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        <title>Evie Magazine</title>
        <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com</link>
        <description>
          Focusing on women and celebrating what makes them so unique, Evie Magazine helps women seek truth and find beauty...the kind that really matters.
        </description>
        <language>en-us</language>
        <copyright>© 2021 Evie Magazine</copyright>
        <pubDate>Sun, 06 Sep 2026 05:42:30 GMT</pubDate>
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          <title>Evie Magazine</title>
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    <item>
      <title><![CDATA[My Husband And I Have Been Married For 26 Years. Here's What I've Learned.]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/my-husband-and-i-have-been-married-for-26-years-heres-what-ive-learned</link>
      <dc:creator>Chelsea Smith</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[The Churchome co-pastor and author opens up about what actually keeps a marriage together. ]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Judah and I have known each other our whole lives. Literally. Our moms were friends when they were pregnant with us, and they joked that they would have a boy and a girl and they would get married. A lot of years and three kids later, that joke became our life. People ask me all the time what drew us to each other, and the honest answer is that there was always just chemistry. Even when we were young, there was a natural pull. As we grew up and grew in our faith, there was so much cohesion between us, so much that just fit. We were really grateful for that. And it's wild and amazing to get to know somebody more and more over the course of your life. The more you know them, the more you love them. And yes, the more annoyed you get. But truly, the more you love them. We've been married for 26 years now. That sentence still shocks me a little. But when people ask what's kept us together, I always come back to the same things. There is something so significant about knowing that there is a time in the week that is set aside for just the two of you. The first is a weekly date night. My parents had one every Friday when I was growing up. They were religious about it, and I'm so grateful they gave us the gift of that example. Judah and I picked it up, and after 26 years and half of an empty nest, Thursday nights are still our night. There is something so significant about knowing that there is a time in the week that is set aside for just the two of you. You're going to look at each other from across the table, go on a walk, do something fun together, and know that time was made just for you. The other thing that has really meant a lot is having something we're building together that is outside of ourselves. Our family is one of those things, obviously, but we also work together and build church and community together. Even having something outside your normal comfort zone, whether that's serving in your local community or working on a shared project, is really significant for a marriage. Now, conflict. It inevitably comes up, and I actually love when people phrase it that way, because the first thing I want to say is: conflict is not a sign that something is wrong. I see conflict as two unique, strong people who have strong opinions that don't always line up. When it happens, one of the best things Judah and I have done is form what we call rules of engagement. What are the ways we're going to handle conflict when it comes up, not if it comes up? Conflict is not a sign that something is wrong. One of the big ones is the old phrase "never say never." It's so easy to point fingers and say "you always" and "you never." We're feeling some kind of way, so we exaggerate and we hurt each other. Instead, we've worked on communicating with "I feel" language. Saying, "Hey, when you didn't do the dishes, it made me feel overlooked," instead of "You never help around the house." It sounds small, but that shift changes everything. If you want to know how Judah and I incorporate faith and prayer into our marriage, the honest answer is that it has been a saving grace. Not in a cute, throw-it-on-a-pillow kind of way, but in the moments when we are in conflict and we feel like we want to go in two completely different directions. There is this mutual understanding between us that God is in charge and we are, together, going to surrender to His plan. That conviction has carried us through more than I can describe. The advice I would give to any couple wanting to build a marriage centered on faith? Do it personally. So often, we think, "If only my husband would pray more" or "If only my wife would do this spiritual practice." But in a lot of ways, we can really only grow our own faith and then help each other grow. Work on your own, and see what beautiful things come as a result. Chelsea Smith is the co-pastor of Churchome alongside her husband, Judah Smith. Together, they lead a global church community with locations in Seattle and Los Angeles. Judah is a New York Times bestselling author, has been featured on Lana Del Rey's album Did You Know That There's a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd, and has served as a spiritual mentor to Justin Bieber. This year, Judah and Chelsea have partnered with Glorify , the leading Christian daily devotional app, to launch a three-part course on recalibrating faith, habits, and relationships for the new year. Judah leads "Bad Thoughts," drawing from his bestselling book on overcoming negative thoughts. Chelsea offers "Developing a Rhythm of Rest," exploring sabbath rhythms and digital boundaries in an age of constant noise. The course culminates with "I Do," where they teach together on covenant love and the spiritual foundations of partnership, sharing tools from 26 years of marriage.]]></content:encoded>
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      <pubDate>Fri, 22 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Relationships</category>
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      <title><![CDATA[Ella Bright Is Being Called “Fat” For Looking Like A Healthy 19-Year-Old]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/the-internet-thinks-ella-bright-is-fat-that-should-concern-you</link>
      <dc:creator>Meredith Evans</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[When Bright appeared in Amazon Prime’s "Off Campus," she looked like what most people would probably consider a beautiful, healthy 19-year-old girl.]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Well, at least that's what I thought. I was wrong. Her physique turned into a point of controversy online almost immediately, with viewers calling her “fat” and “chubby” on social media. The other comments were predictably vulgar. One man wrote, “They showed the boobs of every woman on this show except the one we actually wanted to see,” while another person mocked her appearance by posting, “skinny where?” There were viewers who pushed back against the criticism, including one viral Portuguese tweet arguing that people had become so consumed by extreme-thinness standards that they could no longer recognize what a genuinely healthy body looked like. I'd say that reaction feels closer to the truth of what’s actually happening here. Because Bright is not overweight or underweight. She looks healthy and youthful. She looks like a young girl with energy, one who exists outside the strange Hollywood aesthetic that has slowly convinced people that women are supposed to look slightly unwell to be considered attractive. What’s unsettling is how normalized this dehydrated, heroin chic "aesthetic" has become. In recent years, we’ve spent time looking at shrinking actresses, influencers, and models. I don't have to name any, because there are probably some that come to your mind. My point is that we’ve gotten too accustomed to seeing, dare I say it, disordered women. The Internet’s Reaction to Ella Bright’s Body Feels Completely Warped The strange thing is that culture already had this conversation once before. The early 2000s were notoriously cruel to women, especially young actresses and celebrities who were constantly photographed, ridiculed, and torn apart for existing in perfectly healthy bodies. Magazines were harsh and awful. Women who gained five pounds were humiliated publicly. Entire generations of girls grew up believing beauty meant looking as thin and weightless as possible, even if it came at the expense of their health. The body positivity movement emerged as a response to that era, and initially, it made complete sense. Women were exhausted from spending their lives at war with themselves, and people wanted to push back against the idea that every woman needed to shrink herself in order to deserve love, success, or visibility. Somewhere along the way, though, the conversation became distorted in its own way, and obesity was accepted as normal. You could be “healthy at every size,” they argued. Then the pendulum swung the other way again, as most extreme cycles do, and now celebrity culture is back at glorifying extreme thinness. People’s perception of normal has shifted so dramatically that health itself now looks unfamiliar to them. Now we’re in this bizarre cultural moment where people claim to support “real bodies,” yet a completely healthy-looking teenager becomes controversial because she doesn’t resemble the increasingly gaunt beauty standard dominating social media and red carpets right now. This is alarming. This odd reaction to her body shows that people’s perception of normal has shifted so dramatically that health itself now looks unfamiliar to them.  There’s also something deeply uncomfortable about how young actresses are discussed online now. Bright is 19 years old, yet strangers feel perfectly entitled to simultaneously sexualize her and criticize her body in the same breath. One moment, people are demanding nudity from her onscreen, and the next, they’re mocking her appearance for not fitting an increasingly microscopic standard of acceptable thinness. We've got to give Bright her flowers; I can't imagine what it must be like being a rising star in this day and age.]]></content:encoded>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/the-internet-thinks-ella-bright-is-fat-that-should-concern-you</guid>
      <pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Culture</category>
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      <title><![CDATA[Sex Is Better When You Treat It As Sacred, New Study Confirms]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/sex-is-better-when-you-treat-it-as-sacred-new-study-confirms</link>
      <dc:creator>Artemisia Leclair</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[Want more orgasms? It's time to tap into your spiritual side. ]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Sexual sanctification has long been studied by psychologists due to the observed positive effect it has on sexual relationships and behavior. And while it may sound odd, it's simply a term used to describe how some individuals believe sex to have a special meaning or significance beyond its physicality, some going so far as to claim sex as sacred or as a means to experience the divine. For years now, researchers have observed a link between sacred sex and better sex . More enjoyment, more satisfaction, more time in the bedroom. But a recent study asked an interesting question: Why? Why does treating sex as sacred result in greater sexual satisfaction? What turns reverence into pleasure? Through a Glass, Darkly To answer this question, the researchers gathered a sample of 452 heterosexual couples that had been in a committed sexual relationship for at least two years. They had each individual rate themselves on sexual sanctification, sexual satisfaction, and the amount of passion they held for their partner. Then they measured four behaviors they believed linked sexual sanctification to sexual satisfaction: mindfulness (being present, non-judgmental, and focused during sex), sexual communication (being able to comfortably discuss sexual preferences and desires), sexual frequency, and orgasm frequency. Unsurprisingly, the results were significantly divided by gender but nonetheless fascinating. For females, those who viewed sex as a sacred act were more mindful and more communicative. They also had sex and orgasmed more frequently than their female counterparts who believed sex to be purely physical. What turns reverence into pleasure? The strongest link between sexual sanctification and sexual satisfaction for women was communication. And if we're being honest, this makes sense. It's understandable that a better sex life would flow from superior communication. Additionally, women talk about what's important to them. Viewing sex as sacred means you have to view it as important. For men, the results were different. The only aspect that was linked to sexual sanctification was having sex more often. Instead, what seemed to result in high levels of sexual satisfaction for men was maintaining good communication and involvement in an organized religious routine (such as attending a weekly church service). Finally, and perhaps most interesting, the study found that one partner's belief in the sacredness of sex did not affect the other's sexual experience. As sanctification is an internal values system, it didn't appear to transfer. The Philosophy of Sex But why is this? What is the why behind the why? Sexual sanctification results in better sex because it changes human behavior, but why? Perhaps we can answer this by examining what happens when sex is seen as ordinary. It seems that whenever sex is viewed as a simple physical act, substantial issues arise that give way to disordered conduct and ultimately, human degradation. Those who give in to their own hedonistic desires, those who seek to trample underfoot every spark of human desire, and even those who have taken the middle, more moderate path, have made the mistake of defining, and therefore treating, sex incorrectly. Today, some of the more dominant modern frameworks in the West define sex as a purely physical act. This has given way to extreme hedonism, as it maintains that sex is pleasurable, therefore sex is good. And because sex is good, everything is permissible as long as it's consented to. However, this view of sex has birthed many disturbing forms of human degradation and degeneracy such as disturbing fetishes, pedophilia, and abortion. As it turns out, consent does not determine morality. Restraint, abiding by some sort of natural order, is required. The Roman Stoic Marcus Aurelius is infamous for stating , "Sexual intercourse is the rubbing together of membranes and the ejaculation of mucus accompanied by a kind of spasm." He deliberately reduces sex to its physical components as a way to weaken its psychological hold and reinforce his own beliefs which held that pleasure during sex was a simple byproduct of the act, not its primary purpose. That sex should not influence man's behavior. And when the sex act is pursued, it should be out of duty. However, if you have to debase something so thoroughly just to get a handle on your own appetite, who is actually in control? The goal of Stoicism is to strip pleasure of its sentiment in order to achieve detachment. Things like sex, and even health, are seen as preferred neutrals. But in so doing, it feels as if Stoicism strips away certain aspects of humanity through undervaluing them. If the focus of sex becomes restraint and duty, and pleasure is only seen as a neutral at best, where is the joie de vivre ? Where is the intimate connection? Where is love? Once again, through viewing sex as a purely physical act, we have harmed man. Most views of sex degrade it because they fail to see sex for what it actually is: a sacred act with physical, relational, and spiritual consequence. Lastly, at the other end of the spectrum, we have asceticism. The Cathars, a dualist heretical movement that flourished in southern France in the 12th and 13th centuries, believed the physical realm was corrupt or evil and that sex (especially procreative sex) was gravely disordered because it imprisoned an immaterial soul inside a physical body. This view of the human person was problematic for obvious reasons: it severed the soul from the body, treated creation as a mistake, and it rejected the goodness of embodied life. For this reason, among others, the Catholic Church eventually backed the Albigensian Crusade, which violently suppressed Catharism in the region. If you were handed a tool with no explanation and no knowledge of its purpose, you might eventually figure out a crude use for it, you might even get close to using it correctly. But you'd most certainly never use it to its fullest potential. Worse, everyone who picked it up could draw their own conclusions about what it was for. Those conclusions could reflect their own desires, frustrations, needs, and expectations. But not necessarily the design of the thing itself. Without knowledge of the maker's intent, the tool would be reduced to whatever the user wanted it to be. Such is the case with sex. Most views of sex degrade it because they fail to see sex for what it actually is: a sacred act with physical, relational, and spiritual consequence. It's no surprise then, that individuals who see sex through this lens tend to treat it differently and, according to the research, often have better experiences as a result. Sacred Sex At this point, perhaps all that remains to be said is this: the fact that the sacred isn't visible doesn't mean it's unreal. We know of air's existence because we see its effects. We observe the way it moves through the world, touches matter, and alters what it passes through. In a similar way, if viewing sex as sacred changes the way people approach it, even changes the way they experience it, then perhaps that perception is not an illusion, but a clearer apprehension of what sex actually is. Perhaps reverence is not an artificial meaning imposed on the body, but a more accurate response to the nature of the act itself. Perhaps those who approach sex as sacred aren't adding something foreign to it, but perceiving more fully what was already there. And if that's true, then the question becomes difficult to avoid. Does sex, rightly ordered, point beyond itself? Does the union of man and woman offer, however briefly and imperfectly, a glimpse of a reality greater than the body alone? Is sex one of man's windows into heaven? Looking for more? Order our latest print magazine now: The Sex Issue!]]></content:encoded>
