The play was Cleansed, written by Sarah Kane. And it has been on at The Almeida for most of August. Anyone who knows Kane’s work will already be familiar with the state of play: violence, mutilation, torture, and a degree of brutality that pushes the bounds of what you can actually put on the stage and subject an audience to. When the play finished, there was a collective sigh of relief in the audience. I didn’t sleep that night.

When Kane’s debut play, Blasted, was first staged at London’s Royal Court Upstairs in 1995, the then-23-year-old playwright’s work became a cause célèbre. The play was about a couple entering a Leeds hotel room, and several acts of sickening violence follow. Critics eviscerated Kane: Jack Tinker wrote a Daily Mail review headlined: "This Disgusting Feast of Filth".

The mood changed later, as reviewers began to recognise Kane’s work less as torture porn and more as thoughtful meditations on the human condition, desire, and oppression. Maybe the initial reaction had something to do with the fact that she was a young woman daring to do something a little different, but what do I know. Lest we forget, blood and gore on the stage is hardly anything new (ever read Titus Andronicus?), but female artists are seldom given the same creative license as men.

Given the difficulty of their material, Kane’s plays are rarely staged. Hence why Cleansed has caused such a ruckus this summer: it has been a sellout run, attracting the attention of many A-list actors and directors; in addition to Sharpe, I spotted four other famous faces in the audience.

Make no mistake, the play is horrifying. Cleansed is about a group of young “undesirables” living in a strange asylum-slash-university where they’re subjected to extreme torture at the hands of a sadist called Tinker, which happens to be the surname of the aforementioned Daily Mail critic who slammed Kane’s debut play. Clever: maybe I should start naming evil characters in my novels after ex-boyfriends.

There were moments I had to look away. But for the most part, my eyes stayed fixed on the stage, in awe of the power of a really good play and the visceral agony being conveyed metres away from me. I have no clue how those actors perform that night after night; their talent is unrivalled.

In today’s screen-addled world, it’s rare to have a collective cultural experience like this. There was something strangely refreshing about sitting there, alongside real people in a small room, all witnessing the same horror unfold before our eyes, and reacting to it in real time.

Despite its shocking violence — and let me reiterate, this is a deeply shocking play with a long list of trigger warnings and a bespoke self-care guide to help viewers prepare — Cleansed is ultimately a play about the agony of love, yearning for human connection, and what it means to be abandoned by the people we love. It’s tragic, too, made more so by the playwright taking her own life in 1999, one year after it debuted. She was 28.

I will be thinking about my experience at the theatre that night for a long time. Sometimes, when we all exist in strict cultural silos that are often decided for us by streaming algorithms, it can be pretty isolating. Gone are the days when we’d all settle into the same crime drama on a Sunday night, giving us something to talk with our colleagues about on a Monday morning. Technology has eroded our sense of cultural community. The theatre — and specifically plays like Cleansed — is bringing it back. And thank goodness for that.

So, it’s been a fairly heavy week. The day I saw Cleansed, I’d been reporting on a deeply upsetting story I’ve been following closely: the Lindsay Clancy case. To those unfamiliar with the story, the Massachusetts mother is on trial for murdering her three children in 2023. Her defence team argues she was suffering from postpartum psychosis, a poorly understood and rare condition causing hallucinations, visions, and delusions in new mothers. I heard about the case in 2024 when The New Yorker published this interview with Clancy’s husband (now ex), Patrick. I’d really recommend reading it.

After that, I became obsessed with learning everything I could about postpartum psychosis, hence this piece I wrote last year, and then this one about Clancy’s case on Tuesday. To me, the case encompasses everything I care about: medical misogyny, wilful ignorance around women’s health, and the tragedies that can ensue when we don’t take female suffering seriously. Postpartum psychosis is not even recognised as a distinct disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

As I write this, the jury is deliberating Clancy’s fate. If found guilty, she will face life in prison.

Some lighter stuff: I’ve been watching Love is Blind UK. Guys, it’s great. When did all of these people get so therapised? It’s wild to see them argue with each other and then take full accountability for their behaviour, apologising meaningfully and actually making amends. They must’ve employed a therapist for this season.

I actually think we could all benefit from seeing more reality TV like this. Not the kind that pushes people to the brink of insanity for entertainment, but the kind that actually shows us what healthy, constructive romantic relationships look like. I was ready to write Ciara off as a spoilt brat, but then she seemed to totally own her self-sabotaging traits in a way that was very rare to see on screen. I also thought the Diwali celebration she put together for Ajay was adorable. More of that, please.

I’m quietly obsessed with Sophie and Taylor, too. Little niggles that would lead to major arguments in more toxic relationships are laughed off — that’s something I’m noticing a lot, actually — and moments of ignorance aren’t cause for humiliation: when Sophie admits she doesn’t know what Downing Street is, or who the prime minister is, Taylor simply tells her without laughing or judging. Sophie doesn’t know this stuff, and that’s okay!

It’s a real pet peeve of mine when someone likes to make someone feel small for not knowing something they do. I’ve dated men like this. Straight women, be warned: a man who gets off on feeling superior to you is one to walk very far away from very quickly.

Anyway, I hope you’re having a lovely bank holiday weekend. I am, quite frankly, exhausted from a very busy week and in need of some hard rest. Friends are about to arrive at mine for dinner as I write this, and I’m afraid I have not cooked a single thing. All hail M&S picky bits.

Lots of love,

OP xoxo

So, on Friday morning, I went for a run to try and rid my brain of the snakes. They stuck around. And it wasn’t until I rang one of my best mates, who thankfully picked up immediately, that the hissing began to subside. Sometimes, you just need to talk to someone who loves you, and everything else sort of melts away.

Aside from running, the other thing I like to do when I feel a little snakey is go to an exhibition. Either alone or with a very good friend, the kind you can stop talking to mid-sentence without seeming rude because something on the wall has caught your eye. Or someone you can cry in front of (I didn’t think an exhibition could make me cry but then I went to see Tracey Emin at The Tate Modern).

It was with one of those friends that I went to see the Frida Kahlo exhibition, which, incidentally, is right next to the Emin one. There also happens to be a very famous photograph of Emin in the Kahlo exhibition of her dressed just like the Mexican icon, taken by Mary McCartney. The likeness is startling.

Anyway, the exhibition was phenomenal. I am someone who knew embarrassingly little about Kahlo before entering; a friend had one of those “Frida Nipple” phone cases when we were at uni, so I knew the extent to which her face had become synonymous with tat. But that was almost it. I won’t bore you with the details, as I’m sure you already know many of them.

The learnings that stuck out to me, though, were as follows: she married a much older man (the famous muralist Diego Rivera) aged 22. He was 42. Both of them had affairs – though by sleeping with Frida’s sister, I think Diego might’ve been the bigger offender there – and eventually divorced, only to remarry again until Frida’s death at the age of 47. Frida was obsessed with doubles. She was also a very sick woman. Polio, the horrific tram car crash where an iron handrail pierced her pelvis, more than one miscarriage, and a constant barrage of pain… she suffered a lot. But she never stopped painting. And on the night of her first solo exhibition, she had her four-poster bed transported from her home to the gallery so she could experience it herself.

Lots of paintings stood out, too, of course, but one stayed with me more than the others. It’s a particularly bloody image (lots of Kahlo’s paintings are) and features a man standing over a naked woman’s dead body; she is covered in stab wounds. He’s holding a knife. This is “A Few Small Nips”, a painting Kahlo was inspired to create after reading about a man who’d murdered his girlfriend by stabbing her repeatedly and in court, claimed: "But I just gave her a couple of little nips!"

