→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

I have a closet full of designer labels.

I like to look good.

I know firsthand that how I look when I enter a room, often as the only woman, matters, even though that’s complete bullsh*t.

And we keep telling women that clothes don’t matter right up until they do. Right up until you’re labeled as “trying too hard,” “letting herself go,” “not polished enough,” or “too polished,” whatever the hell that means.

The contradiction is exhausting, and it gets sharper in middle age when visibility itself starts to feel like a pair of suffocating Spanx.

So when writer Melissa Gould pitched this, I was … intrigued, but I wondered if she had the bite I knew we needed for this. Her writing is always endearing and engaging. But for this topic, I wanted more.

And the first draft did come in too soft and too careful. It would’ve been just another article about what women wear and the pressure and empty platitudes that could be found anywhere. That’s not PROVOKED.

Because the tension women feel around getting dressed isn’t polite—it’s loaded.

So we went through edits, then pivots, then revised drafts, and even more pivots. I pushed for sharper language and clearer stakes because I knew we had to get this exactly right.

And if I do say so myself—which I do—I think we did.

The piece talks about “quiet power,” but the response was loud. Readers came in hot on both sides of the fashion fence with almost 50 comments, and this remains one of our most popular pieces to date.

Some were on the writer’s side:

“Your essay recalls the Italian concept of ‘la bella figura’: Recognizing that you owe both yourself and your audience your best look.”

“I’ve never felt value in going out looking like I just got out of bed. Why not be THAT person who exudes the power to draw positivity and maybe even a little envy? Why not experience a little personal ‘high’ when you receive a compliment?”

Then there’s Abby, my managing editor, who lives in workout pants and sweatshirts. Her intention is comfort, and she doesn’t give a single shit what anyone thinks. Plenty of readers feel the same way:

“I’m boggled with the words used here, as if you cannot dress with intent and wear black linen pants or jeans or a hoodie. ‘Well dressed’—what does that mean? They are not words that matter to me. Maybe there are others like myself who also find clothes, and others’ judgement of them, irritating.”

That’s exactly why we published this.

Because the idea that showing up with intention—whatever that looks like for you—is a conversation worth having.

And to echo Melissa’s closing line, “I’m here for it.”

Read the full article here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

It’s never been a more confusing time to be a woman.

We’ve been sold a shiny, hashtag-ready version of body positivity that promises freedom, self-love, and radical acceptance. And yet somehow, it still manages to feel like bullsh*t.

We’re told to love our bodies, but also to keep working on them. Diet, exercise, and if that doesn’t work? There’s a shot for that. Between social media, traditional media, friends and family, and hell, likely the women at Whole Foods, it’s impossible not to feel the pressure to constantly think about what you “should” change about the way your body looks.

Not how it functions, but how it looks.

And no, I’m not immune.

I take GLP-1s.

I’m not ashamed of it, and I’d be lying if I said it doesn’t complicate the conversation, but it’s a conversation worth having. So when writer Wendee Nicole pitched this piece, of course I said yes.

She was in the middle of her own mess. She thought she’d finally made peace with her body, but then her mom came to town. A month later, she started Wegovy. (And no, that wasn’t a coincidence.)

But I didn’t want another tidy “my journey” article that resolves neatly with self-acceptance and inspirational memes.

I wanted her to sit with the uncomfortable truth that so many women are forced to sit with. Especially in midlife, when our bodies are so out of whack anyway that the last thing we need is for the rules to get stricter.

The result is raw, self-aware, and asks an honest question:

Is weight loss a betrayal of body positivity? What do we really gain from losing weight? And who the hell gets to decide which bodies are “allowed”?

We don’t pretend there’s a clean answer, because there isn’t, and this piece doesn’t ask for approval or applause. It asks for honesty about the pressure, the choices, and the contradictions we’re all navigating in real time.

That tension is the story, because that story is real life.

Read the full article here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

Julia Child influenced me before influencers were “a thing.”

I watched that towering woman bang pans, drop food, laugh too loud, and casually toss in another stick of butter like she was topping up her coffee. She didn’t float through the kitchen like a delicate princess. She stomped through it like she owned the damn castle.