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      <pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Sex</category>
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      <title><![CDATA[Our Hearts Weren't Meant To Be Broken By So Many Different People]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/our-hearts-werent-meant-to-be-broken-by-so-many-different-people</link>
      <dc:creator>Olivia Flint</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[I know someone who gave up on love at 36 years old after a short-term relationship still had her in tears a year later. ]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[They say time heals all wounds, but this heartbreak endured, so she simply decided that was the end and told herself, "I will never feel this way again." And to this day, she hasn't. She hasn't dated again, she hasn't fallen in love again, and she hasn't felt heartbreak again. She's now in her 50s, living in Europe, and leads a happy life, but the last time I went through a breakup, she gave me words of caution. She said, "I don't want you to end up like me. I don't want you to give up on love." It's not that she's unhappily single either. She's one of the happiest people I know, but clearly there's something about love and companionship that she believes (for me, at least) is worth getting back on the horse for, even at the risk of being broken again. I have to say that after how I was treated in my last relationship, I am hesitant to date again. I'm even starting to feel the benefits of choosing to stay single. Interestingly, it was one of the easiest heartbreaks I've ever gone through, but there's something about going through it for a third time that's made me particularly reluctant to put myself out there again. I've found it's become too tiring saying goodbye to so many people I care deeply about, and I'd rather avoid being disappointed again. How many times can one person experience this deep psychological trauma before it begins to take its toll? Long gone are the days of marrying your first and only love. As the average age of first marriage has increased, so too has the number of relationship breakups and subsequent heartbreaks. Repeatedly, hearts are broken and mended, but to what extent? How many times can one person experience this deep psychological trauma before it begins to take its toll? How many heartbreaks can one person take before they finally give up and decide life is easier on their own? The problem with relationships today is that so many of them last for years without either side giving a lifelong commitment to the other. It's the phenomena of the " forever girlfriend " or the "sunk cost boyfriend" where a woman gives a man her most fertile years in exchange for a "someday" that never arrives. She's usually in her late 20s or 30s then when she has to start over completely. During this time, although unmarried, couples grow together and become intertwined in one another's lives and routines while "playing house," not just emotionally, but socially and biologically too. The Biological Reality of Heartbreak If love were only a feeling, heartbreak would be so much easier. Instead, it's a mix of emotions and chemicals bonding us to our partner in ways that make it almost impossible to unbind. Romantic love releases oxytocin when our partner touches us, hugs us, and when we're intimate with them. Romantic attraction activates our brain's reward systems , so when we're around someone we love, we experience feelings of excitement and euphoria. In turn, our brains associate this person with reward and emotional relief, reinforcing the attachment we have with them. On a deeper biological level, our bodily functions even become regulated by our partner. As we spend more time with them, our heart rate, stress responses, sleep rhythms and emotional states become regulated by the one we love. This is why, when you're in a relationship, you may notice you feel more relaxed around your partner, as their presence helps reduce your cortisol and relaxes your body. So is it any wonder heartbreak is so debilitating? The person responsible for regulating our reward system and our body is no longer around, and we suddenly have to learn to cope without them. Emotionally, you want the person who's left you, but biologically, your body is telling you that you need this person to survive. According to psychologist Dr. Guy Winch , heartbreak is a "complex psychological injury" that simply isn't taken seriously enough by society. When a person experiences heartbreak, they're usually dismissed by those closest to them. Often, a heartbroken person is simply told "you'll be fine" and "you'll meet someone else." Although both these statements are true, they completely belittle what the heartbroken person is going through. Emotionally, you want the person who's left you, but biologically, your body is telling you that you need this person to survive. A heartbroken person often experiences nausea, insomnia, and loss of appetite . Studies show it can impair a person's cognitive functioning , making it hard for them to function at their job or at school. Going through this once in life is bad enough. Twice is torturous, but three, four, five times cannot be healthy. Although heartbreak isn't a new phenomenon, it's only recently that we've begun to see the true torment heartbreak brings, as many people now share their experience for the world to witness on social media. For those who haven't experienced heartbreak, this reaction may seem a little dramatic, but it's entirely accurate. Studies show a heartbroken person experiences "unbearable" levels of physical pain during a breakup. It's perhaps a pain someone should only go through once in life, but after repeated exposure to this torment, we're starting to see how it affects a person's future relationships. Does Repeated Heartbreak Affect A Person's Ability To Pair Bond? Pair bonding is the deep emotional connection that develops between two people who choose each other and stay attached over time. When you've pair-bonded with someone, you'll want to stay close to them, you'll miss them when they're gone, you'll want to protect your relationship with them, and you may even feel a little jealous or territorial over them. It's so much more than just being attracted to someone. It isn't just a feeling, either. It involves multiple brain regions, neurochemicals , and sensory modalities (touch, smell, voice, and other senses). However, when a pair bond breaks, the brain has to adjust to the sudden absence of someone it became wired to expect. Pair bonding enables us to not just emotionally connect with someone, but biologically bond with them too. And to a certain extent, we've been abusing it in our current dating culture, treating love as if it comes from an infinite well. Although there isn't a scientific number of heartbreaks and broken pair bonds one person can go through and survive, many people won't come out the same optimistic single person they once were after the third or fourth time. "Oftentimes, people think they are being too emotional, but biology is also playing a role in this dynamic. The chemicals released when you bond with someone tell your brain, this person is safe and it's okay to attach to them," says Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Christina Mathieson . "After enough losses, those same systems start expecting the loss instead of the bond. When people's brains start having this expectation, I see two completely opposite responses. Some clients fall in love really fast and then crash out the second the relationship gets serious, because the bond itself starts feeling threatening. Other people date someone for two years and still keep them at arm's length, never quite letting them all the way in." "After enough losses, those same systems start expecting the loss instead of the bond." "I don't think there's a hard limit on how many heartbreaks a person can survive, but I do think there's a limit to how many they can survive without changing how they show up to dating," Christina continues. "After enough losses, the nervous system starts preparing for the next one before you've even met them. This behavior isn't conscious, it's protective. This protective mechanism can then get brought into the next relationship, whether you realize it or not." According to Christina, people who have a long history of heartbreak tend to get faster at pulling back, shutting down, and intellectualizing what's happening so they don't have to sit in it. Although they still have the capacity for love, what changes is their willingness to be vulnerable. "That can come back," says Christina. "Unfortunately, it doesn't return on its own just because someone good shows up." After even just one heartbreak, many men and women are hesitant to re-enter the dating world. After multiple heartbreaks though, people don't just become hesitant; many become excessively picky. However, this pickiness is usually self-protection. "After several painful endings, the brain starts scanning for threat. A person may interpret minor flaws as red flags, overanalyze texts, avoid vulnerability, or leave before they can be left," says Dr. Anna Elton , Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and author of The Formula of Desire . Although pickiness gets a bad rap, sometimes it's just wisdom and knowing your worth. It's important to pay attention to your preferences so you don't force something. Painful endings do provide opportunities to learn and spot "red flags" before getting attached. However, sometimes it can be fear pretending to be discernment. "If you're ruling people out for things you can't quite articulate, or you're disqualifying someone in the first few dates over very small things (trying to find an ick), that's usually unprocessed grief from the last relationship doing the rejecting," says Christina. How To Avoid Unnecessary Heartbreaks There is no surefire way to avoid being heartbroken. Everything in love is a risk because you're not just dealing with your own feelings or your own flaws. Whether or not a relationship works out is a shared responsibility; one that your partner may not uphold, no matter how hard you personally work at it. The only thing anyone can do is take responsibility for their own actions and do the work they personally need to do to avoid unnecessary heartbreaks. This includes looking at your dating history and seeing if there are any patterns showing up. Do you keep dating the same type of guy and experiencing the same ending? Are there red flags you keep ignoring because you're holding onto the hope that the guy in front of you is the one, even though there are clear signs he isn't? Dr. Anna Elton recommends slowing the pace when you begin to date someone new. "One way to reduce repeated heartbreak is to slow the pace of emotional attachment before the relationship has demonstrated stability," says Elton. "Many people bond quickly through chemistry and emotional intensity, but overlook whether the other person is actually capable of consistency and long-term reciprocity. Intensity can feel intoxicating, but consistency is what creates emotional security." British author and journalist Louise Perry also recommends waiting to be intimate. It's common in modern dating to sleep with the guy you're dating before becoming committed, but this isn't necessarily what's best for the relationship. Men can have sex with a woman without getting attached, but most women become emotionally attached to a guy after having sex with him, and there isn't really a way to avoid it. Like most things, the reason for this is simple: biology. Women release oxytocin when having sex with a man and become attached. Men, on the other hand, can emotionally disconnect from sex. Perry argues that it's in a woman's best interests to wait before having sex with a man for a variety of reasons. Firstly, if a man is genuinely interested in being in a relationship with you, he'll be willing to wait. Secondly, it's difficult to discern whether or not a man is right for you once you've become biologically attached through intimacy. Take your time getting to know someone before fully committing and being intimate, and you may find greater success in your dating life. Perhaps the real danger of repeated heartbreaks is not the physical pain we have to endure, but the fact that love begins to become associated with loss instead of safety. The more often a person is broken by the people they trusted the most, the more difficult it becomes to fully embrace and surrender to the right love. For most of human history, women didn't go through four or five major heartbreaks before walking down the aisle. They had one love, or maybe two. Now we're asking women to weather a decade of serial relationships, each one teaching the nervous system to expect loss, and then arrive at thirty ready to bond for life with the next guy. That's a lot to ask of a person. Going through heartbreak can make anyone afraid to be vulnerable again, but most people keep trying anyway, refusing to let the pain convince them that love isn't worth the risk. After everything she's been through, Taylor Swift is engaged to a man who adores her, and if she can keep her heart open after writing a decade of albums about getting it broken, the rest of us can too.]]></content:encoded>
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      <pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Relationships</category>
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      <title><![CDATA[Alex Cooper Isn't Actually A Hypocrite]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/alex-cooper-isnt-actually-a-hypocrite</link>
