It's Everything Shower Season (And I Have Thoughts) 🤔

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If you're new here, welcome to Girlhood — the group chat we should have had all along. This week: why everything shower season hits different when you've seen the ANTM documentary, the podcasts keeping me company lately, what two new fertility studies made me feel in my bones, and the cholesterol test your doctor probably hasn't mentioned yet. Let's get into it.

Hi friend,

My BFF texted me last week: "I just shaved my entire body." I responded: "Wait, I'm literally about to do the same thing." We didn't plan this. We didn't need to. It's that time of year, and somehow our bodies knew it before our calendars did.

If, like me, you're Italian and had a unibrow until you were 14, you know this isn't your average shower. This is the "everything shower" — the full spring production, the fresh razor purchased in advance, the prayer you make it past the left knee.

I've been thinking about this more than usual since watching the America's Next Top Model documentary, which sent me spiraling in the best and worst way. Watching those episodes back, what struck me wasn't the drama; it was how completely unremarkable it all felt at the time. Women being assessed, corrected, and ranked by the inch, all of us at home absorbing it like it was just TV. It wasn't just TV. It was the water we were swimming in, and most of us didn't notice until years later.

We grew up steeped in that: the before-and-afters, the "flattering" cuts, the understanding that our bodies were permanent renovation projects. Now we're in our late thirties, rolling our eyes at all of it, and also blocking off ninety minutes before sandal season to handle the situation.

What can I say — women contain multitudes. You can see exactly how you got here and still need to get your eyebrows threaded every two weeks. Both things, forever.

🔍 Ask Clara: Why do women with PCOS deal with more hair growth?

🥫 Ultra-Processed Foods and Fertility: On Controlling What You Can Control

There's a specific kind of obsession that sets in after enough failed cycles — the kind where you start reading ingredient labels like they contain the answer. I know this because I lived there. Secondary infertility has a particular cruelty to it: you've done it before, your body knows how to do this, and yet. So you find the one thing you can actually control, which is everything you put in your mouth, and you grip it.

I worked with a registered dietitian. I cleaned up my diet in ways that felt both genuinely meaningful and slightly unhinged. I have opinions about gut health now. I became, briefly, a person who read studies for fun.

So when two new ones dropped this week linking ultra-processed foods to lower fertility — women with the highest intake were significantly less likely to conceive; men eating more UPFs took longer to get their partners pregnant — I felt the old reflex. Not guilt, exactly. More like, of course. One more variable to add to the list.

Worth noting: both studies are observational, meaning they show a link, not a cause. Researchers suspect it's not just poor nutrition, but chemicals like phthalates and BPA leaching from packaging (known hormone disruptors) doing damage in the background. According to the CDC, Americans get about 55% of their daily calories from ultra-processed foods, which is a lot of packaging.

Here's what I know, though: I did everything right, and it still took everything I had. The pantry audit matters. It also doesn't save you. Skippy was never leaving my house, and somehow, eventually, it worked anyway.

🔍 Ask Clara: What should I eat to support fertility?

The Matcha That Ruined All Other Matcha

As winter softens into spring, many of us crave energy that feels clean and steady. Not the jittery spike-and-crash kind.

That’s why I keep coming back to Sun Goddess Matcha by Pique. It’s easily the best matcha I’ve tasted.

In a market full of dull, bitter powders, this ceremonial-grade matcha stands apart for both flavor and purity. Crafted by Japanese tea masters and shaded 35% longer, it’s naturally rich in antioxidants and L-theanine to support calm focus and balanced energy.

The result is vibrant, smooth matcha that carries you through brighter mornings and fuller days. No spikes. No crashes. Just sustained energy that works with your body.

If you’re ready for a better morning ritual, try Sun Goddess Matcha here. 🌿🍵

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🫀 The New Cholesterol Guidelines Changed the Conversation — Here's Mine

I was 13 when my grandfather died of a massive heart attack. The kind that doesn't give you a warning, doesn't give you time. One of those moments that rewires something in you — not in a way you can explain at 13, but in a way you carry forward every time the word "cardiology" comes up.

I'm 37 now, which still feels young until you start doing the math.

The American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association just released their first updated cholesterol guidelines since 2018, and a few things stopped me. Screening is now recommended starting at 19(!). Risk assessment begins at 30, and it now calculates your 30-year risk, not just 10, which changes the conversation entirely when you're sitting across from a doctor who thinks you're "too young to worry." For people with a family history, earlier medication is on the table. And there's a new test most of us have never heard of: Lp(a), or lipoprotein(a), recommended once in every adult's lifetime. It's mostly genetic, highly predictive, and almost never brought up unless you ask.

That last part is the one that gets me. About 1 in 4 adults has elevated LDL cholesterol, and most don't know it. Heart disease is still the number one killer of women, accounting for roughly 1 in every 5 female deaths. And yet the default is still to wait, to monitor, to revisit it later.

My grandfather didn't get later. So the next time I'm at my doctor, I'm asking for the Lp(a) test, and I'm not apologizing for it.

🔍 Ask Clara: What should I ask my doctor about heart health in my 30s?

🎧 The Podcasts Keeping Me Company Lately

Nobody warns you that your 30s are basically one long lesson in letting go of the plot you had in your head. Mine have included infertility, IVF, pregnancy loss, a chronic illness diagnosis, and three kids who arrived on their own timeline, not mine. I came in thinking if I just did everything right, things would go the way I planned. I was wrong, repeatedly, and somehow that turned out to be the education.

The through line in all of it — grief, IVF, motherhood, the insurance calls that will live rent-free in my brain forever — is that control was always an illusion. You can optimize, advocate, prepare, and still end up somewhere you didn't plan. That's not failure. 

What I've found, especially lately, is that the things that actually help aren't the ones that promise to fix anything. They're the ones that keep you company inside the uncertainty, that meet you where you are instead of telling you where you should be. Good information helps. Honest conversation helps. And sometimes, genuinely, a podcast that makes you laugh until something hurts helps more than anything else.

My current queue does all of it (women's health, financial health, the hard stuff, the funny stuff), and I wrote up the whole list here.

Some weeks you need the science. Some weeks you need someone to just tell you you're not alone. Most weeks, honestly, you need both.

xo,
Kristyn

🔍 Ask Clara: What should I listen to when I need to feel less alone?