Day: April 21, 2023

By this time, it’s pretty well-documented that the autoplay feature on YouTube is not healthy for anyone of any age. Not only does it cause teens and adults to watch content for much longer than they normally would, but it has a tendency to get increasingly extreme and polarizing, feeding unknowing audiences false, misleading, or conspiracy-minded content.

But many parents — especially newer parents — don’t know that even YouTube Kids, which is touted as a safe space, comes with autoplay dangers that can harm kids.

Now, a new viral TikTok shows just one example. In it, viewers see what first appears to be a normal Thomas the Train video playing — but within seconds, the video turns terrifying. Thomas’ eyes turn red and he says, “I’m gonna chug. I’m gonna choo. I’m going to kill the lot of you!”

Yikes.

“Parents, beware if you let your children watch YouTube Kids! I was shocked when I saw this pop up while my 2 year old was watching,” she captioned the video. “I don’t even have words for this. Needless to say we are looking for a different subscription for Brody to watch.”

This is not the first time that this issue has been brought to public attention. In 2016, “Elsagate” took place: a controversy that uncovered thousands of violent, inappropriate, and sexual videos on YouTube that were disguised as kids’ content like Frozen and Spiderman videos. The result was millions of dollars in fines for YouTube — and the company taking new steps to stop content.

But the issue is obviously still there, though many parents assume that YouTube kids has solved the problem.

And it’s important to know that the issue is not isolated to YouTube. Remember the time Kim Kardashian’s son Saint saw an advertisement for his mom’s alleged sex tape while he was playing Roblox?

What are the best things you can do to protect your kid? First and foremost, make sure that your YouTube autoplay is turned off in the parental settings (if it’s turned off in the kids’ settings only, your kids can easily turn it back on). You can also only let your kids watch channels that you approve of and nothing else. Another possible solution? Just stick to more trusted and vetted organizations for your toddler’s screen time, like PBS Kids or Netflix Kids.

Scientists may have cracked the code as to why hair tends to go gray as we age. While collecting data on hair follicles in mice, scientists may have found the reasoning behind how and why hair turns gray. The new findings may actually give more insight into how gray hair could be preventable or reversed.

The process of hair turning gray starts with a type of stem cell called melanocytes, AKA McSCs, says the study, which was published in the journal Nature this week.

NYU researchers at the Grossman School of Medicine were aware that melanocytes — the mechanism that produces the pigment melanin — bring color to skin and eyes. They also know that that same pigment melanin is a major factor in hair color.

McSCs hang around in your hair follicles, where they receive a protein signal that tells them when to become mature cells. Mature cells release pigment and, voilà, you get your hair color.

But over the course of the study, researchers learned that McSCs actually move between microscopic compartments in hair follicles. Each compartment within a follicle has the power to give the MsSC a slightly different protein signal, which allows the cell to change between different levels of maturity.

As a person gets older, the maturity level of MsSCs gets more complex. As your hair grows and sheds in cycles, the more McSCs get stuck in one particular compartment called the hair follicle bulge.

“Our study adds to our basic understanding of how melanocyte stem cells work to color hair,” said study lead investigator Qi Sun, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow at NYU Langone Health. “The newfound mechanisms raise the possibility that the same fixed positioning of melanocyte stem cells may exist in humans. If so, it presents a potential pathway for reversing or preventing the graying of human hair by helping jammed cells to move again between developing hair follicle compartments.”

When the McSCs are stick in the follicle bulge, there are no more signals being sent to help along the maturing process, and the hair isn’t given its dose of pigmentation. As a result, hair goes gray. Wow!

The research team conducted research on mice by physically speeding up the aging process by plucking strands of their hair again and again over the course of two years.

“It is the loss of chameleon-like function in melanocyte stem cells that may be responsible for graying and loss of hair color,” said study senior investigator Mayumi Ito, PhD, a professor in the Ronald O. Perelman Department of Dermatology and Department of Cell Biology at NYU Langone Health.