      <dc:creator>Gina Florio</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[Alex Cooper announced her pregnancy this week, and the internet promptly lost its mind. ]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[The critics piled on within hours and the accusations of hypocrisy were immediate. People wondered how she could possibly live with herself ; after all, she constantly praises hookup culture and casual sex on her podcast, and yet here she is, happily married with a baby on the way. To believe that Alex is a hypocrite is to misunderstand the ways of modern feminism, though. It may seem like she's talking about a lifestyle on Call Her Daddy that she doesn't actually believe in, let alone walk herself, but that's not quite what's happening here. Alex Cooper is actually living out the perfect feminist dream. The only problem is, that dream is not nearly as attainable for everyday women as they would like to believe. Alex Cooper's Path to Marriage Alex has built a public brand around candid conversations about dating, relationships, and modern romance, but much of her own love life remained intentionally private for years. Before becoming engaged and eventually marrying film producer Matt Kaplan, Cooper often discussed past relationships anonymously on her wildly successful podcast, Call Her Daddy, using nicknames rather than revealing identities. In the meantime, she would also talk about graphic sex experiences with her guests and even encourage her listeners to sleep around as much as they choose. One viral clip in particular features Alex instructing her audience to find a summer fling—a man who is unemployed, has friends that you don't even like, and has no intention of taking you on a dinner date. She gleefully recommended having wild sex with a guy you don't even particularly like, because summer is all about zero commitments and no worry about the future. She has also ridiculed men who express any kind of negative reaction to a woman with a long, chaotic history of dating and sleeping around, claiming that it's fun and normal for women to have a high body count. And she's repeatedly doubled down on the idea that these women should have absolutely no shame for being promiscuous. Early in the rise of Call Her Daddy, fans frequently speculated about the real identities behind Alex's stories involving athletes, ex-boyfriends, and complicated situationships she referenced on the show. During the podcast's explosive growth between 2018 and 2020, Alex often portrayed herself as single and navigating modern dating culture while balancing sudden fame and business success. One of her most discussed rumored relationships involved former professional baseball player Noah Syndergaard, though Alex never fully centered the relationship publicly. She also alluded to other relationships with athletes and entertainment figures during various podcast episodes, helping fuel internet speculation around her dating history. However, Cooper's approach to privacy shifted significantly when she began dating Matt. The couple reportedly met through mutual connections in the entertainment industry around 2020. Unlike her previous highly publicized dating stories, Cooper kept the relationship largely out of the spotlight in its early stages. On her podcast she referred to Matt only by the nickname "Mr. Sexy Zoom Man," a reference to how their relationship began during the COVID-19 pandemic through virtual meetings and long-distance communication. As their relationship became more serious, Cooper gradually opened up about the stability and emotional maturity she found with Matt. She frequently contrasted the relationship with some of her earlier dating experiences, describing it as healthier, calmer, and more grounded. In 2023, Cooper announced her engagement to Matt, sharing details about the proposal and describing the relationship as deeply supportive both personally and professionally. The couple later married in an intimate ceremony. Now, they're expecting their first child together. This Is the Modern Feminism Blueprint Modern feminism does not have objective standards or rules to follow because the entire ideology is built upon the premise that women should never have to follow any standards or rules. If you want to sleep around in your 20s and 30s, do it. If you want to sleep around in your 20s and then get married in your 30s, do it—but only if it's on your own terms. If you want to never have kids, don't have them. If you want to freeze your eggs so you can have kids in your late 30s, do it—but only if it's on your own terms. It's not that modern feminists think women should never get married or have kids, it's that they believe there should be no protocols that women feel pressured to follow, and that there should be no consequences for their choices and actions, especially the choices and actions of their younger years. That's why women are encouraged to sleep around when they're young and hot. Date around, have casual sex, sleep with the loser who has no prospects but smells good, get dumped, dump men, have summer flings, get as many abortions as you want. Never believe the lie that there are rules to follow, because you are the arbiter of your future and you should never accept a friend or a boyfriend who would judge you for your past. The entire ideology is built upon the premise that women should never have to follow any standards or rules. However, if there comes a time that you do desire marriage and motherhood, there's nothing wrong with that. You can retire your hoe phase, consequence free, and start to look for your perfect forever man. And this high-value man of your dreams (rich, tall, handsome, sexy) will not and should not care what your past looks like. But there are a few flaws with this plan. Everyday women who consume Call Her Daddy simply aren't on the same playing field as someone like Alex Cooper. This modern feminist blueprint sounds utopian (because in many ways, it is), and in reality it only works for exceptionally successful, gorgeous, alluring women with influence. Think models, actresses, wealthy entrepreneurs and heiresses. Of course there are exceptions, but we're talking about the rule. This blueprint doesn't quite translate for the average woman working a boring 9-5 job. By the time she's well into her 30s and has gotten sick of the casual dating scene, she doesn't have the same allure and magnetism as a famous rich blonde who regularly rubs shoulders with elite celebrities. The men that she wants to try and settle down with—the "high value" men—are much more likely to settle down with or marry a woman much younger, much less seasoned, and much more fertile. This sounds harsh, but unfortunately it's the general way of the dating world, and it's one of the (albeit not the only) reasons that we are seeing such a high rate of women in their mid to late 30s who are dating for marriage but having trouble finding a husband. The dating pool has shrunk significantly, leaving them with far fewer options (unless they adjust their standards). Put simply, women like Alex Cooper can proudly carry around a "hoe phase" with far fewer consequences because the men in her dating pool are more likely to overlook it or not care about it because of the influence and status she brings to the table. This is not an endorsement for extraordinarily beautiful women to have endless casual sex, but rather a mere acknowledgement of the ways of the dating world. It's not fair. But that's how the cards usually fall. This modern feminist blueprint sounds utopian (because in many ways, it is), and in reality it only works for exceptionally successful, gorgeous, alluring women with influence. The lack of objective standards in the world of modern feminism is the primary reason that this ideology turns out to be such a massive failure for so many women. We want to believe that rules and standards are limiting, but the truth is, there is freedom to be found from functioning within an objective type of morality. We should be teaching young women that it's good to preserve their sexuality. It's moral to respect your body. It's worthy to only give yourself to a man who is fully committed to you. And even if you don't see anything morally wrong with the hookup culture that Alex praises on her show, women would be wise to understand the real world, and that you have a much greater chance at locking down a high-value man when you're a bit more austere, particularly in your younger years. This is by no means supposed to make women with a regrettable past feel like they are doomed in the future; it's meant to flip the cultural script and offer a new narrative for the younger generation of women. Just because the celebrities sleep around with no consequences doesn't mean that others should follow suit.]]></content:encoded>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/alex-cooper-isnt-actually-a-hypocrite</guid>
      <pubDate>Thu, 21 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Culture</category>
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      <title><![CDATA[The World Cup Starts Next Month. Here's Everything You Need To Know.]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-world-cup</link>
      <dc:creator> Johanna Duncan</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[Every four years, the world comes together in an incomparable way.]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[The traffic in cities pauses and entire countries hold their breath at the same time. And suddenly, a sport that in America is just another little league alternative becomes the center of the world. That’s the effect of the FIFA World Cup. It's a global phenomenon, and with North America hosting it this summer, it’s about to feel a lot closer to home. So if you’ve ever felt like soccer (or football, as the rest of the world calls it) just wasn’t your thing , consider this your invitation. Because once you understand it and see its magic, you can’t really unsee it. To quote Bill Shankly , "Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I can assure them it’s much more serious than that." Why the World Cup Is Unlike Anything Else Most of the time, the best soccer players in the world are scattered across elite club teams. There’s Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Manchester City, and Real Madrid, just to name a few. All composed of the most expensive players and they compete year round to defend their club’s titles. That’s the usual business of soccer, but the World Cup changes everything. For one month, soccer suddenly operates like the Olympics. Players leave behind their clubs and the loyalties that come with it and return to their home countries to represent something far more personal: their culture and their national pride. This is what makes the World Cup different. It’s about more than just athleticism and skills. It’s about unity and belonging. A Brief History The first World Cup was held in 1930, and since then it has grown into the most watched sporting event on the planet. Back then, it only included 13 teams: 7 South Americans, 2 North Americans, and 4 Europeans. Later, countries started to compete to qualify and the best 32 countries competed at the World Cup. This year, for the first time, it will expand to include 48 countries. This expansion has sparked debate. On one hand, it allows more countries, especially smaller or developing soccer nations, to participate on the global stage. On the other hand, critics argue it could dilute the level of competition. That means, imagine a country like Curaçao (which has approximately 160,000 people) sending their best players to compete against Germany (approx. 84 million people). Their sample of best players comes from a much smaller pool, and therefore might not be as competitive. Nonetheless, this argument has been proven somewhat weak in terms of the World Cup, as countries like Croatia which has about the same population as the city of Houston has dominated the field and proven to be amongst the best national teams in the world, winning silver and bronze medals in 2018 and 2022, respectively. What cases like Croatia have proven is that a country’s population is sometimes irrelevant and what matters instead is the country’s soccer culture; which is reflected in the quality of their soccer schools, the funding they receive (public and private), and the overall support they get. I would even say, this creates the aura and that’s a crucial and powerful tool to win. Countries know this, which is why some create their own hype songs that sound more like war cries, rallying soldiers ready to give everything for their country and the people they represent. Here are France's and Portugal’s official songs in case you’d like to hear for yourself. In many ways, this situation actually makes things more exciting for everyone and opens the doors to countries that have never before participated. So could a country like Curaçao beat Germany? We’ll find out on June 14th when these two countries face each other in Houston. Ultimately, this change from 32 to 48 participant countries means more teams, more stories, more underdogs, and more unexpected moments for the 2026 World Cup. The Beauty of the Game Unlike many elite sports pipelines, soccer is extremely accessible. You often only need a ball, a little space, and a few teammates, but sometimes not even that. As a consequence of this, socio-economic backgrounds are less likely to be a barrier of entry and players from every corner of the world are welcomed. Some of the biggest stars in the world came from almost nothing. Take Luis Díaz , for example. When he first joined a professional team, coaches were concerned not about his talent, but his weight. He had grown up in poverty and was undernourished, unfamiliar with consistent meals. It wasn’t until he was drafted near his hometown in Colombia that he started eating three meals per day. Today, he plays at the highest level and earns millions, a transformation that feels almost impossible until you realize how common stories like his are in this sport. Or Sadio Mané , who left home at 15 to chase his soccer dreams, which seemed unrealistic at best. He went on to become one of the greatest players of his generation, and then used his success to give back, building schools and hospitals in Senegal and supporting families in his hometown. Mané went viral in 2020 when he was making 100k per week and photos revealed that he had a cracked iPhone. When asked why he didn’t replace it he said: "Why would I want ten Ferraris, twenty diamond watches and two jet planes? What would that do for the world?" And we can’t talk about the World Cup without mentioning Cristiano Ronaldo . The son of a maid and a somewhat absent father who struggled with alcoholism. In an interview, Cristiano mentioned to Piers Morgan that he used to go to McDonald’s during closing hours to beg for food and an employee would feed him. Cristiano recently broke the record of the wealthiest sportsman and the first ever billionaire soccer player. Then there’s the Croat Luka Modrić , who spent his childhood as a refugee of the Balkan War. Soccer became an escape from the air raid sirens, the fear of landmines, the sound of bullets, and the grief of having family members murdered. Even after proving his talent, he struggled to join a professional team due to the fact that he is considered somewhat short and skinny, but Luka says that the mental resilience he developed as a kid in a war zone gave him the strength to persist. Now, he is undoubtedly one of the best players of his generation. Largely due to these backgrounds, it is a common thing to hear soccer players say that their ultimate dream is to buy homes for their mothers. And for many of us, the joy of the World Cup is to witness the dreams of these little kids come true. Here is a phone call between Argentinian soccer legend Diego Maradona and his mother after he won the 1986 World Cup: But enough about the players for now, here's what you need to know to understand the game. How the Tournament Actually Works If you’ve ever tried to watch the World Cup and felt completely lost, you’re not alone. The structure can feel confusing at first, but once you understand it, it becomes part of the fun. Here’s the simple version: Group Stage: Teams are divided into groups and play round-robin matches (everyone in the group plays each other). Points System: Win = 3 points Draw = 1 point Loss = 0 points The top teams from each group advance. From there, it becomes a knockout tournament. You either win or go home. A match lasts 90 minutes, with a halftime and one water break in each 45 minute section of the game, plus added time at the end to make up for time lost due to pauses. If it’s a knockout game and ends in a draw, it goes to extra time, but if time runs out and there’s no winner, penalties come in. This is one of the most nerve-wracking experiences in sports. The sense of thrill drives everything in the World Cup. Once the ball is rolling it only stops due to a goal, a foul, or if they run out of time. This makes the eyes of the viewer follow the ball as if hypnotized while hoping for a goal. But it’s never that simple. Players are humans and are experiencing an incredible emotional load and if they allow the nerves, the frustration, or the excitement to get to them they can ruin the game. Sometimes the game gets dirty and players intentionally offend other players in order to get to their head and weaken them. That’s when yellow and red cards come in and they appear in almost every game. Yellow cards are a warning and red cards mean expulsion from the game. This is not only a punishment for the player, but also for their team who must continue the game outnumbered as the expelled player cannot be replaced. Two yellow cards equal a red card. Famously, during the 2006 World Cup Final Zidane (France’s top scorer and undisputed best player of that particular tournament) got a red card for head-butting an Italian player and didn’t get to finish the last game in his career. Many cried watching Zidane walk out the field for the last time with a red card and it’s said that this is the reason Italy won the World Cup in 2006. Some blame Zidane for letting his emotions get to him. Others sympathize with him as it became clear that the Italian player was verbally provoking him by insulting his sister. Either way, the moment is now commemorated with a bronze statue in Paris . The Ronaldo vs. Messi Era And Its Final Chapter Even if you don’t follow soccer, you’ve probably heard the names: Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi. For nearly two decades, they’ve defined the sport and inspired a whole new generation. They have different styles, different personalities, but the same relentless pursuit of greatness. Fans have debated them endlessly: Who is better? Who is more capable? Who is the greatest of all time? Discussing this is like discussing what came first, the chicken or the egg. It’s partially pointless but certainly interesting. The impact and influence of these two players is so big that many of the players they’ll face in the World Cup are players who grew up watching them. Famously, France’s striker Kylian Mbappé had so many posters of Cristiano in his room that it looked more like wallpaper than