Kahlo’s painting, and the message behind it, has stayed with me since. It captures the essence of what it means to be a woman operating within a world of medical misogyny, patriarchal conditioning, and rampant violence against women, where, so often, we have to convince people that our pain was real, even in death.

A man I went on a date with not too long ago said that misogyny in modern-day society was a moral panic.

Just a few small nips.

Almost every woman I know has been sexually assaulted. 99% of those perpetrators are men. Hardly any of them will face justice.

Just a few small nips.

A man got his penis out on the tube next to me the other night.

Just a few small nips.

Here’s an extract from a piece about Andrew Tate in The New Yorker: “Southern remembers fading in and out of consciousness as Tate raped her unprotected and choked her. Afterward, he sat on the edge of the bed and said, ‘Don’t tell the press I raped you.’ She remembers saying, ‘My whole brand is literally talking about how stupid bitches get themselves in situations like this. There’s nothing I can say without destroying my career. So congratulations.’”

You get the idea.

After leaving the exhibition, I did my usual nerdy thing of trying to read and listen to as much Kahlo content as possible. This episode of In Our Time was pretty good, but this podcast interview courtesy of Katy Hessell and Jessie Burton was better.

I’ve been working a lot. I know that my Instagram may suggest otherwise — btw it’s a bit wild the assumptions people make about our lives on there, isn’t it? I do it too, but, like, I had to do an announcement to let people know a very old friend of mine was not my boyfriend — but I haven’t had a proper holiday where I haven’t done any work for longer than one or two days in, like, five years.

That’s not a humlebrag. I’m exhausted. And I want to go away and not feel obliged to check my emails. But I’m a freelance writer; what if nobody ever hires me again!? I have no other skills. Apart from being highly adept and not taking breaks from work, panicking about work, and overthinking about which boys are (and are not) texting me back.

If you’ve come this far down, you get a little fun goss about the boys, see.

Speaking of women who write about boys, the new Phoebe Bridgers album is also very good. I’m not convinced by the “shade” against Gracie Abrams that people are talking about online (apparently she said something rude about Gracie sleeping in her bedsheets because Gracie is with her ex, Paul Mescal?) and am choosing to ignore this baseless internalised misogynistic nonsense. Focus on the songs, which are excellent. “Bobby” is the best track, shortly followed by “As Above”, which made me cry in about four seconds.

None of these songs are “Motion Sickness” (though I do think “Lost Boys” is also very, very good), but it’s lovely to have some new Phoebe music in my ears.

Finally, allow me to tell you about Legally Blonde, a near-perfect film that really didn’t need a sequel. And it certainly didn’t need the recent reboot I have not gone near. At its core, this is a very silly and frothy film but with quite a serious bit of heart. We seem to have lost that art in the modern-day romcoms. The Devil Wears Prada? Great film with heart. The Devil Wears Prada 2? Social media froth shallower than an iced oat vanilla matcha latte someone spilled on the floor.

Legally Blonde is about a woman who has been pigeonholed. She has to fight to be taken seriously and understood as more than just one thing. Maybe this is related to my earlier Instagram comment; the assumptions we make about people’s lives, etc.

Anyway, it’s very satisfying to watch Elle Woods succeed at proving her intelligence and worth in this film, subsequently triumphing over her loser ex-boyfriend. Also, the Luke Wilson character embodies everything I think every straight woman I know is looking for in a man: someone who believes in her, sees through her, understands her, and meets her where she is, but also pushes her further.

This film was written by two women.

There will be more soon, I think. I’m going to try and get better at Substack. In the meantime, here are a few articles I’ve written recently, if you’re interested:

Emma Mackey on Greta’s Narnia and A24’s Peaked

Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon are dating finance bros – here’s what they need to know

Ghosting, pressure, the cost of dinner — I know why men won’t date

I Refuse To Be Separated From My Red Lipstick – Even At The Beach

A date for every day of the week? Why I tried ‘roster dating’

Speak soon. And if the snakes come for you, call your mates.

Lots of love,

Olivia xxx

“I just read your repugnant account of your wild night of blackout drinking from two years ago,” the email began, referencing an article I’d written for The Daily Mail in 2024 about a night when I was sexually assaulted twice. “I find your refusal to take accountability for your choices staggeringly outrageous. At every step of the way, you were the one making the decisions you came to regret.”

The email was long, and continued in a similar vein, the writer proceeding to ask me why I drank so much, calling me “haplessly oblivious” and referring to my perpetrators as “the men you gangbanged”. “You are not brave,” they added. “You are not deserving of anyone's sympathy. You are not a victim.”

Just in case I hadn’t got the message, the writer felt compelled to send me three follow-up emails, one of which included the following: “In your case it happened because you created the conditions for it to happen. That is very different from young girls being abducted at gunpoint and sold into sexual slavery. Your ‘rape’ does not qualify as a rape.”

You get the idea.

Now, look, I’ve been writing about violence against women in my journalism for a while. That includes incidents that have happened to me as well as those that have happened to other people. Unfortunately, that means I’m no stranger to receiving emails like this. Whenever a woman writes about sexual trauma, it’s depressingly common for people to get in touch and poke holes in her story, challenge her recollection of events, and find ways to undermine, slutshame, and blame her at every turn.

It’s a sad but accepted part of writing about rape, and being a woman on the internet more broadly. So much so that almost every publication I’ve written for turns off the online comments section for these pieces, to prevent writers from having to see this kind of abuse.

All of which is to say, I’m used to this. And normally, I’d brush an email like that off, finding solace in the lunacy of it all and laughing at the litany of grammatical errors: “Ha! You think it was my fault I was assaulted? At least I know how an apostrophe works!”

This is my Substack, and I’ll be facetious if I want to.

But I didn’t laugh this email off. I actually read it twice and burst into tears, poring over everything they’d written and wondering if they were right.

For context, the piece was about “blackout sex”, an oxymoronic term I used to describe the experience of being too drunk to consent to sex, which, by the way, classifies as rape. Under Section 74 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, consent is legally defined as an agreement made by choice, with both the freedom and the capacity to make that choice. A person can’t make that choice if they are:

• Heavily intoxicated by alcohol or drugs to the point of being unable to process the situation

• Are asleep, passed out, or unconscious

• Have a mental disorder or learning disability that prevents them from understanding the nature of the sexual act

• Are legally underage

I discovered this after reporting what happened to me to the police, who swiftly told me the likelihood of getting anywhere with my case was extremely low. This was due to the lack of “evidence”, something that rape survivors so rarely have beyond their word, given the complex nature of sexual trauma that inhibits us from going to the police immediately, if at all.

Pursuing my case would mean having to go through a traumatising legal process whereby my perpetrator would almost certainly wind up walking away unscathed. Then he’d just be out there, a free man, who would know I’d accused him of rape.

I dropped the case.

There’s a scene in the film Sorry, Baby when Eva Victor’s character goes to the doctor the day after she’s been sexually assaulted and tells him that she has since taken a bath. “So, it’s usually best to go to the emergency room right after something like this happens,” he says. “Oh, okay, I will definitely keep that in mind for the next time,” she replies.

It’s a moment that captures society’s gross misunderstanding of sexual violence, which is one of the reasons why I rarely talk about this stuff, even with my closest friends. Without wanting to cause me harm, they might unintentionally say the wrong thing, which could be deeply re-traumatising, invalidate the pain I’m experiencing, or make me feel as if I’m being melodramatic. This has happened before.

But I don’t want to sit in silence with it the way society tells me I’m supposed to. Nor do I want others to feel like they ought to. That’s why I write about it instead.

