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While women have long complained about the negatives of menopause, Kelly Ripa has recently discovered one benefit of going through the process. In a recent episode of her podcast, Let’s Talk Off Camera With Kelly Ripa, the Live With Kelly and Mark host discussed an under-appreciated aspect of menopause that she recently experienced herself. “I love not getting my period,” Ripa, 53, told her podcast guest and her real-life hormone doctor, Dr Erika Schwartz. The TV personality said that she experienced the beginning of menopause during the Covid-19 pandemic. Menopause, according to the Mayo Clinic, marks the time in a person’s life when their menstrual cycle ends and they no longer get their period. However, Ripa recalled the moment she learned of a main upside to menopause - the ability to wear white pants without fear of getting her period. “My first Memorial Day through Labor Day after menopause… it was the summer of the white pants because I never had to worry about wearing white pants,” Ripa recalled. The All My Children alum went on to speak with Dr Schwartz about the misconceptions of menopause, and how many people still consider the topic to be taboo. “People still whisper the word menopause,” she said, adding that “the information is still so hidden”. Her hormone doctor agreed, noting that “we’re still in the Dark Ages” when it comes to menopause and described the process as “like a bad secret”. Ripa said that even her friends of the same age are in denial going through menopause. She revealed that some of her friends routinely “tell me they still get their periods regularly”, while others consider the process to be “embarrassing”. “They’re talking to me, an open book, and still cannot bring themselves to talk about having gone through menopause. It is too scary for them to acknowledge,” she said. Dr Schwartz maintained that some women have trouble opening up about menopause because they feel it’s a sign that they’re “no longer useful” in society. “Because, in this day and age, there’s still a lot from yesterday’s day and age that has permeated the society and culture,” the doctor said. “And we think that being aged beyond menopause, we’re no longer useful.” “The moment you’re no longer fertile, you’re not useful,” Dr Schwartz continued. “I think you’re very useful. That’s when you have the information, the experience. You have so much to bring to the table, that I think every woman should feel great about herself.” Ripa has been married to husband Mark Consuelos since 1996. The longtime couple share children Michael, 26, Lola, 22, and Joaquin, 20. The TV host previously revealed that when she first started going through menopause, she mistakenly thought that she was pregnant. Speaking to Haute Living about her book, Live Wire: Long-Winded Short Stories, in 2022, she recalled the moment she believed her husband had accidentally “got [her] pregnant”. “I started taking pregnancy tests daily, but then Mark sort of gingerly said: ‘Could there be another reason why you’re not getting your period?’ and me saying: ‘What other reason could there possibly be?’ He really had to walk on eggshells here [by explaining to me that I was probably going through menopause],” Ripa said. However, she ultimately felt relieved that she wasn’t pregnant. “I was really grateful that I was not going to have to explain to my kids that they were about to meet their new sibling,” she joked. Read More Kelly Ripa says she thought she was pregnant when she first started going through menopause Viewers applaud Kelly Ripa and husband Mark Consuelos’s ‘great chemistry’ after Live co-hosting debut Kelly Ripa says she worked out of a janitor’s closet for years before ABC gave her a permanent office Teenager received a ‘zero’ at school because he didn’t have class supplies As transphobic hate crimes rise by 11% in a year, how to be a better ally All the big-ticket celebrity donations to Selena Gomez’s Rare Impact Fund Benefit

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Paris Hilton has opened up about her decision to welcome her children via surrogacy. The reality TV star, 41, recently admitted that it wasn’t an easy decision to use a surrogate for the birth of her now 10-month-old son, Phoenix Barron. “Surrogacy was a difficult decision to make,” Hilton said during the season two premiere of Paris In Love, which hit Peacock on 30 November. "I would have loved that experience of growing the baby in your tummy and feeling the kicks and all of those exciting moments, but my life has just been so public,” she explained. “So even though the baby is biologically mine and Carter’s, we decided to have a surrogate carry him.” Hilton, whose life in the spotlight has been highly publicised since the early 2000s, ultimately came to the decision out of her concern for both her and her baby’s safety. In a confessional, her husband Carter Reum echoed those concerns as he spoke about their future plans for their family. "Now having a family with Paris, we want our family to grow up and be normal and not always be known as Paris Hilton’s children," he said. “We have to think about safety. When we go to the farmer’s market, it’s one thing if someone stops and asks Paris for a photo. It’s a whole other thing with the baby in tow in a stroller.” The 42-year-old venture capitalist continued: “I don’t think we know everything the journey’s gonna throw at us, but we’re just gonna tackle it as we go.” Hilton and Reum - who tied the knot in November 2021 - surprised the world last January when they announced the birth of their first child together. “You are already loved beyond words,” she captioned the post, which showed her holding her son Phoenix’s hand. Just 10 months later, they welcomed their second child together - baby girl London. “Thankful for my baby girl,” Hilton wrote on Instagram, showing a photo of a pink pajama set with the name “London” inscribed on the collared top. Because the DJ opted to use a surrogate to welcome her children, she was able