posters. Mbappé’s mother even shared that her son used to refer to himself as Portuguese instead of French due to wanting to be everything Cristiano is. Mbappé is still one of Cristiano’s biggest fans even though he led France to a World Cup victory in 2018, an accomplishment Cristiano is still chasing. And then there’s Spain’s young and upcoming star Lamine Yamal who won a contest as a baby and had some photos taken of Messi bathing him. There’s a running joke now that he received Messi’s baptism into soccer and that’s what made him so gifted. Did it ever cross Messi’s mind that he would one day play in the same field as this baby? Well, they’ll face each other at the 2026 World Cup. Argentina (Messi’s team) won the last World Cup, and that’s the only trophy missing in Cristiano’s large collection. Cristiano has stated that he plans to win the World Cup and retire happily ever after. So, will he? Or will Messi defend his title? We’ll have to watch and see, maybe neither will get to touch the trophy. Anything could happen. But regardless of who wins, we are witnessing their final appearances on this stage. That matters not just because of who they are, but because of what they represent. An era is ending and whether you’re a longtime fan or a newcomer, there’s something meaningful about watching greatness in its final chapter. This World Cup marks the end of many successful careers. In addition to Messi and Ronaldo, we are also saying goodbye to Croatia’s Modrić, Colombia’s James, Mexico’s Ochoa, France's N'Golo Kante, and Egypt's Mohammed Salah, among a few others. Rising Stars and New Faces While legends say goodbye, the World Cup is also where new stars are born. This year, there’s particular excitement around a new generation including teenagers stepping onto the world stage, some as young as 16. There’s rumors that England’s 16-year-old Max Dowman will join the national team as he recently made headlines for becoming the youngest goalscorer in Premier League history . Could you imagine showing up to school on Monday after breaking this record? And then there’s Bosnia’s 18-year-old Kerim Alajbegović , who, despite his youth, seems to have the full trust of his older teammates. He was designated for the penalty shootout and helped Bosnia, against all odds, eliminate Wales and Italy in the race to the 2026 World Cup. Could they be the next Cristiano and Messi? Only time will tell. Underdogs, Miracles, and Who Will Win? If you want one example of why people love this tournament, look no further than the 2022 FIFA World Cup. That year, Morocco entered as an underdog and few expected them to go far. Yet they went on to become the first African and Arab nation to reach the semi-finals. A historic run that united not just a country, but an entire region. Even though Wales did not qualify to this year's World Cup, their story needs to be told. They’ve only qualified twice, first in 1958 and then 2022. You can only imagine the thrill, emotion, and responsibility those players felt. This moment was beautifully commemorated with a TV commercial featuring Cliff Jones , the last surviving player from the 1958 squad and who in his nineties still works as an ambassador for the Welsh team and attends most games. The thing about the World Cup is that anything can happen. We can root for our country, the experts can run their numbers, but none of it guarantees a thing. The laws of physics themselves get put to the test. Scientists have studied how Cristiano Ronaldo seems to hang in the air long enough to score with his head. They've analyzed how Brazil's Roberto Carlos curved a free kick around the defensive wall and into the goal, a strike that seemed to defy physics. The math doesn't add up, so some think God must've heard the fans' prayers, or that these soccer icons are superhumans. In physics, this kind of seemingly impossible feat is explained by the Magnus Effect , and I can't wait to watch these players bend the rules of nature in front of our eyes again. Currently France, Portugal, Argentina, and Spain are considered the most likely to win. Portugal is largely fueled by Cristiano’s leadership and his hunger to close his career with a World Cup trophy. It’s a now or never situation. And the Portuguese team already said they are dedicating the tournament to their teammates Diogo Jota and his brother André Silva who died in a car accident last year. And Spain won the 2024 European Cup, which has led many to believe that this continues to be the leading European team . Why It All Matters You don’t have to grow up with soccer to feel the pull of the World Cup. Because at its core, it’s not really just about the sport. It’s about hope, opportunity, sportsmanship, and patriotism. All at its best. And the rare, beautiful, and fleeting experience of the world paying attention to the same thing at the same time. More specifically, an estimated 5 billion people engaged in the 2022 World Cup and 1.5 billion watched the final match. Players are aware of this. That’s why at the 2014 World Cup, the Colombian national team agreed to line up and dance traditional Colombian dances to celebrate every time they scored. They did this because in those brief moments they had the eyes of the world on them and they used the opportunity to showcase their culture and invite others to join in celebration. And while the World Cup is all about competition, soccer can bring out the best of humans. Like the time a whole stadium in Liverpool, England sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” to Cristiano Ronaldo who had just lost a son at birth. Singing this hymn is something often reserved for the Liverpool players and fans as a sign of union and empathy amongst the club, but Ronaldo was playing for Manchester United, the rival team. Nonetheless, the stadium erupted in unison in the 7th minute of the game. 7 is Cristiano’s jersey number and the reason he is often called CR7. Or the time when both sides of the field cheered and consoled Brent Stevens , a young Belgian goalkeeper who debuted in the field only days after his dad passed away. Or the time Neymar, Brazil’s top striker at the time, visited children with cancer at a Brazilian hospital and one of the kids showed him a particular dance he would like him to do after scoring. Neymar scored the goal and the Brazilian team joined in celebration. The World Cup is all about moments like this. How to Watch it If you've ever felt like soccer wasn't for you, this is the moment to reconsider. Hopefully by now you have a better grasp of the rules and overall logistics. But even if you don't, I'm telling you to take the leap and let the game pull you in. I think it's best watched in good company. Some countries even host public viewings and open-air screenings so fans can cheer on their teams together, so if that's available to you, take the opportunity! House parties are ideal too. If you're attending or hosting one, just remember the golden rule: keep the chatter brief while the ball is rolling, and crank the volume way up when someone scores. On average, you can expect anywhere from zero to three goals over the course of a ninety-minute game, and every single one is the result of extreme speed, skill, and sometimes a little bit of luck. Some of us think the best of these goals belong in a museum. Personally, I'd hang this beauty from England's Harry Kane: If you'd like to learn more, I highly recommend the Captains of the World documentary on Netflix. It offers a behind-the-scenes look at how the captains of the teams competing in the 2022 World Cup prepared themselves and their squads. Other than that, just throw on your jersey (or at least your team colors), get ready to feel the energy, and be part of something the whole world shares. Because when billions of people tune in and the first whistle blows, you won't just be watching history. You'll be living it.]]></content:encoded>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-world-cup</guid>
      <pubDate>Wed, 20 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Culture</category>
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      <title><![CDATA["Off Campus" Was Just Renewed For Season 2. Here’s What To Know About Ella Bright And Belmont Cameli. ]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/off-campus-hockey-romance-ella-bright-belmont-cameli</link>
      <dc:creator>Meredith Evans</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[Just days after premiering on May 13, "Off Campus" was renewed for Season 2, turning the adaptation of Elle Kennedy’s bestselling hockey romance books into one of the internet’s latest binge-watch obsessions.]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[The series follows Briar University students Hannah Wells and Garrett Graham, whose fake dating arrangement slowly turns into something much more complicated. So if you love a slow burn, this show is for you. And if the premise sounds familiar, that’s because the original Off Campus novels have had a loyal fanbase for more than a decade, especially among BookTok readers who helped revive the college sports romance genre online. At the center of the show are newcomers Ella Bright and Belmont Cameli, the actors bringing Hannah and Garrett to life onscreen. Between viral fan edits, press tour clips, and nonstop comparisons to other hockey romance adaptations, both stars have quickly become breakout names. Here’s what to know about the pair leading Prime Video’s newest romance hit. Who Is Ella Bright? Ella Bright grew up in North London after being born in New York , and longtime British TV viewers may already recognize her from the BBC series Malory Towers , where she played Darrell Rivers for five seasons. She also portrayed a young Kate Middleton in Season 6 of The Crown and appeared in Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on London’s West End stage as Lily Luna Potter. In Off Campus , Bright plays Hannah Wells, a music student and aspiring songwriter who agrees to tutor Briar University hockey captain Garrett Graham in exchange for a fake relationship designed to make her crush jealous. The arrangement eventually turns into a real romance, though the series also follows Hannah navigating trauma from a past sexual assault and the emotional fallout surrounding Garrett’s difficult family life. During an interview with TODAY.com, Bright said she immediately connected with Hannah’s personality. “I loved Hannah’s quirkiness and bubbliness and her confidence in who she is as a person,” she said. “I feel like I see myself in that a lot.” Bright also admitted the scale of the fandom only truly hit during the show’s international press tour. “We’ve met so many people who have read the books or are fans,” she said. “It’s been really crazy.” Who Is Belmont Cameli? Belmont Cameli plays Garrett Graham, Briar University’s star hockey captain, whose polished image starts to crack once Hannah enters his life. Cameli previously appeared in projects like Saved by the Bell and the thriller film Along for the Ride , but Off Campus is shaping up to be his biggest role yet. In the series, Garrett struggles under pressure from his abusive father while trying to maintain his future NHL prospects, friendships, and growing feelings for Hannah. Much of Season 1 revolves around Garrett learning how to let people in emotionally, something Cameli said drew him to the role. “I thought Garrett’s story had a lot of meat on the bone and had some really important elements to tell as storytellers,” he told TODAY.com. Cameli also spoke about how surreal the fan response has been since the show premiered. “This is crazy,” he said. “We’re going back to Vancouver in a couple days to shoot Season 2.” Off Campus Was Renewed Before Season 1 Even Premiered Prime Video renewed Off Campus for Season 2 before audiences even saw the first episode. The streaming platform clearly had confidence in the adaptation from the beginning. According to show creator Louisa Levy, all eight scripts for the second season are already written, and production is expected to begin almost immediately following the Season 1 press tour. The series appears to be following a format similar to Bridgerton , where each season focuses on a different central couple from Kennedy’s books. While Season 1 adapted The Deal and focused on Hannah and Garrett, fans expect Season 2 to shift toward Garrett’s best friend John Logan and his romance with Grace Ivers. India Fowler has already been cast as Grace, though Bright and Cameli are both expected to return. One notable change from the books has already sparked conversation online. The Season 1 finale introduced Hunter Davenport, a character who originally doesn’t appear until Kennedy’s later Briar U spinoff novels. Even the cast admitted they were caught off guard by the reveal while filming. “We’re supposed to be incredulous as it’s happening,” Cameli explained. “We’re not supposed to know what’s happening.” Why Fans Are So Invested In Off Campus Part of the appeal comes from timing. Hockey romance adaptations are suddenly everywhere, with viewers comparing Off Campus to other recent sports romance hits like Heated Rivalry. Cameli acknowledged the overlap while speaking to TODAY.com, saying, “All hockey press is good hockey press, in my opinion.” The show also taps into a formula romance readers have loved for years: fake dating, emotionally unavailable athletes, found family dynamics, and slow-burn chemistry in a college setting. Kennedy’s original books follow different members of Briar University’s hockey team, with later stories exploring marriages, careers, and even the next generation of characters. For now, though, most viewers are still recovering from Hannah and Garrett’s emotional Season 1 finale and waiting to see how much bigger the Off Campus universe is about to get.]]></content:encoded>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/off-campus-hockey-romance-ella-bright-belmont-cameli</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2026 05:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Culture</category>
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      <title><![CDATA['Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage' Is The Most Misunderstood Bestseller Of The Year]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/strangers-a-memoir-of-marriage-is-the-most-misunderstood-bestseller-of-the-year</link>
      <dc:creator>  Liana Graham</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[Belle Burden was married for nearly 21 years when her husband asked for a divorce. ]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[He broke the news during a lockdown stay at their Martha’s Vineyard property. In Burden’s account, her husband seemed to change overnight. “A switch had flipped,” she writes. He didn’t want any part of their life together and told her she could have everything, even custody of the children. This is the basis of her new book, Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage. It debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and remained there for weeks. Hollywood took notice. A Netflix adaptation starring Gwyneth Paltrow is now underway . Strangers has been widely promoted on social media as essential reading for women. One viral TikTok video bemoaned that women are “unbelievably naïve when it comes to marriage.” She pointed to Strangers as proof. The book “really shows you what men are.” The caption hovering above her head throughout the video betrayed her conclusion: don’t get married. Readers have interpreted Strangers as an indictment of marriage, men, and even traditional gender roles. They are wrong. Burden’s memoir indeed captures a cultural malaise that has made women skeptical of relationships. But this angst is not a product of marriage or men in general. It is a product of an increasingly individualistic society that has undermined love. Men and traditional gender roles are not the primary villain of Burden’s book; divorce culture is. Readers have interpreted Strangers as an indictment of marriage, men, and even traditional gender roles. Burden’s roots are deeply American. Her lineage includes ties to the Vanderbilt dynasty, socialite Babe Paley, and Chief Justice John Jay. There was every reason to believe that Burden would follow them: she studied law at Harvard, worked at a prestigious Manhattan law firm, married a fellow lawyer, and had children. Her life was a picture of conjugal bliss. Until it all came crashing down. One day her husband was eating dinner with the family, just as in love with her as he had always been. The next, Burden discovered he was having an affair. He told her it meant nothing, that it was a mistake. But his remorse was short-lived. The next day, he told her he was leaving her. Burden details the isolating, maddening experience of trying to figure out what had gone wrong. Her husband refused to elaborate on his reasons. He simply didn’t want to be married anymore. She searched the past for anything that might resemble a clue or warning of any kind. She could only find the crushing revelation of how much of her life she had entrusted to him. She held out her heart in vulnerability and watched as the person who promised to forsake all others forsook