Amanda Chatel

It's estimated that $1.9 billion will be spent on flowers and $1.7 billion on candy this Valentine's Day, according to a recent consumer survey. But once the flowers are dead and the candy is gone, what do you have? Nothing. You probably should…

Let's be honest: Everyone fucking hates Valentine's Day. It's cheesy and expensive, and it puts enormous pressure on both single people and people in relationships. Valentine's Day is such a pain in the ass that it's basically become de rigeur to…

Do you still sleep with a stuffed animal? It's a simple yes-or-no question, but one that might make any self-respecting adult a little nervous if the answer is "yes." Yet when BuzzFeed writer Grace Spelman recently tweeted a request that her…

It's a truth universally acknowledged that no one forgets their first love. Whether it lasted eight years or eight minutes, there's a scientific reason why we feel so much nostalgia for our first relationships. Researchers have found that there's a…

In a culture that cringes at the thought of menstrual blood, 2015 was officially the year that women fought back against period-shaming. From the saga of Kiran Gandhi, the free-bleeding marathon runner, to the photographer who took a stand against…

When I left Paris in mid-July, my husband and I agreed that he'd spend the next month getting his life in order before he'd come and join me in New York City. We had been dividing our time between NYC and Paris for the past few years, and due to…

When Rihanna sat down with Vanity Fair for its November issue, she disclosed something about herself that some might have found shocking. Although Rihanna self-identifies as extremely sex-positive, she admitted she just isn't into the whole casual…

When human rights attorney and activist Amal Alamuddin married George Clooney, something odd happened: The media stopped referring to her as Amal Alamuddin, the attorney and activist. Instead, they referred to her as Amal Alamuddin, the wife of…

If you have any interest in getting married someday, you've probably wondered at some point whether you'll change your name to your spouse's.  A recent Google survey conducted by the New York Times indicated that women keeping their names is on the…

To those who have them, and especially to those who don't, vaginas can be a mystery. It makes sense, really. In addition to the historical taboos associated with female sexuality — unlike manhood, which metaphorically and literally dangles proudly…

"The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats," the famous sex researcher Alfred Kinsey famously wrote about the spectrum of human sexuality. "The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects." In other words, sexual…

You're sitting on the downtown train after a long day when you notice the guy across from you, just as he loosens his tie and rolls up his sleeves.  Or perhaps you see a person on your lunch break, deeply absorbed in a novel on a park bench. Maybe…

The vibrator has come a long way since its early days. It once weighed 40 pounds, took two people to operate and looked like a torture device. Not only are they far prettier and lighter now, they're also more accepted. Over 50% of American women are…

Yes, there are plenty of people who've found success in the dating world. Yes, some of those successful daters were straight women interacting with men.  Yet for every glowing success story, there seem to be countless cringe-worthy anecdotes of…

New York City gets a bad rap when it comes to dating. The conventional wisdom is that, despite the supposed riches of single people, everyone in the Big Apple is too self-involved, too picky or too "busy." The variety should be great, but as one…

We're the generation of sex on TV, IUDs and the very phrase "sex positivity." So it's strange to think how little we were actually taught about sex growing up. According to a recently released survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, 75%…

Dating is damn hard. That's one of few universal truths people can agree on. But we often fixate on the difficulty of getting a date in the first place, when in reality, the most emotionally trying part can be the end of one. Not everyone can end a…

Thanks to Netflix, binge-watching has become a national pastime. The judgment around staying in on a Friday night has given way to a celebratory shamelessness about serial-watching TV as a valid weekend activity. In fact, a Netflix-sponsored survey…

Not everyone is at their most comfortable when they're naked. But to those who are, we see you. You're the "naked people," the friends who strip down first when the opportunity arises and prefer being in the buff to wearing even the coolest…