“These findings suggest that melanocyte stem cell motility and reversible differentiation are key to keeping hair healthy and colored,” said Dr. Ito.

They found the number of McSCs lodged in the follicle bulge increased from 15 percent to nearly 50 percent during the two year period. However, in the younger hairs, which weren’t plucked, the McSCs continued to move around the different compartments, picking up protein signals and producing a rich brown pigment.

Though these new findings give new insight, it should be noted that there are several other factors to consider when hair goes gray. Previous studies have shown evidence that genetics and stress levels are also involved in the graying of hair as we get older.

Seventy-four percent of people between the ages of 45 and 65 years of age have at least some gray hairs (with an average of 27% gray) according to research from the National Institutes of Health. So, if you’re in that group and truly wish the grays would relent, researchers say that moving the McSCs to their proper location could prevent graying.

Though research is moving us toward helping to prevent gray hairs, is that actually something people, especially women, want to do? When men go gray, they are called salt-and-pepper silver foxes who we should be drooling over. When women go gray, they’re traditionally seen as bridge trolls.

However, several women in Hollywood (and around the world) are ready to buck this stereotype, especially in the wake of the pandemic, when millions of women decided to stop treating their hair during isolation.

Sex and the City actor Sarah Jessica Parker resented the notion that she was “brave” for letting her hair go gray.

“It became months and months of conversation about how brave I am for having gray hair,” she recalled in an interview with Glamour. “I was like, Please, please applaud someone else’s courage on something!”

Actor Andie MacDowell admitted that when she was younger, she actually wondered if gray hair suited her face better than darker hair. When the pandemic hit, she took the opportunity to try out her theory.

“When it started growing out during COVID I saw I was right … It looks good on me,” she said.

She went on to say that she both looks and feels better now.

“As it was growing out, my eyes popped, the color of them looked a little different. I liked the way my skin looked better,” MacDowell said. “And there was a feeling. It empowered me more. I felt more powerful and I felt more genuine and I felt more myself.”

They bottom line? Whether or not you like your gray hair (or your gray-haired future), you might have a choice down the road.

There’s a lot to unpack in Virginia Sole-Smith’s paradigm-shifting book Fat Talk: Parenting in the Age of Diet Culture. Her topline proposals: How about we stop letting kids be fat-shamed as if fat = bad? Can we quit policing our kids’ “healthy eating” in a way that sets them up to feel like they can’t trust themselves? What if mealtime with our kids was just social and we didn’t control portions but instead let them eat whatever they want from what’s on the table?

The terror for most American parents is that, given no guardrails, their children might constantly eat themselves sick on sugar and junk. But what’s actually happening with our micro-managing is that kids sneak treats, gorge on candy if they get the chance, see vegetables as undesirable and, most heart-wrenchingly, understand that “fat” is a bad thing to be by the time they head to preschool.

I talked with Sole-Smith about some parts of the book that hit me, as a parent, the hardest.

Scary Mommy: You have this radical idea that we should stop weighing ourselves and our kids, even at the doctor’s office.

Virgina Sole-Smith: With kids, it’s more nuanced. There are times where you need to know their weight for the Tylenol dosing and car-seat sizes and things like that. And it’s so important that kids gain weight every year: All kids, no matter what their body size, need to be growing. If they’re losing weight, that can be indicative of a health problem. But, does my kid need to get weighed when we go in for an ear infection? Definitely not.

We could have doctors do a blind weigh-in at every well visit, with our kids not knowing the number. Doctors could talk privately to the parent if there’s a concern about a big shift — it would make much more sense. Instead, every doctor’s appointment we go to, as kids or as adults, ends up being super weight-centric in a way that does not promote health. Getting weighed first-thing centers the conversation in the wrong place. When I interview people, they so often say that a comment the pediatrician made was the event that triggered a disordered relationship with food.