her instead. Though educated and successful, Burden became what the Washington Post calls an “exceedingly affluent tradwife.” She chose to take care of her children while her husband continued to work. Forsaking career and financial independence to rely on a man turned into a messy financial battle when her husband unilaterally divorced her for apparently no reason. Some see Burden’s story as a cautionary tale for women who would do the same. It is no coincidence that Strangers has become popular at the same time as Yesteryear, a book about a tradwife influencer living in a nightmare of her own making. Both are cautionary tales of traditional life gone wrong. Burden’s horror story, suffused with what The New York Times calls “1950s-housewife elements,” is seemingly designed to make women think twice about depending on a man. Such conclusions mistake the cause for an effect: 1950s housewives were not living in a divorce-on-demand legal system egged on by a culture that celebrates it as a pathway to empowerment. We do. Expressive divorce shifts marriage away from promoting the well-being of the family and toward personal happiness. Burden’s sorrowful tell-all is a rare perspective in today’s media landscape. Popular culture frames divorce as a pathway to liberation and fulfillment for women. Reformation recently launched a divorce-inspired clothing line. Target sells “Dump Him” sweaters. “Divorce parties” are becoming more common . But Strangers shows that the knife cuts both ways: No-fault divorce has given women the ability to unilaterally end their marriages by giving the same power to their husbands. Even as women’s workforce participation has risen, mothers still disproportionately reduce their working hours after having children. The rise of divorce culture “empowered” women at the cost of putting the most vulnerable women—stay-at-home wives—at risk. Strangers gives voice to that perspective. It is a chilling one. According to a Harper’s Bazaar article , Strangers is “making people hate their husbands.” Women walk away from the book feeling shaken and angry. The overwhelming public response echoes what Burden’s therapist affirmed to her as a crucial component of her healing process: what her husband did was wrong. Compare that to the reception of another bestseller: Eat, Pray, Love. The feminist cult classic tells the story of Elizabeth Gilbert, who one day realized she was unhappy in her marriage. She initiated a divorce to her husband’s protest. Despite the pain her desertion caused her husband, women view Gilbert as an icon of female empowerment. Her story even inspired copycats . Members of Burden’s affluent community tried to offer a similarly redemptive reading of her husband’s betrayal. Gilbert left her husband to “find” herself; perhaps Burden’s husband could do the same. “James leaving Belle could be a good thing,” a golf club friend said at a dinner. “My father left my mother for another woman, and she was the love of his life. They were so happy together.” Burden was stunned: “This was a good thing? This was a love story? What about MY love story with James?” When told from the perspective of the spouse left behind, unilateral divorce turns out to be more traumatic than empowering. Tasteless as the comment was, it embodied the assumptions made by a culture that sees divorce as an instrument of self-expression. We now live in an era of what author Barbara Dafoe Whitehead calls “expressive divorce.” Expressive divorce shifts marriage away from promoting the well-being of the family and toward personal happiness. The divorce rates more than doubled since that revolution began. The praise of Elizabeth Gilbert’s divorce created the culture that made Belle Burden’s possible. Expressive divorce is today’s cultural orthodoxy. According to that orthodoxy, judging Burden’s husband is difficult. He failed to communicate his reasons for his divorce. But his failure to justify himself is expressive divorce. Any reason for divorce is a good reason. Any reason easily turns into no reason at all. Strangers shines a spotlight on the unforeseen and often unacknowledged victims of women’s liberation: women. No-fault divorce penalizes stay-at-home wives. Women can still get married and embrace dependency, but it is in a far riskier climate than before. Many laud equality of right and opportunity for men and women to divorce. Hopes for equality of responsibility led many to reject alimony (financial support after divorce). Even Betty Friedan acknowledged that no-fault divorce put housewives in a terrible position. Her dogmas about liberating women led her to accept the cost. Strangers shines a spotlight on the unforeseen and often unacknowledged victims of women’s liberation: women. The moral judgment directed at Burden’s husband is incoherent in a culture that has eradicated the concept of marital duty. Our culture sees marriage as a means of personal fulfillment, one that either spouse can end at will. Vows now adhere as long as the “feelings” last. Burden is haunted by her marital vows throughout the book, returning to them with the sorrow of a widow. Our hearts break reading her story precisely because old wisdom about marriage is deeply embedded in natural reason and tradition. The “liberated” women who read Strangers and weep are haunted by a ghost of a culture whose death they cheered on.]]></content:encoded>
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      <pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Living</category>
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      <title><![CDATA[Why Every Girl In Her 20s Suddenly Wants To Be A Magazine Writer Again]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/why-every-girl-in-her-20s-suddenly-wants-to-be-a-magazine-writer-again</link>
      <dc:creator>Meghan Dillon</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[For a generation of young women, there was nothing more aspirational than to be a magazine writer, and we can’t seem to let that fantasy go.]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Picture this: it's 2007, and you’re 13 years old. You invite some of your best friends over for a sleepover. Your friend tasked with bringing the magazines hits the jackpot with the latest issues of Girls' Life , Seventeen , and Teen Vogue . Over pizza and soda, you flip through them. You’re so amazed by the DIY face mask recipes that you all rush to your kitchen sink to whip up the concoction promised to make you "glow from within." As you let the masks work their magic, you’re stunned to learn from another magazine that Hilary Duff's must-have lip gloss is only $5 at Target (you decide you'll beg your parents to take you all in the morning). You fawn over the beautiful fashion spreads and contemplate which flirting tips will work best on your crush at school on Monday. When it comes time to choose a movie, you can't decide between 13 Going On 30 , How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days , or The Devil Wears Prada . You decide to shuffle the DVDs to pick which to watch first, and try your best not to fall asleep before you roll the credits on all three. In the morning, you giggle with your friends over what it must be like to work at a magazine like that and pinky-promise to move to the same big city one day so you can take it on together. This wasn’t just my experience, but the experience of many women who came of age in the 2000s, the golden age of rom-coms and women’s magazines. These movies helped shape our adolescence, so it’s no wonder that millennials and Gen Z on social media are still obsessed with the rom-com journalist today . On the surface, the nostalgia is based on 2000s aesthetics and print media, but in reality, it’s deeper than that, because what we miss is what the rom-com journalist represented . The good news is that we can not only bring her back but also help create a more fun and beautiful landscape for women's media in the process. How, you ask? Let's get into it. The Romanticization of the Rom-Com Journalist While I've always been more of a Charlotte than a Carrie , my dream of working as a writer in New York City has been a constant throughout my life. The idea of waking up in a swanky apartment, picking out a glamorous outfit from my walk-in closet, and arriving to a high-rise office to work on my latest article (with a Starbucks in hand, obviously) sounded like a fantasy. As it turns out, it was. But more on that later. Examples of these characters include Jenna Rink from 13 Going On 30 , Andie Anderson from How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days , and Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada . While all three movies are different, the two main things they have in common are that they feature women working at glossy magazines and take place in the 2000s, before print media largely became redundant. These women worked on glamorous photo shoots, wrote articles on a wide range of topics, and ultimately produced stunning print issues. Jenna from 13 Going On 30 is a teenager in an adult body (not sorry for the obvious spoiler) who realizes she grew up to be a horrible person, and is determined to fix the mistakes her future self made by leaning into her teenage whimsy. Andie from How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days feels stuck in her career and takes drastic measures to prove she’s a good journalist, yet welcomes love eventually when it unexpectedly comes into her life. Andy from The Devil Wears Prada finds herself in a job a million girls would kill for, but wants more from life and her career. In each of these movies, the audience falls for the protagonist because of how she learns from her mistakes, not in spite of them. That’s what makes them so relatable, especially for women just starting their careers. We spend less than two hours with these women on screen, yet we still adore them two decades later. They’re flawed and fully alive in a way that feels rare today, when studios chase politically correct characters at the expense of relatable ones. These characters are career-driven but still desire love, a combination that feels almost contradictory in today’s algorithm-driven media landscape. They let women project an impossible fantasy onto them: the big-city career and the storybook romance, all at once. They were the perfect balance of aspirational and relatable. Of course, the rom-com journalist is a fantasy. The lifestyle would be impossible today (Carrie Bradshaw was obviously six figures deep in credit card debt), and it probably wasn’t as glamorous in the 2000s either. Real writers weren’t hitting swanky cocktail bars on Tuesdays or attending galas every weekend, which would have been exhausting anyway, and the work was as stressful as anyone else’s. But we love the fantasy precisely because these characters get the best of both worlds without giving up their femininity. What more could a girl possibly want? Legacy women’s media in 2026 is unrecognizable from its heyday. Gone are the silly Gossip Girl quizzes, the celebrity beauty how-tos, and the at-home date-night tips. A push for progressive social politics reshaped the industry in the 2010s, and we’re still feeling the effects today. What Changed Women’s Media? So why did women’s media change so drastically? It started with advertisers. As political correctness and the dark side of the body positivity movement took hold in the 2010s, brands began pushing social agendas, and political ones followed. Soon, any woman to the right of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez felt alienated by these publications. Anyone center-right, moderate, or even center-left was pushed aside as progressive politics eclipsed quality editorial. That meant cutting the beautiful fashion spreads and useful dating advice in favor of photoshoots straining to “push boundaries” and sex tips graphic enough to make Helen Gurley Brown blush. Our favorite rom-com journalists may have represented a kind of girlboss feminism (particularly in The Devil Wears Prada ), but they still wanted romance. As radical, man-hating feminism took hold in these publications, women who actually wanted love got left behind. Film and TV followed suit, churning out “strong female characters” whose whole identity was “I am strong, I am a woman.” A far cry from our rom-com heroines, who got to be flawed, feminine, and relatable. Then came algorithm-based social media, which deepened political and social division. Extreme content earns the clicks, so outlets keep serving it up (nuance? Never heard of her), erasing the fun, beautiful culture of the magazines we grew up on. Is it really any wonder we miss the rom-com journalists of the 2000s? How To Bring It Back The rom-com journalist represents something fun and simple. She offers an escape from the AI slop and engagement-bait eating our culture. Of course we feel nostalgic. Women are exhausted by gender wars and the radical feminists who shame any woman for wanting romance with a man, which is why Evie keeps growing while legacy outlets struggle to keep the lights on. The hunger for the rom-com journalist runs deeper than nostalgia. What women are really reaching for is what she represented: ambition that didn’t preclude romance, and femininity treated as an asset rather than a problem to be solved. The good news is that she’s not gone, she just relocated. The Manhattan high-rise gave way to Substack and independent magazines like this one, where young female writers refuse to pretend they don’t want both a byline and a love life. Readers never stopped wanting her. Advertisers and editors just stopped feeding the appetite, and that gap is what this generation is filling. Every girl who suddenly wants to write for a magazine again is chasing the same thing: permission to want it all. The rom-com journalist isn't dead. She just needs to be reimagined for the 2020s.]]></content:encoded>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/why-every-girl-in-her-20s-suddenly-wants-to-be-a-magazine-writer-again</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Culture</category>
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      <title><![CDATA[The Lazy Dad Cliché Is Dead And The Data Proves It]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/the-lazy-dad-cliche-is-dead-and-the-data-proves-it</link>
      <dc:creator>Lisa Britton</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[“What’s wrong with this picture?” a woman posted on X, alongside a cartoon of a pregnant woman in an apron, baby on her hip, two small children tugging at her skirt, while a man lounged on the couch in the background. ]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[The image went viral, sparking a flood of comments drenched in female victimhood and righteous indignation. But as I stared at it, I wondered: What’s really wrong here is that we’re still pretending it’s 1955. We’re shaming and blaming men as if gender roles remain frozen in black-and-white television tropes, when the data tells a very different story about modern fatherhood. A new report from the American Institute for Boys and Men (AIBM, led by Richard Reeves) confirms what anyone not drowning in ideology can plainly see: fathers are doing more than ever before. Titled “The Gender Convergence Restarts: Led by Dads,” the analysis of time-use data shows that since 2019, the amount of unpaid labor fathers perform has risen dramatically while their paid labor has dropped. For decades, we’ve endured a relentless cultural campaign of blaming and shaming men to “do more” at home. It seems to have worked spectacularly. Yet the public narrative refuses to update. Instead of celebrating this progress, media outlets, academics, and social-media scolds keep hammering the same tired message: dads are lazy, absent, and insufficient. I see articles and memes daily still shaming and blaming men to “step up” while framing women as victims. It’s time to retire the guilt trip. Since 2019, the amount of unpaid labor fathers perform has risen dramatically while their paid labor has dropped. I don’t even need to see a report to believe the uptick in engaged dads is true. I look around today at all the friends my age who are dads, and I see the effort and love they put into parenting. They are hands-on, genuinely doing so much it blows my mind. I recently went into a popular bakery one morning in Connecticut, and there were so many solo dads in there with their children. It caused me to stop in my tracks and think “Wow, things have changed dramatically in our modern era.” But let’s look at the numbers anyway. Among couples, the gender gap in weekly paid work hours narrowed sharply post-2019, falling by 4.3 hours—from 14.7 to 10.4 hours—a 29 percent decline. About three-quarters of that closure came from husbands cutting their paid hours, with wives increasing theirs for the remaining quarter. The pace of this convergence has been historically rapid: 1.68 percentage points per year among couples since 2019, outstripping even the 1.27 percentage points per year during the so-called “quiet revolution” of 1969–1992. The shift is even more striking among parents with children under six. Here, the gender gap in unpaid work (housework plus childcare) shrank