The email arrived at a bad time. I’d not been sleeping well and, in all honesty, had been feeling rather lonely after reflecting on past sexual encounters, some of which had happened while I had been drinking. These were consensual casual experiences with people I trust and nothing remotely comparable to assault. But there was a tiny voice in the back of my head that told me I might not have slept with some of those people, or consented to certain things, had I been sober. And that made me feel pretty ashamed.

Somewhere along the wobbly path my mind began to wander down, I started thinking about the people I’d been with, and how many of them I actually wanted to be with versus how many I decided to be with purely to escape from some other feeling.

It’s not that I thought there was necessarily any truth in the email, but it was getting to me. And as someone who has had far more casual sexual encounters that society would deem meaningless than I have encounters within a relationship (I’ve only had one boyfriend), I started to wonder whether I was devaluing and degrading myself, and subsequently whether I was, in a way, asking for it.

Then I went to watch the play 1536, which I must say is the best piece of theatre I think I’ve ever seen. I can’t really say much more without spoiling the plot, but I will say that I related to one of the characters, and the way she gets treated by men, in a way that made me want to sob for hours. I watched it a few days after receiving the email.

Ultimately, all of us are looking for something meaningful from our sex lives. I’m still trying to work out what that looks like as a single woman in her 30s, dating within this era of heteropessimism and supposed sexual liberation. What I do know is that regardless of how much I drank on the night I was assaulted, I didn’t deserve it. I know that nobody puts themselves in a situation where they can be raped, and making such a claim only serves to highlight someone’s ignorance and lack of empathy.

But I also know that this messaging is deeply entrenched in our society. And sometimes, no matter how much we rally against it, it seeps in.

If any of this resonated with you, please do get in touch, as I’d love to hear from you. It can be very isolating to sit with feelings like this, and even the smallest interactions can help make you feel a little less alone.

I’ll leave you with some recommendations:

• This phenomenal essay on plastic surgery by Jia Tolentino makes a very interesting link between beauty standards and casual misandry within the dating landscape.

• This tragic essay about a man who lost his 22-month-old son is one of the best things I’ve read about grief.

• The new Gracie Abrams album has had terrible reviews, but I love the song Death Wish.

• This is a great interview with the writers behind The Invite.

• This is a very old Louis Theroux documentary about San Quentin prison, which happens to be very close to where my dad lives in California. I found it fascinating.

• Bagels as a snack. Ideally toasted and with some butter.

Hope you have lovely Sundays.

Lots of love,

OP xoxo

This is the general vibe in Olivia Wilde’s latest directorial venture, which stars Seth Rogen, Penelope Cruz and Edward Norton, as well as Wilde herself. I was lucky enough to see it at the UK premiere last week, which had an eclectic mix of guests, including Rashida Jones, Lulu, and Malala.

Based on a Spanish play, The Invite is a paean to domestic horniness, featuring two couples whose lives and libidos couldn’t be farther apart. Angela (Wilde) and her failed musician husband Joe (Rogen) have nothing in common, unless you count a 12-year-old daughter, mutual misanthropy, and a lingering obsession over their upstairs neighbours. He wants them to stop having absurdly loud sex; she just wants them to think she’s really cool, which is why she invites them round for dinner.

Enter sexologist Pina (Cruz) and her former firefighter boyfriend, Hawk (Norton), who are so hot for each other they might as well be another species to Angela and Joe, who can undress in front of one another mid-argument without even noticing. Theirs is a dynamic laced with passive aggression and contempt. Take the time Angela poorly disguises her discomfort when Joe suggests smoking weed in his office, or when Joe belittles Angela for taking relationship advice from a podcast.

These two have stopped speaking the same language; anything they say to each other is just another weapon to wield. An excuse to eviscerate the other person, because when the pain runs this deep, misery doesn’t just love company; it feeds off of it to survive. I know this dynamic because I’ve lived it, as has anyone else who has ever been trapped in that horribly familiar pre-breakup phase, when both of you are still clinging on despite knowing that tragedy looms.

Watching The Invite, which I should add is also very funny, I was reminded of my previous relationships, and the ways I’ve deluded myself into thinking everything was still okay because the reality was so much harder to accept. It’s as if you’re standing in a house that has been slowly falling apart, and you’re waiting for every last wall to come crumbling down before moving elsewhere.

I’m far from the only person who came away feeling like this. On social media, viewers have evangelised the film’s verisimilitude. “It’s when a relationship is so doomed that the thing you’re talking about is never the thing you’re talking about,” wrote one person on X. “It goes places in terms of relationship woes that I’ve only seen in real life,” added another. One person noted how it made them want to apply some of the film’s wisdom on relationships – Esther Perel was a consultant, FYI – to themselves: “The Invite made me look in the mirror and tell myself, ‘I want someone to desire me, too want me. I deserve that!’”

Others have said the film made them feel seen. “To me it made me realise how we are more afraid of vulnerability than unhappiness,” said one friend. Another said it made her realise she should’ve ended things much sooner with a recent ex. Some people have even gone so far as to say that The Invite’s examination of ethical non-monogamy has made them reconsider their romantic relationships entirely.

In a society that positions traditional romantic partnerships as paramount to a successful, happy life, it can be all too easy to slip into an Angela/Joe dynamic and stay stuck there. Leave, and you risk breaking up a family, never finding love again, and being hopelessly single and sexless forever. Well, if The Invite sends us one message, it’s to ignore all of that archaic noise, even if it is significantly louder for women, and do something a bit daring. Because as the characters in The Invite illustrate, genuine happiness isn’t always about colouring inside the lines.

It’s a point Wilde has often made when talking about the film in interviews, explaining how the cast were encouraged to share their own personal experiences to contribute to the script, which was written by Rashida Jones and Will McCormack. “My character had this experience of heartbreak that was not foreign to me,” Wilde told Time, referring to her 2020 split from long-term partner Jason Sudeikis, with whom she shares two children. “The movie was in many ways plucking from experiences that I’ve had, and it was a relief to rip my heart out of my chest and plonk it on the table.”

With this in mind, it’s no wonder so many of us are identifying with The Invite. Yes, it might be a film with fictional characters and circumstances. But it’s one rooted in an emotional truth that many of us recognise and share. Because in case you needed reminding, heartache spares none of us, not even A-list actors, a fact that is both bleak and comforting, all at the same time.

Before I go, a few recommendations:

• First up, if you’re in London, I suggest a visit to the NPG for the Marilyn Monroe exhibition. It left me feeling inspired, sad, and deeply angry at the never-ending cycle of misogyny that is so often at the root of the way women in the public eye are treated. I spoke about how the exhibition affected me on Straight Up, which my very good friends Ellie and Kathleen host. Listen here.

• I am a bit obsessed with shark documentaries at the moment. This new one about Hammerheads with Bertie Gregory (who truly has the coolest job in the world) is great and important, especially when it comes to marine conservation.

• I am currently reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, which is fascinating, strange, and weirdly funny.

• Been eating a lot of dates recently?

• Speaking of food, the chocolate-covered custard creams from M&S will change your life.

• I had the most delicious meal at Lucky Cat in Mayfair this week, where I was also served a glass of this Chardonnay that was like liquid gold.

• Rediscovered this Bon Iver live album and A SATISFIED MIND is very beautiful.

• Tried an IV drip on Saturday! That was fun; it was at the Nobu Hotel in Portman Square at this clinic.

• Putting tiny cubes of ice on my cat when she looks particularly hot and fed up.

That’s all for now! I’m trying to really delve into some book writing this summer, hence why I haven’t been writing as regularly on here as I’d like to. Wow, it’s hard to write books! Funny how you forget each time. Anyway, enough from me. Enjoy your weekends, and I suppose let’s hope it’s coming home etc.

