Pakistani dramas have frequently explored narcissistic pathology. We call them ‘villains’ without recognising that they are psycho-education disguised as entertainment. Narcissism exists on a spectrum, and can perhaps be divided into two broad categories. Each destroys differently. Each requires a different survival strategy.

Overt narcissism: The shouters

Easy to spot, they are loud, entitled and unapologetic. They demand attention and special treatment and believe rules do not apply to them. And when challenged, they rage.

1. Mubashira Jaffer (Ayeza Khan) in Main — The textbook grandiose narcissist

Mubashira does not just want power. She claims it as a birthright. Her arrogance is her core identity, not a mask. She manipulates, schemes and destroys whoever threatens her position because she genuinely cannot conceive of a world in which she is not the main character.

Narcissism is more than vanity or selfishness. From domineering personalities to subtle manipulators, Pakistani dramas offer striking examples of how narcissistic behaviour unfolds

The clinical markers are unmistakable. She exhibits a sense of self-importance, exaggerates achievements, expects automatic compliance and displays a complete lack of empathy. When her plans fail, she doesn’t reflect — she retaliates. This is narcissistic rage — the violent response to any threat against the fragile ‘god self’ beneath the grandiosity.

Protecting yourself: Bou­n­daries must be impenetrable, stated clearly and enforced. They will test every limit, gaslight, guilt-trip and escalate. Do not negotiate or explain. They thrive on reaction. Calmness is your armour.

2. Farasat Ali (Naumaan Ijaz) in Sharpasand — The malignant manipulator

A darker sub-type, he doesn’t just lack empathy — he enjoys destruction. He destroys the character of women in his neighbourhood who do not submit to him — Shazmeen (Hira Mani), Hafsa (Zuni Sheikh) and Sanam (Hareem Farooq). His cruelty is calculated, not impulsive. He identifies vulnerability and exploits it with maliciousness.

This is narcissism with sadistic features. The pleasure is not just in winning. It is in watching you lose. Farasat seeks submission rather than admiration. He wants to see spirits break. This is the narcissist who will destroy reputations, relationships and people’s sanity — and then claim he was “just being honest.”

Protecting yourself: No contact is the only safe option as there is no reasoning with someone who derives pleasure from pain. Do not engage or confront. Document everything, protect your support system and exit. This is not a person who can be won over. This is a person who must be escaped.

Covert narcissism: The whisperers

Harder to spot, these narcissists play the victim, appear humble, sensitive and even self-deprecating. But beneath the vulnerability lies the same grandiosity — a deep belief that they are special, misunderstood and entitled to endless care. They drain you not with demands, but with need.

1. Nabeel (Mirza Gohar Rasheed) in Goonj — The covert harasser

He does not shout or threaten. He makes covert comments, withholds approval and isolates his target Zarnab (Komal Meer). When she explodes, there is no evidence. He has engineered the perfect crime: abuse that leaves no fingerprints.

In slow-motion gaslighting, the victim begins to doubt her own perceptions. Nabeel’s narcissism is not loud entitlement — it is quiet control. He does not need to dominate openly. He needs to make sure you know, in every interaction, that you are less than him.

Protecting yourself: Tr­u­st your gut. If you feel small, confused, or constantly apologising around someone, pay attention. They thrive on your self-doubt. Keep a journal of interactions. Share with a trusted person. Remember, you are being psychologically conditioned.

2. Raza Haseeb (Usman Mukhtar) in Pamaal — The love-bomber who crushes

Raza is perhaps the most insidious sub-type: the narcissist who loves you into submission. He begins with overwhelming attention, gifts, declarations of devotion. His wife Malika (Saba Qamar), a writer, believes she has found her soulmate. Then slowly, the mask slips.

He critiques her writing, isolates her from her friends, portrays her creativity as a threat to their marriage. He does not yell, he acts disappointed. He sighs when she succeeds. He withholds affection when she asserts herself. He is not a monster — he is a slow poison. His wife does not leave because he is cruel. She stays because he was once so kind — and she keeps hoping that man will return. He never does. That man was the bait. The trap was her hope.

Protecting yourself: Recognise the pattern. Love-bombing is seduction as strategy. Healthy love grows slowly. It does not demand self-abandonment. If someone asks you to shrink so they can feel big, leave… because they are incapable of seeing your worth.

Regardless of their type, narcissists share core features: a fragile self-esteem masked by grandiosity, a profound inability to empathise and a relentless need for a narcissistic supply of attention, admiration or submission.

But here is what they take: reality testing — you stop trusting your own perceptions and self-worth, you believe you are the problem — and hope. You exhaust yourself trying to be good enough.

Is change possible?

Research says yes, but it is rare and difficult. Unlike the dramatic redemption arcs we see on screen, real change requires years of committed therapy. This is the hardest step because narcissism is built on denial.

Therapeutic approaches work by helping the narcissist develop the capacity to understand their own mind and the minds of others — something stunted in childhood. With treatment, reductions in pathological narcissism are possible, but here’s the catch: change only happens when the narcissist wants to change, not because someone demanded it, but because the pain of staying the same has become unbearable. Most never reach that point. And those who do? It takes years, not episodes.

For everyone else, the only healing is the one you do for yourself.

Healing the partner

If you have encountered a narcissist, you know: the damage is not just what they did but what you stopped being. Recovery is not about “getting over it.” It is about rebuilding the self.

1. Identify: This is not about labelling someone but about validating your experience — the confusion, exhaustion and persistent feeling of being either ‘too much’ or ‘never enough.’

2. Grieve: You will grieve the person you thought they were, the relationship you believed you had, the years you lost. Let yourself feel the anger, sadness and relief as valid.

3. Rebuild: Narcissists dismantle your sense of self. Reconnect with your own needs, voice, desires. What do you want, feel and need today? The answers will feel foreign at first. Keep asking.