[Weigh-ins, Sole-Smith contends, also prevent adults who feel bad about their size from going to their own well visits, potentially missing chances to catch conditions early purely because they dread the scale.]

SM: Another point that blew my mind, and that you might get pushback for, is the notion that perhaps someone who is overweight and has a stroke suffered that stroke due to a life of low-grade stress and shame in our thin-centric culture. The stress, in fact, could have caused more problems than extra pounds.

VSS: This is so controversial, and it shouldn’t be. We should have better science to answer the question, but we don’t because the bias is so baked into how research on weight and health gets done. Most researchers are taking it as a foregone conclusion that high body weight causes health problems. That’s the premise from which they’re doing all their investigations when, in fact, we don’t have any studies showing causal relationships.

We have correlations, but we don’t have causation. And that’s a super important distinction to make. There are lots of explanations for disease that don’t involve the literal pounds sitting on your body. It could be all the social determinants of health: experiences of poverty, lack of access to healthcare, lack of access to healthy food and nutrients. We know these things seem to contribute to larger body size, but it doesn’t mean the body size then causes the health problems. It means maybe both body size and health problems are outcomes of these experiences.

The big thing we need to collect data on — but which isn’t getting funding — is this question of “What is the physical toll of daily experiences of anti-fat bias?” The fatter you are, the more bias you experience as you move through the world. We have clear data showing that this raises cortisol levels, the stress hormone. So many people are living in a stress-response state all the time.

SM: Bringing this back to parents — what can we do? I want to mitigate any child’s worry about their size. But we start parenthood by being handed a baby that we have to feed, and we kind of never stop believing their size is our job.

VSS: We have been told that our main goal as parents is to raise kids who eat their vegetables and who don’t eat “too much.” It’s nutrition in service of thinness. You’re eating a certain way in order to maintain a thin body. This creates unrealistic standards and is honestly not good for anyone’s health.

My reframe is, what if our top priority in feeding our kids was body autonomy? What if our goal was to raise kids who trust their bodies, who know that their bodies are never the problem, no matter what size they are, no matter what the world’s telling them, who have that bedrock of trust in themselves?

Currently, kids are more or less told that they don’t get to listen to themselves. How are we expecting them to be able to trust themselves as teenagers, and into adulthood? If you change your focus around family meals to “This is my space to connect with my kid,” then you’re not counting broccoli bites or cookies. You’re talking about other things and giving them breathing room. That’s powerful, and that’s love.

[Sole-Smith stresses that there’s nothing magic about “family dinner,” so if your only time to all sit together is at breakfast on Saturdays or during movie nights on Fridays, that works too.]

SM: Kids have a sharp radar. I feel like you cannot casually put down both cookies and salad and say, “Yum, salad’s so good for our bodies,” without kids knowing one food is now acceptable and one is a little bit forbidden.

VSS: It’s so hard to keep all foods neutral. Kids completely read us when we get excited about them eating salad, and we tense up when they eat cookies. But I think if you can try giving your kids pretty unfettered access to foods that make you anxious — put down a plate of cookies and don’t comment on how many people can have or how fast they’re eating them — you can start to watch your kids really enjoy the food.

[You likely already give them unfettered access to fruits and healthy snacks. The goal here is to take the shame out of treats as well, to raise kids who eat without side-eying others to see if they are “allowed” to have more. Being judged trains them to listen to cues outside of their own body.]

SM: We’re up against society. What are some ways we can give kids armor to all the comments people make about food and size?

VSS: Be a safe space so your kid can come home and talk about it. Often comments about size burn into our brains because nobody countered it. Nobody questioned it. Be the person who tells your kid, “Your body is amazing. No one deserves mean comments. Our culture sets us up to think our body is a problem, but it is not.”

If you’re there when a doctor or someone else makes a comment, jump in with, “I’m not really worried about that. I trust their body. I think their body’s growing really well, and we’re just not going to focus on that.” Your kid cares more about what you think than what the doctor does.