Lots of love,

OP xxx

It wasn’t that I was running away from anything (people really need to stop pathologising their exercise habits) or that I wanted to try and up my fitness. I’ve always said that running feels like flushing the toilet in my head. I guess, at that particular time, I needed to flush a little harder — it’s my Substack; I’ll use toilet metaphors if I want to.

My point is that after I found myself getting back into the swing of running distances I hadn’t managed since the pandemic, I signed up to do a half-marathon. I’d done a few before, but not since 2021, which was a particularly tricky one that I was running in memory of a friend who’d passed away very suddenly earlier that year.

I trained hard for this particular half, managing weekly long runs and doing shorter ones in between. I was looking forward to it; this was my chance to find my way back to something I’d loved and lost. I wanted to prove to myself that I was strong enough, mentally and physically, to complete this particular challenge. Then the day itself came around, and I couldn’t get out of bed.

Again, it’s my Substack, and it feels like a fairly safe space, so I’ll tell you the real reason why that was.

I’d been dating someone for a few months, and things had been going well. Really well. We had lots in common, knew some of the same people, and were even astrologically compatible (sorry, but I do always ask for people’s star signs on a first date). One morning, after he’d stayed the night at mine, we were cuddling in my bed when it became apparent we were going to have sex. This was something I wanted. I think.

But before I could be certain, he was inside me. And he wasn’t wearing a condom.

People who’ve been reading my work for a while might be familiar with a piece I wrote in 2021 about being the victim of stealthing aka non-consensual condom removal. Yes, legally this is rape. That’s not what happened with this man, whom I’ll call F (not his real initial).

After I realised what was going on with F — condomless sex I hadn’t consented to; we’d only used condoms up until that point and hadn’t had a single conversation about STIs or other contraceptives — I froze, my body resorting to that familiar fight or flight state. I stayed still while he got on with it and later, after I’d composed myself enough to speak, tried to broach the subject by asking when his last STI test was. “Recently,” he mused, nonchalantly, clearly not picking up on what I was invoking. I felt too vulnerable to raise it again.

It wasn’t until several hours after he’d left, and I’d had a panic attack, that I texted him, all shaking hands and short of breath, to explain how that had made me feel. He apologised and seemed to mean it; he got carried away in the moment, he explained. He was half asleep. He hadn’t wanted to had sex without a condom, either. He was sorry. If there was anything he could do for me, I should let him know. He was sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

I knew it wasn’t intentional. I knew F hadn’t meant to harm me. And I knew it wasn’t rape. My mind knew these things. But my body didn’t. And I found myself descending into a similar state that I was in after the stealthing incident, which was followed by an abortion — another violation that made the whole thing doubly traumatising. My body has really kept the score with that one.

It’s hard to write about this stuff, by the way. I considered putting this post behind a paywall; at the time of writing, I’ve added and removed one four times. But as I learned when my stealthing piece went a little bit viral, opening up about these things can really help someone else. Maybe even a lot of people. It can help them to feel seen, to understand that they had a right to feel violated, and to realise that they aren’t alone in those feelings. I’m trying to be brave.

Sadly, so many of us have been through things like this. We’ve opened up to someone we trusted, been intimate with them, and then something goes horribly wrong that colours the entire experience in a different shade, one we often can’t quite describe. We push it away at first, telling ourselves it’s just a minor thing. No big deal. But our body incrementally tells us otherwise. And we find ourselves rallying against decades of social conditioning that has aligned sexual violence with internal gaslighting — did they really do that? Did I do anything to provoke that? Am I being overdramatic? — and that can slowly send us a bit insane.

This is my long-winded way of telling you that the reason I didn’t get out of bed for that half marathon last year was because I was dealing with the fallout of a minor sexual trauma that reminded me of another, much larger, one. I cried for weeks. I didn’t really sleep. And after trying to give F the benefit of the doubt, he ended up slowly phasing me out. This didn’t help.

All of this was on my mind when I signed up to the Hackney Half on a whim a few weeks ago. It felt like a way of reclaiming the time and energy that F had taken from me last year, a way of proving to myself that I could run that race, and I could run it well. I did. And I actually did it in a much faster time than I had planned. After I crossed the finish line, I burst into tears. Relief, sadness, euphoria, grief, gratitude… all of it enveloped me at once. I felt like I’d won the whole damn thing.

To be totally clear, I didn’t run without any training at all; like I said, I’ve been running a lot more recently, and I think unintentionally upped my fitness levels in the lead up to the race, which really helped. I was in agony afterwards and booked a massage immediately to ease the pain my legs were in. Today, I had a lymphatic drainage massage via Airbnb (did you know you can book massages on there? I didn’t), which was truly wonderful. If you’re based in London, go and see Debbie immediately.

I didn’t start this essay planning to talk about F. It was meant to be an essay about running. But that’s the funny thing about writing. Very often, it isn’t until you’ve finished that you realise what it was you’ve been trying to say.

Until next time,

OP xoxo

P.S. I am loving I Want You To Be Happy by Jem Calder. Highly recommend if you’re looking for a summer read.

Such was the degree of my distress, I came pretty close to cancelling the trip I’d planned weeks ago altogether. It would’ve been easier to stay in bed, cuddle my cat, and order several meals via Deliveroo.

That’s certainly what another version of me would have done, the one who spent most of 2025 dipping in and out of depressive episodes, crying in the kitchen, and fantasising about starting all over again. It was bad, actually. Probably the worst my mental health has been in a while. I’m incredibly lucky to have such wonderful friends, whose constant support was instrumental in keeping me sane and (relatively) stable last year.

People frequently tell me how glamorous my life looks online, so I think it’s important to be candid about what’s really going on underneath the surface, even though we all know that Instagram is merely a mirage. I forget sometimes, too.

I’m in a better place now. So, that morning, I found myself able to push through the sadness, get out of bed, and onto the train to Yorkshire, where a lakeside cabin awaited me.

I’ve always been sceptical of writing retreats. One of the joys of being a writer is that you can work anywhere: on the tube, on your sofa, and even on the beach. Nobody should have to pay money to earn money. That’s why I rarely write in cafes, or anywhere else that requires me to buy overpriced oat lattes in exchange for an uncomfortable chair and an ill-positioned table. I can write perfectly well from the comfort of my own home, where the coffee is free, the seating is suited to my needs, and did I mention the cat of it all?

But I’ve been struggling with my third book. It’s a novel, which is all I’m ready to tell you, one I’ve been working on for close to two years now. So, when Airbnb got in touch, offering me the opportunity to try one of their UK properties out as a writing retreat, I figured it would be worth a shot. I chose this one at random, mostly because I loved the idea of waking up to that lake every morning.

Back to the teary arrival (had I been listening to Phoebe Bridgers? Yes, yes, I had). Once the sobs subsided, I paused to take in my new surroundings. A small cabin with a private deck looking out onto an expansive lake surrounded by greenery and filled with geese, goslings, ducks and ducklings. My nervous system felt instantly calmer. Put me in the middle of nowhere with some baby animals, and I’m a whole new person, apparently.

Within hours, I felt like myself. And when I feel like myself, I can write. I’ve never bought into the whole ‘tortured artist’ trope; to write well, I need to be rested, fed, and ideally, exercised. In other words, I need to be at my fittest, healthiest, and most energised self. Otherwise, I might as well be scribbling on a notepad in the dark.