4. Set boundaries that stick: This means walking away when they are violated. Choose yourself over the fantasy of their change. They will test every boundary. Your job is not to convince them to respect it. But to respect it yourself.

Pakistani dramas have shown us narcissism in all its forms. We fume watching these characters. But the real work begins when we recognise them in our own lives. The question is not “who is the villain?” but “who in your life is making you smaller?”

You do not have to stay small or earn love by disappearing. Narcissists may or may not change. But you can. And that is the only freedom that matters.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, August 2nd, 2026

A representative for the star told The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday she would be “taking a step back from visibility” after she completes her Eternal Sunshine tour on September 1.

“She looks forward to finishing the tour and ending it on a high note, both healthily and happily and then taking a much-deserved break from public-facing work and appearances, which have led to endless, ongoing public scrutiny,” the representative said.

This isn’t just about her music, she has also decided not to appear in a theatre performance of Sunday in the Park with George in London next year, the production company confirmed.

“We know this cannot have been an easy decision and she makes it with our complete understanding and support. The production will open at the Barbican in summer 2027 as planned and casting will be announced in due course,” Empire Street Productions said.

Grande also stars in Focker-in-Law alongside Robert De Niro and Ben Stiller. It is unclear whether she will participate in the film’s promotions in the lead up to its release on November 25.

The singer released her eighth album, Petal, on Friday, with the title track’s music video attracting concern and commentary regarding her health. Fans — and even some celebrities — have said Grande looked incredibly thin and weak.

British model, author and body positivity activist Charlotte Howard was among those speaking out following the release of Grande’s music video.

“I think it’s vital we discuss imagery/videos/content like these and the damage they can — and will — have on women and girls. WHAT YOU SEE HERE IS NOT NORMAL,” Howard wrote in the caption of a post featuring stills from the music video.

She claimed Grande was evidently suffering from anorexia and that it was “absolutely appalling, from both a moral and capitalistic standpoint, to have released these videos and an album when this person needs psychiatric help and hospitalisation”.

Actor and comedian Jameela Jamil also spoke up, claiming the singer was “possibly dying right in front of us” and that it was “thoroughly irresponsible” of her team not to guide her away from presenting such an image to young fans.

Grande herself has told people not to comment on her appearance — or anyone else’s. Last year, she shared footage from a 2024 interview where she was asked about beauty standards.

“I think in today’s society there’s a comfortability that we shouldn’t have, at all, commenting on others’ looks, appearance… what they think is going on ‘behind the scenes’, or health, or how they present themselves. I think it’s dangerous, for both parties involved,” the singer said in the video.

J&J said the settlement covers about 76,000 claims, including ones consolidated in federal court in New Jersey, and related cases in state court, representing nearly all of the remaining talc claims against the company. J&J previously settled most of the cases alleging that its talc contained asbestos and caused mesothelioma.

Plaintiffs’ law firms confirmed the deal on Monday, saying it was a good resolution after a decade-long court battle. The deal must be accepted by 95 per cent of the ovarian cancer claimants in state or federal court before it becomes final.

J&J’s vice president of litigation, Erik Haas, said the claims were “meritless” and that the company was willing to settle in order to get closure.

“While we are confident the company would have ultimately prevailed with further litigation, as it has in the vast majority of cases tried to date, this resolution allows the company to put this matter behind it and remain focused on its mission to develop medicines and devices that save lives,” Haas said.

J&J expects to pay $3bn in 2027, and it will make further payments in 2028. But the deal could be worth more, depending on how many people participate in the settlement.

Chris Seeger, an attorney who represents about 2,500 clients with talc claims and helped negotiate the agreement, said J&J could ultimately pay $7bn or more. The settlement assigns specific values to qualifying ovarian cancer claims but does not cap J&J’s total payout, he said.

“We got a fair settlement, and our clients are going to be happy with it,” Seeger said in an interview.

Deal comes after courtroom wins

J&J reached the settlement after a series of wins in court, including victories in individual trials, successful efforts to disqualify plaintiffs’ lawyers from the litigation, and court rulings against experts that plaintiffs had used to prove their cases in court.

J&J won a significant court victory in the long-running legal battle last week, when a federal judge cast doubt on individual plaintiffs’ ability to prove that talc specifically caused their ovarian cancer.

J&J has long denied that its talc products caused cancer, saying that talc was safe and did not contain asbestos. The company stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the US in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product.

The litigation resumed in March 2025, after being put on hold for more than three years while J&J unsuccessfully pursued a strategy known as the “Texas two step,” filing three bankruptcies through a shell company subsidiary in an effort to settle the cases. Each bankruptcy ended in dismissal.

Before the bankruptcy attempts, J&J had a mixed record in talc trials, with a multibillion verdict in favour of 22 women who said baby powder caused their ovarian cancer. The company won some trials outright and had other verdicts reduced on appeal.

Unlike the proposed bankruptcy settlements, Monday’s agreement applies only to existing claims and does not address future lawsuits.

The exclusion of future claims made more money available to current plaintiffs than the bankruptcy proposal did, and it also accelerates the payments so that all claims will be paid within 18 months instead of being spread out over more than a decade, Seeger said.

Smoking rates are at a six-decade low among American adults and the lowest in a quarter-century among youth.

And yet, searches for the term “smoking pose” on the image-sharing platform Pinterest have soared 70 per cent among 18- to 24-year-olds, according to Style Analytics, a fashion world data tracker.

On Instagram, the account “Cigfluencers” shares images of celebrities smoking – “your favourite smoker’s favourite smokers,” reads the tagline.

The posts included a number of shots snapped in May at the Met Gala, the annual gathering of A-listers in New York.

Even though current US smoking statistics don’t show an increase in the actual habit, making cigarettes chic again has triggered concern among anti-smoking advocates.