Also, call out anti-fat bias in the media. Peppa Pig is so mean about Daddy Pig’s tummy! [Even Bluey can be scale-obsessed.] I’m watching Gilmore Girls with my 9-year-old right now, and we love it, and I love Melissa McCarthy’s character in it, but there are a lot of eating jokes. I just keep yelling, “You don’t have to think that way! It’s OK to eat.” And my 9-year-old is eye-rolling along with me. Now she’ll often bring me examples that she finds in a book or a video game. She’ll show me and be like, “Look at this, Mom. It’s diet culture.”

Kid-related airplane etiquette has been all over the news recently. Pro-ball player Anthony Bass has been making headlines this week for getting upset that his wife was asked to clean up after her children on a flight, while President Biden has spoken out about unfair airline practices that separate parents from minor kids.

But the all-time MVP of kid-related airline issues has always been and will always be the crying baby.

Read More: People Who Freak Out About Crying Babies On Planes Are The Absolute Worst

Yes, it is absolutely terrible to listen to a wailing baby while trapped on a plane. But no, there is basically nothing you — or the baby’s parents or guardians — can do about it. It’s a fact of life. It’s a necessary part of the universe. It’s like shaking your first in the face of death: it accomplishes nothing!

But still. Some people still get big angry about it. Let’s take this guy for example.

This week, a Southwest Airlines flight headed to Florida got stuck in a holding pattern due to weather — and during the delay a baby started crying. If that wasn’t bad enough, a fellow passenger couldn’t take it anymore and exploded.

The guy shooting the now-viral video was amused, but the guy upset about the baby definitely wasn’t.

“I paid for a ticket too, and that child has been crying for 40 minutes,” the man screams, over the screams of the baby. “Calm the child down, please! I had headphones on, I was sleeping! Want me to scream? I’ll f*cking scream! Please, stop the baby from crying!”

It’s actually surprisingly hard not to feel for this man, who honestly doesn’t seem to understand that there aren’t magic ways to quiet the baby (if the were, I’m guessing its parents would have tried it by that point).

And you have to admit the guy, even in his anger, makes a few funny points.

“Can you lower your voice?” a flight attendant asks.

“Can you lower that voice?” the man counters.

“You’re yelling,” the flight attendant says.

“SO IS THE BABY!” the guy says. “Did that motherf*cker pay extra to yell?”

And it makes sense that he’s in a rough spot, as he explains: “We are in a tin can with a baby in a godd*mn echo chamber, and you want to talk to me about being f*cking OK?”

And certainly, many parents can identify with how it feels when a crying baby pushes you to the limits of your sanity.

Still, the bottom line is that a baby — and its parents — can’t control when a baby feels uncomfortable on a flight. And a grown man should be able to control his outbursts better than someone in diapers.

Or, as another passenger on the flight says during the video, “He’s an a**hole.”

At the end of the flight, there were police waiting for the man in Orlando, though it’s not clear what happened next.

The video, captioned “Belligerent passenger causes diversion,” has tallied almost 2450,000 views and 6,000 comments over on TikTok.

Many pointed out the man’s immature behavior.

“Have we tried swaddling this man?” one person jokes. “He needs some soothing techniques.”

“I would be just as embarrassed as his wife,” another observes. “Lord knows what she goes through with this man every day.”

“How do you think the baby’s parents feel? People need to get a grip, babies are a part of life. We were all babies once,” another said.

“You’re entitled to a child-free life, not a child-free world,” another said (going to write that down and use it later).

A few people had sympathy for the man… even if they didn’t agree how he handled the situation.

“40 minutes of crying is exhausting,” one person commented.

“I’m a parent and understand his frustration,” said another. “The overstimulation of having to listen to a child scream and cry would be too much.”

Still others actually sided with him — and blamed the mother (not the father, of course) of the baby.

“This man deserves a medal for speaking up.”