I don’t know how anyone can write from a place of pain. At least not coherently. It’s a myth, too, that the greatest artists did this: even Van Gogh did his best paintings when he was at his most rested and mentally robust, as I learned last summer by visiting the Saint-Paul Asylum in Saint-Rémy, where he painted many of his most famous works.

Yorkshire is beautiful. During my stay, I went for regular lakeside hikes, chatted to locals, and befriended many, many ducklings. Their parents were less impressed and hissed at me whenever I got too close, which only made me love them even more; animals must protect their little families!

Unlike whenever I go anywhere in London, I walked without headphones, listening only to the wind and the birds. Much more peaceful. I also took myself on a little excursion to the nearby town of Haworth to visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum, which was very special. Not least because Wuthering Heights is such an important book to me (I also enjoyed Emerald Fennell’s adaptation!), but because I learned so much about this fascinating, brilliant family that I never knew.

For example, did you know the Brontë children lost their mother very young? Or that the sole boy in the family, Branwell, was an alcoholic who died at 31 after having an affair with a much older woman, who refused to marry him? I also didn’t realise how young they all died; Emily was just 30.

I’ll admit that I was worried about spending three full days and nights alone. Hence why I’d invited a flurry of friends to come with me at the last minute. Nobody could make it, which I’m actually quite pleased about now. Because all that time and space to myself was a true indulgence, and I was surprised at how empowered I felt being on my own the entire time: content in my own company, and quickly forgetting about the aforementioned boy.

I wrote a lot, too, by the way. Articles. Pitches. And parts of my novel I’d been struggling with. So, maybe writing retreats do work. This one certainly did.

A few recommendations for you before I leave:

The Other Bennet Sister – a truly delightful period drama on the BBC about Mary Bennet. I normally find period dramas boring (sorry!), but this one totally charmed me.

Hit the Wall by Gracie Abrams – I’m a huge Gracie fan (and said as much when I bounded up to the poor woman at Glastonbury last year), so am very excited for her new album, which is produced by my all-time fave, Aaron Dessner (of The National). Justin Vernon (aka Bon Iver) also worked on the record. The new single is great. Also, if you’re a fan of this lot like me and haven’t yet listened to Big Red Machine, go now. Reese is one of my faves.

Rivals – the new season is as fabulous as the first.

Ornella – a delicious new Italian restaurant in London Fields. The focaccia is orgasmic.

Famesick by Lena Dunham – again, this needs no introduction, but I’d highly recommend it to any aspiring writers. Her sentences are superb.

My own singles nights – guys, they’re really fun. There are a handful of tickets left to my next event on 27 May, so please come along.

That’s all from me for now.

Until next time!

Lots of love,

OP xoxo

P.S. If a writing retreat sounds like something you’d be keen to try, Airbnb has teamed up with Hay Festival to offer eight UK-based writers a coupon worth £1,500, enabling them to stay in a UK location of their choosing for a writer’s retreat. I think this is an incredible opportunity for anyone looking to start, finish, or delve deep into a writing project. More info on how to enter here.

Take Olivia Nervo, the Grammy award-winning songwriter, who was six months pregnant when she found out her partner was in a relationship with someone else – a woman who also happened to be pregnant… and was also already the mother to his first child. The experience led Nervo to learn about reproductive coercion, a type of abuse whereby a person interferes with their partner’s agency over their reproductive health.

It’s not a phrase I’d heard before, though it describes behaviour I recognise from friends who’ve been in situations similar to Nervo’s. They meet someone, fall in love, and decide to start a family, only for the pregnant woman to realise that her partner is not who he said he was, and that she has essentially been duped into having a baby with someone under circumstances she didn’t necessarily consent to.

This could take many forms: the partner could be hiding a substance abuse problem, major financial issues, or perhaps they’ve cheated on you. Maybe, like in Nervo’s case, that partner is in another relationship and already has children with someone else. None of these is discoveries you want to make after already having committed to having a child with someone.

I can’t think of anything more horrific. The violation of your body, mind, and entire future is too vast to comprehend. Your entire life ruined in the matter of seconds it took for the truth to be exposed, most likely by accident – abusive partners like this rarely have the compassion and courage to come forward with whatever bad behaviour it is they’ve withheld.

Then what? You find yourself having a child you wanted with someone you didn’t. The agony must be unbearable. Nervo is among those now calling for reproductive coercion to become a standalone offence. Last month, the Labour MP, Natalie Fleet, led a debate in parliament on the issue, saying it was “so important – in the public interest, even – that the story of Olivia Nervo is heard”, adding that this is something the legal system “still struggles to recognise”.

You find yourself having a child you wanted with someone you didn’t

While reproductive coercion is recognised as a form of coercive control in England and Wales under the Serious Crime Act, it’s frequently misunderstood and overlooked, given its various complexities. After all, it was only in 2015 that coercive control was made a criminal offence. Read more about what happened to Olivia Nervo in the Guardian here.

As a victim of stealthing – something I’ve written about before – I couldn’t agree more that this kind of offence should be considered within that same remit. Consent is one of those things that can seem complicated but is actually glaringly simple: you have either given it, or you have not. And there are terms you agree to, and terms you do not by dint of not being made aware of them. While I appreciate that there’s an element of never truly knowing what you’re signing up for when you commit to raising a child with someone else, surely there should be specific parameters in place to protect women from being deceived and coerced.

Having a child is one of the most significant decisions a woman can make about her body; we all deserve the chance to do it freely and fully informed. And in those awful cases where this doesn’t happen, and our bodily autonomy is undermined, we should be legally protected. It wouldn’t change the situation, but at least justice would be served, the violation validated. That counts for a lot more than people might think.

Cultural recommendations

Reading Famesick by Lena Dunham — like every other millennial woman, I’m a huge Girls and Lena fan. To this day, I’m convinced that American Bitch remains one of the greatest episodes of TV.

Watching Margo’s Got Money Troubles — particularly fond of the father/daughter relationship that’s explored in this.

Listening to Raye — her latest album got me through my recent flat move

Eating — La Petite Maison is truly one of the best restaurants in London. Their ‘tomatini’ is my favourite cocktail in the city. I suggest pairing with some of their burrata. Delish.

That’s it from me for this week. I’m diving into the second draft of my new novel and planning more Red Lips dating nights for the summer.

Speak soon,

Olivia xoxo

Now, after four years living in the same flat, I’m on the move again. But this time, even though there have been financial wriggles and various dynamics that have made it necessary, it feels like more of a choice. I’m moving to a different part of the city (east!) and into a totally different environment. New furniture. New walls. New beginning.

I haven’t really been able to think about anything else. I’m excited. But given that I’ve been in my current place for so long, and the new place will be significantly smaller, I’m having to get rid of a lot. For some people, this might be a fairly straightforward process. For me, I’ve realised it isn’t at all. I’m a bit of a hoarder, with the ability to attach sentimental meaning to just about anything from a high street top I bought seven years ago (I wore it on my first date with an ex!) to a pebble (I found it on a beach in Mexico when I went solo travelling!).

I’ve not done a proper clearout in a long time. And it transpires that I’m having trouble letting go. Yes, of belongings. But also of memories. Of a past version of myself, one that, if I’m being honest, wasn’t altogether that happy. A lot has happened these past few years. That’s the way life rolls. 2024 was good (my debut novel was released!). 2025 was not so good. And at the start of this year, I lost a family member I was very close to, which set things off to a wobbly start.

I threw away old photographs. Birthday cards from exes. I sold clothes on Vinted. Donated items to charity shops. And lugged suitcases of books to Oxfam. Slowly but surely, I’m lightening my load. The more I get rid of, the more I feel like I’m making way for something new. Like I’m finally letting go of the things that have been holding me back. I’m not really a spiritual person, but this feels pretty close to something of that ilk. Can you really move forward if you’re stuck in the past?