So when Abby pitched a piece about Julia? No hesitation on my part.

I love cooking. I loved Julia then, and I still love her now. But somewhere between “this will be funny” and “final draft,” Abby did what she does best—she followed the thread all the way down.

What started as jokes about influencers turned into something much sharper: an ode to a woman who refused to make herself small in a world that demands women do exactly that.

She writes Julia like a cultural disruptor, someone who refused to apologize for every indulgence and tone it all down before anyone got uncomfortable.

Our readers felt it immediately.

“I remember watching her when I was MUCH younger. I will never forget her booming voice. She was so full of life and joy! Give me ALL the bread and butter!”

“Hooray! It’s nice to hear someone push back against the thinness war of low cal, low fat, and factually low pleasure. Child was an icon and we’re lucky to have had her in our lives. Thank you for reminding us what a wonderful women’s warrior she is.”

“Thank you so much for this! I’ve been channeling Saint Julia for the last 30 years! It’s so nice to see someone put the ‘why’ into words.”

Because Julia didn’t just teach us to cook.

She showed us how to live like we mean it.

And always—always—use the good butter.

Read the full article here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

Women are tired.

Not “need a nap” tired. Bone-deep, low-grade, always-on exhausted. And a lot of that fatigue doesn’t come from work, kids, or doomscrolling the news at 2 a.m.

It comes from the quiet, unpaid job we’re doing inside our relationships: managing men’s emotional and social lives like it’s just part of the deal.

We remember his friends’ birthdays. We nudge him to text his mom. We absorb his bad day. We’re the emotional shock absorber because, conveniently, he “doesn’t have” anyone else.

There’s a name for it now: mankeeping.

Writer Jennifer Green talked to almost two dozen women and named something they’ve been carrying silently for years. No hand-wringing or “communicate better” bullsh*t. Just: Here’s what’s happening and here’s why it matters.

And clearly it does matter from the comments that quickly came in.

“I daydream sometimes about being alone, on my own, and think of how I would enjoy spending my time with no restrictions and resentment coming from him.”

“I can relate to the person who describes her husband’s friendships as toddler stage, side-by-side play. Trying to verbalize it to him, though, without causing him pain, has been so difficult. If I’m his “best friend and wifey,” why should he talk to someone else? But I’ve got cancer and I can barely deal with my own sh*t!

Those are the kind of reactions that let me know we hit the mark.

Because it’s smart, validating, and yes, a little rage-inducing.

You may not love what this reveals, but you’ll recognize it.

And that’s the point.

Read the full piece here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

There’s a corporate euphemism that’s quietly become one of the most insulting phrases in professional life: “overqualified.”

On the surface, it’s polite and non-confrontational.

But when you cut through the bullsh*t, what it usually means is: You’re too damn old.

We’ve built a workforce culture that devalues seasoned women while pretending to praise their experience. And that word—overqualified—does all the dirty work without anyone having to admit what’s actually happening.

Joanne Helperin is a writer with a very strong personality, so I knew she had the voice to call it out without flinching. Because here’s the thing about money articles: They’re often dry as hell. Personal finance advice tends to be either preachy or boring, and career pieces can feel like LinkedIn posts written by AI to build false “authority.”

We don’t do that at PROVOKED.

Our goal with every money story is to combine actual service with cultural punch and a distinct voice, something that tells you how to navigate the system while also interrogating why the system is rigged against you in the first place.

This piece does exactly that.

Joanne interviewed women who were passed over, ghosted, or gently nudged out. But it’s more than just their stories. It’s a sharp critique of the language we use to disguise the discomfort with maturity and expertise that refuses to back down.

Because isn’t just the word itself; it’s what that word does.

It erases decades of skill under the guise of being complimentary.

As one woman said in the comments, “I want to go back to work and I have extensive experience. But the baby recruiters look at me and I hear it in their voice. ‘Oh, you haven’t worked in a couple years?’ Yeah, but I didn’t forget anything! I’m still relevant.”

Yes, we our. And our experience isn’t a threat.

Dismissing it as “too much” is.

Read the full piece here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

Middle-aged women have been branded “bitter” for doing the unthinkable: telling the truth and enforcing a boundary.