to keep their birth a secret from not only her team of staff, but also her family. “Not even my mom, my sisters, my best friend knew until he was over a week old,” Hilton explained on her iHeartRadio podcast, This Is Paris. “It was really nice to have that with Carter, be our own journey together. I just feel like my life has been so public, and I’ve never really had anything be just mine.” In a preview clip for Paris in Love season two released earlier this month, Hilton’s husband shared his thoughts on keeping the birth of their first baby to themselves. “I don’t think it ever hit me we weren’t going to tell anyone, that was really Paris,” he said in the teaser. “My initial inclination was to tell my family and get everyone excited, hers was to hold the secret.” However, Reum admitted that he understood why Hilton was apprehensive about sharing Phoenix’s expected delivery date. “But she’s had to go through life having to protect herself, so I was gonna do everything I could to be a good teammate,” he said. Much like the birth of her son Phoenix, Hilton also surprised her friends and family after welcoming her daughter London. “The only people who knew were obviously Carter, my mom, and my sister. But my parents didn’t know when it was happening, they just knew that it was going to happen,” Hilton said during an appearance on Today earlier this week. “It was the best Thanksgiving surprise ever for everybody.” “I feel just so at peace, so happy, so grateful for my husband and this beautiful family and life that we’re building together,” she added. “I couldn’t imagine anything else. I’m just over the moon with everything.” Read More Paris Hiltons says ‘mama bear instincts’ came out after comments about son’s head Paris Hilton opens up about welcoming ‘angel’ baby London: ‘I’m loving my mom era’ Paris Hilton announces surprise birth and name of second child Paris Hilton’s husband reveals why she wanted to keep their son’s birth secret Paris Hilton makes grand entrance into F1 party but ‘no one’ is there to watch Megan Fox says she’s raising her sons so they are ‘not like men that I’ve been with’

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For makeup devotees, the name Danessa Myricks holds power. The makeup artist and founder of her eponymous makeup line has easily reached icon status for those in the know, and after her Yummy Skin Blurring Balm Powder went viral last summer, it seems like her star is only rising further. With multi-use makeup products becoming essentials in our makeup routines, Myricks took note and launched the Groundwork Defining Neutrals Palette in September, creating a one-stop tool to a stellar makeup look.

The next time you eat something with your hands, take a moment to notice how it feels on your fingertips before taking a bite. If it’s a burger, are the buns smooth or covered in a smattering of sesame seeds? When you put pressure on them with your fingers, does the bread squish down or is it more of a crumby affair? Then, when you finally take a bite, notice how satisfying it is to sink your teeth through its layers; soft bun giving way to crunchy lettuce or onion, to oozy cheese to, finally, juicy patty. Now think about how different it would be if you had used a knife and fork. Eating with one’s hands is an immensely pleasurable experience. While in the West, the act is usually confined to foods encased in bread or pastry, Indian, African and some other Asian cultures are more adept at using their fingers for dishes that might seem too “messy” or “sticky” on this side of the world. One of my favourite dishes is banana leaf rice, which at its core comprises of rice, vegetables and curry. I mix each element of the dish and use a pinching motion with all five fingers to construct the perfect bite, before sweeping it up in a quick motion and delivering the food to my mouth. I find that it forces me to really consider each bite, from what flavours and textures I want it to contain, to how large a portion I can manage. Up until a few months ago, I never really thought about how often I eat with my hands. Like many people, I associated it closely with Indian meals and always thought that Western culture was too obsessed with polite society to really dig their fingers in. This is still true, to an extent – many South Asians who grew up eating with their hands report being looked at with horror when they attempted to do the same in public here. But, after witnessing my very white British husband happily dig into banana leaf rice when we began dating, and having conversations with friends about the topic, I’ve come to realise that eating with our hands is a much more universal act than I thought. For example, burgers, pizzas, hot dogs and chips are all eaten by hand – unless you’re eating one of those beastly burgers that tower too high and need to be deconstructed. Then there’s things like fried chicken or shellfish, which are simply easier to pick up, pull apart and pry open using your fingers. Foods like Mexican burritos and tacos or Japanese sushi are commonly picked up by hand and devoured. Some people enjoy eating salads by hand, finding it easier to use pieces of lettuce filled with dressing and other ingredients like edible spoons. A surprising proponent of this was Sylvia Plath, who wrote in the third chapter of her 1963 novel The Bell Jar that she observed a poet eating a salad “with his fingers, leaf by leaf”, making it “seem to be the only natural and sensible thing to do”. The more I think about it, the more I realise that my hands are my favourite utensil. No one is delicately picking up crisps with chopsticks or forking a French fry. All manner of flat breads – from parathas and naans to injeras – beg to be torn apart by hands and used to mop up dhal and curry. I would never think of eating a sandwich with a fork and knife, any more than I would for a Taiwanese bao. It just seems wrong. On this side of the world, cutlery has reigned supreme until very recently. Primitive humans have been carving knife and spoon-like implements