Read more

Before I continue, let me make it clear that I am always reluctant to comment on women’s bodies. It’s a symptom of a patriarchal society that gives people the right to police how we look, particularly when we’re already operating within an increasingly limited scope of societal beauty standards. But when the dial moves this sharply in one direction, and the homogenised ideal becomes this unrealistic, and potentially very unhealthy, it feels a little irresponsible to say nothing at all.

As someone who has been going to London Fashion Week for more than a decade, reviewing shows and writing about trends, as well as writing a litany of best-dressed red carpet features, I can’t help but feel complicit in some of the toxic messaging that has been — and is being — perpetuated. And if I’m not calling it out, I’m contributing to it. So, I’m choosing to do the former.

Read more

This has been happening for a while, by the way: check out this WIRED report on the issue from 2024. Last year, a phantom writer named “Victoria Goldiee”, whose bylines appeared everywhere from the Guardian to Architectural Digest, was found to be a chatbot invention. Elsewhere, AI is writing speeches, scripts, sermons, and just about anything else you can think of.

To some people, this might not be a problem at all. After all, as this New Yorker piece pointed out, some readers prefer AI-generated writing. And hey, who am I to ruin a good time? But I like to think that an appetite for real, human writing, the kind that relies on experience, empathy, and emotional depth, will persist. In fact, I know that it will.

I often think about Nick Cave’s comments on AI’s impact on art in this New Yorker profile from 2023. His comments are the best I’ve read on the subject.

“Maybe A.I. can make a song that’s indistinguishable from what I can do. Maybe even a better song. But, to me, that doesn’t matter—that’s not what art is. Art has to do with our limitations, our frailties, and our faults as human beings. It’s the distance we can travel away from our own frailties. That’s what is so awesome about art: that we deeply flawed creatures can sometimes do extraordinary things. A.I. just doesn’t have any of that stuff going on. Ultimately, it has no limitations, so therefore can’t inhabit the true transcendent artistic experience. It has nothing to transcend! It feels like such a mockery of what it is to be human. A.I. may very well save the world, but it can’t save our souls. That’s what true art is for.”

Ultimately, AI can do a lot of things, but it can’t move through the world in the same way as a human. And what is art if not a meditation on those movements, with all the colour and chaos they bring us? To lose that would be terrifying, and I fear all of us would suffer as a result.

Writing is supposed to be difficult. That’s the whole point of it. I say this as someone who has been agonising over trying to write a second novel (it’s coming, I promise) for over a year. I’m also someone who frequently stares vacantly at a blank Google doc, trying to conjure up some coherent sentences to no avail. But that’s part of the fun. Or at least, I think it is. Otherwise, I’m not sure there’s much point. Did you know that some university students are now writing entire dissertations with ChatGPT? One friend told me about someone who was awarded a first for their English degree dissertation that was written entirely by AI. What a waste.

I’ve not been as active on here as I would’ve liked. The truth is that whenever a thought arose for something I wanted to write about on Substack, something else would come along to distract me. A commission from a newspaper. A singles night. A book. A date. A cat. And so on. But talk of AI taking over Substack has convinced me it’s time to actually come back, producing regular, non-robot-generated content for anyone who’d like to read it.

Read more

There’s a lot of negative energy around being a single woman right now, particularly if, like me, you happen to be one who dates men. Heteropesimism is everywhere and, in my view, is holding us all back from finding meaningful connections.

I’ve been trying to change that with my singles nights, Red Lips Dating, which was founded on the unique concept of inviting single women to bring a single male friend with them to a night of flirting, speed dating, and possibly snogging. So far, it has been going incredibly well — we also hosted our first WLW event this week — and I’m thrilled to share that my next event is happening in partnership with Bumble, the women-first dating app launched by Whitney Wolfe-Herd in 2014.

Since its inception, Bumble has always been an outlier in an industry where women’s needs are often sidelined, if considered at all. Its mission feels deeply aligned with everything I’ve been doing with my singles nights so far, which is why I’m so pleased to be working with them.

Combining a mixer and speed-dating format, the event will be hosted in true Red Lips style, with women inviting a male friend to introduce to other women, creating a space for genuine face-to-face connection and bringing some much-needed positivity back into dating. Frankly, I think we need a bit of that more now than ever before.

Scroll down for more info.

Tuesday 24 February | 7pm – 11pm | Corner Shop, 7 Arundel St, London WC2R 3DA

Some small print:

• Each spot includes one free drink on arrival

• Light bites and snacks will be served from 7.15pm

• Speed dating will begin at 8.30pm

• The age range for this event is aimed at 25-35

• Each spot you sign up for through Eventbrite grants you one male and one female entry. You must include your email address for both parties (to check your Bumble status!)

• Please arrive with your plus one to guarantee entry

• This is a free event

I can’t wait for this event; I think it’s going to be a really special night. Looking forward to seeing you there.

And if you’re single this Valentine’s Day weekend, take this as an opportunity to show yourself some love, whether that’s going to your favourite exercise class, visiting a gallery you love, or indulging in a solo cinema trip. You deserve it.

Sign up here

Lots of love as always,

OP xoxo

There was the makeshift chef, the problematic financier, the unfeeling filmmaker, the Australian academic, the tortured musician (followed shortly by the even more tortured actor), and then a few recurring characters I don’t feel inclined to put in print because it’s actually embarrassing.

So, I’ve been out there. Mostly, I collected the men on dating apps, hence why it has been so easy to reduce them to tropes; they were dehumanised to me from the outset, just as I’m sure I was to them. I’ve often imagined what epithets I might’ve earned from the men I’ve dated: Delusional writer? Oversharing novelist? I hope I’ve had at least one “crazy cat lady”.

The trouble is that online dating has hit a wall. What once seemed like a promising new platform that exposed us to people we might never have had the chance to meet has been reduced to an insipid video game, one that everyone is bored with playing. As a woman who dates men, I can’t help but feel that the burnout is particularly potent for us: our safety is at a statistically higher risk when we go on a date, and, I’m sorry to say, I know far more quality single straight women than I do quality single straight men.

Everyone I know would rather meet someone in real life than online. And yet, trying to orchestrate a real-life meet-cute in today’s dating landscape is like looking for a rainbow in a thunderstorm. I can’t tell you how many “girls’ nights out” I’ve been on with fellow single friends where the underlying intention was to try to meet men, a mission that has literally never been successful. As for weddings and parties, the former are almost always populated by couples (bar the one single man everyone will try to shove you on with decreasing subtlety as the night goes on), and nobody really does the latter so much once you enter your 30s.

Hence why I decided to do something about that. A few weeks ago, I hosted a singles night at Ellie’s in Dalston for an article I was writing for The Sunday Times STYLE. The night went surprisingly well: many people coupled off, there were snogs at the bar, and at least one couple went home together.

After the article came out, I was so inundated with messages from single people asking me to host another event that I decided to create something, but with a few key learnings in mind. Most of the people who expressed interest were single straight women. I couldn’t just put them all in a room together.

Introducing RED LIPS, the singles night that prioritises women who date men. Tickets are sold in pairs, and include one female and one male entry. That’s the deal. This unique system ensures that all of the men have been vetted by at least one woman, which I find reassuring, and it also means the events will have an even split of men and women. Yes, I’m surprised nobody else has thought of this yet, too!

