Author: Bradley Chadwick

When was the last time you felt like your skin was working against you when you entered a crucial room, such as a client meeting, panel interview, or first day? That has an unexpectedly high mental cost. Angling your face away from the light, being aware of whether the concealer is holding, and being slightly preoccupied with something unrelated to the conversation and entirely focused on how you think you appear to the people across the table are all examples of being half present and half managing. When you’re focusing on something else, it’s hard to project authority. However, this…

The appointment was scheduled before the onset of anxiety. A slot at a skincare clinic three blocks from my apartment opened up during the hectic week of preparation. The interview was set for two in the afternoon and involved a four-round process at a company that had already put me through a phone screen and two video calls. 8:30 a.m. 30 minutes. The website stated that there was no downtime. I made the reservation, convinced myself that it made sense, and then I silently wondered for the next two days whether this was a perfectly reasonable choice or a great…

On a Saturday afternoon, observe who is in the skincare section of any Sephora. It won’t be the person you anticipate. Teens and young adults in their early twenties, some of whom are hardly old enough to drive, are carefully navigating shelves filled with vitamin C serums, niacinamide toners, and retinol formulas while paying close attention to ingredient lists. They have. They arrived at the store with a clear idea of what they wanted after watching hundreds of TikTok videos, following dermatologists on Instagram, and cross-referencing YouTube routines and Reddit threads. If you think back to earlier generations’ skincare regimens,…

Mention that you have red hair when you walk into practically any laser hair removal clinic in London, the kind with spotless white walls, dimly lit treatment rooms, and a receptionist who speaks in calming tones. In the past, the reaction has varied from a courteous wince to a direct “we probably can’t help you.” For many years, redheads were discreetly denied access to one of the most well-liked procedures in the beauty industry, claiming that the technology was just not made for their hair. In general, that was accurate. It’s getting much less so. Nowadays, the question is more…

The fact that Shania Twain, the woman who sold over 40 million copies of a single album, spent 99 weeks in the Billboard 200’s Top 20, and became by most accounts the most commercially successful female country music artist in history, almost lost the one thing that made it all possible during a horseback ride is somewhat shocking. Not an automobile collision. Not a mishap on the stadium stage. Somewhere in 2003, during what ought to have been a typical afternoon, there was a tick bite. Lyme disease was present in the tick. Twain contracted Lyme disease. It would take…

Before anyone even questioned Laz Alonso, the internet concluded that something was amiss. These days, it goes like this: someone appears different on screen, a few screenshots go viral, and within hours, Reddit threads are speculating about illness, recasting, or worse. The speculation machine started spinning almost instantly when early footage from The Boys Season 4 started circulating, and fans noticed how much leaner Alonso appeared in comparison to the bulkier, more physically intimidating Mother’s Milk from previous seasons. The character may have been recast, according to some. Others immediately focused on health issues, openly speculating as to whether the…

The post might have arrived in the most Midge Ure way possible—on social media, without much fanfare. There was no press release. No well-crafted statement via a publicist. “Looking forward to getting back on stage with my Band Electronica in a few months after my unscheduled break” is a straightforward update from a 72-year-old man in his early seventies who had spent the majority of his adult life creating music that people carried around inside of them for decades. In that sentence, the term “unscheduled break” does a lot of silent work. The more complete image had been developing for…

The majority of people are familiar with one version of Claude Littner. The person seated across a conference table in a room without windows, staring at a nervous applicant who has just attempted to defend a disastrously flawed business plan. Perfectly motionless. Silently devastating. The kind of presence that, under pressure, causes seasoned professionals to forget their own names. For almost ten years, that controlled, surgical, completely unreadable version of Claude Littner on The Apprentice became one of the most recognizable characters on British television. The other story is completely hidden in that version. At the age of 48 in…

More succinctly than any caption, the picture she shared conveyed the story. Two blackened eyes. Her face was framed by bandages. a chin strap that kept everything in place while the healing process quietly permeated the bruised tissue. Beneath is a compression vest. Above all, it’s the look of someone who has done this before, knows exactly what will happen next, and doesn’t really want to be talked out of it. Three days after surgery, 31-year-old Yazmin Oukhellou, who had just left an Istanbul clinic, felt compelled to let people know that she trusted the procedure. The internet had opinions,…

Somewhere in the M.D. is a room. Butch Harmon fought for his life at the Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas, one of the most prestigious cancer hospitals in the world. Not behind a microphone analyzing someone’s backswing, not on a practice range, but in the kind of institutional quiet found in cancer wards, with medical professionals working while the rest of the world went on without him. At that time, Harmon was already one of the most well-known names in golf coaching, but his throat cancer was so bad that medical professionals reportedly doubted his chances of recovery. Yes,…