Autumn dressing can be tricky, and it’s particularly hard this year as we’re only just extricating ourselves from the longest, sexiest summer fling most of us can remember. We’re all living in disbelief of this transitional weather: Is that…rain? Why is it bitingly cold when I leave the house but sweltering when I pop to Pret at lunchtime? The question on everyone’s lips is "Will I need a coat?" but before you trouble yourself with layers, introduce some autumn dresses into your wardrobe. Wear them bare-legged and with trainers now, then double up on the tights and socks and pop on a pair of boots once the frost sets in.

There was a proliferation of dresses in the AW18 collections, particularly the long, loose and languidly printed styles seen at Balenciaga and Gucci. Resist the urge to call it boho – this is not the early '00s Monsoon interpretation of Sienna Miller’s style apex. Yes, the lines are relaxed and the prints recall '70s upholstery, but we will not be pairing them with a low-slung coin belt. Feel free, however, to grab a pair of cowboy boots – see Ganni for reference.

If this '70s redux isn’t your cup of tea, there are numerous other ways to get your dress fix. Tailoring is a key trend for the season but if suits aren’t your thing, add some formality to your wardrobe with a fitted blazer dress, as seen at Stella McCartney and sustainable New Zealand designer Maggie Marilyn.

Denim is everywhere, of course; our preferred way to wear it is buttoned down the middle in a deep indigo. Alexachung shows us how to do it best, as usual.

Ahead, we’ve rounded up the best dress trends as worn by our favourite street style stars.

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Welcome to Money Diaries, where we're tackling what might be the last taboo facing modern working women: money. We're asking a cross-section of women how they spend their hard-earned money during a seven-day period – and we're tracking every last penny.

This week we're with a trainee teacher.

"Last summer I gave up a well-paid job with perks like a company car in order to pursue a new career in teaching. I have spent the past year as a student training to be a secondary school teacher. Although I wasn’t paid a salary during my studies, I did receive a government grant of £26,000 as there is a recruitment shortage for the subject I teach. I treated the bursary like a salary and I would not have been able to retrain if not for this generous amount – I feel indebted and very grateful!

I live with my husband, who is self-employed, and my sister, who is currently living in our spare room and paying us £300 a month. We use this to help pay the mortgage. My sister is like my best friend and the three of us share the same group of friends. She’s very sociable and often away for the weekends so we also get alone time!

Taking the plunge and giving up the security of my job to start over in the career I knew I wanted was a big decision. It also came only a year after my husband gave up his job to become self-employed. While a lot of our friends of a similar age are seemingly becoming more settled financially, it feels like we are starting again in many ways. The experience has made us braver, more willing to take risks and has been an exciting start to our marriage as I feel our relationship has become stronger. I feel fortunate that I have such a supportive husband, and that we were able to buy our first home together (thanks to the generosity of our parents)."

Occupation: Student teacher
Age: 27
Location: Hampshire
Salary: £0. I receive a (much-needed!) £26k tax-free bursary paid into our joint account
Paycheque: Varies only slightly according to when the bursary is sent out, but usually quite even at £2k a month
Roommates: Husband and sister (and dog!)

Husband and I have a joint account which our salaries are paid into. Husband also has a separate business bank account. As he is just starting up he pays himself a minimal salary to help us keep going.

Monthly Expenses

Mortgage: £999 (split between my husband and me)
Utilities: Water/electricity/gas (split between husband and me): £100
Phone bill: Two mobile phones, Wi-Fi and internet in one package shared with my husband: £60
Council tax: £120
Credit card: We only use this for big ticket items and when we want added security. We tend to pay this off each month, usually £100
Student loan: Currently on hold while I am a student, as well as my pension
Savings? £300 + anything else we don’t spend in the month
Other: Pet insurance, healthy pet club, Netflix, life insurance etc: £100

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Renting in cities is expensive. Most of us get around this fact by sharing houses and flats with other people, but what if you really want to live on your own?

One way people are dealing with huge rent prices is by living in studio flats. Now, don't get me wrong, the price of a one-room studio flat in London is still likely to be a Very Serious Amount Of Money, but it is likely to be a darn sight cheaper than renting a whole one-bedroom flat to yourself. Turns out, a lot of being a millennial is learning to look on the bright side of pretty crappy situations.

Luckily, plenty of people are in the same boat, which means that plenty of people, both in retail and the DIY industry, have come up with ways to make studio flats feel less like one small room where you sleep, cook and watch Netflix, and more like a full flat for a grown-up person – by using room-dividing techniques.

To help you out we've decided to bring you a few of our favourite examples, and instructions for how you can get the same effect in your studio flat.

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The furore surrounding Serena Williams' recent "meltdown" at the US Open; the outcry over Kirstie Allsopp admitting to smashing her kids' iPads in frustration; the faux outrage and hysterical online reaction when a female activist dared to challenge Piers Morgan on live TV. It's clear that even in 2018, large swathes of society have a problem with angry women.

We've always been angry – we're underpaid, overworked at home and in the workplace, thwarted from reaching our potential and diminished. But female rage is suddenly all the rage, and in recent months female anger and the causes thereof have been taken more seriously and given greater validity than before. There has been a flurry of articles, TV shows ( Sharp Objects and Killing Eve to name just two) and books on the subject, the latest of which is Rage Becomes Her: The Power of Women's Anger by award-winning writer and activist Soraya Chemaly.

Described by fellow activist Laura Bates as "a love letter to women’s anger" and "a battle cry for women's right to rage", the book is a vital read for anyone whose anger is so often turned inward, manifesting as tears or depression, instead of being channelled productively.

Why does Chemaly believe writers like her are so interested in female anger right now? "In times of social and political tumult, women are generally given free rein to express anger publicly," Chemaly told Refinery29. "I think it’s more than just this instability, however. I think that, implicitly or explicitly, we’re moving towards an understanding of women as central political actors, which means we can’t ignore their anger."

Due to the weight of gender-role expectations bearing down on us, expressing anger as a woman is still taboo – we fear people thinking that we've "lost control" or are acting "inappropriately" or even "dangerously", Chemaly says. But suppressed female anger is a wasted resource, as she argues forcefully in her book. In Chapter 10, "A Rage Of Your Own", she outlines 10 strategies for anyone who wants to use their anger productively. Extracted below are some of her top tips.

1. Develop self-awareness

"Anger does not, in and of itself, make you 'right'. It is, however, explained feminist writer and thinker Audre Lorde, 'loaded with information and energy'. Use it this way. People who understand how they are feeling are able to be patient and thoughtful in anger. They develop a liberating detachment that enables them to decide what solutions will work for the problem they face."

Chemaly goes on to explain: "The more you know about anger, the less you will be subject to it as a negative force. Experts agree that owning one’s anger— knowing what it is and naming it—enhances relationships and intimacy. Some people benefit also from finding 'their people', the ones who will understand, listen, empathise and, often, are angered by the same issues or problems. Even if you can’t act immediately on how you feel, simply talking about anger is beneficial; other people often see solutions and alternatives that you don’t. Sharing is important for specific reasons. Naming, writing, and talking, known as affect labelling, is different from simply venting the way you might, for example, by throwing plates. Naming, talking, and writing, are beneficial because they actually interfere with the neurological mechanics causing anger or anxiety. They constitute a kind of anger mindfulness."

The more you know about anger, the less you will be subject to it as a negative force. Owning one’s anger – knowing what it is and naming it – enhances relationships and intimacy.

2. Distinguish the three As: anger, assertiveness and aggression

"Anger, assertiveness, and aggression are frequently and unhelpfully lumped together, particularly when the person who is being assertive, angry, or aggressive is a girl or woman. All three are, however, related by the word 'no', and a simple, unapologetic, declarative 'no' is not a word that girls and women are taught to embrace. Assertiveness is simply the act of stating a position with confidence."

Aggression, meanwhile, "is a more directly confrontational behaviour, less civil, but, in many cases, respectful. It is possible to be both assertive and aggressive without being angry at all and, conversely, to be angry without being assertive or aggressive. Each, depending on context, has its place."

Chemaly continues: "Anger, assertiveness, and aggression also all become entangled in the word 'passionate'. 'I’m not angry, I’m passionate' is an expression I often hear when talking about this topic. The word 'passionate' always strikes me as a particularly gendered one, women being more likely to be described as passionate, whether they are angry or not, for speaking firmly and with determination. 'Passionate women' are often women who have developed an exquisite ability to select their words and convey their strongest beliefs while navigating anger-averse people and cultures. Anger is the emotion generated by feeling passionate about an issue or topic of serious interest or commitment. Ask yourself, why might you prefer to be thought of as passionate and not angry?"