And I’m sick of pretending that label means anything.

Gayle MacBride is a therapist. That means she’s spent years listening to women get shamed for finally saying, “No, actually, I’m not doing that.” Her early drafts for us came in like most expert writing does—technically perfect, emotionally level, polished within an inch of its life.

Useful, but not PROVOKED.

So we pushed her to lose the academic buffer, drop the “on the one hand/on the other hand” hedging, and say what you actually see in the chair when women hit their 40s, 50s, 60s and stop playing nice with the bullsh*t.

This piece is what happened when she did.

The culture loves the “bitter old woman” trope because it’s lazy and convenient.

Gayle takes that trope, drags it under a bright light, and answers with six F‑words that have nothing to do with being “difficult” and everything to do with finally taking up space.

She doesn’t come at it with memes or tidy empowerment slogans. She comes at it like a clinician who’s seen the pattern a million times: women running on fumes, subsidizing everyone else’s success, apologizing for having needs, and then getting slapped with a label the minute they tighten the scope. ​

Here’s what makes this piece different.

It doesn’t ask you to be nicer about aging. It asks you to be more precise about it.

It names what’s actually happening when women are called bitter: They stopped absorbing, performing gratitude for scraps, and pretending exhaustion is a personality trait.

And the world doesn’t know what to do with a woman who’s fresh out of f*cks to give.

I love this piece because it gives you the language to push back. Not with anger—though that’s valid too—but with clarity.

You’re not bitter.

You’re done, and those aren’t the same thing.

Read the full article here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

I wasn’t planning on writing about the Oscars this year.

I had 1.2 million things on my Monday to-do list—including preparing for the launch of two new PROVOKED products, building out the Thursday newsletter, and working on partnership proposals.

So I spent Monday … writing about the Oscars.

Because when I watched them on Sunday, I realized there were two completely different shows happening on the same stage.

The one everyone talks about was predictable: speeches, ratings, red carpet coverage where women’s bodies get dissected like it’s still 2003 and we’re all supposed to pretend it’s “fashion.” Celebrities clapping for each other in borrowed diamonds and calling it culture. Fine.

That’s not what I was watching.

Because underneath all that noise, there was another show happening—quieter, sharper, and a hell of a lot more interesting if you’re a woman over 50 who’s done pretending this event was ever built with you in mind.

That’s the one I cared about.

While outside the cameras lingered on bodies that looked like they were working very hard at disappearing, something else was happening inside the room.

Women in their 50s, 60s, and 70s were taking the stage, holding gold, commanding rooms. Owning the moment like they’d been there all along—because they have, even though most people didn’t know their names.

And when they finally got up there?

They made it about more than themselves.

They made it count.

So no, this isn’t an awards recap or fashion report. God knows the internet is drowning in those.

This is about what actually stood out once you stopped watching where they told you to look.

Women over 45 weren’t just present; they were driving the whole damn thing. Behind the camera, in the edit, in the sound, in the design, they’re shaping what the world sees. And for many of them, it took decades to get there.

That’s the part worth paying attention to.

Because yes, it proves it’s not too late.

But it also makes one thing very clear:

It never should’ve taken this long.

Read the full article here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

When Abby Alten Schwartz sent me this pitch, I hated it, because I recognized myself immediately.

I’ve designed nuclear submarines as a naval architect, shaped global brands at Disney and Nestlé, and was a professional high-stakes poker player in Russia.

And I still told my daughter to intercept the FedEx guy before her dad saw the box.

He wouldn’t have cared or questioned it. Probably wouldn’t have noticed unless it was furniture or lingerie (for me, not him).

So why the hell was I performing financial guilt like a reflex?

Yes, in 2026 there’s a weird little performance a lot of women are still doing. The box-hiding. The receipt-stuffing. The minimize-the-purchase routine. The joking confession to friends: “Don’t tell my husband what this cost!” said with a laugh like it’s normal.

We’re women with our own income, careers, and financial literacy who are still role-playing spending shame like it’s a marital requirement.

Here’s what made us stop and look harder: In a huge number of modern partnerships, the husband doesn’t actually care. Not secretly. Not quietly. Not “deep down.”

The tension isn’t coming from him.