“It’s the mom’s fault! She should have been prepared, melatonin, etc. It’s selfish!”

And maybe the best comments were the ones that pointed out that screaming about the baby did nothing, but helping the parents could have.

“If I was on that flight I’d go to the mama and be like hey mama you need a break I got you mama you are doing your best mama,” one wrote.

Now that would have made for a lovely heartwarming viral video.

Childcare costs in America are no joke. A 2020 report found that the national average annual cost of childcare was $10,174 per child. That’s more than 10% of the median dual income for a married couple, and more than 35% percent of the median income for a single parent.

With childcare costs so astronomically high (and many salaries so low), some families opt for one parent to stay home because it just doesn’t make sense to have one parent working just to cover the cost of childcare.

But as one working mom of four explains, she’s playing the long game, both for her family and her career.

In a now-viral video, Paige Turner explains why she and her husband (who make about the same) both work full-time jobs and also pay around $5k in childcare a month for their four kids. Yes, you heard that right. Turner and her husband dish out about 60k in childcare a year — a number some of us cannot even fathom.

Unsurprisingly, the mom of four is often met with confusion as many people wonder (with sexist undertones) why she bothers to work when the costs of childcare are so high.

She posted the TikTok to make her strategy crystal clear.

“In our scenario, where my husband and I are similar earners, our on-the-year earnings are very similar, it does not make sense for one of us to stay at home right now,” she explains. “We are spending an astronomical amount of money, and I understand, that on childcare, that some people can’t fathom, and some people don’t even make in a year, right?”

She goes on to say that the question of why her family operates the way it does always being directed towards her is “insulting” and also “negates” any sort of idea of what Turner would do with her life once her kids no longer needed daytime childcare.

“I am not a mother of young kids forever,” she said. “I’m a mother of young kids for 5 to 10 years depending on how widespread your children are. And so for me, in 4 years from now, my youngest child will be in full time school.”

Turner explains there is an “end date” to their huge daycare bills once her kids are all in school and taking time off to be home with the kids would halt her plans to climb the corporate ladder and secure her family’s future.

“I know that where I want to go in my career and the compensation that I’m able to have, it’s there. It’s at my fingertips, right? And me stepping away from work for five to 10 years would throw me back, right, from where I want to go, and the life I want to live after my children are out of daycare,” she said.

Turner explained that for the time being, she and her family are pinching pennies, not going on any luxurious vacations and “doing what [they] can.”

“I’m not just planning for the next four years,” she said. “I’m planning for the next 20, 30 years of my life and my kid’s life, and I know what’s important to me.”

The video, which now has over 300k views, was met with a mixed reception. Some TikTok users praised Turner’s plan for thinking head while other questioned her on the perception of placing her career over spending time with her kids.

In a follow-up video, Turner replied to a comment noting that she would never get the time back that she was missing with her kids while they were little. She replied to the comment noting that the younger years of parenthood were not exactly her “favorite.”

“Some people will love the newborn stage and others will love the toddler stage, and I honestly really enjoy like, now that my kids are a little bit older, like 4 and 5, like that’s fun for me,” she explained.

Turner switched gears to ask a bigger question about motherhood, gender roles, and the pressures put on moms to be present parents that dads just don’t seem to get burdened with. “Why is it that we put so much pressure on women in particular to stay home when their kids are young even if they’re not enjoying it like the most?”

Users were quick to defend Turner with one TikToker commenting, “They act like she lives in another household.”

Another wrote, “they NEVER say this to dads.”

Now that the answer is out there, let’s make it a point to just not ask working moms this question ever again.

That wide-eyed look a child gets after that first taste of ice cream is totally priceless. The same goes for when a bite of lemon hits their lips. Introducing new foods to kids can be hilarious (see: lemon), nerve-wracking (see: peanuts), and also frustrating (see: my kid refusing anything “green” because green is “yucky”).