“Pop culture’s glamorisation of smoking is just reigniting the addiction among young people and discouraging those trying to quit,” Jessica Rath, vice president at the anti-tobacco advocacy group Truth Initiative, told AFP.

‘Highly concerning’

The organisation noted that eight of the 10 feature films nominated for this year’s best picture Oscar contained images of tobacco use.

This type of exposure makes young people two to three times more likely to use tobacco products, Rath said.

Brian King, head of US programmes at the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, said the trend is “highly concerning from a public health perspective”.

One explanation for the resurgence is the return of aesthetics from the 1990s and early 2000s — an era when smoking was still quite common in the United States.

The look was all over the recent popular series Love Story, a show that detailed the storied relationship of the late John F Kennedy Jr and Carolyn Bessette — the latter was a regular smoker and was portrayed as such on the show.

The brand strategy newsletter On Brand has dubbed the smoker’s aesthetic an act of rebellion against the social media pressures of “self-optimisation.”

And it’s all set, of course, against a backdrop of economic and geopolitical uncertainty.

“Right now, we’re also having kind of a colliding mental health crisis with young people,” said Rath. “And so young people are thinking that using nicotine is helping their feelings of anxiety, depression, and stress – when really it could be making it worse.”

King noted that public attention has shifted away from the risks associated with conventional cigarettes, as e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products and nicotine pouches grow in popularity.

“In some cases, we as society have been recalcitrant in terms of remembering those risks, and also importantly implementing policies that we know work to prevent the use of these products,” King said.

‘De-normalise smoking’

US President Donald Trump’s administration has made significant cuts to smoking prevention and cessation support programmes.

And the previous administration under Joe Biden backed off its plan to ban menthol cigarettes, which are popular among young people.

King said that in the US, the tobacco industry spends the equivalent of approximately $1 million an hour on marketing and promotion.

Nonprofits and anti-smoking organisations lack data on how tobacco companies might be pushing the “cigfluencer” phenomenon.

But it’s critical, King said, that the United States works to “de-normalise smoking” in the face of such trends.

Society must “not be doing anything that could potentially reverse the considerable progress that we’ve made in reducing smoking over many decades,” he said.

Along with traditional methods of discouraging smoking — public service messaging, cessation support, price hikes, and smoking bans — Rath recommends working with platforms and Hollywood to discourage the habit.

She suggests displaying on-screen messages directing viewers to support services, similar to those already in use to prevent suicide or assist those suffering sexual violence.

“Shows also have the power to reduce tobacco depictions and incorporate realistic quitting examples into storylines,” said Truth Initiative, noting recent depictions in The Bear of the main character working to quit smoking using nicotine replacement therapy.

The scene captures the reality that disabled Pakistanis know all too well: our cities and their infrastructures — schools, workplaces, and public spaces — are often inaccessible. A simple outing can require careful planning, transportation arrangements, and the hope that there will be a ramp, an accessible entrance, or even a functioning washroom.

Yet, during my research on and interviews of disabled women across Pakistan, I learned that accessibility is about far more than physical infrastructure. It’s about attitudinal and societal barriers as well, which are informed by the complex socio-cultural context of Pakistan. Despite being invisible, they are just as effective in hindering accessibility as a flight of stairs or lack of sign language interpretation.

As a disabled researcher myself, I spent more than six months in 2025 interviewing 21 disabled women across Pakistan to understand what disability advocacy meant to them, the challenges they faced in pursuing it, and the social and cultural norms that shaped their participation in public life.

One finding in particular surprised me. When I asked participants about the greatest barriers they faced, I expected to hear them talk about inaccessible buildings, discrimination, or lack of employment opportunities. Instead, shifting — or transferring between surfaces — emerged as one of the greatest challenges facing women with physical disabilities.

Shabana*, a 49-year-old wheelchair user with muscular dystrophy who is an associate professor and disability advocate of more than a decade, explained that for her, the greatest barrier was not education, employment, or even the wheelchair itself. It was shifting: getting from a wheelchair into a car, from a car into a classroom, or navigating staircases and other inaccessible environments. These everyday transitions, often taken for granted by others, required constant planning, physical effort, and emotional vulnerability.

For years, she was able to continue her education because friends helped her transfer between wheelchairs and vehicles. Looking back, she reflected that without those friends, completing her master’s degree — which ultimately opened up a world of professional opportunities — would have been nearly impossible.

Shabana also told me about another disabled woman who was able to attend college only because her brother carried her onto his motorcycle every day. When they arrived on campus, he would transfer her into a wheelchair and help her get to her classes. She completed her education this way. But then her brother got married and his responsibilities changed. He became less available and there was no replacement support system on which she could rely to further her education or career.

She also felt hesitant to ask for her brother’s help now that he had, in her words, “a family of his own”. As a result, despite being educated and capable of working, she remains largely confined to her home because she has no reliable way to travel independently.

These lived experiences of disabled women in Pakistan reveal a dimension of accessibility that is rarely discussed in public debates. When policymakers think about disability inclusion, they often think about visible infrastructure: ramps, elevators, accessible buses, and designated parking spaces. These investments are important and long overdue.

Several women I interviewed spoke about being invited to television studios, advocacy events, or cultural centres only to encounter inaccessible entrances, missing ramps or the absence of elevators.

But disabled Pakistani women frequently depend on another form of infrastructure that remains almost entirely invisible — female relatives, sisters, friends, attendants, and caregivers who make mobility possible. For many women, this support is not simply a matter of convenience. It is shaped by deeply held religious and cultural norms regarding modesty, privacy, and physical contact.