It’s coming from a cultural script that refuses to die.

That disconnect is exactly why so many readers related to this article, because it’s not cute and harmless.

And it’s insulting to our partners.

Stop hiding the boxes.

Not because of the money but because of what the hiding implies.

Read the full essay here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

I couldn’t stop watching the same ritual unfold every week.

A woman posts a mirror selfie with three dress options and the comments arrive with polite diplomacy until someone tells the truth.

And then the thread implodes.

She just wanted help choosing a dress for her 50th high school reunion. By sunset, she’d shut down comments and left the group because someone told her the truth, and truth has been criminalized.

I’m done pretending this is normal.

Because most women posting “Which dress?” aren’t asking about fabric or fit. They’re asking if they’re still visible, still relevant, still here.

We’ve weaponized sensitivity so effectively that honest feedback gets branded as body-shaming, toxic energy, mean girl behavior. Meanwhile, empty flattery is called “support” and “sisterhood.”

This is the culture we’ve built. It’s exhausting, and what’s left isn’t community—it’s performance. So yes, I wrote this piece pissed off. Not at the woman looking for fashion advice, but at all of us.

Because we’ve created an impossible paradox: We crave honesty and then punish the women who deliver it.

If every honest answer is bullying, the problem isn’t the dress.

It’s us.

​Read the full article here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

Every time someone mentions customer service, there’s a look. The thousand-yard stare, the involuntary exhale, the story that starts with “I was on hold for 47 minutes…” and ends with someone screaming “REPRESENTATIVE!” while the chatbot cheerfully types, ‘I understand you’d like to buy a refrigerator!’”

We keep pretending shitty service is just one of those things, a quirk of capitalism or minor modern inconvenience like traffic or slow Wi-Fi.

It’s not.

Because it’s not just bad experiences anymore. It’s a slow-burn psychological experiment and system designed to make you give up.

This piece came from Abby Heugel—our editor and writer who has a gift for making you laugh at things that should make you flip tables. And the reaction in the comments turned into a support group, with people trading war stories like veterans comparing scars.

It took off because it lets us laugh at the descent, and maybe feel a little less unhinged for having lived it.

And no, humor doesn’t fix broken systems. But it does remind you that you’re not alone, you’re not imagining it, and you’re not the problem.

Read the full article here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

Grown, intelligent women—women who’ve run companies, families, teams, and whole damn systems—are still being talked to about food like unsupervised toddlers hovering over a cookie jar.

Don’t eat this. Fear that. Cut those. Be good. Be disciplined. Be smaller. And while you’re at it, be quieter, please.

We’ve survived low-fat, no-fat, fake sugar, real sugar panic, protein worship, carb terror, detox drama, and whatever powdered miracle came in a plastic tub that year. We’re walking archives of nutritional whiplash.

And if anyone has earned the right to raise an eyebrow and say “hold on, this is bullsh*t,” it’s us.

So when writer Lauren Manaker—a registered dietitian with decades of experience—pitched this, I didn’t say yes because we needed another food piece. I said yes because I was tired of watching women get gaslit by an industry that claims to be “helping” us while slowly breaking our brains.

Lauren admitted something most experts won’t: She feared carbs.

Despite the science and her training, because the cultural messaging was that loud, pervasive, and loaded.

And here’s what made this piece harder to write than she expected: We don’t do safe at PROVOKED. We don’t do the sanitized expert voice that hides behind credentials and talks at readers instead of with them.

I told her to get vulnerable and question the narrative she’d been taught, and taught others. It wasn’t easy, but she did, and what you get isn’t a diet plan or a new set of rules.

It’s a dietitian cracking open the lie we’ve all been sold: that carbs are the enemy, discipline equals virtue, and women’s relationship with food should be monitored, managed, and moralized.

The response? Immediate relief with women sharing their own fear and mental gymnastics over a piece of bread. I got emails saying it was refreshing for someone with letters after her name to finally say out that a lot of what we were taught wasn’t just incomplete, it was screwing with their own peace of mind.

It’s a reminder that not everything fed to us (no pun intended) should be accepted without actually questioning it.

So we did.

Read the full article here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

How often do you think about sex?

