Ladies, We Need To Talk

Samhita had it all. As the executive editor of Teen Vogue she was living the Devil Wears Prada life — fashion shows, fancy dinners and towering heels. She was a girlboss. But at the height of her success, cracks began to appear. She was anxious, burnt out and her body was falling apart. But Samhita was at New York Fashion Week in a fur coat and clutching a Gucci handbag, having just put Malala You...

There's an expectation that couples share a bed, but what if sleep isn't compatible with being in the same room as your other half? Maybe they snore, maybe they starfish, or maybe you just need a few hours without another human touching you. Is a sleep divorce, AKA, having separate bedrooms, the answer? There's a trend towards normalising sleeping separately from your partner. Cameron Diaz is doin...

Is Ozempic the drug of our lifetime? Since it burst onto the scene it's become synonymous with weight loss, with everyone from A-list celebrities to your next-door neighbour rapidly slimming down. The popularity of the drug and others like it such as Mounjaro and Wegovy, has led to demand outstripping supply, with the price of these medications falling out of reach for some.  And along with the ch...

There aren't many people on your Instagram feed who are as loved and as loathed as Abbie Chatfield. Ever since Abbie shot to fame as the slut-shamed villain on The Bachelor Australia in 2019, she's been a public and controversial figure who's hard to look away from. Five years and almost 500K followers later, Abbie's built an empire on sharing her trauma dumps, UTIs, political rants and sexcapades...

What if your man has another, equally important woman in his life: his mum? For some sons, the aprons strings are tied so tight, it’s impossible to compete with mummy. She’s his number one fan, dotes on him and interferes in his life, including his relationships. It’s not sexy. So, can a mama’s boy ever reform and stand on their own two feet in a relationship? Or will you always come off second be...

As we get older, wiser, more resilient, and better placed to back seat drive, the world does not reward us. Or our grey hair. If the advances of human progress can make a potato chip taste like a beef rendang curry, why are women still, after all this time and progress, so judged by the way we look? The Australasian College of Cosmetic Surgery estimates Australians spend around $1 billion a year o...

Aubrey Gordon is a fat woman. She's not on a diet or trying to get thinner and that pisses some people off, but she's done apologising. This self-acceptance has been hard fought. All her life, Aubrey has had to swallow comments about her size from strangers and family alike. Like all of us, she was force-fed the idea that there is only one ideal body: a thin one. Aubrey's resistance started with h...

You're on a date and there's a spark, the chat is great, the vibes are flowing. But come the time to disrobe, all that potential sexual brilliance comes crashing down. They're a dud root. So what on earth do you do if you've got a connection with someone, but they're not rocking your socks off? How do you have a conversation about what you like, without hurting their feelings? And can you ever tur...

The Other Woman. The bit on the side. Side hoe. She's the biggest villain of them all. She's probably younger, hotter and she's left the girl-code far behind, because THAT woman is stealing your man, girl. So, who is 'the other woman' and what's driving her towards married men anyway? In this episode, Yumi sits down with women dating men who are teken and finds out how they navigate their own mess...

Jill Stark spent most of her life defined by alcohol. Either as a hard-drinking party girl, spurred on by a culture of drinking as a journalist, or as the poster child for sobriety, trapped by a public identity that revolved around abstinence. Yumi and Jill talk about her journey to genuine sobriety on her own terms, and how she has learned who she is without booze.    Resources: National Alcohol...

We’re all about labia love here at Ladies, but it seems that some women are less than enthusiastic about their lower lips.  So what’s the real deal on the labiaplasty? Will cosmetic surgery really help restore the labia love to those who just aren’t feeling it? Yumi is here to unpack the problems with our flaps and give us the low-down on the down-there surgery.  

Tick, tock, tick, tock... can you hear that? It’s your biological clock and it’s about to blow!  For some, deciding whether to have a baby isn’t just about fertility, it’s also about weighing up whether becoming a parent is the path best taken.  Never fear, Yumi Stynes has perched herself behind the mic to hold your hand and navigate this tricky time-bomb. 