3. Be brave

"Be brave enough to stop pleasing people, to be disliked, to rub people the wrong way. In many environments, all you have to do to be castigated as an angry woman is to say something out loud, so you might as well say exactly what’s bothering you and get on with it. This means that, usually, you have to come to terms with not always being liked. Your anger and assertiveness will make some people unhappy, uncomfortable, sensitive, cautious. They will resent you, your thoughts, your words. They will hate your willingness to risk social connections and challenge social conventions. Be prepared to be labelled humourless, difficult, a spoilsport, and a ruiner of parties, meetings, dinners, and picnics."

4. Take (deliberate) care

"It is possible to take care of others without being careless with yourself. Most women take on what they do not only because they are expected to but also because they love and care and want to. But the expectation that we do so infinitely and selflessly, and the demands that such expectations produce, exhaust us. Care with purpose. Understand that this includes taking care of your own health and wellbeing. Learn to say no and to say no unapologetically. One of the most effective ways to address care creep is to think deliberately and to make conscious choices. It is possible to audit the paid and unpaid work you do and even the emotions that you manage for other people."

Chemaly recommends setting clear boundaries, seeing your anger "not only as a possible symptom but also as a way to recover yourself", rethinking forgiveness, teaching those around you to name and talk about their anger, and considering therapy to help you make sense of your emotions.

5. Cultivate body confidence

"If your appearance is important to you (and studies show that it is for the overwhelming majority of women), it is important to consciously balance how your body looks with your body’s health and competence, meaning health and functioning as opposed to attractiveness. Self-objectification makes it harder to feel your anger or do anything about it. It makes you more vulnerable to threat and assault.

Your anger and assertiveness will make some people unhappy. They will hate your willingness to risk connections and challenge social conventions. Be prepared to be labelled humourless, difficult, a ruiner of parties, dinners, and picnics.

"It contributes to low self-esteem, self-silencing, and a heightened likelihood of self-harm, anxiety, and depression. If there are people in your life telling you or girls that you know that 'girls are prettier with their mouths shut', demand that they stop. Studies of athletes show a strong correlation between body competence, self-esteem, and healthier anger expression. Think about how you can develop a sense of your body’s strength and abilities in order to refute damaging, pervasive messages undermining self-esteem and the almost inevitable mental distress that comes with it."

6. Take your anger to work

"Anger is often part of the average workday, and occupational status directly affects how we feel and express our anger. Women are far more likely to be employed in jobs that require them to suppress anger, with spillover effects into their personal life. For example, a nurse who spends her day silencing herself with both doctors and patients is more likely to respond explosively at home to a relatively minor frustration."

Chemaly advises: "Chances are, if you are angry about a problem, so are others; this is information that you can use to your advantage. If there are issues too hot for you to confront directly, consider what Trojan horses you might be able to develop to achieve your goal. If you fear consequences or retaliation, find allies and champions who can represent your interests. If you don’t have a mentor or sponsor, get one. It might also make sense to explain explicitly to your employer the positive contributions that anger can generate in a workplace, in terms of diverse ideas and outcomes. The communication of anger can improve organisational functioning and workplace environments, and can benefit not only you but also those around you."

7. Cultivate communities and accountability

"Anger can feel very isolating, but, in fact, it is an emotion that demands communication and conversation. It also finds strength in community. Finding communities that validate and share your anger creates powerful opportunities for effective collective social action. In these settings, anger is often a source of energy, joy, humour, and resistance. Anger, awareness, listening, and strategising are all key components to social movement. Communities built by women in response to what makes them mad also have the added benefit of making women’s anger and community public and visible, creating important shifts in representation and understanding."

8. Challenge binaries

"Binaries make up the male-female structure of the world. They mark the differences between home and work, personal and professional, private and political, and emotional and rational, to name only a few. In terms of anger, context often governs how you feel and express it, and for women, one of the foremost regulators of our expression is how we are supposed to act in public versus in private. In both places, we are more subject to being tone policed, but in public spaces, this is especially true.

"The private/public divide is fundamental to keeping women isolated from one another and, historically, from engaging in politics and commerce. The divide also masks the relationship between interpersonal sexism and institutionalised discrimination."

A second binary to reconsider, Chemaly explains, "is the one that supports stereotypes about emotions and reason, instinct and thinking. It is frequently used to invalidate women’s anger and concerns. Women are designated more emotional, but then the designation itself is used to undermine our reason. In this framework, a man, a thinker, can have emotions, but a woman, a feeler, is emotional. To paraphrase one study, if a man gets angry, he’s having an off day, if
a woman does, she’s a raging bitch."

Communities built by women in response to what makes them mad have the added benefit of making women’s anger public and visible, creating important shifts in representation and understanding.

9. Trust other women

"Sometimes we are our own worst enemies. On a personal level, it is often the case that the people or person you would most likely talk to about being angry are the ones causing you to feel angry. Being non-confrontational is an early life lesson for many of us, particularly with other women. Instead, some of us learn to resort to cattiness, silent treatments, passive aggression, and the 'mean-girl' behaviours thought to be inherent to being female. Or, in order not to threaten a relationship, we divert our anger into other channels, never finding an outlet or resolution to what is bothering us. This, however, suggest Cox et al., doesn’t help deepen a friendship the way a more honest and respective exchange does.

"When a friend tells you she is angry, do you ask why and listen? If you see a woman 'losing her shit', do you make fun of her? If a girl is 'moody', do you ask her not about what’s wrong with her but about what’s happening around her? Do you even have a solid cadre of women friends? If not, if you have always thought that the vagaries of female friendship are too demanding and that male friends are 'so much easier to deal with', it might be worthwhile to consider if you are the 'cool girl', the 'no drama' type that some men love and what that might mean."

10. Accept a desire for power

"Anger and power are always entangled. Women are just as motivated by the desire for power as men; it’s just that our cultural ideas about power don’t associate it with femininity. If you are a girl or woman, chances are you have grown up unwittingly associating ideas about power with masculinity. Our primary roles as caretakers make the idea of power, associated as it often is with masculine behaviours like competition, conflicting."

In intimate contexts, Chemaly recommends talking "about expectations in relationships before, undiscussed, they become problematic. The association between our expectations of power and gender are worth examining openly. Both interpersonally and socially, the mockery that women anticipate and dread from men—mockery that sometimes spills into contempt—has been tied to men’s attempts to justify higher status. In cases where there is intimate conflict over gender roles, many women who seek equality in their relationships feel guilt, as though to demand more parity in expectations and care is 'unnatural' and harmful."

In the public and political realm, she advises: "Stand up for yourself and hold the communities and institutions you are part of accountable. This isn’t, despite girl-power mantras, a popular activity when it means demands for serious change. The more comfortable we become with claiming ownership of public and institutional spaces, in anger, the more effective our efforts will be. There is creativity in anger and much anger in creativity. Women are constantly manifesting rage in creative, productive, and visionary ways."

Rage Becomes Her by Soraya Chemaly, £16.99, is published by Simon & Schuster.

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As summer draws to a close, London Fashion Week always happily signals the beginning of a new season, one where heavy duty boots, faux fur, velvet, sequins and animal print are welcome.

While we may be looking ahead with designers' SS19 collections – Victoria Beckham's homecoming, Riccardo Tisci's debut at Burberry, Alexachung and RIXO on the LFW schedule – our wardrobes are firmly in the new season, and thanks to the show-goers on the streets of London, we have autumnal inspiration aplenty.

Click through to see the best looks from London Fashion Week street style.

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London Fashion Week is over, Milan is well underway, and the style set will be moving onto Paris soon, to watch powerhouses like Chanel, Christian Dior and Saint Laurent present their SS19 collections. Typically, fashion month is reserved for those in the business, but this season, creative director of Givenchy Clare Waight Keller, is giving fans the chance to sit shoulder-to-shoulder with industry insiders and influencers and watch the show.

How? Well, a post on Givenchy's official Instagram account details the nature of the competition. "Win your ticket: find the 4G tickets for a chance to win a ticket to the #GivenchySS19 show and be featured on our official account."

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by GIVENCHY (@givenchyofficial) on Sep 18, 2018 at 11:53am PDT

First up, you have to find one of the 5,000 stickers hidden around London and Paris - think walls, lamp posts, street signs - then take a photo of it and post it on your Insta feed. Once you've tagged #GivenchyFamily, the brand will choose three winners to attend the show and have their pic featured on the official feed. The most creative posts will win, so use your Insta skills to make yours stand out - Huji simply won't cut it this time.