Jannat*, who is also a wheelchair user, explained that if a disabled man needs help getting into a vehicle, a driver or stranger may be willing to lift him. For a disabled woman, the situation is often more complicated. Assistance with transferring between a wheelchair and a vehicle or navigating inaccessible spaces may require physical contact and many families are uncomfortable with such assistance being provided by a na-mehram (unrelated) man. As a result, women often require a female companion or family member to accompany them whenever they leave home.

This reality is rarely reflected in accessibility planning.

The challenge becomes even more apparent in a society where women’s mobility is already shaped by concerns surrounding safety and family honour. Many women repeatedly described how the families of disabled women worried, in the words of Batool*, “double or triple times more” about their movements than those of disabled men. Batool is an experienced disability rights advocate who regularly travels internationally for advocacy work, yet she observed that concerns about accompaniment, safety, and reputation continued to shape how disabled women’s mobility was viewed. Questions about who would accompany them, who would help them transfer between spaces, and whether they would be safe in public were constant considerations.

Fauzia*, a disability rights advocate in her thirties who uses crutches after being disabled by polio during childhood, summarised these attitudes bluntly: if people doubt a disabled woman’s ability to navigate the world independently, they also question her ability to protect herself. These concerns are not entirely unfounded. Women with disabilities face significantly higher risks of harassment, abuse, and exploitation than many other groups.

The women I spoke to described carefully selecting ride-hailing app drivers, travelling with trusted female companions, avoiding certain spaces, and sometimes concealing aspects of their disabilities to reduce vulnerability.

The result is that mobility becomes a complex negotiation involving accessibility, gender, safety, religion, economics, and family support. And economics matters. Several women described spending substantial portions of their income on drivers, attendants, and transportation.

Shabana, who has high support needs, explained that more than half of her salary goes toward mobility-related expenses. She maintains multiple attendants because if one is unavailable, she risks missing work altogether. For women from lower-income households, such arrangements are often impossible. Jane*, a blind educator and disability rights advocate, shared stories of disabled women who had to turn down advocacy opportunities because they simply could not afford the cost of travel. The result was not only a loss for those women personally but also for the broader disability movement, which lost valuable voices, perspectives, and leadership.

This raises an important question: what would accessibility look like if it were designed with disabled women in mind?

The answer is not to dismiss cultural or religious values that many families consider important. Nor is it to frame these values as obstacles that must be removed. Rather, it is to recognise the realities they create and design services accordingly.

Imagine trained female accessibility assistants at hospitals, universities, transport hubs, and government offices. Imagine subsidised attendant services for disabled women seeking education or employment. Imagine accessible transport systems that recognise the additional support some women require in order to travel safely and with dignity. Such initiatives would not replace ramps, elevators, or accessible transport, rather, they would complement them.

Accessibility is often treated as a technical issue that can be solved through architecture and engineering alone. My research suggests otherwise.

For many disabled women in Pakistan, the question is not simply whether a building has a ramp. It is whether they can reach that building, enter it, navigate it, and return home with dignity. For many, the barrier is not the wheelchair, it is everything that must happen before and after the wheelchair moves. Until our understanding of accessibility reflects that reality, inclusion will remain more aspiration than achievement.

*Names have been changed to maintain anonymity

The princess announced in March 2024 that she had been diagnosed with cancer and by January 2025, she said she was in remission. While announcing her recovery, she thanked The Royal Marsden for looking after her so well during the past year. She and her husband Prince William became patrons of the Royal Marsden Hospital at the time.

“In my new role as joint patron of The Royal Marsden, my hope is that by supporting groundbreaking research and clinical excellence, as well as promoting patient and family wellbeing, we might save many more lives, and transform the experience of all those impacted by cancer,” the princess had said at the time.

In her post on Monday, she said, “Every year, hundreds of thousands of people in this country hear the words no one wants to hear. What follows is a path that tests every part of who we are: physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. The challenges ripple outwards, touching families, friendships, work and the quiet moments we spend alone with our thoughts.

“Cancer doesn’t just affect the body. It changes how you think and feel and profoundly affects every aspect of life. I know this personally, and that the journey through and beyond treatment requires more than medicine alone.”

She said she had taken on the National Three Peaks Challenge, not simply as a physical endeavour but as a chance to explore life beyond diagnosis and to give something back. “The Royal Marsden is a place that holds great meaning for me and whose care and expertise are life changing for so many people. Through this challenge, I want to raise awareness for the deeper impact of serious illness and the importance of holistic healthcare,” the princess explained.

“Every individual is different, and ensuring there is a whole person approach to care enables those living through cancer to manage the deeply personal challenge of diagnosis. Holistic therapies complement clinical pathways and support patients’ ability to maintain their wellbeing, resilience and quality of life during an exceptionally difficult time.

“We have an opportunity to reshape what the future of holistic cancer care looks like, enabling more people, nationwide, to access the kind of personalised support that can help make a meaningful difference during and after medical treatment,” she said.

Her challenge will support the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity, helping to transform access to, and understanding of, holistic care that will enhance recovery and healing for patients across the UK.

“Healing, whether personal or collective, is not just about fixing what is wrong. It is about finding balance in how we live. Between effort and acceptance, between control and trust, between thinking and simply being. Because in the end, bravery isn’t just about pushing forward. It is about knowing how to stay grounded, connected and present, no matter the terrain or landscape you are walking.”

But how much can a pack of six coils realistically set you back? If you answered “around Rs15,000”, you’d be absolutely right. French fragrance house Diptyque Paris has introduced its limited edition Citronelle Incense scented spirals and they are exactly what you’re imagining.

The brown spirals with the signature snake head in the centre come in packs of three interlocked pairs — you’ll have to be extra careful separating these ones — and have a golden coil holder included in the box. Each coils weighs 12 grams.

The brand describes burning one as, “Light wisps of lemongrass escape into the air. From dusk forward, the spiral releases relaxing notes recalling the peaceful air of a water garden. Its fresh, herbaceous scent creates an outdoor oasis. Placed on its small oval stand or paired with the enamelled ceramic incense holder, their fragrant spirals create a serene cocoon.”