Nevertheless, food and kids can be an extremely personal and sensitive journey of milestones for a parent. So, what happens when someone in your inner circle thoughtlessly decides to overstep big-time? One U.K. mom knows all about that — and now she’s pissed.

British mom and TikTok content creator, Katie, shared a frustrating and relatable story about people totally crossing the line when it came to her baby, Aria, and “need to rant” about the incident.

In a now-viral TikTok video with over 1 million views, Jones explained that she was visiting a friend with her husband and four-month-old child when someone at the house — who was holding her baby — decided to give her a taste of chocolate cake.

Her husband saw what was occurring and ran into the kitchen yelling “No!” while attempting to get the cake out of his daughter’s mouth.

“I grabbed my baby, stung out of the house, haven’t spoken to this person since,” she explained.

After storming out of the house due to her very reasonable boundaries being crossed, Katie was accused of overreacting about the situation. Specifically, she was told it was “not a big deal.”

Even though she doesn’t have any explaining to do, she goes on to note that her 4-month-old was not weaned off milk and had only tried a bit of watermelon one time.

“The reason I’m so mad about it is because I felt like a precious moment had been taken away from us and just for the expense of like someone’s laughter,” she said. “On top of that chocolate cake has like, sugar, dairy, caffeine, all these things in that I want to control with my baby. Like that is my boundaries, what I set and nobody should overstep that.”

Seems like a pretty simple request to ask the mother of the child if it’s okay to introduce brand new foods to a literal baby before going ahead and doing it yourself.

She revealed that this isn’t the first time it’s happened, and she is sick of clarifying her boundaries. “I don’t get why people love to put things in babies’ mouths!” she exclaimed on TikTok.

A flurry of comments came in supporting her emotions after the boundary violation. “I would be SWINGING no solids are going into my babies mouth until she’s 6 months,” one user wrote.

Katie replied, “Exactly, no solids let alone something like cake”

“What if the baby has any allergies?” pointed out an insightful viewer.

“This is absolutely crossing a boundary,” commented another. “Stand your ground!”

Some commenters suggested that her storm out was unnecessary and defended the person who fed the baby cake, suggesting that Katie should have explained why feeding a 4-month-old solids is a no-go, especially cake.

“That person probably didn’t mean any harm, just make it a learning lesson and say, please don’t feed my baby without my permission,” one user wrote.

Another echoed, “I would be annoyed however i probs wouldn’t storm out the house i would sit and explain why not and ask not to do it again or ask me first.”

One thing’s for sure that everyone can learn from this incident: when you’re spending time with an infant, always, always ask a parent before feeding them anything.

Memorial Day may be prime time for cookouts, but sometimes you just need some waffle fries, even if it is a holiday. With that in mind, you may already be planning to head to the drive-thru of your favorite fast-food restaurant this Monday, May 29, to pick up a last-minute meal. But will Chick-fil-A be open to cater to all of your chicken needs?

Like many holidays, Memorial Day comes with the expectation of eating lots of tasty food. The unofficial start of summer goes hand-in-hand with grilled burgers and hot dogs, but not everyone wants to stand over a hot grill all day. Whether you’re hitting the road, need to grab a quick bite after a long day at the beach, or just want something fast and simple instead of a huge holiday meal, there are plenty of reasons why you might want to pick up some fast food this Memorial Day. You know there’s nothing better than that bold vanilla flavor of an Ice Dream cone on a long, hot day and you can only get that at Chick-fil-A.

If you’re craving one of Chick-fil-A’s spicy chicken sandwiches with a side of fresh macaroni and cheese just reading this, you’ll definitely want to know if Chick-fil-A is open this Memorial Day. Read on to find out.

Is Chick-fil-A open on Memorial Day?

Chick-fil-A is known for being closed on Sundays, and the fast-food favorite also shuts down shop at 10 p.m. each night. But despite this, Chick-fil-A will be open this Memorial Day for regular operating hours.