What does this mean for the brand, though? Waight Keller, who previously held the mantle at Chloé, but took the helm at Givenchy after Ricard Tisci left after 12 years for Burberry (keep up), is a seasoned Paris Fashion Week designer, but recently gained a wider audience thanks to a certain royal wedding.

Designing Meghan Markle's dress, which featured a boat neckline and just six seams and is currently on display at Windsor Castle, introduced both Waight Keller and Givenchy to a younger audience, which perhaps this Insta-led competition is seeking to mirror. With brands like Off-White, Supreme and Balenciaga ruling the internet as well as the fashion industry, perhaps this is a move from prestigious house to contemporary brand.

On your marks, get set, get 'gramming.

The competition ends on September 25 at 23.59 CET. The full terms and conditions can be found 25.09.18 at Bit.ly/Givenchy_4G

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We're not sure which is more of a challenge, the courage to go for the big chop or the task of finding a stylist who is acquainted with afro, kinky and multitextured hair. 3c to 4c hair requires a specific type of hair dressing and technicality and that's not always easy to find.

Of the 35, 000 registered hair salons in the UK, only 302 cater to Afro-Caribbean hair. This means that 1% of all salons are serving the 10% of the population with kinky-curly and multitextured hair.

So, to laud the places that do afro hair and do it well, we’ve curated some of the best salons across the UK that specialise in cutting, styling, braiding and weaving. From Scotland to Manchester and all corners of London, we’ve checked the reviews, prices, locations and services so you can get back to deep-conditioning in peace.

Click through to read our selection...

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It’s already been said, but it’s worth repeating: The Apple Watch Series 4 was the star of last week's Apple event in Cupertino. While the new iPhones presented improvements on 2017's iPhone X, the new Watch debuted redesigned and reengineered.

Although a new version of the Watch has been rolled out every year since it was first revealed in 2015, it has always been the supporting player in an iPhone-heavy show. This year, Series 4 took centre stage, looking sleeker, easier to perform basic tasks on, and full of innovative new features. Can the new Apple Watch live up to the expectations of its new leading role? We put it to the test to find out.

First Look

Series 4 looks and feels like a premium, high-end smart watch. The redesigned display is 30% larger than before (the 44 mm model has a 977 square mm display area, compared to Series 3’s 42 mm model with a 740 square mm display area) and it makes a big difference: Rounded corners that match the Watch’s shape, and thinner borders around the display — along with larger text and buttons — make viewing texts and emails a much easier experience. Despite the increase in display size, Series 4 is even thinner (10.7 mm compared to Series 3’s 11.4 mm) and doesn't feel bulky.

When turning the digital crown to scroll through messages or music playlists, you’ll now feel a pleasantly subtle clicking that mimics the sensation of turning the crown on an old-school (i.e. non-smart) watch. This comes courtesy of a redesigned digital crown with what’s known as haptic feedback. It might seem like a small change, and you’ll probably forget you didn’t have it before after a few days of using the Watch, but it makes a difference.

Face Forward

There are multiple new watch faces meant to make the best use of the newly expanded display.

My favourite is the infographic option (right), which lets you add up to eight different "complications" — an unfortunate horology term used to describe any function beyond telling time. On Series 4, you can pick which apps appear in each of the four corners as well as the four circles surrounding the hands of the clock. You're not only seeing the information you want upfront, whether that's the 10-day forecast or the next event on your calendar, you're also seeing more of it.

The other new faces are less about efficiency, and more about aesthetics. Some are so pretty, they almost make it worth not seeing the weather at a glance: There's the silvery liquid metal and cloud-like vapour, as well as iterations on the visualisations used in the Breathe app (above left). They're all very soothing, slightly hypnotic, and guaranteed to distract you from whatever you are doing.

Power Up

Apple promises a full-day charge with Series 4 (the same as Series 3) and that's what I got: After a day of working out, streaming music, conducting calls, dismissing Instagram notifications, and reading emails, I was left with just over 20%. Granted, this would be less if you're doing a long outdoor workout and using GPS, but it's still pretty good.

Call Me, Definitely

See that little hole between the digital crown and the side button (left)? That's the microphone, which has been moved to sit on the opposite side of the speaker. The result is noticeably less echoing during calls: I was able to walk down a busy street in Brooklyn on a Friday night, with the Watch down by my side, and still clearly hear everything my sister was saying on the other end (she could hear me well, too). The speaker on Series 4 is a whopping 50% louder than on the Series 3, so you can bid farewell to any Watch-related frustrations involving the dreaded "can you hear me now?"

I only had one small connectivity issue when using Series 4: For some reason, the Watch unpaired from my iPhone after it was set up. But a simple Watch reset (Settings > General > Reset) and re-pairing set things straight.

All About The Beat

Apple has always emphasised the fitness and health-related properties of the Watch, and this year is no different. A new electrical heart sensor (there's already an optical heart sensor) allows for three additional heart health-related features: ECG readings and an accompanying app, notifications if your heart rate is low (there are already notifications for high heart rates), and notifications if your heart rate is irregular.

I couldn't test any of these — the ECG app will not come out until later this year, and my heart is apparently beating at a completely normal rate, so I didn't get any notifications — but it is important to know they are there. (Although, as The Atlantic pointed out, there is the potential for over-diagnosis with features like these.)

There's also an upgraded accelerometer and gyroscope in Series 4, which will improve measurement accuracy during workouts, and can detect falls, too. If someone falls and is unresponsive for a full minute, their Watch will initiate a call to 911. Anyone under 65 will need to go into the Watch app on their iPhone to turn the feature on (it's automatically switched on for anyone over 65). I turned it on and tried to trick it — dropping my watch, faking a fall — but did not successfully game the system and trigger fall detection in either case. That's a good thing — you don't want a small stumble to set it off.

The Extras

Some of the best new features on Series 4 are the ones that come with WatchOS 5, the free software update anyone with an Apple Watch Series 1 or later can download now.

I haven't put the new activity competitions to the test yet, but am a big fan of auto-workout detection: If you forget to start tracking a run, your Watch will prompt you to do so a few minutes in, and still record everything you've done up to that point. This doesn't work for all workouts, but does include indoor and outdoor swims, walks, and runs, as well as cross training and rowing.

It's also nice to be able to stream podcasts now, and especially useful to have new episodes on your iPhone automatically sync to the Watch.

Final Take

This is the first Apple Watch that really feels like it lives up to Apple's original vision for the wearable. The bigger display, improved speaker quality, gorgeous watch faces, and advanced health and fitness features make the £399 starting price seem worth it. If you've held out on buying a Watch altogether, or have been waiting to upgrade from a model without cellular, now is the time to give Series 4 a try.

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Young people in the UK are some of the unhappiest in the world – a survey released today found that a mere 25% of girls and young women describe themselves as "very happy", down from 41% in 2009. And the mental health services that are meant to be supporting them are in crisis, with teachers and campaigners recently describing the situation as "intolerable".

One side-effect of this unhappiness is an increased proportion of young people being diagnosed with mental health problems (and self-harming) and prescribed medication. Recently it emerged that the number of antidepressants prescribed to children in England, Scotland and Ireland has increased substantially over the last three years, with experts blaming long waiting times for specialist mental health services.

The reasons why a young person might develop a mental health problem are complex and multiple, says Matt Blow, policy manager at child and adolescent mental health charity YoungMinds. "But we know that young people today face a wide range of pressures... including school stress, bullying, pressures around body image and growing up in an online world," the latter of which is unique to the current generation. Difficult or traumatic experiences, like growing up in poverty or experiencing abuse, also have a big impact.

While antidepressants have their place in treating some mental health conditions, Blow believes they shouldn't be "prescribed as a sticking plaster for poor access to talking therapies." Currently, "far too many children and young people have to wait months before they get the support they need, or never receive that support at all – and this urgently needs to change. If antidepressants are prescribed, it’s crucial that children and parents have comprehensive information about the side-effects, so they can make informed decisions about whether it’s the right approach."

Antidepressants are most commonly prescribed to treat moderate or severe depression, as well as OCD, generalised anxiety disorder and PTSD, and the NHS recommends people properly weigh up the potential side-effects before taking them. One woman who has been through the process as a parent is Vikie Shanks, whose family tragedy was turned into the Netflix documentary Kingdom of Us. The author and blogger has seven children, including two daughters who were first put on antidepressants as teenagers at 13 and 14. Now aged 17 and 21, they each continue to take citalopram and fluoxetine. Shanks spoke to Refinery29 about parenting children with mental health struggles and the taboo that still surrounds antidepressants.