We don’t know what half of that means to be honest, but customers are warned not to inhale the smoke directly, leading us to believe it has the same cough-inducing smell we all know and love.

Also, for those who don’t think that was enough expenditure on pest control, Diptyque has an incense holder available in enameled porcelain — priced at $183 (around Rs51,000).

For reference, we checked what coils cost when they aren’t carrying luxury labels and we found some on FoodPanda for around Rs90 for a pack of 10.

Naturally, people on the internet found the whole idea preposterous.

One person even said they were jealous of the mosquito that gets to go down from the uber-luxurious coil.

This isn’t the first time foreign brands have taken something from South Asia, copied it and sold it for outrageous sums. How can anyone forget Prada’s Kolhapuris, Christian Louboutin’s Peshawari Chappals and $90 lungis from Zara?

When will this madness stop?

“We feel safe coming to this country for our faces,” said the Dubai-based consultant, one of millions of beauty enthusiasts now boosting South Korea’s tourism numbers and economy as they throng its thousands of skincare clinics.

But these days tourists like Zu seek treatments such as red light therapy or Botox to smooth out wrinkles, as well as ultrasound “skin lifting” to tighten jawlines, not just the nose jobs and double eyelid surgery of earlier years.

“The growth of foreign patients is outpacing that of foreign tourists,” said Hong Seung-wook, director of global healthcare business at the Korea Health Industry Development Institute. His department is tasked by the country’s health ministry to attract foreign patients.

Foreign visitors spend more on medical services

Just over two million foreigners visited South Korea last year for medical treatment, nearly double the 2024 figure of 1.17m, the health ministry said in April.

“We now see foreign tourists spend more on medical services than on tourism in Korea,” said Hong, adding that health authorities hoped to keep up the momentum by promoting services such as anti-ageing treatments to middle-aged visitors.

Zu, a former flight attendant who has visited South Korea at least six times, said she tended to pack several non-invasive treatments into a single trip.

That is a growing trend exemplified by hashtags such as “#koreaglowup”, popular among users of social media such as Instagram.

The major attractions are cost and South Korean expertise in beauty techniques that enables it to offer technologies and techniques often years ahead of those in the West.

Several visitors told Reuters that skincare treatments in South Korea could be as much as a fifth cheaper than those at home, while communication was not a problem, as many clinics employed multilingual coordinators.

“I like that there is a variety of K-beauty treatments in general that are not even offered in the US,” said Cindy Gu, a 30-year-old social media video editor from the United States.

She was waiting to undergo a facial lifting treatment at Lienjang, a beauty clinic in Seoul’s upscale Gangnam district.

Competition is key to affordability

Competition is the key to affordability, said Se-rin Lee, director of Lienjang’s aesthetic dermatology department, as there are so many beauty clinics in South Korea.

“The competition is pushing the prices of services down,” she said, adding that Lienjang’s foreign patients averaged about 100 a day, each with an average spend of about 1.5m won ($1,000).

About 15,000 clinics offer skincare treatments, mostly run by general practitioners rather than dermatologists, the Association of Korean Dermatologists says.

“Korea is doing a really great job in many areas, not only in skincare,” said Zu, adding that she was working on a project to deliver experiences for travellers to Korea and connect the country with the world. “Now my dream is to live here.”

The name change was published in The Lancet medical journal and announced at the European Congress of Endocrinology in Prague on Tuesday. It came after 14 years of collaboration between international societies and patient groups.

According to the medical journal, PCOS has primarily been perceived as a gynaecological or ovarian disorder, however, research has shown that it is underpinned by endocrine disturbances in insulin, androgens, and neuroendocrine and ovarian hormones.

“The broad clinical features of the condition are not captured in its current name, as although arrested follicular development is common, pathological ovarian cysts are not increased. These factors delay diagnosis — with up to 70pc of affected individuals remaining undiagnosed — and also contribute to widespread knowledge gaps and patient dissatisfaction.”

The Guardian reported that the renaming was spearheaded by endocrinologist Prof Helena Teede, director of Melbourne’s Monash Centre for Health Research and Implementation. Experts, including Teede, have said the misleading nature of the term “polycystic” in PCOS contributed to delayed diagnosis and inadequate medical care.

Announcing the new name at the European Congress of Endocrinology, Teede said the term PCOS didn’t capture the “multi-system burden that people with this condition have suffered”, and instead “directs attention to only one organ”.

It is hoped that the new term — PMOS — will better reflect the condition’s complex nature, as it affects not only the reproductive system but also the metabolism and the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

During such difficult times, we wanted to give our readers a guide on how to get through the city’s summer and the many challenges it brings with it.

1. Hydrate well and often

Conventional wisdom says you should aim to drink around eight glasses of water a day, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

In this blistering heat, we’d recommend drinking two to three litres of water a day, ideally with some salt or lemon juice added to boost the body’s electrolyte count.

We also suggest keeping a couple of packets of Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) handy in case you or someone around you is feeling the effects of dehydration.

2. Stay indoors

Avoid going outside as much as you can and avoid standing in the sun, even if you have to be outdoors. Try to find some shade — a shed, a tree or the shadow of a building.

If you’re facing a power outage at home, try hanging wet sheets of cloth on your windows, this will cool the usually hot wind blowing in and make it a little more bearable — it’s what people used to do in the days before air-conditioning.

Use curtains, blinds — and wet sheets — to block out the sun during the day and open them at night to help the day’s accumulated heat escape.

3. Dress to survive

In this weather, fashion takes a backseat and the priority should be to wear loose-fitting, light and breezy clothes that let your body breathe. Go for cottons and linens, avoid heavier fabric and dark colours that might soak up the sun’s light.