And more specifically, how often do you think about monogamy instead of just defaulting to it?

For a lot of women, monogamy doesn’t feel like a choice. It feels like a uniform issue—you got handed the cultural straightjacket so early you forgot it ever had a zipper.

For others, the phrase “non-monogamy” hits like a fire alarm. Pearl-clutch reflex. Marriage-certificate defense mode. Emergency group chat: “Have you SEEN what people are doing out there?”

If you’re in the second camp and already whispering “absolutely not” while your thumb hovers over the scroll button—hold up.

Because a lot of women are curious. Not porn-curious. Not Reddit-horror-story curious. Curious about what non-monogamy actually looks like when it’s lived by grown, thinking adults.

When writer Mariah Douglas pitched this piece, I knew exactly what it was: a chance to drag open relationships, polyamory, and ethical non-monogamy out of the shadows and ask, without flinching: What is this really, and what have we been lied to about?

It’s not, as it turns out, all chaos, jealousy, and sex on trampolines. At least not as a full-time job.

And I’ll be honest. I sat on it for months.

Not because the piece wasn’t ready. It was. I wasn’t sure our readers were. We’ve earned their trust on hard, messy topics, but this felt like stepping over a line I couldn’t fully see. Would it read as an honest, necessary interrogation—or just cheap provocation?

Then we crossed 20,000 readers. The inbox got sharper. The comments got braver. Women stopped pretending their questions were hypothetical.

And it hit me: If we’re not ready to have this conversation now, we’re never going to be.

So we ran it.

And the readers showed up. The women already living non-monogamous lives. The quietly curious. The cautious. The “I would never, but I need to understand why other women do” crowd. The ones reading with one eyebrow raised and both eyes locked.

This piece doesn’t sell you anything. It doesn’t recruit. It doesn’t shame anyone for choosing one partner for life.

It just cuts through the bullsh*t and says: Here’s what happens when women start treating their desire, their boundaries, and their relationships as theirs to define—not the church’s, not the group chat’s, not the algorithm’s.

If monogamy is your choice, you can handle reading about what else exists.

If it isn’t, you deserve better than whispers and worst-case scenarios.

See what comes up for you when the script finally cracks.

Read the full article here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

I couldn’t shut the hell up about Landman.

I tried. I really did. But every scene felt like a slap from someone who’s never met a real woman in this world.

I’m an oilman’s wife. The real kind. Not the one swanning around in stilettos and emotional vacancy.

A real oilman’s wife is a logistics officer and an emotional first responder, not a poolside extra. Our husbands do dangerous work in places that can kill them; they make decisions that hit like a gut punch when the phone rings at 2 a.m.

The women in those expat compounds were engineers, teachers, lawyers, artists. Smart as hell. Capable. Whole. And watching Landman, you’d never know we existed.

Because once again, the women aren’t people.

They’re props.

Sexual scenery.

Orbiters.

Every scene built for the male gaze, not the female reality.

I expect more from the men with the pens—and the budgets. A man this successful, this powerful, should be able to write at least one woman who doesn’t exist just to be f*cked, saved, or silenced.

I wrote this piece because I was furious, and because no one else could. Because women like me are done watching ourselves flattened into background noise.

Because if you’re going to profit off our lives, you’d better at least get the damn truth right.

Read the full article here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

I like to think I’m rational, educated, and confident to a fault.

Then a pitch like this one lands in my inbox and I realize I’ve been sold a bill of goods that profits off my panic.

And so have you.

We love to perform “age is just a number” while collectively dumping billions into products, potions, and pills that promise we can buy our way out of mortality.

The longevity industry isn’t selling hope.

It’s selling fear with better packaging.

Writer Joanne Helperin pitched this piece mid-panic spiral about her own aging. She’d figured out that her panic wasn’t just psychological, it was a profit center. So she stopped spiraling and started digging.

This one took a few rounds to get right.

Because it would’ve been easy to write another “wellness is a scam” finger-wag and call it done. But we wanted the mechanics. How the machine actually works.

Here’s how: Beauty brands and the trillion-dollar wellness racket don’t see complex humans with decades of hard-won experience. They see exploitable anxiety: crepey skin, sagging everything, slowing metabolism, and the lie that aging equals obsolescence.

