.”

Minhae Shim Roth is an essayist, journalist, and academic. Follow her on Instagram @by_minhaeshimroth and on twitter @minhaeshimroth.



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Fertility Week: Everything Women Need to Know About Their Current and Future Fertility


The major exception to the rule: smoking. A cigarette habit will do a number on just about every major health system—your heart, your lungs, even your skin—including your reproductive system. Smoking kicks egg loss into overdrive—women who smoke enter menopause an average of one to four years earlier than non-smokers. (The verdict on vaping is still out: “The problem with vaping is that everyone thinks it’s not as bad as cigarettes but we don’t really know what it does yet,” says Dr. Knopman.)

Weight can also impact your chances of having a baby (that goes for male partners too). “Obesity in women increases the rate of miscarriage, and is associated with worse outcomes for fertility treatments,” Dr. Brady says.

Success rates with IVF—often hailed as a magic bullet—hover around 5 percent for women in their early 40s. “People are really shocked to hear that,” Dr. Brady says.

Really shocked. Fertility doctors see women every day who’ve been led to believe that egg-freezing and IVF are insurance policies with limited risks and hopeful guarantees.

IVF is revolutionary science that has allowed over 8 million births to women who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to get pregnant, since the procedure was first pioneered in the 1980s. But “most of the success of IVF is based on the age of the female,” Dr. Knopman says. “The younger you are when you make the embryos the better chance those embryos are going to be viable and lead to a viable pregnancy.”

It’s far from a fail-safe promise, but the technology (and the ad campaigns surrounding it) has given an inflated sense of confidence about what fertility treatments can and can’t do. “People come in at 40 and say, ‘Oh I’m going to do IVF,’ and I tell them okay but this may take us a lot of rounds and it may not work,” Dr. Knopman says. In other words, you can’t just throw money at the problem: “It’s not always a slam dunk,” she says.

It also matters where you do your IVF. It’s a technically challenging procedure, part art, part science, and not all IVF clinics are up to the challenge. “Not all labs can do egg retrieval and storage the same way,” Dr. Knopman says. “Lab conditions can alter the embryo.” Before handing over your credit card, your body, or your dreams of future pregnancy, ask the clinic the right questions: How many eggs have you frozen? How many eggs have survived the thaw? How many eggs have made embryos?

Look for a clinic associated with the Society of Assisted Reproductive Technology, which provides oversight and keeps tabs on a clinic’s success rate.

“One of the biggest myths I hear is that the pill hurts your fertility and that long-term pill use is not good,” says Dr. Knopman. That’s not true. Let us repeat: Hormonal birth control—whether you use the pill, the ring, the patch or a hormonal IUD—doesn’t hurt your fertility.

“What birth control won’t protect you from is egg loss,” Dr. Knopman says. “Most of us are born with about one to two million eggs. By the time we get our first period, most of us have about 350,000 eggs—you lose a significant amount before you even menstruate.” Each month, regardless of whether you’re ovulating or not, around a thousand eggs die off, their cells absorbed back into your body. “From the first period to the last period, you’re constantly losing eggs no matter what you do,” says Dr. Knopman.



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Best Spring Dresses for Women: Toile Trend


Normally, spring dresses are all about the florals. (If you can get Miranda Priestley saying “Florals? For spring? Groundbreaking,” out of your head, that is.) But with the rise of prairie dresses, shoppers have opened their hearts and their closets to puffy sleeves, vintage-inspired prints, and other trends every season. For 2019, there’s another “It” style on the horizon, which combines different elements from great spring dress trends past: nostalgic patterns, soft colors, and prime Instagram-ability.

Toile-print dresses have been popping up everywhere since Selena Gomez wore an Oscar de la Renta two-piece last summer. “Toile” is a type of decorating, when a repeated pattern of a complex scene—normally something pastoral—is depicted against a white or off-white background. The graphic is charming like a floral, but has the same vintage vibe as your favorite prairie dress. And you can find it on everything from oversized silhouettes to strappy minis.

The latest wave of “It” dresses luckily don’t necessarily have to cost a couple thousand dollars: You can find it everywhere from Urban Outfitters to Tory Burch. If want an alternative to the prairie trend but are tired of the same-old florals, toile-print dresses are a happy medium that aren’t absolutely everywhere yet (just yet). Shop the best ones, ahead.



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The Gig Economy Forces Women Freelancers to Get Creative About How They Calculate Their Rates and Value Their Time


Women are trapped in a bind—socialized to believe that the worst thing we can be is an inconvenience and at the same time made to compete in a workforce that punishes those who don’t name their own needs. Erica Greenwald, an event production freelancer, says that each time she’s asked to price her hours, she weighs her own financial concerns with the desire to make a good first impression on her clients. “You don’t want to come off as pushy or thirsty, because people make snap judgments all the time and you’re just trying to get a gig,” Greenwald says. “It all comes down to power dynamics, and sometimes I feel empowered to advocate for myself, but more often than not I accept what I can get.”

In other industries and in Silicon Valley in particular, there’s been a push for salary transparency—but Bolles, Salvo, and Cowan all say that for freelancers, talking money is still largely taboo. Justin Gignac, founder of the 65,000-member freelance platform Working Not Working, encourages the creatives he works with to share information about their rates to ensure they’re getting fair pay. He consistently finds himself urging the women he knows to up their prices. “I encourage the women in the room to say yes to the jobs you think you’re not qualified for and ask for the money you don’t think is reasonable, because the men you know aren’t afraid to do either,” Gignac says.