by 3.8 hours per week, from 18.6 to 14.8 hours (a 20 percent drop). Nearly all of that change came from fathers stepping up: they added about 3.6 hours of unpaid labor, split roughly evenly between direct childcare and other household tasks. Mothers, by contrast, did modestly less. College-educated fathers led the charge. They slashed their paid work by six hours per week and added more than four hours of housework and childcare. Non-college fathers reduced paid hours slightly but still managed to add 2.7 hours of unpaid labor, largely taken from leisure time and rest. The report notes that standard economic explanations, like sector shifts and remote work, account for only about 44 percent of the difference between paid-work reduction and the unpaid-work difference. The rest appears to reflect deeper changes in priorities and norms around fatherhood. Remote work helped (associated with 1.6 fewer paid hours and 1.9 more unpaid hours for men), but it doesn’t explain the full picture. This is a family-level phenomenon: single men and women saw their paid hours move in parallel with almost no change in the gender gap, while couples showed husbands pulling back and wives stepping forward. These aren’t marginal tweaks. They represent a genuine restart of gender convergence in time use, and it’s being driven by dads. "The cultural tropes about Dads being disinterested are being demolished one study after another.” Richard Reeves tells Evie. “We've seen an astonishing shift in fatherhood in the real lives of American families, one that directly contradicts much of the current cultural gender commentary.” But maybe we should've changed the cultural narrative around the way we view fathers even before this shift began. “Men have sacrificed and crippled themselves physically and emotionally to feed, house, and protect women and children. None of their pain or achievement is registered in feminist rhetoric, which portrays men as oppressive and callous exploiters,” Camille Paglia once said . I couldn’t agree with her more. I have a friend who built a very successful business. During his children’s younger years, he routinely worked 16-hour days and was sometimes home only a few days a month. He shares with me his pain about how much time he missed and the guilt that still lingers now that his kids are entering adulthood. He works far less and is close by today and makes every effort to be present, yet he still beats himself up over lost time. I suspect countless fathers from earlier generations felt the same quiet ache. They weren’t “Mad Men” archetypes who didn’t care; they were men grinding to provide, often at great personal cost, in an era when that was the clearest way to show love. This one-sided narrative devalues motherhood while simultaneously demanding that fathers become interchangeable with mothers. The data now proves that today’s fathers are refusing to accept that trade-off as inevitable, which I believe isn’t only great for children but healthy for the men as well. They’re actively reallocating their time toward home. Yet the shaming continues. We still hear endless lectures about “toxic masculinity” and “unpaid emotional labor,” as if the only acceptable metric of a good father is how many loads of laundry he folds. This one-sided narrative does real damage. It devalues motherhood while simultaneously demanding that fathers become interchangeable with mothers. We’ve spent decades telling women that status, career, and “economic parity” matter more than the so-called “burden” of motherhood . At the same time, we’ve scolded men for not doing enough dishes. The result? A culture that treats parenthood itself as “the problem” or “a burden” rather than the highest calling. It doesn’t celebrate the beauty and significance of parenthood; it treats it as a downgrade in life, no doubt fueling our dropping birth rates. Fathers bring something irreplaceable to the table—something different from what mothers provide. Research consistently shows that involved dads contribute to better emotional regulation, risk-taking, and resilience in children. They model different styles of play, discipline, and problem-solving. A father tossing a toddler in the air or wrestling on the living-room floor with his boys is wiring a child’s brain in ways a mother’s care can’t duplicate. Dads aren’t merely “another pair of hands.” They are co-architects of their children’s development . The AIBM report underscores this by showing that the changes are happening precisely where academics say it matters most: among couples raising young children. These fathers are choosing family over extra hours at the office, even when it means less money or slower career progression. Doesn’t that choice deserve celebration rather than more attacks, memes, and suspicion? We don’t need more finger-wagging at men. We need a total overhaul in how we view fathers. The old narratives that cast them as reluctant participants or paycheck dispensers are wrong. So is the feminist-era assumption that the only measure of fairness is identical hours spent on identical tasks. Families are not corporations pursuing “equity metrics.” They’re organic units where husbands and wives negotiate roles based on their gifts, where they’re at in life, and mutual goals. In our modern economy, some balance is undoubtedly healthy. Dual-income pressures are real. Yet the solution isn’t top-down mandates or public shaming campaigns. It’s trusting families to figure out what works best for them. Some couples will split paid work and domestic duties evenly. Others will have one parent lean more into career while the other leans into home. Both arrangements can be loving and functional when rooted in respect rather than resentment. These fathers are choosing family over extra hours at the office, even when it means less money or slower career progression. The data shows fathers are already moving toward greater involvement. They don’t need the endless cultural browbeating that could lead many men to disengage or break apart marriages because of bitterness and resentment. Perhaps it’s time we stopped treating fathers like defective mothers and started honoring them as the unique, essential partners they are. Let’s retire the cartoon of the lazy dad on the couch. The reality is far different: dads are cooking, cleaning, diapering, coaching, and showing up in ways previous generations and cultures could scarcely imagine. We should also stop devaluing motherhood in the process. The same cultural forces that shamed men for “not doing enough” also convinced women that homemaking was oppressive rather than honorable. Both parents deserve recognition for the invisible, unpaid work that keeps households running and children thriving. Elevating parenthood as the most fulfilling work anyone can do, whether inside or outside the home, would benefit everyone. The AIBM findings offer a hopeful counter-narrative. Gender roles have evolved for our modern-day world. The balancing in time use is real, measurable, and father-led. Instead of another decade of scolding, let’s try gratitude. Let’s celebrate the work men are doing in living rooms and backyards across America, where dads are trading boardroom time for bedtime stories and proving that strength looks like presence as much as provision. Let’s acknowledge that the old blame game was never the answer. Collaboration was. Stronger fathers make stronger families. Stronger families make stronger communities. And stronger communities make a stronger world. It’s time the culture caught up to what fathers have already begun to do.]]></content:encoded>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/the-lazy-dad-cliche-is-dead-and-the-data-proves-it</guid>
      <pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Culture</category>
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      <title><![CDATA[Sex Without Birth Control Is Better, But Not For The Reason You Think]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/sex-without-birth-control-is-better-but-not-for-the-reason-you-think</link>
      <dc:creator>Amy Williams</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[“I’m thinking of becoming Catholic,” is not the sentence I expected to come out of my husband’s mouth, especially when I was only a few weeks postpartum with our second child. ]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Four years after that day, our lives have changed in ways I never expected, but the one I didn't see coming was how much ditching birth control would transform our marriage for the better. My husband and I were both raised Protestant, and while I refused to take hormonal birth control after we got married because of the side effects , we had no qualms about using other methods of contraception. That is, until we decided to become Catholic. When I was only a few weeks postpartum with our second baby, my husband approached me and told me he was thinking about joining RCIA (now called OCIA), which is the spiritual formation process new converts to Catholicism have to go through. Although he had been dropping hints here and there in retrospect, I was completely floored. After a period of prayer and discernment (and peppering him with questions), I decided to join him in RCIA. For us, the decision to convert meant tossing the birth control we no longer felt comfortable using. I knew removing birth control from the equation would make things challenging, but what I didn’t anticipate was how much it would benefit our sex life and our marriage in the years to come. Isn’t the Sex So Much Better? During our journey through RCIA, I stumbled upon an article that listed the strange things that other Catholics ask you when they find out you’ve converted. One of the questions was, “Isn’t the sex so much better?” The author of the article thought that was a pretty weird question. At the time, I thought it was, too. From a purely physical standpoint, I understood why sex would be better. If you’re using barrier methods, it’s obvious why sex would be more pleasurable without birth control. Even with the pill, it’s easy to see how removing the physical and emotional side effects would improve things in the bedroom. What I didn’t realize at the time is that it doesn't even begin to cover the change that happens when you stop using birth control . Missing the Point of Sex Certainly, before tossing out our birth control, I would have agreed that there’s nothing wrong with removing the procreative aspect as long as you plan on being fruitful and multiplying when the time is right. It’s not like you’re sterilizing yourself, removing the procreative aspect permanently. It’s just for a little while. Until you’ve finished school, or your finances are better, or you’re ready to give up the life you’re currently living. Although sex isn’t just for making children, allowing for the possibility is part of participating in the act of becoming one flesh. It wasn’t until recently that I realized how much this affects our view of each other in the bedroom, even if much of it is subconscious. Are We Fully Giving of Ourselves? I paced back and forth in front of the sink while my new husband waited just outside the door. My whole body was shaking. Somehow, I was more nervous in that moment than I was moments before I walked down the aisle. There was nothing but love in his eyes when I walked down the aisle just hours before, and I knew there would be nothing but love when I walked out of the bathroom that night. Still, there was a moment of pause as I realized how significant this moment actually was. Hookup culture may have caused some to be desensitized to the significance of sex, but I think deep down, most know that healthy sex requires a level of trust that surpasses what most people are capable of in a casual context. Within marriage, it requires you to give yourself fully to your spouse, holding nothing back physically, emotionally, or spiritually. After nearly 11 years of marriage, I am convinced that you can’t have good sex without the ability to be fully vulnerable, fully known, and fully seen by your spouse. Although I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, something was missing from our sex life when we were using birth control. As if we were attempting to give ourselves fully to each other, but still holding something back, unwittingly. Not Just an Object of Desire If you paid attention in biology class (or high school health class when they tried to scare you into staying chaste forever), you know that pregnancy is a natural consequence of sex. But even within marriages, the procreation part can be an afterthought. What we often forget is that children aren’t simply a consequence of sex. When sex between spouses is a mutual gift, a child “ springs from the very heart of that mutual giving, as its fruit and fulfillment .” It’s not the only purpose of sex, but it is equally important to the unitive aspect. Intentionally removing the ability to procreate through artificial birth control changes how we view sex and the person we’re having sex with. It diminishes the meaning behind the marital act. Not because sex is only meaningful if we can get pregnant, but because children are the natural fruit of the love between spouses. But What If We Get Pregnant? I imagine some might say that ditching birth control would make their sex life worse (or non-existent) because it would lead to anxiety about getting pregnant. For us, the answer was natural family planning (NFP), which involves tracking fertility signs and abstaining during fertile windows when avoiding pregnancy is necessary. Separating sex from the possibility of parenthood often makes the act solely about our desire and physical pleasure. And while there’s certainly nothing wrong with desiring your spouse, our spouses aren't meant to be viewed as objects or tools for receiving the pleasure we want. Less Birth Control, More Self-Control In times when avoiding pregnancy is necessary, many women use a method of NFP, which requires couples to abstain from sex during fertile periods . By abstaining when pregnancy is most likely, you’re practicing self-control. And considering most women’s sexual desire is highest before ovulation, it really does take a lot of self-control (especially when your husband comes home from the gym looking like a snack). Unlike many of the negative effects of birth control, the use of NFP has been linked to benefits such as improved communication, increased sexual intimacy, and higher marital satisfaction. The use of NFP has been linked to benefits such as improved communication, increased sexual intimacy, and higher marital satisfaction. Sex without birth control is better, because what happens between spouses isn’t just a physical act.  It’s a full giving of yourself, body and soul, with nothing held back. And nothing has been more joyful for our marriage than that.]]></content:encoded>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/sex-without-birth-control-is-better-but-not-for-the-reason-you-think</guid>
      <pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Sex</category>
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      <title><![CDATA[We Need To Stop Talking About Motherhood Like It's A Tragedy]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/we-need-to-stop-talking-about-motherhood-like-its-a-tragedy</link>