My husband took his own life in 2007 when my youngest daughter was six and the oldest was 16. The youngest is autistic and was struggling in the aftermath. She's been in therapy for many years and has spent most of the last three years in an adolescent psychiatric unit. My older daughter was 13 or 14 when it happened and and is also autistic. She was severely depressed and really wasn't coping with life at all, she could barely get out of bed and her life was horrible. So the psychiatrist and I agreed to try fluoxetine and see if it would help her mood. She's been on antidepressants ever since; she's now on citalopram, which I think works better. My younger daughter is now on antipsychotics as well. She was originally admitted to hospital for anorexia but we now know she's also got borderline personality disorder, which we didn't know at the time. My older daughter has anxiety, depression, emotional dysregulation and a lot of other things. The medication keeps them stable and I can tell when they haven't taken their tablets.

The suicide was very traumatic and dramatic. But before then my husband was also mentally ill and very erratic, and his behaviour could cause the children to feel very scared. Both of the girls were very traumatised by his behaviour, and then the suicide was a last straw. Having said that, I'm not sure with or without those factors, whether they would have been on medication anyway. They were struggling before he died. Putting them on antidepressants was a decision made between myself and the psychiatrist. We had to do something at the time and that was the only thing we could do because neither of them were able to access talking therapy and what they were accessing wasn't helping them.

If they need them for the rest of their lives, I can't see the harm. It's a little white pill every morning and it keeps you going.

Antidepressants aren't the answer for some kids but in my daughters' cases they've been effective. I can see a change in them and while the drugs don't solve everything, they help them to remain stable and keep going, and sometimes that's what you need. A lot of people say antidepressants have a numbing effect but I disagree. I'm on 40mg of citalopram and have been for years. I don't feel it numbs my emotions, it just keeps me okay enough to do what I have to do. You need to get the medication and dosage right, which can be difficult as they don't start working straightaway. You have to wait six weeks to see if they really are making any difference. That can be quite difficult to gauge for some parents.

It doesn't worry me that they might be on them forever. Personally I'd be happy being on citalopram for the rest of my life because when I had a heart attack last year they took me off it and I became very ill. We'll try to decrease their dosage at some point and see if that works but if they need them for the rest of their lives, I can't see the harm. It's a little white pill every morning and it keeps you going, it keeps you stable.

Some parents feel they've failed their child if they have to take medication.

It wasn't the greatest thing when my daughters first went on them. You don't want your child to take medication but being logical about it, I knew we had to try it. I was open-minded because I wanted them to be able to lead the best life they could. But some parents refuse to go down that road, so it's an incredibly individual thing. If you've got a young child who can't make that decision for themselves then you have to be the one that makes that call. You want to do what's best and you don't want to put drugs into your child, but if it's the right thing to do then it's the right thing to do.

Some parents feel they've failed their child if they have to take medication. I do a lot of campaigning on mental health, autism and suicide, and I think the stigma around mental health and taking tablets has to be tackled at every level. If we stop stigmatising adults who take antidepressants then the stigma of children taking them will be lowered. We have to be more open about mental health and what people struggle with. When I had my heart attack recently I had to take numerous drugs for my health and I wouldn't dream of not taking them, so I don't see the difference between taking drugs to help my heart and taking a drug to help my brain. If you can look at it that way and get other people to look at it that way, then that stigma is going to be lowered significantly. You might be seen as weak if you take antidepressants, but if you need something to balance the chemicals in your brain then you need something to balance the chemicals in your brain.

Children aren't children anymore. They're under far too much pressure.

I'm not surprised about the rise in the number of children taking antidepressants. They're under pressure from school to get certain grades. They're under pressure from social media to look a certain way. In my time we didn't have things like that and the pressure wasn't there. Social media is a very powerful tool and it's great, but at the same time the peer pressure is insidious. It's going into young people's brains and they're constantly being made to think about what they should have and what they should look like. Children aren't children anymore, they're expected to perform a certain way and be a certain way. They're under far too much pressure.

To any parent feeling like a failure because their child is on antidepressants, I'd say: don't feel ashamed. Be open-minded and if the drugs are helping your child then go with it for as long as you need to. Keep reviewing it, keep an open mind constantly. I always have, as to whether we should try something different or try a lower dose, but I don't feel ashamed because it has nothing to do with anything anyone's done. It's just a fact of life and society shouldn't make you feel guilty. Society should be supportive of different people and the ways they're different and they need different therapies. If it's working for your child then fantastic, you've found something that works. It's a positive thing if it's helping and it shouldn't be stigmatised.

For more information about mental health medication visit YoungMinds' website HeadMeds.org.uk

If you are struggling with mental health issues, please get help. Call Mind on 0300 123 3393 or text 86463.

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When the Queen and Anna Wintour sit front row at your London Fashion Week debut, how do you approach the next season? What message do you send with your following collection, given the fanfare surrounding your first? Such was the pressure on Richard Quinn, who presented his SS19 collection yesterday to an industry anticipating great things from the Central Saint Martins graduate. Thankfully, those expectations were met, solidifying the London-born designer not only as a rising star but also as a real contender in the art of the spectacle.

This season, instead of the two HRHs – of England and of Vogue – Quinn’s front row audience was made up of GCSE and A-level art students from the London state school he attended, and print students from Central Saint Martins. "At a time when real damage is occurring to arts education, I want to point to how substantially its creative power lights the path to our future," Quinn explained in the show notes. "Celebrating the community I come from is important to me, and thanking British art education for the fact that I am business today."

Citing the upsetting statistic that there has been a 34% drop in arts GCSE entries between 2010 and 2018, he said: "This year’s exam statistics show how seriously arts subjects are under threat in secondary schools in England, yet they are a foundation of our £32 billion fashion industry." And it’s not just the arts in higher and further education that are suffering; the arts have been hit with millions of pounds worth of local funding cuts over the past few years, meaning that those seeking creative pursuits outside of the education system are being failed, too. How does this bode for the future of fashion and the careers of our bright young things?

Quinn’s show perfectly captured the sombre tone, with a midnight-blue thunderstorm projected onto the wall, while in a London Fashion Week first, the London Philharmonic Orchestra performed two short works. The first, Rossini’s "The Storm" – "a gripping excerpt which builds from nothing to a crashing and dramatic musical deluge" – soundtracked Quinn’s first looks. Both breathtaking and haunting, show-goers were taken aback by models whose faces were covered with black velvet, huge tulle skirts protruding from under black satin coats.

What started as a funeral for the arts – huge vases of flowers at the foot of the catwalk brought to mind a decorative eulogy – moved into a sinister sort of glamour. Up first was a ‘20s Gatsby -esque glamour, all embellishment and feathered hems – fitting, as the second piece of music featured in Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 adaptation of the novel. This wasn’t frivolous glamour though, but a dark take on the decadence of the time; models wore milky grey contact lenses, dark shadow in the corners of their eyes, and rubber gloves reaching beyond the elbow. Daisy Buchanan meets Miss Havisham, perhaps?

Next came printed bouquets of vivid botanicals on drop-waisted and ruffle-hemmed dresses, the showstopping prints and fabrications with which Quinn has become synonymous. Away from that, there were '70s palm print kaftans and sequin Hawaiian shirts, '80s polka dot and watercolour puffball dresses that would have made Madonna and Cyndi Lauper proud, and graphic ballgowns fit for a debutante. Quinn’s move into animal print was less convincing, but something we’re sure to see strengthen over his next few collections.

With a list of fans including Beyoncé and Amal Clooney, the Queen and Anna Wintour, the pressure was on for Quinn this season. Yet with this collection, the rising star has proven he is no one-hit wonder. We can’t wait to see where his vision will take him (and us) next.

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"This is a story about how my town, Salem, lost its motherfucking mind," 18-year-old Lily Coulson (Odessa Young) narrates in the first scene of Assassination Nation.

Salem, of course, has lost its mind before. In 1692, mass hysteria caused roughly 200 people to be accused of witchcraft, a saga that ended with the conviction and execution of 19 citizens — 14 of them women. Director Sam Levinson, who also wrote the script, tells an updated version of events, replacing 17th century Puritans with anonymous 4chan users, and witches with their 21st century equivalent: sexy, emancipated teenage girls.

Lily and her closest friends, Bex (Hari Nef), Em (Abra), and Sarah (Suki Waterhouse) are the Instagram version of Gen Z high school seniors. They're aggressively open about their sexuality, obsessed with social media, and unconcerned with the rules of middle class morality set forth by their parents. They're young, they're free, and they want to live life on their own terms.