In 2017, Cowan reopened her photography business under the new name “The Blonde with the Smile” and again she’s navigating the minefield of putting a price on her time. Three months ago, a corporate representative called her to book a last-minute gig for an event, hosted by a software company at the Jacob K. Javits Center. Cowan was told that she’d come highly recommended and was asked to name her price. She floated $550 an hour.

“The woman on the phone was like, ‘I’m sorry, what?’ and immediately, I cringed,” Cowan says. “I was like, ‘Shoot, I’m going to lose this gig.’” But instead, the voice on the line told Cowan she wasn’t charging nearly enough. The male photographer she’d been hired to replace had billed $2,000 an hour, and that’s what the company was ready to pay. “That call changed the trajectory of my life. If I’d been on the phone with a man he would’ve said, ‘$550? That’s great!’”

Since then, Cowan has turned down offers that would barely cover her next meal. When she worked minimum-wage jobs, she was focused on how to make ends meet. Now that she prices out her hours, those rates are also tangled up in conceptions of her own professional value. Billable hours have to add up to more than the rent plus food. But those calculations are challenges (and opportunities) to assert that a woman’s time isn’t available at permanent discount.

Emma Goldberg is a writer whose work has been published in the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Economist, ELLE, and the LA Review of Books, among other places. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

April is Financial Literacy Month on CNBC. To mark it we don’t just want to talk about the wage gap or the disadvantages women still face in the workplace. We want action—to the tune of $10,000. This month we’ll explore what women can do to net a cool $10K. That means strategies to save more and spend smarter, tactics to negotiate not just at work but on health care, home decor, and more, and stories to inspire your inner CEO.



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Game of Thrones Season 8 Episode 1 Recap: The Women Were Absolutely Savage


Game of Thrones returned last night for its season eight premiere, and so much went down: a long-awaited reunion between Jon Snow and Arya. And Sansa and Tyrion. And Yara and Theon. The list drags on. But, overwhelmingly, last night’s episode was about women. More specifically, women and their fatal glances and savage quips. If a female lead was on screen Sunday night, she was whittling us down to splinters without doing much at all. Between Daenerys Targaryen, Sansa and Arya, the ever-resilient Yara Greyjoy, and little Lyanna Mormont, I could barely go 10 seconds without involuntarily shouting “Step on me, mom!” at the TV.

I know “glances” might not sound like the most important takeaway from last night’s episode of Game of Thrones, but please understand that I’m gay. Glancing is the official mating call of queer women—and all queer women know the mammoth power a single female leer can hold. So, yeah, there were a lot of intoxicating women glaring at each other on Game of Thrones, and that’s what I cared the most about—I’m not sorry. In a show that doesn’t feature much explicitly queer female content, I have to make up for it in my mind. White Walkers are coming, yeah yeah, sure sure. But also, hear me out: glowering.

HBO

When Daenerys finally met Sansa last night, which Twitter loved, glances were had. Sansa wanted her brother to be fair to Northeners, who named him King before he bent the knee to Daenerys, so she was chilly toward the Dragon Queen. And I know I was supposed to be like, “Oh no, Sansa doesn’t like Daenerys,” but all I could think about was how badly I wanted either woman to fillet me with a single scowl. During one particularly frigid standoff, Sansa jeered, “What do dragons eat, anyway?,” to which Daenerys replied, “Whatever they want.”

The roasts were on full display last night too. When the women weren’t leering, they were dropping hot fire on their male counterparts. Sansa made a major dig at Tyrion when she said, “I used to think you were the cleverest man alive,” and if you know and love Tyrion, then you know how personal that remark is. When Arya reunited with Jon, her opening line was “You used to be taller.”

Then Euron Greyjoy propositioned Cersei (for the thousandth time), and she said, “You want a whore, buy one. You want a queen, earn her”—which is iffy feminism in that it’s…uhh, not feminist, yet I still wanted Cersei to shove me off a castle wall. Lady Lyanna Mormont, who always keeps us humble, reprimanded Jon Snow upon his return to the North: She spat, “You left Winterfell a king and came back a—I’m not sure what you are now. A lord? Nothing at all?” And this chick can glare. Basically, everyone in Winterfell was shaking—and not just from the winter.

The first episode of season eight was jam-packed with reunions and character nostalgia, but it was slow overall. They’re definitely laying groundwork for the final five episodes and gearing up for the big fight between the living and the dead, which apparently will be the longest battle scene in the show’s history. Still, I was fully sated by the season premiere.

Lena Headey as Cersei on HBO's Game of Thrones
HBO

Last season—season seven—was spilling over with powerful moments from the female leads, and if last night’s episode is any indication, we have so much to look forward to from these women. Plot-wise, of course I want to see Daenerys make the Iron Throne her bitch. I want to see Arya fucking flay Cersei. But mostly I’m looking forward to more devastating glances that cut through me like Valyrian steel, and way more shady quips from the women of Game of Thrones. Sic your dragons on me, Daenerys!

Jill Gutowitz is a writer and comedian in Los Angeles. Follow her on Twitter @jillboard.





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