sydney n. sweeney 🕵🏾‍♀️

Just two weeks ago, Sha’Carri Richardson was on fire at the U.S. Olympic Trials. Calling special attention to the 21-year-old sprinter was her distinct style—orange hair, fake lashes, and embellished acrylic nails. But Richardson’s was only part of the reason all eyes were on her. In her post-race interview, after conquering the 100-meter dash, she revealed that a week before.

"Like no place else." That's the motto of Palm Springs, according to their Bureau of Tourism, which also pridefully advertises the Southern California desert resort city as a balmy oasis with a rich heritage, iconic modernist aesthetics, and an ever-increasing cultural appeal to both hipsters on holiday leave and influencers on business trips. For a place like Palm Springs, these attractive qualities are not merely marketing angles, but famed truths. The city was established atop land belongin

Just a few months ago, someone from Black Twitter quipped that the reigning women of Destiny’s Child had “some really black-ass names.” The joke reintroduced an old truth: Beyoncé, Tenitra (Michelle’s first name), and Kelendria sound as black as catfish and fried okra, or a beauty supply store referred to vaguely as “the beauty supply.” As the tweet became a thread, other folks waxed nostalgic upon a yesteryear when such Afrocentric names dominated black entertainment, and one Destiny’s Child

I never imagined myself being one of those bitches who moved in with her boyfriend after only dating him for seven months. My brain has always considered the decision of cohabitation to be necessarily long-brewing—a gargantuan resolution strategized in advance, like becoming a dentist or investing in a high-quality BBL. In the same way that one doesn’t just decide overnight that other people’s healthy teeth or a juicy, $10,000 ass would bring them satisfaction, I never really thought that couple

Scrolling through an iPhone camera roll is the 21st century version of flipping through the pages of a metal ring-bound photo album and romanticizing times that felt much simpler. In 2020, a miserable year that feels more and more like a literal epoch, waxing nostalgic about The Before—a period that I can’t help but refer to as “when things were normal”—has become an international pastime, and at this point, looking back at snapshots of life pre-pandemic can feel borderline masochistic. We had p

Around this time last year, I dated a guy who loved showing ass on the internet via cheeky mirror pics and the occasional film photograph. Cameron’s* mooning-centric Instagram feed was the result of his relatively newfound body-posi mentality; like many of us grappling with idealistic beauty expectations, most of his teen and early 20-something years were dampened with low self-esteem incited by images of how an attractive man’s body should look, and thus, his online nudity represented liberatio

Around this time last year, I dated a guy who loved showing ass on the internet via cheeky mirror pics and the occasional film photograph. Cameron’s* mooning-centric Instagram feed was the result of his relatively newfound body-posi mentality; like many of us grappling with idealistic beauty expectations, most of his teen and early 20-something years were dampened with low self-esteem incited by images of how an attractive man’s body should look, and thus, his online nudity represented liberatio

Our almost-relationship combusted on my 23rd birthday. He was too broke to take me to dinner — or even gift me a one-dollar greeting card. That night, I ate shitty pasta in my little San Pedro apartment and cried myself to slumber, wishing his inaction was unexpected — but secretly knowing such oblivion would disappoint.

Black girls gas each other up about their natural hairstyles in the same way that all tipsy girls compliment each other in the restrooms of concert venues and house parties: obsessively and joyously. It’s a simple, unspoken rule that when we rest our eyes on another brown gal with gorgeous curls, our souls feel an urge to spread some hair love, to reassure that other girl that she’s rocking it right – whether “it” be a gravity-defying afro, well-styled waves, or one-of-a-kind protective style (take customized box braids, Marley twists, or bantu knots, for instance). And when those first “I love your hair!” salutations are gifted to the other naturalista, the conversation frequently snowballs

When I meet up IRL with an Internet boy, my mother is the first person to get my iPhone location. She lives a hundred miles away from me, but I know that if my little red pin were to ever land in suspicious territory, she would be the first to call the cops. I’ve realized that most women my age grant their close girlfriends this kind of first-responder role, and this is not to say that I don’t let my own cronies know what I’m getting into before any risky business commences. (Usually my inbox will be topped with an anxious, yet appreciated “R U OK?” text from my best friend if I don’t prove