They rebrand fear as empowerment and charge you $200 for it.

I wasn’t interested in influencer testimonials or sponsored studies or anyone who’s never sweat through a work call. I wanted the real question:

What happens when anti-aging stops being about health and becomes profit disguised as self-care?

We’re not here to sell you a fix.

We’re here to show you the con, so you can stop funding your own fear.

Read the full article here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

Here’s the part we’re not supposed to say out loud: When things built by and for women disappear, they’re almost never treated as a loss. They’re framed as a fix, a modernization, or a market correction.

Progress, apparently, just happens to look like women losing places, rituals, and power—again.

We’re told to adapt and streamline our needs into something more palatable, more profitable, less … emotional. And if we feel something about it? That’s just nostalgia talking, sentimentality, weakness.

This piece came from anger disguised as grief.

Yes, there’s nostalgia in it. But what we’re actually responding to is the slow, relentless dismantling of women’s spaces, followed by the cultural gaslighting that insists nothing important was lost.

There’s a pattern here, and once you see it, you can’t unsee it.

Anything rooted in care, relationship, or ritual is labeled inefficient the moment it can’t be endlessly scaled or monetized. Finance doesn’t know what to do with human emotion, or with spaces designed for connection rather than corporations. So it declares them obsolete and moves on, leaving women to absorb the loss quietly, like we’ve always been expected to do.

What’s being erased is permission, and too many people still believe these losses are accidental.

They’re not, at least for those us paying attention.

Read my full article here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

When Diane Keaton died, I knew I had to write about her. But I also knew I couldn’t let it become another weepy tribute piece about a Hollywood legend we will all miss. Not as nostalgia porn.

Screw that.

I’ve been watching Diane Keaton my entire life—and what she taught me had nothing to do with being likable.

Back when she was filming Annie Hall in men’s trousers, a vest, a tie, and that hat, I was finding my own sense of style. Learning early that clothing wasn’t decoration. It was armor. It was intention.

It was saying, “I’m here without asking permission.”

I followed her for decades after. Not because she was chasing trends. Because she refused them entirely.

While the fashion industry kept pushing women to chase youth, stay f*ckable, stay small, stay relevant—Diane Keaton built a uniform that said:

I’m not here to please you.

Bowler hats. Layered menswear. Shoes built for walking away mid-conversation. Nothing soft. Nothing apologetic.

She didn’t “age into” great style. She claimed it at 30 and sharpened it for 50 years—as her agency grew louder and her need to explain herself evaporated.

Here’s what I couldn’t say in the main piece: Writing this made me furious all over again.

Furious that we still have to justify dressing with intent. That women are expected to fade gracefully into beige cardigans and “age-appropriate” bullshit. That visibility at midlife is treated like a privilege we have to earn back—not a right we never lost.

Diane Keaton spent half a century saying no to that. Not with words. With fabric, structure, and presence.

She left a blueprint. Not for being admired. For standing the hell up.

That’s why I own my style.

That’s why I wrote this.

Read the full article here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

My inbox looks like an episode of Hoarders.

I read more newsletters than pairs of shoes that I own (and I own a lot of shoes.)

I get annoyed when it takes longer than two seconds for a website to load on my phone like I didn’t grow up using a landline to call an operator to find out the time.

In other words, I’m busy.

And of course, I’m not alone.

That’s why women are claiming “flashing”—not the kind that can get you arrested or one of the “perks” of menopause—but Flash Journalism.

Writer Beth Kanter’s pitch hit me right where it counts: You no longer have time for meandering metaphors, literary foreplay, or writers who confuse long with meaningful. You want impact. You want precision. You want something that hits hard, tells the truth, and gets out of your way—because you have a life to live. (Or at least a Netflix show to binge.)

I was all in.

Women claiming their voices, their time, and their identity—in 1,000 words or less.

No fluff, no filler, and no apologies.

Read the full piece here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

I started PROVOKED to give women over 50 a place that sparks hard conversations, torches stereotypes, and refuses to let aging equal irrelevance.