At 31, Jamila Rizvi’s life changed forever. The discovery of a rare brain tumour knocked the ass-kicking, over-achieving media advisor and young mum sideways.   Jamila had two rounds of brain surgery, followed by radiation, and now lives with chronic health conditions. She’s had to re-map what life looks like and let go of the idea that she can control what lies ahead.  Despite the challenges, Jam...

We all have days when we look in the mirror and think “who is that hideous moll staring back at me??” But what if those days are constant and you feel like a loser in the attractiveness lottery?   Let’s face it, being hot is a social currency and the pressure to look a certain way as a woman is constant. So how can we let go of the ideal beauty standard (whatever that is on a given day) and learn...

Perimenopause can be bad for your health. It’s not just the physical symptoms like weight gain, insomnia, exhaustion and loss of sex drive that can knock women sideways, the mental health impacts can be immense as well.  Hormone fluctuations during this period can lead to mood swings, anxiety, brain fog and depression. To make matters worse, these symptoms are often misdiagnosed and mistreated.  ...

Have you ever had a sexual dry spell? And when we say dry, we mean years and years. Getting naked and doing the bedroom rodeo with another person can be daunting at the best of times, but especially if it’s been such a long time you’re worried you may have forgotten how to ride the horse.   Anxieties begin to take over...Will everything work like it used to? What if they don’t like my body? And wh...

In life, there are a lot of random rules women stick to. One of them is not telling loved ones about a pregnancy until after the first trimester. But why??? The answer is more often than not, miscarriage.  

Being in love feels so damn good, right? But what if you fall so deeply into your relationship, you start to forget who you are?  

Swipe left, swipe right, match, meet, hook up, repeat. We all know the dating dance, but is it really serving us as women? Enter Hannah Ferguson, the 25-year-old media queen who isn’t afraid to tell us how it is.   When Hannah was in her late teens and dating for the first time, Tinder ruled the scene and sex was available at the swipe of a finger. But a string of sub-par experiences left her wond...

Women bear the load of most of the invisible (thankless) work in a household. And that shit gets heavy.   School lunches, laundry, dentist appointments, shopping, snot-wiping, cleaning, care-giving – and don’t forget to get those 10k steps in while you’re at it!  We're exhausted just thinking about it.   Yumi dishes out advice on how to even out the mental load and take the weight off your shoulde...

What if your appetite for sex was insatiable? Would you love to be boning every day, multiple times a day?   There's this idea that it's men that are always lusting after sex. But guess what? Women can be horn dogs too! But that horniness often comes with the label "slutty".  Yumi Stynes chats to women who are relishing their pleasure and enjoying plenty of orgasms while they’re at it.  

When you’re stuck in the daily grind of working-mum life, sometimes it can be hard not to feel like a shitty mum.   School lunches, getting them dressed (FFS), raising good humans, endless meetings – it's exhausting and soul-destroying.  Yumi has some advice to ease the mum-guilt, when your heart is being yanked in opposite directions and backing away from work isn’t an option.   If you’ve got a p...

Yumi has been cheeky and stolen the keys to the ABC archive to bring out one of our favourite episodes. Life is tiring. The cozzi livs, the constant merry-go-round of caring and work and chronic stress can be overwhelming. For some, this relentless pace can lead to burnout.

If you’ve carried a baby, you may have had to deal with the fall out (literally) of pelvic prolapse. But having your organs pop out of your vagina isn’t limited to mammas, getting older is also a big factor. 

Rosie Waterland’s mum was, to put it mildly, chaos personified. Charming and caring one minute, abusive and cruel the next.   This year, she died. A moment Rosie was strangely prepared for. But her mum’s death left her to contend with the conflicting emotions of grief and relief.  Yumi Stynes sat down with Rosie for a heart to heart about growing up with an abusive parent, grieving and coming out...