      <dc:creator>Carolina Rosario</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[There’s something about being a mom that few people highlight nowadays: It's still the coolest job in the world.]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Motherhood is not an easy task. It's often painful in both physical and emotional ways. We can't describe it as a "perfect" experience, but it is the one that will completely change your perspective on being alive, giving you the best feeling anyone can experience. The absolute joy of watching a baby learn every little thing for the first time fills your heart with a mix of love, pride, and wonder that has no comparison. Creating life is already a miracle, so the excitement of each new word, those wobbly steps with arms in the air for balance, the personality traits that show their sense of humor, fears, dreams, and later, the development of critical thinking and personal opinions become unexpected rewards in this rollercoaster ride. Also, if we’re being brutally honest, our children are probably the only people most of us would really give our lives for without thinking twice. It's such an extraordinary emotion, to love like that. From the moment you start carrying that tiny human inside, the transformation begins. Your thoughts, wishes, and actions are now focused on protecting someone else who will eventually become entirely independent from you. Spending years watching that life grow while it remains connected to you by an invisible bond is fascinating. That’s why I struggle so much with a concept I constantly see reflected on social media: Motherhood is almost exclusively portrayed through the lens of exhaustion. It's all about trauma, burnout, identity loss, sacrifice. Motherhood is almost exclusively portrayed through the lens of exhaustion. Obviously, there are some extreme hardships. Many women are raising children alone, without enough resources, sometimes even feeling abandoned by the government. Nevertheless, we should continue talking about motherhood with admiration. Being able to ignite and nurture a new life matters now more than ever. The rise of AI makes it essential to foster our humanity. I’m not saying any of this because motherhood was easy for me. Quite the opposite, actually. October 6, 2016, is etched in my memory. Hurricane Matthew was heading straight toward Florida. I was a field reporter for a local news station. My massive belly and a relentless craving for McDonald’s french fries were a dangerous combination. While half of Miami was buying water and plywood, I was working through contractions with an infusion of happiness and adrenaline. Totally on brand with my adventurous personality: weather drama, breaking news energy, and imminent childbirth all happening at once. That night, my husband took me to the hospital. I felt so relaxed that we stopped for gas, as if we were heading to Disney World. My favorite playlist kept me singing and dancing in my seat. Somehow, I trusted the process. Then, we arrived at the hospital. We parked. We walked toward the entrance. Suddenly, my heart started racing. It was the most chaotic symphony. The receptionist asked: “What brings you in tonight?” A voice that came from me, but sounded foreign, answered: “I’m here to have my baby…” I fell apart, crying uncontrollably, because now I had to face reality. Not a live shot from a hurricane. Not an adrenaline rush. Just my alter ego asking: What if something goes wrong? What if you can’t do this? Is this going to hurt a lot? A few minutes later, I stopped the mental rant, breathed, and told myself: “Carolina, you are brave. Every person in the world was born from a woman. We are made for this.” I walked in, ready for a poetic experience, convinced that it would be a natural delivery. No epidural. No C-section. My new role became the mission I was born to fulfill. Warrior mode on. Instead, I got my own version of medieval torture. Contractions feel like someone is prying your pelvis open from the inside with no anesthesia. My armor cracked when the doctor looked at me and said: “This is your last chance for an epidural.” I quickly begged: “Give it to me immediately.” The anesthesiologist laughed. According to him, every woman hugged him afterward. He whispered: “My nickname around here is Jesus.” Honestly, I understood why his patients were so grateful. God definitely blessed his hands. I only pushed three times, and Kalel was born. And that’s when I saw the light. Not metaphorically. My body got warm in a peaceful way, and I felt embraced by a mystical shine. I understood what millions of women had gone through, and now I was part of that special tribe. I was a mother. My new role became the mission I was born to fulfill. Happiness is too short a word to encompass the meaning of my elation. Six years later, my daughter Arella was ready to make her triumphant entrance into our lives. Another huge belly. More french fries. Despite my planet-sized stomach, I felt beautiful, even sexy. I arrived at the hospital fully confident, but this time, the story was different. The ER doctor in charge performed such an aggressive examination that it caused a placental abruption. Obstetric violence. We should call it what it is. I ended up needing an emergency C-section. The recovery was brutal. Nurses pressing down on my stomach to make sure no blood remained trapped. I still shiver remembering the pain. And yet, when I heard Arella's first cry, I saw the light all over again. I know I can only speak for myself, but this Mother's Day left me wanting to say something that may go against the trend: Yes, motherhood is exhausting. It can change your body. It impacts your career. Yes, the burden of raising kids still falls unfairly on women far too often. Even though all of that is true, we’re making a mistake when we turn motherhood into just sacrifice and exhaustion. We erase what’s extraordinary about it. Children change your entire life, but more than that, they change your ability to appreciate it. Motherhood demands more than you ever imagined, but it also transforms you in ways you couldn't have predicted. A self-absorbed person learns to think about someone else. Previous disorganization becomes discipline. And above all, we discover a capacity for love that expands, evolves, and grows every day. Maybe that's the real magic mothers have been talking about for centuries. Children change your entire life, but more than that, they change your ability to appreciate it. Now, I enjoy the small things more. Going to the movies feels like a vacation in Capri. Sleeping eight uninterrupted hours is the equivalent of a spiritual retreat. Having one hour alone is the epitome of luxury. Motherhood didn't take away my identity. If anything, it gave me perspective. That's why I believe we need to change the conversation. Not to romanticize exhaustion, ignore inequality, or pretend everything is perfect, but to understand that supporting mothers should not come only from pity. It should stem from the deep recognition that bringing human beings into this world is crucial for future generations. To me, the issue should be seen as a whole, considering motherhood’s challenges and glorious gifts, because the most extraordinary things in life almost always bring both. To really celebrate moms and recognize them as the coolest people in our lives, we need to build systems, policies, and cultures that truly support them as they deserve, and still bring them flowers, chocolate, or that gorgeous purse she won't stop talking about.]]></content:encoded>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/we-need-to-stop-talking-about-motherhood-like-its-a-tragedy</guid>
      <pubDate>Mon, 18 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Relationships</category>
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      <title><![CDATA[I Testified To Protect Women's Spaces And A Senator Called It "Terrorism"]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/i-testified-to-protect-womens-spaces-a-senator-called-it-terrorism</link>
      <dc:creator> Grace Mack</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[Apparently, not wanting men in women’s bathrooms and locker rooms is a form of terrorism in 2026. At least, according to lawmakers such as Sen. Debra Altschiller from New Hampshire.]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[It's no secret that the topic of transgender people and which bathrooms they use is a controversial and sensitive subject. Here in New Hampshire, the issue is not as prevalent as it is in other states, but that doesn't mean that women’s safety is not under threat in the Granite State. First, a bit of context: Currently, there are three bills actively being reviewed at the NH State House that protect women’s sports and private spaces, and state that it is not discriminatory to separate sports, bathrooms, and locker rooms by biological sex: HB 1217, HB 1299, and HB 1447. On Tuesday, April 22, 2026, those three bills came before a Senate hearing for review and public testimony. While I had the opportunity to speak in support of all three bills, there were an alarming number of people who spoke in opposition. A number of arguments were made by those in opposition, including that these bills “are harmful to women” and that they “deny the existence of transgender women.” Additionally, there were multiple statements made that “transgender women” were, in fact, not competing in girls' sports and that there is no proof of them taking titles and stealing medals from girls. Obviously, those claims don’t hold up to scrutiny. But what happens when a member of the committee reveals her true feelings about the bills during a hearing? Almost as soon as I walked into the room to testify, I could see that Sen. Altschiller was not on the side of common sense. Her demeanor toward those testifying in support of the bills was cold and dismissive. She even attempted to cut off a NH state representative who was testifying in support of the bills before her 90-second time slot had expired. During my own testimony, she barely looked at me and asked no follow-up questions, while on the flip side, she was very attentive and even sympathetic toward those speaking against the bills. After one particular testimony from a person opposing the bills, Sen. Altschiller asked a question that drew an audible reaction from those of us supporting the legislation. She said, “Thank you for bringing up the mental health toll that drawing from this particular well takes on transgender people, on transgender people’s families and friends. And would you say that, since we’re going to have 16 bills over the course of this session, and all of — like you said — the preparation and the rhetoric around it and the fear mongering that builds from it, that this is a form of stochastic terrorism?” These three bills are pro-truth, pro-reality, and pro-women’s rights. After multiple hours of keeping my composure while listening to biological men say my safety did not matter to them, I, along with others who had come to the State House to testify in favor of the bills, could not hide my shock and anger. The person testifying could not even answer the senator’s question, and the committee chair had to intervene, stating that the senator was way off base. To be accused of fear-mongering and engaging in a form of terrorism simply for saying I do not want men in women’s bathrooms—by a female senator, no less—was appalling, frightening, and infuriating. These three bills are pro-truth, pro-reality, and pro-women’s rights, which is something that people on the political left claim to strongly support. If Sen. Altschiller is any indicator of how these people truly feel, she has made it abundantly clear that they couldn’t care less about women’s rights. This rhetoric put forward by the left that empowering these men is an act of feminism is blatantly false and dangerous, and it needs to be put to rest immediately. This NH senator that I referenced is sadly just one example of countless individuals, including biological females, who have been indoctrinated into thinking that enabling this behavior is acceptable, and that it makes them a better person for making these individuals feel “included” amongst women. Individuals such as Dylan Mulvaney have pushed this rhetoric online, bringing his viewers along on his journey through “girlhood” and blatantly making a mockery of what it actually means to be female, even purchasing feminine products and storing them in his bag. Others like Mulvaney have since joined in publicly sharing similarly disturbing storylines, and over the past few years the transgender movement has become extremely normalized at the expense of women’s spaces, and in some cases, their health. Sadly, there are cases in which females have been sexually assaulted and even injured by these men who have been allowed into our bathrooms and cleared to compete in contact sports with girls, including Payton McNabb , a volleyball player from Maryland who was left partially paralyzed after being struck in the head by a ball that was spiked by a, you guessed it, male player masquerading as a girl on the opposing team during a match she played in 2022. The governor of NH, Kelly Ayotte, has declined to sign bills to protect girls’ spaces on two previous occasions, stating that the issue is “a complicated one.” As a former athlete, former coach, and user of public bathrooms (like everyone else), it frustrates and worries me that the governor of my home state has continued to allow men into our private spaces. It makes me feel as though the governor, a woman herself, would rather put other women at risk than acknowledge the facts. How many more times do we need to put females at risk before we end up with a Payton McNabb story in NH? This idea that women need to conform to sharing what is rightfully ours with men is robbing us of our privacy and femininity. There was a reason that women were given separate spaces in the first place: to keep men out. It is not our job—women’s jobs, that is—to give up our sports and spaces for the sake of affirming mentally ill men. And this is not me saying that men don’t deserve their own bathrooms and locker rooms, they absolutely do. What both sexes do not deserve are individuals who feel entitled to spaces that they should not be in at the expense of others' privacy. During the Senate hearing for those bills, I also heard multiple individuals state that you can become “transgender” simply if you say you are. The point being, in a scenario such as when a predatory male wants to gain access to a girls' locker room, he can simply state he identifies as a woman and gain free entry. That was frightening to hear, and only convinced me further that these bills needed to be passed and signed into law immediately. As I stated when I gave my verbal testimony at the state house, it is not our job—women’s jobs, that is—to give up our sports and spaces for the sake of affirming mentally ill men who clearly need help. The bills will now, if passed by the Senate, go to Gov. Ayotte’s desk for the third time. Can we count on her to protect girls in the Granite State? Only time will tell.]]></content:encoded>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/i-testified-to-protect-womens-spaces-a-senator-called-it-terrorism</guid>
      <pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Culture</category>
      <enclosure url="https://www.datocms-assets.com/109366/1778176438-pexels-79380313-8887717.jpg" type="image/jpeg" length="952539" />
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      <title><![CDATA[Why The Internet Is So Excited To Watch A Woman In A Prairie Dress Suffer]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/why-the-internet-is-so-excited-to-watch-a-woman-in-a-prairie-dress-suffer</link>
      <dc:creator>Ellie Mont</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[Anne Hathaway is starring in and producing a tradwife horror satire and the internet is absolutely losing its mind. But the conversation no one is having is the one that actually matters. ]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[There is a new film coming, and the internet has already decided what it means before a single frame has even been shot. Amazon MGM Studios won a competitive rights auction for Caro Claire Burke's debut novel, Yesteryear , with Anne Hathaway attached to star and produce through her Somewhere Pictures banner. Emmy-winning screenwriter Hannah Friedman has since been tapped to write the adaptation. Early readers have described the book as an "insane fever dream." The premise: a woman named Natalie builds a massive online following by romanticizing pioneer life, homemaking, motherhood, and traditional marriage. Think linen aprons and sourdough starters and a husband who provides while she tends to hearth and children. Then she wakes up in the 1800s and actually has to live it. No curated performance, no team behind the camera, just the reality of what that life actually looked like, felt like, and cost a person. The internet called it "brilliant" within twenty-four hours. Comment sections filled with popcorn emojis and “I can’t wait” and “she’s going to break records.” Someone even wrote that they hoped it would “end this stupid debate once and for all.” And honestly, that response is where the conversation starts to go sideways. Because what debate are we actually trying to end? The debate about influencer culture being dishonest? Okay fine. The debate about performative domesticity hiding something ugly underneath? Also fair. But if the debate we are trying to end is whether women who want to build homes, raise children, and lean into femininity have made a respectable choice, then we have a much bigger problem than one tradwife influencer. Let’s start with what the book actually seems to be doing, because it's more complicated than the internet wants it to be. Readers who finished it are not exactly triumphant. One woman said she started the book ready to enjoy Natalie’s downfall and instead ended up feeling sorry for her. Another said it left her “staring at the wall.” Others described it as “gut-wrenching,” not because it mocked homemaking, but because it explored postpartum depression, emotional repression, child exploitation for content, and the strange emptiness that comes from turning your life into a brand. That is a worthwhile story. The real target of Yesteryear does not appear to be traditional femininity itself. It seems much closer to what Black Mirror has always examined: what happens when people turn themselves into products and slowly disappear inside the performance. Natalie is not being punished for wanting a warm home. She is being confronted with the distance between the story she sold and the truth of who she actually is. That is horror worth exploring. They crave the easy and the simple: a mindless surrender to the ridicule of the aesthetic. The problem is that many of the people cheering loudest for this movie do not seem interested in that story. They crave the easy and the simple: a mindless surrender to the ridicule of