Hats haven’t really been ‘in’ for some time now, but they can save your life in this weather. Wear wide-brimmed ones; the wider, the better, straw, boonie and bucket hats are best suited for this.

Umbrellas, also out of non-monsoon fashion for as long as anyone can remember, are also a good way to shield yourself from the unforgiving sun.

4. Be mindful of those around you

You’re not facing the elements alone, so try to carry some extra bottles of water for anyone who may need them, especially people working in the sun like construction workers, hawkers, traffic police officers and delivery riders.

You should also know how to recognise if a person is suffering from heatstroke and how to render necessary first-aid. According the Mayo Clinic, symptoms include dizziness, nausea, rapid pulse and breathing, headaches, fever and either excessive sweating or no perspiration at all.

You should call emergency services immediately if someone is experiencing heatstroke and try to cool the person down. Bring them into a cool, shaded environment and wet their body, especially around the neck and armpits.

If the person is conscious, offer them chilled water and some of that ORS we said you should carry. If they are unconscious and you can’t feel their pulse, begin CPR immediately.

5. Animals need your love too

While we can do so many things to escape the heat, stray cats, dogs and birds don’t get as many choices in the matter, so be kind to them please.

Open your porches, terraces and any covered spaces outside your house to animals and leave out some food and a dish of water for them to drink.

When taking out your cars, check to see if any animals are sheltering under them to escape the sun, give them a little nudge before your fire up your engine.

As long-term solutions to Karachi’s heat crisis involving large-scale tree plantation and pedestrian-centric urban design seem distant, people will have to personally adapt to rising temperatures in the short-term.

These precautions and practices will help you live better and safer in the coming days.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government staged its third annual spring event, dubbed a power nap contest, from 3pm, under a refreshed set of admission requirements for would-be participants: wear outfits befitting either a sleeping beauty ​or prince, come tired, with a full belly.

For a metropolis that famously runs on ​24-hour shopping malls, competitive hustle and iced Americanos, the underlying exhaustion on the ⁠lawn was palpable.

“Between exam prep and part-time jobs, I survive on three or four ​hours of sleep a night, patching it up with desk naps during the day,” said Park ​Jun-seok, who showed up draped in the silken, crimson robes of a Joseon Dynasty monarch.

“I’m here to show off my napping skills, and to demonstrate exactly how a king sleeps,” said Park, a 20-year-old university student.

Nearby, Yoo ​Mi-yeon, 24, an English teacher from Ilsan north of Seoul, stood out in a plush, oversized ​koala-themed onesie. “I’ve always suffered from insomnia, I struggle to fall asleep, and wake up easily,” she said. “Koalas are ‌famous ⁠for their deep slumber. I came dressed as one hoping to borrow a little of their magic.”

Now in its third consecutive year, the sleep competition underscores a chronic issue for South Koreans. Data show South Korea is one of the most overworked and sleep-deprived nations among Organisation for Economic ​Co-operation and Development members, ​and, as a consequence, ⁠people have some of the fewest sleep hours.

As the clock struck three and eye masks descended across the park, officials went around to ​measure participants’ heart rate to make sure they had a stable reading - ​an indicator ⁠of deep, peaceful sleep.

The winner of the contest was a man in his 80s.

Hwang Du-seong, a 37-year-old office worker, was a runner-up. “I was completely drained, having done night shifts often on top of ⁠going ​to work everyday plus I also drive a lot ​for work. So when I saw the contest I was determined to sleep to fully recharge amid river breeze, and ​I’m very happy to be placed second place, luckily.”

We have been taught to consume such stories as masala — something to cry over and then forget once the next episode airs. But what if I told you that millions of viewers are not just watching the protagonists Jami (Emmad Irfani) and Zeba (Sanam Saeed)? They are watching their own fathers, their own mothers and echoes of their childhood selves. Kafeel is not a drama; it is a mirror of the dysfunctional family system hiding in plain sight across our homes.

At its core lies one narcissistic, self-absorbed, and irresponsible father — Jami. His emotional unavailability isn’t passive; it’s destructive. He doesn’t just make mistakes, he weaponises irresponsibility. His wife Zeba, a victimised mother trapped in learned helplessness, becomes the silent enabler. Together, they create a pressure cooker that warps each of their four children in profoundly different ways. From parentification to phobias, from internalised guilt to behavioural mimicry — let’s take a mental health deep dive into Kafeel.

The father – Jami (The malignant source)

Jami is the epicentre of the family’s pathology. He perfectly fits the archetype of the “covert narcissist” — lazy, entitled, deeply insecure, yet charming in public. His gaslighting is textbook: he blames Zeba for his own failures and makes her feel responsible for his inability to work and provide for his family. He doesn’t need to be physically violent; his emotional and financial abuse is enough to trap and damage the entire family.

But here is the nuance Kafeel bravely offers: Jami himself did not emerge from a vacuum. His own patterns are the result of a dysfunctional family setup that he was born into. His siblings used him as a caretaker for their ageing parents, while they provided financial support from abroad. He was never pushed to complete his education or pursue a career and this turned him into an entitled, stunted adult. This does not excuse his behaviour — but it explains it, which is the first step away from blind hatred and towards breaking cycles.

The mother – Zeba (the victim and the enabler)

Sanam Saeed’s portrayal of Zeba is heartbreaking because she plays her character not as weak, but as exhausted. Zeba was conditioned to be ‘sweet, obedient and naïve’ and her silence is not passive — it’s a trauma response called learned helplessness. After years of being oppressed, she has given up fighting back. Her decision to stay with Jami “for the children” is the very thing that damages them the most.

Yet Kafeel offers a quiet, powerful arc: her midlife enlightenment. This makes sense, as midlife is often when early-life trauma knocks again, begging to be resolved. Zeba’s slow awakening is a gift to every woman watching Kafeel who still believes it is too late for her.