So when writer Nicole Pajer pitched an interview with online dating coach Andrea McGinty, I thought: solid service piece. Practical advice for navigating the hellscape that is midlife dating.

And it is that. Andrea’s no bullshit. She tells it straight—sometimes the problem isn’t the apps, the algorithms, or the general decline of civilization. It’s you. Or at least how you’ve been playing the game.

Then shit hit the fan.

Comments rolled in fast. The article was wrong. The apps are trash. There are no good men left on the planet. Fine. We encourage those conversations. Sometimes that is the case.

But then came the personal attacks on Nicole.

Not for her interview questions. Not for her credentials—which include bylines at some of the biggest publications on the planet. But for how “young” she looked. Based on one picture they saw on the masthead.

One picture.

And the claws came out.

Here’s what I couldn’t stop thinking: If this story had been softer—if it told women they were right and the dating world is just broken beyond repair—would those same women have left those comments? Or if Nicole had looked older? Grayer? Less threatening?

Nope.

But because someone dared to suggest they might need to shift their approach, they went for the cheapest, cruelest shot available—perpetuating the exact “mean girl” trope we’ve spent decades trying to dismantle.

I removed the offensive comments. Reached out privately. Because I encourage dialogue, but I don’t allow degradation.

And Andrea—unprompted—left her own rebuttal that says exactly what needs to be said:

Sometimes it’s not them. It’s you.

In more ways than one.

Read the full piece here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

I’ve been thinking about regret a lot lately. Not because something blew up. Just because by midlife, you’ve lived long enough to know some of your decisions were shit.

Some regrets cut deep—failed relationships, careers you walked away from, the person you stayed with three years too long. Others sting in their own stupid way—like cutting your own bangs or thinking yoga after a Double Supreme from Taco Bell was genius.

But here’s the truth nobody wants to say: Society treats regret like a character flaw.

Something shameful to hide. Proof you didn’t manifest hard enough or learn your lessons fast enough.

Especially for women.

When writer Melissa Shultz pitched this, the first draft came in reflective. Thoughtful. Way too “lessons learned” for what this topic actually demands.

Because regret isn’t a meditation retreat.

It’s messy, loaded, and for women, admitting it feels like admitting we failed—which we’ve been trained to never, ever f*cking do.

So we pushed. Hard.

To move this past comfort and into the cultural WHY: Why is regret shaming—even ourselves—giving our power away? Why do we treat it like moral failure instead of being human? Why are women expected to spin every bad choice into a “growth opportunity” while men just get to shrug and move on?

The final piece doesn’t coddle. It interrogates.

It names the weight women carry when we’re not allowed to say “I wish I’d done that differently” without someone weaponizing toxic positivity or a bullsh*t Instagram quote about divine timing.

This is permission to name your regrets. Own them. Stop letting them rot in silence while you perform gratitude you don’t feel.

One face-palm moment at a time.

Read the full piece here.

→ Read the full essay on PROVOKED

Editor’s Note: Off-Script—the why, what, and oh sh*t moments behind this article.

There’s something I can’t keep quiet about anymore.

The polite rules of society don’t vanish the second you set foot in a grocery store.

If you think express lane etiquette is negotiable, you pick up frozen pizza and abandon it in the shampoo aisle like some kind of conceptual art installation, and your cart has a mind of its own—usually blocking an aisle or claiming a parking spot—then congratulations.

You’re the antagonist of every decent human’s weekly food run.

Abby Heugel—our managing editor who’s at the store so often they greet her by name—feels our pain. She considers throwing a shoulder at someone ambling down the middle of an aisle like they’re touring the Sistine Chapel. She silently (or not so silently) curses the cart abandoners, aisle hogs, and checkout creepers who treat the “20 items or less” sign like a loose suggestion.

The second I read this piece from her? I had no notes. No edits.

It was sharp, unfiltered, and packed with just enough righteous fury to make you feel seen somewhere between Aisle 8 and the checkout lane from hell.

Our readers agreed. Hard. Even now—months after publication—comments still roll in with grocery store horror stories and solidarity rants.

Because here at PROVOKED, we encourage you to own your space. And sometimes that means the last two feet of the checkout conveyor belt, the express lane, and yes—returning your damn cart.

Read the full piece here.