for centuries, while the fork is a surprisingly modern invention. According to the Smithsonian Magazine, a Byzantine princess debuted a golden fork at her wedding feast in Venice 1006, which disgusted locals who ate using their fingers and knives. One Venetian apparently condemned such a tool and said: “God in his wisdom has provided man with natural forks – his fingers. Therefore it is an insult to him to substitute artificial metal forks for them when eating.” There’s perhaps also an aspect of self-consciousness being thrown out the window when we eat with our hands. It banishes the concept of formality and Anglocentric ‘table manners’ Surekha Ragavan Despite the initial rejection, forks became a mainstay across Europe after 1533 when Catherine De Medici, wife of Henry II, hauled a collection of silver forks from Italy to France in 1533. Three hundred years later, the full set of silverware as we know it had integrated itself into everyday life in Europe. Manners-obsessed Victorians then made up all sorts of etiquette rules, from how to hold a fork, to the myriad of different-sized cutleries with very specific purposes – like fish knives and dessert spoons. These became class markers, separating the upper echelons of society with their dinky utensils from the lower classes, who worked too much to care about which spoon went where. But one thing could be agreed upon – eating with one’s hands was considered impolite and vulgar in almost all culinary situations. That is, until about a decade ago when DeBrett’s, the British authority on etiquette and behaviour, declared in their 2012 guide that “table manners are no longer about adhering to a rigid, and outdated, code of conduct”. The experts named foods like pizza and calzone as “acceptable” foods to be eaten using your hands. It also advised such adventurous eaters to create “as little mess as possible”, sit up straight and ensure you “never put your elbows on the table”, proving that some old habits die hard. Bristol-based restaurateur Rashintha Rodrigo, one of the five founders of Sri Lankan restaurant group The Coconut Tree, says he eats almost anything with his hands – even a roast dinner. “I start with a fork and knife but always find myself picking pieces of chicken or potato off my plate with my fingers towards the end of the meal,” he laughs. He also grew up eating rice and curry with his hands in Sri Lanka, and felt self-conscious about doing the same when he moved to Britain. But these days, he finds it liberating. “It’s become more accepted in the past five or six years and more people are curious about it,” Rodrigo says. Surekha Ragavan, founder of Periuk, a digital archive of heritage Malaysian recipes, also finds freedom in the act. “There’s perhaps also an aspect of self-consciousness being thrown out the window when we eat with our hands. It banishes the concept of formality and Anglocentric ‘table manners’,” she says, reminding me of another observation by Plath in The Bell Jar. The author’s liberation is slightly different, though, as she wrote: “I’d discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at a table with a certain arrogance… nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and very witty.” Those who advocate eating with hands often also say it makes the food taste better, but no one seems to be able to pinpoint why. Jose Pizzaro, the acclaimed Spanish owner and founder of the Pizarro group of restaurants, describes it as “the best way to eat”. “It’s a visceral pleasure that’s really hard to beat,” he says. “It creates a sort of magical connection between you and the food. If you’ve never eaten a big, fat, juicy prawn covered with garlic and lemon with your hands, and then go through the ritual of pulling off the legs and the shell and then sucking the brains out – you haven’t lived!” But why is the tactile sensation of touching food so delightful? Some opine that touching your food is beneficial because you can gauge food temperature better with your fingers, and so run a lower risk of burning your tongue. Others claim that your fingers have “healthy bacteria” on them that get transferred into your digestive system when you eat with your hands, but these are difficult to quantify. However, Charles Spence, professor of experimental psychology at the University of Oxford, believes the pleasure lies in our perception of food, as opposed to any other physical benefits. In his review of how the experience of eating changes when people eat with their hands instead of cutlery, Spence found that having more direct, tactile contact with food appears to “enhance the experience” of eating and drinking. “There’s a lot of sensory input that happens even before we put the food in our mouth,” he says. “Just by using our sensitive finger pads, we almost anticipate how tasty something is going to be before it reaches our tongue.” There’s practicality in using our hands to eat, too. We can determine how ripe a fruit is by squeezing it gently, or figure out if something is going to be soft or crunchy before biting into it. Of course, there are some dishes that are simply not hand-friendly. Noodles, pasta and soups obviously require cutlery to eat, but there’s nothing to stop us from taking more joy in the foods we can eat with our hands. If you’ve never tried handling anything beyond a sandwich or a pasty, I fully encourage you to try something new. Take a leaf out of Plath’s book with your next salad, perhaps, or take the plunge into some rice and curry. It will require practice to develop the skill of eating without dropping rice absolutely everywhere, but I promise you, it’s worth it. Read More Adorable, cuddly… evil? How the Furby took over the world ‘You think it’s going to be a money making machine’: How modern life killed the hobby The dish that defines me: Mallini Kannan’s baked honey-soy salmon 30-minute summer recipes for all the family to enjoy What to cook this week: Tomato tart, sweetcorn pasta and other summery suppers The dish that defines me: Mallini Kannan’s baked honey-soy salmon