Obviously, this format only works for heterosexual couples, and I plan to grow RED LIPS into one big dating party brand where I regularly host hetero nights alongside queer nights — for these, tickets will still be sold in pairs so that everyone comes with a friend. It’s all very exciting, and the first event has already been planned:

11th November 2025 | Ellie’s Dalston, 428 Kingsland Rd, London E8 4AA | 7pm - 11pm

£20 tickets (sold in pairs for £40) that include one cocktail on arrival

You can buy tickets here.

And for those who miss out this time around, please register for the RED LIPS Substack, where I’ll be emailing people about upcoming events. You can also follow RED LIPS on Instagram here.

If you happen to work with any venues you think would work for a RED LIPS party, please feel free to get in touch! Okay, that’s it for now.

Lots of love,

Olivia xxx

And yet, the act of actually going away on your own feels quite different: your solitude isn’t commonplace at all. You’re reminded of it at every turn.

I’m writing this from Lisbon, where I’ve come to do an event for Gold Rush, my debut novel that recently came out in paperback. Last night, I spoke about my work at Salted Books, the popular English bookshop run by Alex Holder. It was like something out of a film: we sipped on spicy margaritas from the bar next door and chatted about journalism, creative writing, the looming threat of AI, and so much more in front of way more people than I’d expected. I’ll be buzzing from it all for days.

But back to travelling alone. I’ve been to Lisbon once before – briefly for a night out with friends in 2017 – but given how little of the city I’d seen, I took the event as an opportunity to have a little trip. Yes, a solo trip.

I’ve been away a few times on my own – you can read a piece about my holiday in Santorini in The Sunday Times here – so the thought of it didn’t intimidate me; I knew the lay of the land and had a strategy in place. Airbnb for the first two nights, hotel for the next two. Bring a book everywhere. Read at dinner. Call mum whenever walking home alone at night. And so on. None of this feels new or transgressive to me. But apparently it does to a lot of other people.

Take the old friend I bumped into at the airport who was travelling with her partner. “Where are you guys heading?” I asked. And after a brief conversation about their holiday plans, she replied with, “How about you guys?” I laughed and clarified it was “just me guys”. Meanwhile, I was given two keys when checking into my hotel despite the fact that I was quite clearly alone. And when I arrived at my Airbnb, there was a bottle of red wine on the kitchen table with two glasses laid out beside it.

None of these things are ill-intentioned, I know that. But they serve as consistent reminders that travelling on your own is still seen as a societal anomaly rather than the norm. Even at restaurants, asking for a “table for one” elicits a flash of surprise across people’s eyes. It’s subtle, but it’s there, as are the occasional glances from families and couples, trying to work out if anyone is coming to join you.

I find all of this very odd. Why is it that going away on your own is still viewed as some sort of quiet revolution? Even the fact that we refer to it as “solo travel” rather than just, erm, “travel” tells us we’ve not yet normalised it. It’s empowering. It’s subversive. And if you’re a single woman (hello), it’s an act of feminism. Why can’t it just be a thing people do? Is the world really so hyper-fixated on tailoring everything to pairs and groups?

Some of the best travelling experiences I’ve had have been on my own. I’m not sure there’s anything quite as deliciously indulgent as being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, especially if you’re doing it in 30-degree sunshine. There are no itineraries to abide by, no dietary requirements to tailor to aside from your own, and no being dragged to insipid tourist traps other than those you visit of your own volition.

On the beach, you can flip flop between reading in silence, listening to music, and eavesdropping on nearby sunbathers (every writer’s dream) all without a modicum of guilt over being antisocial. The only limitations are money – but honestly, so far I’ve found Lisbon fairly affordable and have been saving a lot by eating breakfast in my Airbnb, and bringing packed lunches and plenty of supermarket snacks along with me for the day (tuna and avocado sandwiches, in case you were wondering).

Before this, there was the trip to Paris I’d originally planned with an ex. I wound up going alone with an empty seat next to me on the Eurostar. I spent the weekend trawling through vintage shops, tearing into croissants the size of my face, and reading in cafes. It was outside one of those cafes that a friend I hadn’t spoken to in years walked right past me. After some internal debates (was it worth the small talk? would he even want to say hello? what if I was intruding?) I caught the attention of him and his friend. They invited me to join them for a drink that evening, and we wound up going out together until 5am. It was one of the most fun nights out I’ve ever had.

There’s a special kind of magic that happens when you’re on holiday alone. Like you’re making space for opportunities you wouldn’t have had otherwise. By shirking convention, you leave room for something different and possibly a little more exciting. I just wish it wasn’t seen as quite so unique, and that more of us welcomed this kind of travel and accommodated those who choose to do it, whether they’re in a relationship or not.

I’d love to hear about some of your travel experiences in the comments.

Until next time,

OP xxx

Bonnie is a rage-bait machine, a woman who thrives, professionally and personally, off of causing opprobrium. The more outrage she sparks, the more money she makes – up to £1.5m each month. The documentary, directed by Victoria Silver, covers Bonnie’s rise to global infamy, offering a behind-the-scenes look at her viral 1,000 men stunt, her subsequent ban from OnlyFans, where she’d been planning to sell the footage, her surprisingly lonely personal life (she hasn’t been out of the house on her own in six months), and the daily death threats she recevies.

Despite Silver’s repeated attempts to unpack the wider societal impact all this is having – has Bonnie thought about the message she’s sending younger women? Or the type of degrading sex her 'content’ is normalising? How about her own internalised misogyny? – she repeatedly falls short; her gentle probing is no match for Bonnie’s strident stare and bank of misogynistic pull quotes (“I just loved … knowing I was doing something their wives should have done,” she says in the documentary). Bonnie enjoys what she does. It makes her lots of money. And that, it seems, is that.

At a Q&A hosted by Naked Attraction host Anna Richardson, Bonnie brushed off serious questions with jokes, including one about just having had sex in the toilets. She also referred to her critics as “fat women”, insisted she will sleep with anyone over the age of 18, and regularly batted lines of questioning away with crude comments. Shock value is her currency.

Honestly, it was one of the most surreal evenings of my life. When I arrived at the screening, which was fairly small, I was surprised to find Bonnie mingling among the guests. People were fawning over her and asking for selfies. Drinking a bespoke blue cocktail made in her honour and clad in a blue sun dress, the woman herself appeared much smaller and slighter than I’d imagined. I made a beeline for her, determined to try and understand what was driving all this.

“It was like Christmas Day for me,” Bonnie told me when I asked about whether she enjoyed the 1,000 men stunt, going on to talk about it as if it were a standard meet-and-greet between a D-list celebrity and their fans. “I honestly loved it, I got to meet so many subscribers that day,” she added. “I know a lot of people think I should be ashamed but I really was proud of myself that I did it, and that I had a really good experience doing it.”

As for criticisms that Bonnie is setting a dangerous precedent for our already highly pornified culture, where rough sex is used as a defence in murder cases and women as young as 18 are becoming adult content creators, she's having none of it. Consent, she insisted, is a core part of what she does. “I always talk about how I'm consenting to this,” she said. “I want to be a slut. I want to be spat on. I want to have my hair pulled and be dragged around. Other people don't, and I never refer to other people. I'm not saying every girl should be slapped and spat on. That's not the case, and that would be very unfair for me to say. But because I always refer to myself, that way I'm never endangering other women.”

When I pressed her on this (is there not a part of her that worries she’s contributing to a culture whereby men feel entitled to degrade women? Can she not see the shortcomings of individualism?), Bonnie only leant in harder, claiming that the men she meets are always respectful (“I think people see me as someone they want to protect a lot of the time”) and that she has never felt unsafe with any of them. “There are no blurred lines,” she added before reiterating a victim-blaming ideology that seems to be at the heart of her business model: “I think for some women, because they're not confident enough, and don't have enough of a voice, they can put themselves sometimes in situations where they're not necessarily wanting to do something.”