But when a hacker starts leaking Salem's secrets, all hell breaks loose. Suddenly, everything is out in the open: the conservative, "family values" oriented mayor's penchant for lingerie; the high school principal's pictures of his two-year-old daughter naked in the bath; the affair via sext that Lily is having with an older man while dodging calls from her boyfriend Mark (Bill Skårsgard); the evidence that Reagan (Bella Thorne) leaked Grace's (Maude Apatow) nudes to the whole school. In the midst of the total anarchy that ensues, Salemites are looking for someone to blame, and Lily and her friends are an easy target.

At first glance, it's easy to see how Assassination Nation could be perceived as problematic. Levinson's bloody, stylised take on the slasher horror genre focuses on four teenage girls who spend most of the hour and forty-seven minute run time clad in the shortest shorts possible, with the camera lecherously panning their legs. The second half of the film builds up to a brutal scene of attempted rape. There's a fine line between portraying violence against women as social commentary and just revelling in it, and Levinson teeters over each edge at various times throughout. It's the ultimate male gaze. In fact, it says it right there in the list of trigger warnings that open the film.

But what's interesting is how Levinson chooses to wield that gaze — as a weapon aimed at the audience, rather than the girls. It's a bold move on the part of the male director, who appears to be challenging viewers to judge and sexualise these high school seniors. There's no overt nudity in Assassination Nation, no scene that's entirely black and white. Everything is sexually charged, yes, but in a way that puts the onus on the audience. What is it about a woman's body that's innately sexual? Is it a matter of perception? Of cultural baggage? Of upbringing? And what's more terrifying than a group of young women who reflect our darkest fears and desires back at us? Imagine the power they could have if unified against their oppressors in one powerful, unbreakable, furious force?

Australian actress Young anchors the film with a strong, unvarnished performance. Her narration provides insight into the double life she leads: on the outside, she's carefree, a party girl whose boyfriend's drunk, mean comments mean nothing as she storms off to text her older lover. But on the inside, she's struggling. Struggling to keep up appearances, to figure out what she wants, what's expected of her, and how to exist in this world that seems hostile on every front. Nef is poignantly resilient as Bex, a trans woman who, like Lily, projects utmost fierce yasss feminist pride in her public persona; this is a smokescreen concealing a fragile being whose face crumples when the boy she likes uses her for sex but is ashamed to go public. (Abra and Waterhouse aren't given much to work with, however. Other than the fact that the two are sisters — a fact that never really gets explained, despite the fact that Em and their mom are Black while Sarah is not — we don't get to know much about them.)

Those dual personalities are on full display at a party early on in the film. In wide shots, the girls are seen partying together, dancing and revelling under moody, neon lighting. But as they break off into separate sub-interactions, the screen splits, revealing their true selves. It's a not-so-subtle commentary on our tendency to present our best face on social media — not as we are, but as how we hope to be.

Levinson is clearly fascinated by a generation that has grown up with a very different conception of privacy. In one scene, Thorne's character makes that evident in a semi-monologue about how cute it is that "old people" still think they can have secrets. It's scary to think that we've created, and constantly buy into a situation that will probably lead to our own demise — but it's also freeing. The youth of Assassination Nation is optimistically nihilistic, a mess of contradictions, like a group of boys using the proper pronouns for Bex as they attempt to lynch her for being trans.

Hollywood has a poor track record when it comes to accurately depicting technology and how teenagers actually use it, but Assassination Nation breaks the mould. Sure, you'll probably cringe when someone tosses out an "it's lit," but the film's core portrayal of the internet's ability to magnify cruel behaviour and mob mentality is accurate. It's a behaviour that's repeated later on in the film, when townspeople start wearing masks when hunting down the girls. The first half of the film effectively builds tension because it feels real. Who among us has not

had a moment of severe paranoia briefly considering what would happen if someone gained access to our online presence? It's a prospect so horrifying as to be placed squarely into the realm of the abject.

Ultimately though, it's hard to pinpoint what Levinson is actually targeting. Is it social media? Misogyny? Homophobia? Internet culture? Gossip? Donald Trump? The answer is probably all of the above, but it makes for some heavy-handed messaging verging on sensorial overload. Lily's narration, so useful when it comes to providing insight into her own mind, is too often used to explain what the audience should be able to interpret onscreen. It seems counterintuitive, but Assassination Nation would pack more of a punch if it did a little less.

Still, maybe the times we live in don't call for subtlety. Because watching Lily deliver a rallying cry to young women that inspires them (and some male allies) to pour out into the street in support, my heart swelled — with pride, at what we can accomplish, and with pain, at what we're still up against.

It’s Heathers meets The Purge when a town-wide data leak means four teen girls have to rise up against slut-shaming, hate, and toxic masculinity. Get ready for Assassination Nation , the first film in an exclusive partnership from Refinery29 and Neon.

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Looking at the Obituary section of the New York Times since it's first publication in 1851, you might think that 75% of people who die each week are White men. The Times is finally addressing the issue of who gets remembered (and why) by writing the long overdue obituaries of noteworthy women like Ida B. Wells, Charlotte Brontë, and others who made important cultural and scientific advances throughout history. I sat down with Jessica Bennett, Gender Editor at the New York Times, to hear about the inspiration behind this project, and to unpack the importance of recognising women's historical and contemporary achievements.

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Today is a sad day for the Duchess of Cambridge and her wardrobe. The label Orla Kiely, a staple in Kate Middleton, Alexa Chung, and Keira Knightley's closets, is no more after 23 years in business. The designer reportedly broke the news to her staff on Wednesday morning. According to The Metro, a source told the paper the news "wasn’t sent out in an official email or anything but was spread through word of mouth."

A note on the brand's website reads: "Kiely Rowan Plc, the retail and wholesale fashion business of Orla Kiely, has ceased trading as of Monday 17 September 2018," meaning business has come to a halt, quite literally. The note also announced that, in addition to its website, its retail stores in London and Kildare will be closing as well. "We apologise for any inconvenience caused," the statement continued. "Orla Kiely's Home and Design licensing business will not be impacted, and its selection of accessories and homewares will continue to be sold through its distribution partners. Thank you for embracing our brand and designs throughout the years and for your ongoing support. Orla, Dermott, and the team."

Kiely and her husband started her eponymous brand in 1995. "Each year, we do a new project," her husband, Dermott Rowan explained in 2008. "But we don't do anything unless it can be done absolutely perfectly." Rowan went on to say the "whole thing" started by accident. "We had this chaotic situation where boxes of sample designs would come into our apartment and if we didn't get them out by 5 p.m., there was nowhere to sit."

A small selection of Orla Kiely accessories and homeware will continue to be sold through department stores like Debenhams and John Lewis.

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Drink spiking isn't new, and while it's difficult to know exactly how common it is because of the number of incidents that go unreported, evidence suggests the crime is on the rise. The number of reported incidents doubled in less than three years, according to new figures from UK police.

The number of reports to police forces containing both the words "drink" and "spiking" or "lacing" rose by 108% between 2015 and 2017, Sky News reported today. London, which recorded the most cases, saw a 74% increase from 103 recorded incidents three years ago to 179 last year, and there were 1,039 instances recorded countrywide.

But many victims and experts believe these numbers barely scratch the surface as so many victims don't come forward. DI Daniel Boulter, head of the rape and sexual assault task force at Lincolnshire Police, which rolled out a citywide drinks testing scheme in participating bars earlier this year, also described it as a glaringly underreported crime.

He was persistent, leaned forward and bit me on the neck, which is probably when he drugged me.

Most victims don't report it if they end up getting home safely with the help of friends, bar staff or a taxi driver, and police only tend to deal with it in relation to sexual assaults, he told Sky News. Another reason is the lack of concrete evidence, as one victim told Refinery29 (below).

The most common substance used to spike drinks (including in cases of so-called "date rape", a.k.a. rape) is Rohypnol, but any drug can be used, such as ketamine, GHB and LSD, as well as alcohol itself.

Nikita (not her real name), 28, from Reading, had her drink spiked with an unknown substance by a stranger in 2016 while at a gig in London. She was with her boyfriend and four friends, and was on her third drink of the evening when the incident happened. "I was dancing with a pint glass in my hand when a guy tried to dance with me and I told him to go away," she told Refinery29. "He was persistent, leaned forward and bit me on the neck, which is probably when he drugged me. Then he walked off."

While she didn't notice anything odd about the taste of her drink at the time, what happened next remains a blur. "I don't remember any of the evening after it happened, apparently I was sick everywhere and kept passing out. My friends got me home, partly on the train, where I was sick again, and then one of their parents came to get us."