According to Chick-fil-A’s official website, “Unlike the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays, U.S. Chick-fil-A^® restaurants are open on Memorial Day. Check with your local Chick-fil-A restaurant for their specific hours of operation. To celebrate the holiday, don’t forget to order Chick-fil-A Catering (catering menus and availability differ by location).”

Before you get too excited, don’t forget to check your local restaurant’s hours. According to Chick-fil-A’s website, most restaurants will be open from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Memorial Day. However, Chick-fil-A is a franchise and even multiple locations in your city could have different owners with different holiday philosophies. As such, some locations may open earlier or stay open later. Others might still choose to close for the day, though that seems unlikely given the corporation’s official stance. But in general, you shouldn’t have any trouble ordering nuggets for your kiddos (or you) this Monday. Praise be!

Which holidays does Chick-fil-A close for?

Despite closing every Sunday, there are only a few holidays on which Chick-fil-A closes its doors. The only holidays you won’t be able to order a tasty chicken sandwich on are Thanksgiving and Christmas Day. (Of course, you also can’t get nuggies on Easter, as that’s always on a Sunday.) The rest of the year, the fast-food chain is busy serving up chicken minis and waffle fries to its devoted fans.

Which other chain restaurants are open on Memorial Day?

Memorial Day is a big driving holiday. As a result, you may find yourself eating out more than once over the holiday weekend. If you’ve already grabbed a chicken sandwich and your passengers are demanding something different for dinner, then check out one of these chains that are also set to be open this Memorial Day (as with Chick-fil-A, hours may vary by location):

• Applebee’s
• Burger King
• The Cheesecake Factory
• Chili’s
• Chipotle
• Cracker Barrel
• Dairy Queen
• Denny’s
• Five Guys Burgers and Fries
• Golden Corral
• IHOP
• KFC
• McDonald’s
• Olive Garden
• Outback Steakhouse
• Smashburger
• Starbucks
• Taco Bell
• Wendy’s

No matter what kind of food you’re in the mood for, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a restaurant open on Memorial Day. But if all else fails, you can always eat more chicken.

We live in a results-driven society. We like to make lots of checklists (pack the kids’ lunches, make dinner) and tend to think that if anything is worth doing in life, it ought to have a goal. Otherwise, what’s the point, right? While there are obvious things that should have goals — like saving for a down payment to buy a house or training to finish a 10k race, for example — having sex, specifically achieving orgasm, shouldn’t be one of them.

Most of us assume that reaching orgasm is like crossing the finish line to sex. You might even wonder if it’s worth doing without at least one climactic moment. And that’s the problem: seeing sex as a means to an end rather than simply enjoying it. “As a society, we are very focused on goals and achievements, which is a product of late-stage capitalism. Among people who view sex as strictly reproductive and not pleasure-focused, orgasm is always necessary,” Kristen Tribby, head of Global Marketing and Education for Fun Factory, tells Scary Mommy. “However, viewing sex as a performance, chore, or test is highly anxiety-inducing. Pair that with America’s lack of vacation, maternity leave, sick time, and family resources, and you can see how we bring lots of stress into bed!”

Throw in the pressure to achieve orgasm — both for ourselves and our partner — and it’s no wonder sex can feel like a chore sometimes. It’s that kind of thinking, says sexologist Rebecca Alvarez Story, CEO and co-founder of Bloomi, that robs intimacy between partners.

“There’s a performance stigma around reaching a climax that limits our understanding of intimacy and puts pressure on individuals or partners during sex,” she tells Scary Mommy. “Think of intimacy as a means of connecting with yourself or others, and sex as one of many types of intimate activities that help you connect through providing and experiencing pleasure. Orgasms don’t always have to be the end goal of a sexual experience — unless you want it to be.”