Bonnie clarified that she wasn’t referring to sexual assault, although some would say it’s almost impossible to make that distinction. “I'm very vocal [during sex],” she added. “I will tell them exactly what I like. But then that means I'm never in a situation where I'm doing something I don't want to do.”

‘I'm never in a situation where I'm doing something I don't want to do’

While she regularly describes her stunts as empowering, Bonnie doesn’t label herself a feminist. “I definitely don't do anything against feminism,” she said, somewhat confusingly given the internalised misogyny regularly espoused in her social media content and elsewhere (“a lot of the hate is from women who have 'stay at home mum of two' in their bio,” she says at one point during our conversation). “I never said I'm a spokeswoman for feminism,” Bonnie added. “I'm not taking women back: I'm independent, I don't rely on any guys to pay my bills. I do what I want with my body."

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Bonnie says she doesn’t cry much. Emotion is a sign of vulnerability that seems largely incompatible with a public image defined by a steeliness, even if that's less down to resilience than it is cognitive dissonance. Still, she did admit to weeping when her grandfather died and when she went through her divorce – she officially split from her husband, Ollie, in 2023, though he features in parts of the film.

Outside of that, though, there are no tears. “It's like if you went on a shopping trip, would you cry after it?” she asked me without missing a beat, as if reading from an autocue. “There's no difference. You would’ve chosen to go shopping, so you're not going to cry. But you're never going to see me putting myself in the situation and then crying about it. Because I've chosen to be there.”

—

I’d love to know what you think of all this. I wasn’t even sure whether to publish my interview given the brazen misogyny Bonnie expresses. But I do think that given the scale of her platform and influence, it’s important to talk about (and challenge) the messages she’s putting out there. Let me know what you think in the comments.

See you soon,

OP x

Hello everyone! I am so sorry that it has taken me a while to get back to this. As you may know, my debut novel, Gold Rush, is being published very soon (18 July!) and, as a result, my focus has mostly been on that.

But now that the book is almost birthed, I fully intend on getting back to business over here. And I want to start off by sharing some things I’ve learned in the process of writing a novel. Because I’m often asked about the process and there is a LOT I wish I’d known beforehand. Here goes:

You can’t write a novel if you refuse to write a word

This might sound obvious. But I meet so many people who get stuck at the first hurdle, and can’t seem to put a word on the page. Generally, this is out of fear and a lack of self-belief. But I’m telling you, pushing past that is part of the process. No one starts a novel thinking it’s the most fantastic thing that has ever been written. And you will probably start yours by thinking it’s dire. That’s fine and normal. But if you want to actually write something decent in the end, you need to leave your ego at the door and keep going. It will get better, trust me.

Don’t worry if you’re taking inspiration from real life

I’ve been fairly open about the parts of Gold Rush that have been inspired by my own life, most notably in this piece for The Sunday Times, but this is never an entirely straightforward act within the context of being a female novelist. People always assume books written by women are about them; it’s something I’ve written about before in this newsletter. Obviously, this is insulting and speaks to a wider cultural problem with how we view and discuss female artists. Because of this, though, there can also be a degree of embarrassment surrounding those who do decide to take inspiration from their own lives. But that shouldn’t - and doesn’t - discredit the work we’ve created as a result. There’s no shame in making art out of something you’ve gone through; more people do it than you think.

Don’t keep it to yourself

When you’re working on something like a novel, it can be tempting to vow never to talk to another soul about it in fear of “jinxing” the process. This is, to put it bluntly, bullshit. Talking to other people about your creative process can be hugely enriching. I started talking about my ideas for Gold Rush in the summer of 2021 and found those conversations immensely helpful. People chipped in with thoughts and ideas that helped to shape the plot that’s in those pages today. Creativity is, in my opinion, at its best when it’s a collaborative process. Don’t let self-doubt and nonsensical “woo woo” ideas prevent you from engaging in that.

When it gets tough, just hold on

This is very simple advice I return to over and over again. I was not in the best place when I started writing Gold Rush. I was in the midst of a messy breakup, drinking far too much, having to find somewhere else to live, making various terrible decisions, and grieving the sudden loss of a friend. It felt as if everything was falling apart. During that time, the following words were particularly helpful to me. They’re taken from the pages of Bryony Gordon’s book, Eat, Drink, Run, in which she reminds readers who might be going through a difficult time that things change.

“Firstly, think not of what you aren’t but what you are,” she writes. “Secondly, remember that one day, things could happen to you that you wouldn’t be able to believe right now – the most astonishing, amazing things. Trust me when I say that all you have to do is hold on.”

That’s it from me for now — but I will leave you with a few recommendations:

• This interview with Lena Dunham

• This short story by Haruki Murakami

• I Used to be Funny starring Rachel Sennott

• Freedom by Jonathan Franzen

• I also made a playlist for Gold Rush, which you can listen to here

Right, I’m off to get ready to watch the football (is it really coming home? I’d love to think so…) and hopefully have an early night because I’m hosting a big old launch party for Gold Rush tomorrow night. I’ll probably write about that in next week’s newsletter, so keep your eyes peeled.

Speak soon,

OP xxx

“How much of it is autobiographical?”

“So, did that really happen to you?”

“The main girl is you, though, right?”

I understand why people ask. You’ve written a story! It has characters! It all seems quite real! Of course, there are exceptions to that last part, like if the book features any of the following: talking animals, time travel, decent heterosexual men. And so on. (That last one was a joke, stand down).

Generally speaking, though, when people ask if your work is autobiographical it’s because it plausibly could be. But there are times when this might be appropriate and times when it is quite objectively not.

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It’s a Thursday night and I’m sitting in the pub across from a close friend who is crying about a boy. The boy in question was into her. So into her, in fact, that they’d started making plans for trips away in the summer. He’d sent her links to hotels they could stay in and restaurants they could visit. He’d suggested books they could read side by side under a beach umbrella, with a bottle of rosé perched on ice in between them. He’d even sent her a photo of his holiday shirt (it was hideous).

Nonetheless, this was not enough to put her off. They made plans for the weekend to book the flights. Then came the text: “Can’t wait to see you tomorrow. But FYI feel like I should mention I’m not really looking for anything serious right now.” She was bulldozed. As was I — because it’s the third time I’ve heard a story like this in the last few months.

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Never have I woken up to more texts than the morning after that night: What does Ryan Gosling smell like? (He wasn’t there). How beautiful is Emma Stone in real life? (Very). Did I shag Leonardo DiCaprio? (Gross. And no).

Everyone wanted to know what happened: who was nice and who wasn’t. Who danced and who didn’t. Who looked hotter in real life and who looked, well, less hot. Even after I’d written about it, I received messages from almost all of my journalist friends asking for the “real” gossip from the night.

Well, let me begin by saying I had an incredible time.

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You may have noticed that there was no new essay in your inboxes yesterday. I’m afraid this is because things are changing for me a little right now in terms of workload, which means that from now on, my Substack essays will be fortnightly instead of weekly.

I’m taking a little break this week as I’ve been deep in final edits for my novel, Gold Rush, which I can’t wait to tell you more about soon. Exciting things are happening and I want to make sure these essays don’t suffer a drop in quality as a result.

So for now, expect something new every two weeks starting from 24th March.

I’ll see you then.

All my love,

OP xxx

But if you have some time today, do watch it. It might not be a flawless piece of filmmaking but it says a lot about violence against women, consent, and the sexual norms we’ve all put up with for far too long. It also made me re-evaluate my entire sexual past.

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