Nikita felt unable to talk to her friends about what happened in the days that followed, and she never reported it to the police because she "had no evidence". She continued: "I woke up the next day on my own confused and none of my friends would talk to me about it. Eventually they told me they had no idea what had happened and had just wanted to get me home."

Her then-boyfriend was also unsympathetic and blamed her for what happened: she subsequently found out that the pair had a serious argument and he left her at the venue. "I think they were all embarrassed – not because I did anything wrong, but because they didn't know how to deal with it," she believes.

The events of that night have had a lasting impact on Nikita's behaviour. "I no longer drink pints at gigs, I always drink from a bottle or a can with a straw and I keep my finger over the opening at all times. At festivals I use covered cups with a straw."

There are a number of initiatives and gadgets on the market aimed at protecting women from becoming victims – such as Undercover Colors nail polish, anti-drink spiking stoppers, coasters, cups and straws – but seemingly less attention on stopping the crime at its source by deterring perpetrators and encouraging people to report it to the police. Lincolnshire's new scheme does aim to raise awareness and deter these criminals, but where is the nationwide campaign?

Pubs, bars and clubs also have an important part to play, Nikita believes. "Security should also be aware of peculiar behaviour [associated with these drugs] and know how to advise others." There should also be posters in the venues to deter perpetrators, advise people what to do and the signs to look out for.

Signs that your drink has been spiked

These are the symptoms to look out for, according to the NHS:

• lowered inhibitions
• difficulty concentrating or speaking
• loss of balance and finding it hard to move
• visual problems, particularly blurred vision
• memory loss (amnesia) or "blackouts"
• feeling confused or disorientated, particularly after waking up (if you've been asleep)
• paranoia (a feeling of fear or distrust of others)
• hallucinations (seeing, hearing or touching things that aren't there) or having an "out of body" experience
• nausea and vomiting
• unconsciousness

If you believe you have been a victim of drink spiking, please contact your local police force to report the incident.

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It's not exactly a surprise that racism can affect your mental health, but a new study published in the journal American Psychologist has shed some new light onto just how early those effects can begin.

The study, which researchers say is the first meta-analysis to look into racism's effects on adolescents (as opposed to adults), examined 214 peer-reviewed articles examining over 91,000 adolescents between the ages of 10 and 20.

Using 11 indicators of well-being (including depression and levels of self-esteem), researchers found that perceived racial or ethnic discrimination was linked to poorer mental health, lower academic achievement, and more engagement in risky or negative behaviours such as substance use.

"The consistent relations we identified are of particular concern, given the long-term linkages between depression, anxiety, substance use, aggression, hostility, and poor academic performance and engagement with an individual’s risk of illness or early death," lead author Aprile D. Benner, PhD, said in a statement shared with Refinery29.

The study notes that humans start to understand racial and ethnic differences fairly early in life — babies as young as six months old can sense these differences, and even pre-schoolers might begin grouping themselves by race. And by age 10, they can start recognising obvious and even subtle signs of racial discrimination.

"The psychological, behavioural and academic burdens posed by racial and ethnic discrimination during adolescence, coupled with evidence that experiences of discrimination persist across the life course for persons of colour, point to discrimination as a clear contributor to the racial and ethnic disparities observed for African-American, Latino and Native American populations compared with their white counterparts," Dr. Benner said in the statement.

It's certainly true that people of colour face mental health disparities. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Black Americans are 20% more likely than the general population to develop mental health problems, and Latinx Americans experience disparities in access to treatment. Asian-Americans are also three times less likely than white Americans to seek help for mental health issues.

"While the past three decades have seen a major increase in attention to issues of racial and ethnic discrimination in adolescence, we have identified substantial gaps that should be addressed in future research," Dr. Benner said.

f you're struggling with feelings of anxiety, Anxiety UK has a dedicated helpline which can provide support. You should also always speak to your doctor.

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Right now, your browser is probably inundated with summer-to-autumn transitional style stories. Every year, despite being on this planet for 24 years, I look at my wardrobe with panic. Who is autumn Michelle? What pieces do I want to try? Maybe I want to start wearing cashmere turtlenecks and dress like someone who calls autumn 'fall' instead?

This autumn — I tried saying 'fall,' it's not for me — I've decided I want to be someone who doesn't let the changing of the seasons change me, and not just because the seasonal closet switch-out is exhausting and stuffing my favourite summer clothes into a plastic bin in a dark storage space fills me with so much guilt. This year, I'm keeping my warm weather items on-hand and giving them the opportunity to feel the fresh crisp autumn breeze. They worked so hard through months of humidity — they deserve this.

Ahead, I chose seven pieces of clothing that have been staples of my summer wardrobe and autumn-proofed them. The week was an ode to the end of sunny days — my final goodbye to ice cream on the beach and running around with only a swimsuit as a top. Click through to see how I took pieces like flip-flops and Hawaiian shirts to new pumpkin spice heights.

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“We didn’t know how to protect victims,” Yadira Pizarro Quiles, executive director of the nonprofit ESCAPE, told Refinery29. “Who would we call when their abusers came near them?”

It’s been a year since Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and among debates about the collapse of the power grid, the death toll, and the political circus, an already vulnerable community remains forgotten: survivors of domestic violence.

“The immediate crisis our island was going through was focused on getting food and water to people, saving lives,” she said. “But the social part, from the police’s involvement to support systems for survivors, was overlooked.”

According to the World Health Organization, the aftermath of a natural disaster fosters a surge in incidents of intimate partner violence and sexual violence. In a place like Puerto Rico, which was sent into a state of emergency with no power or telecommunications following the storm, survivors found themselves more vulnerable than ever.

“These women were in crisis and couldn’t reach out to the authorities. There were times where our team would try to figure out who would take in the victims or how could we relocate them because their abuser was already harassing them and could show up at any time,” Pizarro Quiles, who has led the intervention and prevention nonprofit for two decades, said. “It was complicated, but we were able to help our survivors without putting them in dangerous situations.”

ESCAPE, which offers prevention and intervention services for domestic violence and children’s abuse cases in several areas of the island, saw a 62% increase in requests for survivor-related services and a 47% surge in requests for preventive and education resources. Other organisations offering services for survivors reported similar surges. “We also witnessed the intensity of the violence after Maria through the hits women received, where and which type, the aggression towards children,” she said. “The trauma of the storm and the current economic situation are bound to be triggers for more violence.”

Earlier this summer, advocates said that though they found an increase of cases in violence against women in their work, this is not backed up by stats because of how telecommunications failed after the storm and the lack of reliable data collected by the Puerto Rico Police Department (PRPD), the Women’s Advocate Office (known in Spanish by the acronym OPM), and the judicial system.

“In Puerto Rico, there’s currently no standardised way to collect data about violence against women,” Angela Cruz, from the women’s rights coalition Coordinadora Paz para la Mujer (Peace for the Woman Coordinator), told Refinery29. “But it matters to have hard numbers on who are the survivors we’re helping and what are their needs.”

According to Puerto Rico’s Center for Investigative Journalism, each branch of the government — OPM, PRPD, the courts — records a different type of information. OPM counts the calls to its hotline and the requests it gets for survivor-related services; the police are in charge of handling incident reports for cases of domestic and sexual violence, which survivors can make both in person and over the phone; and the courts are responsible for tracking criminal cases related to violence against women and the orders of protection that have been filed. But the stats don’t match because there’s no unifying system.

After Hurricane Maria, ESCAPE saw a 62% increase in requests for survivor-related services.

Women's Advocate Lersy Boria, who is at the helm of OPM, told Refinery29 via email that though there is no data showing an increase of domestic violence cases after hurricanes Irma and Maria, "we can't say that there was a decrease either, since studies show that [in these circumstances] there's no reporting and the victims, who continue to be victimized by their partners, remain silent. In the face of a natural disaster, it's possible that the population's priority and focus is on survival and recovery."

She added that OPM's 24-hour hotline was up and running two days after Maria. The agency also had a social worker on the 911 emergency centre to help with calls from survivors. "We were able to help with around 200 cases through that effort," she said.

Other than OPM's direct number, four emergency domestic violence hotlines were down in the immediate aftermath of the storm. The few survivors who might have had access to cell service probably couldn’t get through to 911 because emergency responders were attending other issues, Cruz said.

The statistics were crucial post-Maria in order for organisations to receive the funding and resources to help the influx of women seeking help, Pizarro Quiles said. “Since the storm, we’ve seen waiting lists for our services. That’s something that has never happened, and if you’re in a situation of violence, you just can’t afford to wait three or four months to get help.”

