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83 results
  • Comic
  • Comic

Hair

| Rob Bidder

Humans don’t like body hair. Unless they do. It depends.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

‘My Hair Is Not…’

| Inés Yearwood-Sanchez

Eight Black people talk about their relationship with their hair – their hairstyle history, their experiences, and how they decided to have natural hair.

  • Comic
  • Comic

New hair, same me

| Sarah Akinterinwa

Curiosity must come with respect.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

My body, my hair

| Farah EssetEden Rickson

To depilate or not to depilate? Farah Esset and Eden Rickson share a collection of personal pictures and stories that explore the intimate interplay between body hair and identity.

  • Article
  • Article

What our facial hair says about us

| David JesudasonSteven Pocock

Five bearded and moustachioed men choose five hirsute archive images to help them reflect on the way facial hair is linked with personality and identity.

  • Photo story
  • Photo story

How wigs help children handle hair loss

| Carmel KingHelen Babbs

For young people who lose their hair during cancer treatment, a wig can make them feel normal again. Carmel King photographs some of the processes and people involved with a charity providing beautiful human-hair wigs for kids.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Historical ways to hang on to your hair

| Maisie Jenkins

Could upper-class hair-hygiene regimes cause baldness, or does hair health depend on a blast of deadly mercury? Maisie Jenkins scours the archives for historic follicle care.

  • Article
  • Article

How your hairdresser could save your life

| Kristin HohenadelThomas S G Farnetti

Barbers and hairdressers have a unique view of us – one that means they can spot potentially dangerous health problems. Find out how buzzcuts can lead to blood-pressure checks, and dip-dyes show the way to the dermatologist.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Advice for (medieval) old age

| Katherine Harvey

Whether it was an abstemious, pious preparation for death or drinking gold in the quest for eternal life, those seeking advice on what best to do in their later years were never short of inspiration.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

Electric marvels in the age of enlightenment

| Amelia Soth

How our understanding of electricity has grown, from novelty to the pulse of modern life – and the inner fire that powers the human machine.

  • In pictures
  • In pictures

From rockets to raves

| David Jesudason

Find out how hydrogen peroxide has been used to do everything from investigate murders and propel rockets to treat teeth and bleach hair.

  • Article
  • Article

The making of ‘Quacks’

| Helen Babbs

How do you create a medical comedy that’s authentic and laugh-out-loud funny?

  • Article
  • Article

Keeping death close

| Lauren EntwistleShay Azzari

Scattering her father’s ashes, Lauren Entwistle found herself longing for something physical that proved he once was a living, breathing person. Here she reflects on the objects that help us to grieve and remember.

  • Article
  • Article

Identifying skin lightening agents in cosmetics

| Ngunan AdamuAmaal Said

Could your moisturiser be damaging your health? If it contains skin-lightening agents, the answer is yes. But this is an area where consumers definitely do not have the upper hand.

  • Article
  • Article

How to talk to kids about race

| Pragya AgarwalJoelle Avelino

When her daughter decided blonde was best, a red flag went up for Pragya Agarwal. In this essay, the behavioural scientist discusses childhood development, race and representation.

  • Article
  • Article

Our endless quest for eternal youth

| Dr Lindsey FitzharrisKathleen Arundell

From poisonous 16th-century cosmetics to the latest “vampire facelift”, discover the fashions in unsavoury methods for improving our appearance.

  • Article
  • Article

Is shoegaze the loneliest genre of music?

| Christine Ro

Christine Ro explores the connection between shyness and shoegaze.

  • Comic
  • Comic

Bald

| Rob Bidder

Don't let your selfish hair mask your cranial beauty

  • Comic
  • Comic

Facts

| Rob Bidder

More hair grows on your eyeball than your armpit.

  • Article
  • Article

Witches

| Helen FosterEast Midlands Oral History ArchiveAsma Istwani

Many of the women persecuted as witches in the 16th-century “witch craze” were over 50 and exhibited signs of menopause. Helen Foster suggests that the stigma of the wicked witch still affects older women and how they deal with menopause.

  • Article
  • Article

Doris Day blows against

| Dodie BellamyMichael Salu

Dodie Bellamy remembers a heady summer watching Doris Day grimace and gust in vintage movies, her expressive exhalations changing her onscreen world with a puff.

  • Article
  • Article

Nurturing my autistic, gender-questioning child

| Jude LaxJack Lax

As mother of an autistic child who questions her gender, Jude Lax describes cherishing her growing daughter as she explores her identity.

  • Article
  • Article

Building resilience in a racist world

| Louisa Adjoa ParkerOlivia Twist

With the resurgence of racism in today’s UK, Louisa Adjoa Parker reflects on the trauma of growing up in a racist society and explores how victims could begin to heal.

  • Article
  • Article

The leukaemia diagnosis I didn’t see coming

| Hannah Partos

Treatment for leukaemia kept journalist Hannah Partos in isolation, like the female prisoner whose image inspired her to write this piece.

  • Article
  • Article

Are doctors medical detectives?

| Jules MontagueJohn R A Smith

Do doctors really identify medical conditions in the same way that detectives solve crimes? Neurologist Jules Montague makes her diagnosis.