The four wounded children – A psychological breakdown

Each child is a unique case study of how a child adapts to survive a narcissistic, abusive parent. It’s a masterclass in the ripple effects of a dysfunctional family system.

The eldest son – Subuk (Aashir Wajahat): the parentified child

Subuk was forced to grow up overnight and become the emotional and financial support his mother needed and the father figure his sisters lacked. His low self-esteem doesn’t come from failure but from the immense pressure of holding a broken family together. This is called role reversal trauma — and it often follows children into adulthood in the form of chronic anxiety, an inability to relax and a compulsive need to fix everyone around them. No one in the drama ever tells him that he is just a child or that he shouldn’t have to carry such a burden.

The eldest daughter – Javeria (Nooray Zeeshan): the blame sponge

Javeria has learned that the only way to feel safe is to over-control herself and take responsibility for everything. She blames herself for the family’s fights, financial problems and even her father’s moods. This is a classic survival mechanism: if she can fix what’s ‘wrong’, maybe the chaos will stop. She becomes a people-pleaser with zero self-worth — hallmark signs of growing up with a volatile, unpredictable parent. In therapy, we see Javerias everywhere: brilliant, kind women who apologise for existing and believe that love is something they must earn through suffering.

The middle sister – Zoya (Haya Khan): confident but phobic

Zoya shows us how trauma can become somatised — locked into the body’s nervous system. Her fear of sharp objects (aichmophobia) is not irrational; it is a conditioned response to her father, who threatens the family with a knife frequently. Her confidence is a mask. Underneath, her body remembers the terror. This is one of Kafeel’s most brilliant threads: trauma does not always look like sadness. Sometimes it looks like a strong, sharp, seemingly put-together daughter who cannot hold a kitchen knife without her pulse skyrocketing.

The youngest daughter – Tania (Hania Ahmed) — the mimic

The youngest child is the most chilling example of how abuse normalises pathology. Tania has learned that, in this family, there are no real consequences for bad behaviour, because her father models it daily. By using “my father does it too” as an excuse, she is not being inherently manipulative; she is mirroring the survival tactic she has observed. If the most powerful person in the house can get away with anything, why can’t she? This behaviour is a learned adaptation to a dysfunctional environment, and it highlights the danger of normalising toxic traits. Without intervention, Tania is at the highest risk of becoming like Jami in her future relationships — not because she is evil, but because she associates power with this way of being.

Intergenerational trauma

One of the most upsetting moments in the series is when we see Subuk begin to mimic his father’s aggressive behaviour. In that moment, we see the future. The abused becomes the abuser. The drama masterfully shows that, without intervention, children will carry their parents’ patterns into their own relationships, perpetuating the cycle for another generation.

This is why Kafeel is so important. It is not just a story; it is a warning. It is a call for self-awareness, for breaking the cycle and for prioritising mental health over societal pressure. We cannot heal what we refuse to name.

But here is the truth that Kafeel doesn’t show — or hasn’t yet — because dramas rarely do: the cycle can be broken. A narcissistic father does not have to define your future. A victimised mother does not have to be your blueprint. Parentification, guilt, phobias and mimicry are adaptations, not life sentences. With the right support — therapy, self-awareness and healthy boundaries — each of these wounded children can reclaim their mental health.

Intergenerational trauma is powerful, but not necessarily a destiny. Healing begins by naming the wound and choosing to stop passing it down. Kafeel warns us, but your life can prove that your story ends differently.

Why Kafeel is essential viewing

Kafeel is not a drama; it’s a psychological case study disguised as entertainment. It shows that abuse is rarely just a slap. It is the slow, silent erosion of a person’s will, and the insidious poisoning of the next generation.

This drama is a mirror for every household where one broken parent created four differently broken children. Kafeel exposes the mental health legacy of a toxic father. It forces us to ask a difficult question: how many of our “family dramas” are actually multi-generational trauma centres?

None of this analysis would be possible without the bravery of writer Umera Ahmed, the brilliance of director Meesam Naqvi, and the courage of ARY Digital for airing this raw and uncomfortable story. Mainstream Pakistani dramas often romanticise toxic relationships or resolve complex trauma with a single emotional scene. Kafeel refuses to take that shortcut. It trusts its audience to sit with the messiness, to recognise the subtle signs of narcissistic abuse and to understand that healing doesn’t happen in one episode.

This is not just good television. This is responsible storytelling. And it deserves recognition.

Originally published in Dawn, ICON, April 26th, 2026

The star posted a video on Instagram from the gym on Wednesday with a caption asking viewers whether they would choose “familiarity or evolution”.

In the clip, Abbas talked about her own mental health struggles, saying, “For the longest time, I didn’t know how to validate my feelings.” She said therapy works when it comes to that, but there was more that kept her going.

“I was working out at the gym and I realised, what is this thing that makes me feel happy, and that makes me feel validated,” the actor told her fans.

She said she was feeling particularly good and wanted to share the “kick” she gets from “moving”.

Abbas was quick to point out that moving did not just mean mundane household chores you would ordinarily be doing in your life like “driving a car [or] cooking food”.

Instead, what she meant by “movement” involved going out to a “designated place”.

The actor also said, “You never really get out of depression.” Instead, she contended, you learn to “understand it [and] work on it”.

Abbas said the idea was to understand how to “control your anxiety and your triggers” and to keep doing that.

She said there were a number of ways to do this, like “watching a good movie” or “talking to a good friend”.

She said that if even one person in her audience could connect to what she said in the video, that’s her good deed done for the day.

The actor has earlier been a strong voice on a number of mental health issues. She has talked about her own struggles with anxiety, spirituality and postpartum depression. She’s also urged women not to hurt themselves in attempts to look younger.

In a post on Instagram, the star highlighted the struggles she faces with her own skin and how her work and age led to acne breakouts.