Puerto Rico is no stranger to intimate partner violence. In fact, the island has historically seen some of the highest domestic violence rates in the world. The local police in particular were hit with charges that the department was routinely and systematically failing survivors: A years-long investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) found “significant delays in the adjudication of protection orders ... dramatic under-enforcement of violations of protection orders; inadequate staffing ... lack of adequate evidence collection and case investigation,” among other issues.

When Ana* was 17, she began dating a man four years her senior. It was her first relationship, and like so many teenagers before her, she fell deeply in love. But the relationship was volatile from the beginning, eventually escalating to physical abuse. Her story is not uncommon given Puerto Rico’s patriarchal society, which still puts a lot of weight on traditional gender roles, including pressuring women to settle down early, and the island’s rampant machismo, which is at the root of most gender violence.

“He first started by threatening to kill himself [if we broke up]. If we were supposed to go out, he would show up high on cocaine. He would yell and insult me, but then he would tell me I was ‘the best thing that has ever happened’ to him or would call me a goddess,” she told Refinery29. “Then he started raising his hand to me, until he finally hit me. The last time he hit me it was in public — and no one did anything.”

Once, the man beat Ana so violently she ended up in the hospital. There, she said, emergency personnel and the authorities told her it seemed like she had hurt herself because she was acting too emotional. When she finally found the courage to report her ex-partner to the police, they told her that she was lying because she didn’t have any visible bruises. “One of them told me, ‘If you like to be spanked, then you like getting hit,’” she said. “It was horrible trying to get help from the system.”

Her efforts to get a protective order after their breakup were unsuccessful, despite evidence that her ex was harassing and stalking her. She eventually gave up on trying to get any type of help, changed her phone number, and moved on. Today, Ana is 26 and a psychologist helping other survivors, mostly because of her frustration with the way the system handles violence against women. She said Hurricane Maria is a reminder of how far Puerto Rico needs to go before treating survivors, regardless of their gender, with the compassion and justice they deserve.

“There needs to be more education and training on the island, particularly for everyone who comes into contact with survivors and those trapped in the cycle of violence,” she said. “The abusers are the ones in power right now. We need to recognise how that affects survivors’ transportation, housing situation, their basic needs.”

The struggle to survive after the storm, including having access to basic needs such as clean water and electricity, is one of the reasons some women might have stayed with their abusers or returned to them. “I would have wanted for survivors’ shelters to have multiple floors, so we could have housed everyone,” ESCAPE’s Pizarro Quiles said.

“I would love to say the domestic violence and children’s abuse situation has gotten better, but what we’ve seen is an increase on how lethal the violence truly is,” she added. For example, police statistics show that as of early September there had been 31 femicides this year alone. Nearly half of the murders were at the hands of the women’s current or former partners.

[A cop] told me, ‘If you like to be spanked, then you like getting hit.' It was horrible trying to get help from the system.

Cruz, from the coalition, said after the hurricane there were four shelters for survivors working at full capacity and two working at half — to service the entire island. Advocates said in late June that there are no survivors’ shelters in the southern part of the island.

“One of our biggest fights was that the government would give us some funding help, because these shelters were not in their list of priorities,” she said. “For an upcoming natural disaster, there needs to be an emergency plan in place that has a gender lens.”

She added: “We were on the line of fire after Maria. The government needs to work with us on a national plan that prioritises the prevention of violence against women.”

*Name has been changed for privacy reasons.

If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Helpline on 0808 2000 247.

Si estás experimentando violencia doméstica, por favor llama a la Oficina de la Procuradora de la Mujer al 787-722-2977 o al Centro de Ayuda a Víctimas de Violación al 787-756-0910 para apoyo de manera confidencial.

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While Republicans continue to try and cram Brett Kavanaugh onto the highest court in the country, plenty of questions, many of which he has dodged, remain about both his record and his moral character. There are serious concerns about his interpretation of the law when it comes to abortion rights, same-sex marriage, executive power, and more — concerns that put him at odds with the majority of the public.

As we learned on Sunday, he is also allegedly an attempted rapist, which for many Republicans doesn't seem to disqualify him from the lifelong appointment of Supreme Court justice. Christine Blasey Ford, the California professor who came forward and said that Kavanaugh forced himself on her in high school, is now in hiding after receiving death threats for telling her story.

But with the midterm elections (and, let's not forget, possible impeachment) hanging over their heads, even the White House is now reportedly worried that brazen support for Kavanaugh could cost them. According to Vanity Fair 's reporting, Trump may be holding back from antagonising Ford — the way he has antagonised other alleged sexual assault survivors — because he fears the Republicans will lose the House and Senate in November. Plus, White House advisors reportedly worry that even more damning information about Kavanaugh will come out.

One source told Vanity Fair that Ivanka Trump has told her father to "cut bait" and drop Kavanaugh. But we also know that whenever there's a crisis, information inevitably trickles out about Ivanka trying to temper her father's extreme views or reactions. It's unclear whether she ever vehemently opposes him — it's always a whisper in the wings, just like when she finally spoke up about family separations.

Carol Robles-Román, an attorney and women's rights leader who has extensive experience in judicial selection and vetting, says that it's quite possible Ford's allegations have come up. in the past. She also says that it's not unlikely there are more allegations against Kavanaugh.

"There’s oftentimes more than one allegation. Most women don’t complain, most women don’t report," she tells Refinery29. "I have to assume these allegations that this professor is bringing forward were not totally unknown. I find it hard, personally, to believe that this is the very first time this is coming up. And I suspect that it probably came up in some way, some form, in one of the many positions he has been vetted for."

When asked what she would say to those who cast doubt on whether this incident matters for Kavanaugh's future because it allegedly happened in high school, she said, "This is an honour and a privilege that is reserved for our most brilliant jurists and those that have the utmost integrity. And if you’ve exhibited in your background violence against women, if you’ve exhibited a tendency to live in a world where misogynist things are said and done in your presence, and you have either been a part of it or stayed silent...you do not have the integrity to be a justice of the United States Supreme Court."

To Robles-Román, the question is a moral one: Do you believe Christine Blasey Ford? In other words, why would a woman risk her entire life to come forward, and tell her therapist about the incident in 2012, if the allegations are false? It's a question that many Republicans seem to be dodging: We posed it to every single Republican woman in the Senate, and not one has gotten back to us.

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The following passage is an extract from What Would De Beauvoir Do? by Tabi Jackson Gee and Freya Rose.

The female orgasm is a biological mystery and it is also a cultural one. It has remained something of an enigma, thanks to being largely ignored and in many cases even censored out of literature, movies and the media. But this is about you, not the media. Or is it?

If you are struggling to climax, you are most definitely not alone. Research conducted by the condom brand Durex in the Netherlands (published as "The Orgasm Gap") shows that almost 75% of women in the Netherlands and Belgium do not orgasm during sex, whereas only 28% of men say they don’t always climax. Durex calls this "orgasm inequality". It also found that lesbians have more orgasms than heterosexual women, so this affliction is more specific to women in straight relationships than any other group.

There are many reasons why feminists believe women feel the need to fake orgasms, and a lot of them have to do with, well, being a woman. Maybe you don’t want to hurt your boyfriend’s feelings. Maybe you feel like it is your fault. Maybe you are worried you will topple him off his masculine perch if you admit that you have never orgasmed and have been faking it all along. Maybe you just think it is the easy way out. Whichever it is, you are probably doing yourself and your boyfriend an injustice by pretending. But it may not all be your fault.

The myth of the vaginal orgasm

One of the greatest mysteries surrounding the female orgasm is: why does it exist in the first place? It serves no purpose in the exact act of reproduction (men can have sex with women and produce babies with the woman experiencing no enjoyment at all). Scientists have still not found an answer to this question.

Some people even go as far as doubting the very existence of the female orgasm. Feminists – and women full stop – have been fighting this misconception for a long time, and the importance of this battle cannot be underestimated. There are still cultures around the world where female pleasure is a sin, hence the horrific practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). This, many feminists would argue, is one of the main reasons why we still need feminism today.

The first scientific study of women’s sexuality was undertaken by American research team Masters and Johnson, who published their findings in a book, Human Sexual Response, in 1966. Two years later Anne Koedt (born 1941) wrote an essay on women’s sexuality, looking at the findings of Masters and Johnson from a radical feminist perspective. This essay was called The Myth of the Female Orgasm and it looked at evidence for the clitoral orgasm, female anatomy and reasons why the "myth" of the vaginal orgasm was (and still is) maintained.