Why Pleasure Is Necessary

You may be scoffing at the notion of pleasure — “Enjoying something for the sake of enjoyment? What’s that?!” But don’t be so quick to write off pleasure as something vain or unimportant. Alvarez says pleasure is a basic need that we all must experience regularly to be mentally, emotionally, and physically healthy. And while sex is an important mechanism for delivering a specific type of pleasure that’s unique, “not everyone wants or even needs to have sex, but everyone needs pleasure,” she says.

In terms of how beneficial pleasure is when it comes to the act of sex, when you share your satisfaction with someone, it allows for a deeper connection. “A performance mindset can get in the way of pleasure because it provokes self-consciousness and anxiety,” Tribby explains. “Replace thoughts about your performance with thoughts about your enthusiasm for your partner, and your sex life will improve dramatically.”

How to Create More Pleasure

To create more pleasure in sex, it might be helpful to explore what pleasure means to you in your life outside of the bedroom. Tribby suggests creating a pleasure practice, which means dropping into the little moments of pleasure we have daily.

“Maybe it’s a quiet cup of tea, a warm bath, or sitting outside and letting the sun warm your body,” she says. “Life offers these moments to us all the time, but we are often scrolling, multitasking, or too rushed to appreciate them.”

After you work with your mind to be open to daily pleasure, your body might need some help, too. Tribby recommends massaging yourself or rubbing a vibrator all over to wake up the nerves in your body, prepping you to receive pleasure. “Another tip is to engage your pelvic floor by doing Kegels,” she says. “Breathe deeply into your belly and pelvis. Then tilt your pelvis while squeezing your glutes for a pelvic stretch. Do a few of these reps to bring energy flow to your pelvic floor. This will help ready your body for pleasure.”

How to Feel More Pleasure in Sex

According to Alvarez, you don’t need any special tools to focus on pleasure and practice mindfulness during sex. Instead, here is what she recommends:

• Plan the session. “Consider any needs you might have going into sex that might help make it more complicated and put your mind at ease. Turn off your phone and anything else that may disturb you.”
• Reframe your intention. “Shift your expectation from having an orgasm to creating space for intimacy and pleasure. You may decide all you want to do is spend an hour laying down with your partner and exploring consensual touch together rather than expecting to have sex at all.”
• Focus on sensations. “There are so many sensations to take note of during sex other than an orgasm. Notice the feel of your partner’s skin, the sensation of their touch, the temperature of the air on your skin, and any tingling or pulsing. You might find you can tap into a sensation in the erogenous zones, like the nipples, thighs, buttocks, lips, or ears.”
• Pay attention to your breath. “Your breath is always available to you as a tool that can help anchor you to the present. Notice if, at any point, you’re constricting your breathing. Try to take long and deep breaths all the way down to your abdomen. Is your breath changing or restricting during different forms of pleasure?”
• Notice any thoughts. “Instead of telling your thoughts to stop, try to notice them when they occur and then let them go. You don’t need to pass judgment for thinking thoughts during sex; everyone does this at some point. Come back to your intention of staying present in the experience.”

How to Stop Worrying About Orgasms As the “Be-All and End-All” of Sex

So, how do you switch your mind from results-driven “do or die” orgasm-seeking sex to “let’s just enjoy this naked experience we’re having” sex?

Alvarez says, like any good experience in life, you want to focus on the journey, not the destination. “Being too fixated on having or giving an orgasm will make it difficult to enjoy yourself and lead to performance anxiety,” she says. “Instead, focus on your senses and what you are feeling throughout the entire time. The pleasure you experience during sex shouldn’t be reduced to a singular moment.”

Tribby suggests thinking about the best sex of your life. “Take a moment to walk yourself through the details. Did you think about the orgasm? Was there even an orgasm? Most likely, these memories are not about the orgasm but instead about the energy of that moment. Did you feel empowered? Sexy? Did you surrender or take control?”

Next time you start to feel the orgasm goal creep into your headspace, Tribby says to focus on the energy of the moment instead. “It’s like a dance; we never think about what’s next in the song or how it will end,” she says. “We just dance.”