the aesthetic. They want a woman in a prairie dress to suffer so they can feel vindicated about something they already believed. And what many of them already believe is that any woman who moves toward traditional femininity must be either deluded, oppressed, or dangerous. But here's the thing nobody really wants to sit with: The tradwife movement did not appear out of nowhere . Those influencers found audiences because there were already millions of women depleted by modern life. And when they saw a woman baking bread, moving slowly through her mornings, raising children, decorating a home, and seeming genuinely  unhurried, something inside them responded to it. Not because women are naïve, or easily persuaded, or blind to reality, but because what they respond to is often misunderstood, flattened, or reduced into something simpler than it really is, as if their desires can be explained away instead of actually listened to, as if complexity must always be turned into assumption rather than understood as lived experience. For decades, women were told that equality meant working exactly like men , that to be equal, they had to prove they could do everything men could do. But in the process, something got lost. We talk about celebrating differences, yet when it comes to gender, any acknowledgment of those differences gets treated as an attack on women. The reality is that men and women are often drawn to different roles, not because one is lesser, but because we are made differently. Many men feel called to protect and provide. Many women feel called to nurture and care for a home. Of course, both should serve and support one another. But women were taught that working outside the home was the only path to equality, and at the end of the day, that message hurt women, hurt families, and largely benefited a corporate culture eager for more labor . There may not be a simple solution. But part of the answer is letting women know it's okay to be a stay-at-home mother, or to work, without shame either way. What matters is prioritizing family and the health of the family unit, and having honest conversations about both. Staying home is difficult , often invisible, and frequently undervalued. But many women also have to work, not always purely by choice, and that reality deserves to be acknowledged without shame or simplification. Many women also do not have a real choice but to work, and corporate America has benefited enormously from that reality. What gets left unsaid is what that structure costs at home. Families absorb it in stretched time, divided attention, and a kind of constant exhaustion that never fully clocks out. The system gains productivity, but it often does so by pulling against the very foundation it depends on. That being said, real equality is not a woman being pushed into the workforce as proof of her worth, nor is it a woman being shamed for choosing her home. Real equality is freedom without narrative pressure, the ability for a woman to choose her life without being told that only one version counts as liberation , and the other must be justified. That is the conversation we have not been honest enough to have. A woman who chooses to work should be respected. A woman who chooses to stay home should be respected just the same. The moment we attach a woman’s value to either choice, we stop talking about equality and start talking about approval. We keep making the mistake of treating the desire for softness itself as the problem, instead of the commodification of it. What the tradwife aesthetic was selling, underneath the linen dresses and sourdough starters, was permission. Permission to slow down, to nurture, to find meaning in caring for people, to be soft without apologizing for it. And a lot of women responded, because modern culture has become emotionally cold in ways people struggle to articulate. We somehow arrived at a moment where a woman baking bread for her children is viewed with more suspicion than a culture that treats hyper-independence as the highest form of liberation. The problem was never the bread. The problem was the performance. Some of these influencers were still trapped inside a system of constant production and validation, they just repackaged it in beige tones and called it peace. That is what Yesteryear seems interested in exposing: the gap between the aesthetic and the actual soul underneath it. And honestly, that is a legitimate thing to examine. But we keep making the mistake of treating the desire for softness itself as the problem, instead of the commodification of it. Those are not the same thing. There is also something worth noting about how these narratives are shaped more broadly, especially when they come from people with visibility, influence, or access to wealth and resources. The presentation of a “perfect life” almost always depends on things that are not visible in the image itself. It takes money, time, and often an entire support system to make life look effortless. Childcare, assistance, flexibility, and invisible labor that smooths out everything the audience is meant to see as natural or simple. What appears as ease is often highly structured, carefully supported, and heavily curated behind the scenes. And that gap matters, because it changes how certain lifestyles are interpreted. What looks like simplicity is often the result of coordination, privilege, and unseen labor working underneath it. There is always a difference between choosing a lifestyle and being forced into one. And there is also a difference between critiquing influencer culture and mocking ordinary women who genuinely love homemaking, motherhood, and domestic life. Those things are constantly being collapsed into each other online, which means every criticism aimed at performance or influence often ends up spilling over onto women who never positioned themselves as symbols in the first place. And most of those women never signed up to become cultural arguments. What Yesteryear will probably do well, if it is as sharp as its premise suggests, is show how easily people become projections of what others want them to be. Natalie apparently props up her perfect domestic image with money, employees, emotional repression, and performance so complete it becomes indistinguishable from personality. The aesthetic is real. The woman underneath it is disappearing. And when 1855 strips away everything that allowed her to curate the fantasy, what remains is someone who no longer knows herself at all. That is where it becomes unsettling, because the horror is not that she wanted a home and a family, and it is not even the performance itself. The deeper horror is what happens after it leaves her hands, how quickly a woman’s choices stop belonging to her and start belonging to everyone else. They are picked apart, judged, reduced, turned into symbols, turned into arguments, turned into evidence for whatever story people already want to tell, often with very little concern for the actual person at the center of it. A life stops being a life and becomes material for other people’s certainty, whether that certainty shows up as moral superiority, ridicule, or the satisfaction of feeling right. There is a difference between critiquing influencer culture and mocking ordinary women who genuinely love homemaking, motherhood, and domestic life. It is how quickly people feel entitled to turn women into examples instead of seeing them as individuals. How quickly a woman’s life becomes something to analyze rather than something she is simply allowed to live without being dissected, interpreted, and used. What the film should not become, though it almost certainly will in some corners of its reception, is another excuse to tell women that wanting softness, slowness, motherhood, or domestic life is itself regressive. That interpretation flattens what many readers are actually responding to in the book, that it is sadder, more human, and far more complicated than a simple gotcha aimed at feminine women. Strength is in nurturing people. Strength is in motherhood. Strength is in building warmth and keeping it alive year after year without applause or recognition. Strength is in a softness that does not shrink itself or apologize for existing. Strength is in trusting another person enough to build a life together and meaning it through the ordinary, unseen weight of days. None of those things need to be performed, and none of them require a ring light to make them real. For centuries, feminine strength was considered one of the foundational forces holding communities together. Women carried grief and still fed people through it. They buried children and still woke up the next morning to make breakfast. They built homes people survived inside. And somewhere along the way, culture started talking about all of that as though it were embarrassing. The culture replacing it has not exactly made women less exhausted. It has just created a different kind of exhaustion, one that is easier to monetize and more socially acceptable to display as success. And inside that shift, a lot of ordinary women started asking what they actually gained. Not ideologues, not extremists. Just women who genuinely love their husbands, want children, enjoy nurturing people, and are tired of feeling like they have to justify that desire. The most countercultural thing a woman can do right now might simply be knowing what she truly wants and refusing to apologize for it in either direction. What would actually make Yesteryear interesting is if it refuses to let anyone fully off the hook. A story that critiques Natalie’s performance while also forcing the audience to confront their own. Because everyone performs now, the hustle, the curated independence, the carefully constructed effortless life, the branding of personality itself. We all sell versions of ourselves online while the real self pays the cost. That is the real horror underneath the horror. Not that a woman wanted to bake bread in a dress, but that we live in a world where identity itself has become a product, and every single one of us is both the seller and the sold. If Yesteryear understands that, it could be sharp, unsettling, and honest. But if it becomes just another way for one group of women to feel superior to another, then it will do exactly what its protagonist did: turn something real into performance and call it truth. If it becomes just another way for one group of women to feel superior to another, then it will do exactly what its protagonist did: turn something real into performance and call it truth. Because the most unsettling thing in this entire conversation is not a woman who wants a warm home. It is a culture so uncomfortable with femininity that it can only imagine it as a cautionary tale, and that says far more about us than it does about any woman in a prairie dress. We have built a world that monetizes exhaustion and calls it ambition, that rewards performance and calls it authenticity, and that dismantles every traditional source of meaning while acting confused about why people feel empty. And then when women turn back toward the things that once gave life structure and warmth, home, family, softness, presence, we turn it into commentary, critique, or even spectacle. Maybe the real horror is that we forgot what we were building toward in the first place. Not a world where women perform liberation instead of domesticity. Not a world where one cage is replaced with another. But a world where a woman can know what she wants, name it out loud, and not have to justify it to anyone. That world does not require a ring light. It does not require a brand deal or a curated aesthetic. It only requires the one thing modern culture has made hardest to hold onto: permission to be real.]]></content:encoded>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/why-the-internet-is-so-excited-to-watch-a-woman-in-a-prairie-dress-suffer</guid>
      <pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Living</category>
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      <title><![CDATA[The Best Celebrity Cannes Film Festival Looks Of All Time]]></title>
      <link>https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/the-best-celebrity-cannes-film-festival-looks-of-all-time</link>
      <dc:creator>Emily Osment Davis</dc:creator>
      <description><![CDATA[The French Riviera: where celebrities combine red carpet fashion with coastal elegance.]]></description>
      //
      <content:encoded><![CDATA[Known as the "Hollywood of Europe," Cannes, France, has long been a playground for the elite. An indescribably picturesque Mediterranean town where cafes bustle with activity, artists line the Croisette walkway, and open-air markets sell everything from vintage Chanel to lavender perfumes. The moment you set foot in Cannes, you recognize that fashion is not an afterthought but an everyday occurrence. It's in the air you breathe there; even the sea is a stylish shade of cerulean blue. This is why the world’s most prestigious and influential global film festival takes place in Cannes, France every year in May. Since the late 1940s, the festival has been a prime locale for celebrities to get their best close-ups. Whether on the red carpet, partying on yachts, or strolling the promenade, the film festival presents a unique opportunity for them to make their fashion mark . Over the decades, the festival has produced some of the most enduring style moments in history, with each era reflecting not just trends, but new fashionable visions of femininity. Vintage Glamour (1950s-1960s) This is the era that kick-started starlets attending the Cannes Film Festival. The most beautiful women in the world arrived in this tiny town in France. And whether they were walking the red carpet or attending premieres, they were getting noticed. Goddesses of the silver screen, like Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, and more, loved showing off their finest threads. Grace Kelly 1955 Brigitte Bardot 1956 Elizabeth Taylor 1957 Sophia Loren 1959 Bold Glamour (1970s-1980s) This era ushered in a new wave in fashion, one that broke away from the conventional shapes of women’s clothing and into a more personalized, bold expression. The accessories became bigger, the patterns bolder, and the fabric flowed free. Megastars like Diana Ross and royalty like Princess Diana showed that their looks could be cinematic, commanding, and still very feminine. Diana Ross 1973 Jane Birkin 1974 Princess Diana 1987 Minimalism (1990s) In direct contrast to the previous years of overt glam and excess style, the 1990s brought with it a wave of simplicity. Models and stars opted for clean, sleek silhouettes, often sporting neutral palettes, fresh faces, and simple gowns. The 90s ‘slip dress’ became a strong choice for feminine fashion on the red carpet. Supermodels like Claudia Schiffer and Kate Moss expressed 90s minimalism perfectly at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. Claudia Schiffer / Kate Moss 1998 Salma Hayek 1999 The Modern Statement Era (2000s) The 21st century took a direct turn away from simplicity and launched itself toward fashion risk-taking. In this new digital era, every look could be captured, shared and re-shared, visually traveling around the world in one day. This made the stakes of fashion high for virality. Celebrities saw the Cannes Film Festival as a critical moment for getting noticed and donning their most stylish dresses. Each look could be crafted to telegraph something about the wearer. Whether that’s Margot Robbie honoring her movie character (former model Sharon Tate), Angelina Jolie showing the gorgeous elegance of being pregnant with twins, or Naomi Campbell proving she's still the most fashionable woman on a runway—their looks make a statement. Aishwarya Rai 2003 Angelina Jolie 2008 Irina Shayk 2012 Adriana Lima 2017 Thylane Blondeau 2017 Margot Robbie 2019 Madison Beer 2019 Mahgala Jaberi 2022 Rosie Huntington 2023 Au Revoir! From the polished elegance of the 1950s to the bold experimentation of the '70s and '80s to the minimalistic restraint of the '90s and the high-impact spectacle of today, the Cannes Film Festival remains a constant stage for celebrity fashion at its highest. Each decade brings with it a new interpretation of glamour, shaped not just by changing trends, but by evolving ideas of femininity, confidence and cultural influence. And yet, despite these shifts, something about Cannes remains unchanged. There's still that unmistakable feeling that style, in this "European Hollywood," matters a little more. That every appearance is part of something larger than the moment itself. Perhaps it’s the backdrop of the Riviera, or the legacy of the women who came before, but in Cannes, fashion never feels fleeting. Cannes is the place where the red carpet meets the sea, and where, year after year, celebrity style makes history.]]></content:encoded>
      <guid isPermaLink="false">https://dev.eviemagazine.com/post/the-best-celebrity-cannes-film-festival-looks-of-all-time</guid>
      <pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2026 04:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
      <category>Style</category>
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