Koedt explored how Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) and his approach to women’s sexuality, or their lack of it, had reinforced misconceptions borne in the Victorian era about things such as hysterical behaviour and the notion that women were inferior to men. But she also considered whether his idea that women learn to be frigid as a natural reaction to men’s dominance may have some truth in it. Perhaps women and men are both afraid of female sexuality? It was these sorts of topics that Koedt was not afraid to tackle and, in doing so, she set a new precedent for what could and could not be discussed in the public sphere.

Are women simply frigid?

If you are "faking it" to your boyfriend, then clearly you belong in the group of people who do believe in the female orgasm. So what is going wrong? Australian-British writer Germaine Greer (born 1939) laments in her 1970 book The Female Eunuch that the reason women are so unfamiliar with their own sexual needs is because, from a young age, unlike boys, they are encouraged not to understand themselves. "The little girl is not encouraged to explore her own genitals or to identify the tissues of which they are composed, or to understand the mechanism of lubrication and erection. The very idea is distasteful."

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86), who was remarkably ahead of her time in talking about female sexuality, took this comparison between men and women and used it to initiate a debate about the politics of sex. In The Second Sex(1949), she proposed that if a man has the desire to have sex, he will have sex, climax and then no longer have the need for it. For women, this progression does not appear to be so linear, or so simple.

The chances are, if you are finding it hard to orgasm, it could well be due to lack of experience and not knowing yourself well enough. As much as the female orgasm has been ignored, it has also been underestimated. How can you understand something so complicated if you are taught it is supposed to be easy?

Are the media to blame?

We see examples of this over and over again in the media. You and your partner have both seen movies and TV shows where women come at exactly the same time as their male counterpart, with zero foreplay and straight, penetrative sex. If women are learning from movies, books and porn that women can come like that, the next step is to suspect that if you can’t, there must be something wrong with you. You learn to improvise to avoid failing to fulfil your own and your partner’s expectations. You learn to lie.

As radical American feminist John Stoltenberg (born 1944) said: "Pornography tells lies about women. But pornography tells the truth about men." In the 1989 romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally, Meg Ryan’s character famously tries to debunk some of these lies when she demonstrates how easily she can fake an orgasm, attempting to persuade Harry that he may not be the sexual impresario he thinks he is. "It’s just that all men are sure it never happens to them and most women at one time or another have done it," quips Sally. "So you do the math."

The feminine mystique

During the so-called Sex Wars of the 1970s, feminism focused a great deal on sex, pornography and censorship. In her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique Betty Friedan (1921–2006) used popular psychology of the time to try to understand women and their sexuality. She argued that in the absence of agency and exploration, women "evade human growth" and "will never know sexual fulfilment and the peak experience of human love until they are allowed and encouraged to grow to their full strength as human beings".

Friedan quotes a 1930s study by psychology professor Abraham Maslow (1908–70) where the relationship between sexuality and "dominance feeling" or "self-esteem" or "ego level" in women was examined. Contrary to what you are often shown on TV and in movies, the research found that the more dominant the woman, the greater her enjoyment of sex and the more easily she orgasmed. These women were more themselves, Friedan noted, and therefore they could give themselves to love.

But in reality this does not happen often, says Friedan. During a woman’s first sexual experience she understands that she is there to facilitate the male orgasm. She is playing a part in a fantasy where the woman must be submissive and please her partner, as she does in everyday life.

YES, YES, YES!

Making a decision

Friedan and her contemporaries argued that only a woman who is able to express herself in everyday life can reach orgasm and thus take a leading role in her own (sex) life: "The transcendence of self, in sexual orgasm, as in creative experience, can only be attained by one who is himself, or herself, complete, by one who has realized his or her own identity," she wrote (Friedan, The Feminine Mystique, page 263). The female orgasm does exist. And your right to orgasm is a woman’s right. A human right. Seize it.

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Around this time last year, I experienced the worst breakout since my teenage years. Whiteheads, cystic spots, blackheads and pesky bumps under the skin - you name it, I was rocking it. After countless, useless trips to my GP, I finally booked an appointment with a dermatologist, who prescribed me medication to get my hormones in check and a brand new skincare routine, including acids and retinol. Amazingly, my skin responded incredibly well, but while my breakouts are now few and far between and so much more manageable than before, I'm not immune to the odd cluster of spots every now and then, and they get worse before my period.

In my experience, topical treatments that claim to bring down the size and inflammation of said monster zits fall short of their promises. Salicylic acid definitely helps, but if you're impatient like me, it might not be your best bet. So when the experts behind dermatologist-led skincare brand Dr Dennis Gross let slip that on 1st October they'd be launching an LED tool – the SpotLite Blemish Reducer, £58 – with the power to reduce spot size, redness and inflammation, I was intrigued. The wand-like device, cleared by the FDA, harnesses two LED lights and claims to "target and treat acne at all stages, even before it surfaces". How? Well, it uses the full spectrum of both light wavelengths. The blue light "penetrates just beneath skin’s surface to fight acne-causing bacteria" while the red light "goes deeper to heal skin, reducing inflammation and redness". The tool is meant to be used once daily, for three minutes at a time, and while it sounds pretty sci-fi, it seems there's method in the madness.

"There is increasing interest in the anti-inflammatory and rejuvenating properties of LED treatment, and in acne, this form of phototherapy is being increasingly used," explains Dr Justine Hextall, consultant dermatologist at the Tarrant Street Clinic. "Previously a lot of work was done looking at the effects of blue light (peak 415nm) in acne. Blue light has been shown to be antibacterial to P.Acnes [acne-causing bacteria that live in pores and hair follicles] in the skin, but interestingly it's a mixture of blue light and red light (peak 660nm) that seems more effective. The red light seems to be anti-inflammatory and it seems it is this combination of anti-inflammatory and antibacterial light which has more efficacy."

Sounds pretty great, right? Well, according to a clinical study conducted by Dr Dennis Gross, 100% of participants reported some improvement in the reduction of acne when the tool was used once daily for two weeks. The thing is, no matter how huge, my spots only really tend to stick around for three or four days maximum. It's the hyperpigmentation, which some of us refer to as 'scars', that takes time to fade. Regular exfoliation and retinoid use are efficient here, as Dr Hextall stresses. "LED is most effective as an adjunctive therapy in acne, so it is beneficial to combine it with topical treatment such as benzoyl peroxide and retinoid cream. A light peel prior to LED treatment may also help." With that in mind, I chose not to abandon my trusty glycolic acid toner (The Inkey List's Glycolic Acid Toner 10%, £6.99, in case you were wondering) and what is now my go-to retinol (Elizabeth Arden's Retinol Ceramide Capsules, £42) and instead, used them alongside the tool. Here's how I got on...

Day One

I wake up with a cluster of spots on my right cheek (they always congregate here for some reason) so I give the whiteheads a squeeze (gross but necessary), wash my face with YourGoodSkin's Brightening Exfoliating Face Wash, £5.99, pat my skin dry and go straight for the tool, holding it to my face with one hand while checking the news on my phone with the other. It doesn't feel hot like I expected, it isn't heavy and the bright red light switches off after exactly three minutes, indicating that it's already worked its magic for that day. It doesn't reduce the swelling immediately but as I apply my trusty Medik8 Balance Moisturiser, £45, and follow with Heliocare 360 Gel Oil-Free SPF50, £31, I can safely say the cluster appears just a tiny bit less red and angry, although I seem to have pressed too hard and have a slight ring on my cheek for a few seconds! I cover up the spots under a layer of foundation and don't give them much thought throughout the day. When I get home, I take my makeup off but nothing much has changed. The good news is that no spots have sprouted in that area, which is a total win for me, because they can multiply at this time of the month.

Day Three

I'm fast-forwarding to day three, because on day two when I wake up, there isn't much of a difference as the redness is still there slightly. Brilliantly, the spots have gone down in size but are still a little bumpy. Here, though, my spots are more or less completely flat, so there isn't any inflammation that needs deflating. I take this picture in the evening, a good 12 hours after using the tool as part of my morning routine. It's the result I'm after and I pop the tool back in its box, continuing to use retinol and glycolic acid alternately each evening to fade the marks.

The Verdict

I'm impressed by how the SpotLite inhibited any whiteheads from joining the party, but I'm pretty sure alternating between my retinol capsules and a splash of glycolic acid every night did most of the work. As Dr Hextall explains, LED light works best in conjunction with a skincare routine suited to acne-prone skin, so on a long-term basis I'd suggest using it alongside proven acne-busting ingredients like these. That said, if you've got an upcoming event and need to minimise an acne cluster fast, I'd recommend the tool as a quick fix, with a dot of concealer for good measure.

Dr Dennis Gross' SpotLite Blemish Reducer, £58, is available from Cult Beauty on 1st October

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