Posting pictures of herself from before, during and after the breakout, Mobeen said her skin “went through a lot these last few months”.

She said a combination of harsh lights, daily makeup, wrong treatments and “just being in my early 20s with hormones” led to her developing “really bad acne”, which is “finally healing now”.

The actor said she didn’t look like the filtered pictures she posted on the internet, “but that’s because I am human”.

She went on to say that people face intense scrutiny online, especially “young women in the spotlight” and sometimes netizens “forget there are real people behind the pictures”.

Mobeen ended her note saying, “A little more kindness would go a long way.”

She isn’t alone here either. In 2019, Hania Aamir talked about the same scrutiny and mentioned feeling insecure about her own struggles with acne. She said her anxiety eventually led her to ask, “Why is my skin defining me? Who has made these beauty standards that we always feel the need to match?”

Echoing Aamir’s sentiments, Mehwish Hayat also said, “Flawsome is awesome.” The actor said that, “Away from the studio lights, the cameras and the glamorous makeup, we all battle with the same skin problems and insecurities as any other girl.”

Hayat urged girls in her line of work, Aamir included, to “embrace it,” calling it “part of being a woman”.

In 2021, Syra Yousuf faced trolls head on when they began to make fun of a barefaced picture her sister had posted. The star proceeded to post more of herself with the caption “I really like my skin. #NoFilter”

The change is evident on social media, where posts like Kylie Jenner’s TikTok uploaded last week quickly went viral.

“I’ve added a new favourite to my routine. Pomegranate-flavoured cutting jelly. This is not a typical jelly. It’s for digestion. My goal is to snack less for the new year. I’ve been bringing this everywhere,” she said, filming herself pulling a stick-type jelly supplement out of an Hermes bag and eating it in her car.

The message was clear: beauty routines are no longer limited to serums and creams. They now extend to functional foods and supplements designed to support digestion, skin and overall wellness — a category widely known in Korea as “inner beauty”.

Cardi B delivered a similar endorsement in December, praising the same type of “cutting jelly” on Instagram. Marketed as helping control post-meal blood sugar spikes and promote regular digestion, the product combines pomegranate concentrate with dietary fibre in a portable, single-serve format. “With this, I can eat whatever I want,” she said in the video, reinforcing the idea that beauty and body care are increasingly framed as lifestyle habits rather than cosmetic fixes.

Industry watchers see these celebrity shout-outs as a sign that inner beauty has entered its next growth phase. According to Kolmar BNH, the health-functional-food arm of Kolmar Korea, the global inner beauty market is expected to grow about two per cent annually through 2027, driven by rising interest in skin, hair and gut health. “Inner beauty products are gaining attention worldwide across multiple wellness categories,” the company said.

Search and sales data support the shift. On Korean beauty app Hwahae, October’s top global search terms included not only skin care but also supplements such as zinc and selenium. At Olive Young, the country’s largest beauty retailer, sales of inner beauty products rose 24pc among domestic customers and 49pc among overseas shoppers in the first 11 months of 2025 compared with a year earlier.

The collagen boom sits at the centre of the movement. “Collagen is king,” said Olive Kim, founder of supplement brands Cloud Cafe and Collagelee, noting that ingestible formats — from liquid shots and stick jellies to gummies and powders — are gaining favour as consumers seek visible skin benefits from within. Industry experts note that, because collagen molecules are difficult to absorb topically, many dermatologists and dietitians recommend oral supplementation to support elasticity and hydration.

Format matters as much as function. Fruity jellies, liquid shots and drinkable supplements are turning what was once a chore into a daily habit many consumers enjoy. As Korean-style holistic beauty gains popularity worldwide, the line between snack, supplement and skincare is increasingly blurred.

This story was originally published on The Korea Herald, an ANN partner of Dawn

Actor Nadia Afgan, who sees this happening around her all the time, posted a video on Instagram to challenge these practices and maybe talk some sense into people driving themselves and others mad in the pursuit of ‘perfection’.

Barefaced, with morning tea in hand, she boldly faced the camera to show what she looked like without makeup. She said her hands are “wrinkled” and “have spots on them”, one of her eyebrows “has a few grey strands”, and she’s got wrinkles under her eyes. Despite all of this, she said, “I think I am very beautiful, I am very confident with my skin and my face.”

Coming to today’s beauty standards, Afgan said, “the most beautiful, intelligent, talented young girls are made to worry about their looks. About extra fat on their cheeks [and] on their bodies”. She told the camera how newcomers are made to worry “about their height…their skin, their faces, their hair” and told, “If you want to become a heroine, if you want to land a lead role, you need to look a certain way.”

The actor said there was a need to relieve newbies of this “unnecessary pressure” and have them focus on their talent and acting ability. She told the young actors to “be comfortable in your own skin”, adding that nobody on TV has perfect skin, “there are tonnes of makeup, filters, great lighting”.

Afgan said she had gone through the same thing and would often complain to her husband about it. He asked her if she “wanted to look like everyone else” and gave her more strength to love herself. She said she tries to look after her physical and mental health by sleeping better and eating well.

The Sharpasand star said she’d gotten fillers under her eyes at one point, but later found out the bags under her eyes were a sign of Iron deficiency; supplements were all she really needed to make them go away. She also said that she tried to lose weight recently after gaining a bit during menopause, but not “because I wanted to look slender and dance around trees wearing a sari, I was genuinely worried for my joints and the threat of diabetes.”

Afgan said there was a need to “improve our beauty standards”. Adding that, “People are different and still beautiful. Everyone’s journey, surroundings, circumstances, experiences are different and that shapes them.” She asked viewers to accept themselves and others as they are and “not make a world where people say ‘oh, she’s pretty and she’s not’.”

For young stars, her parting words were, “Sure, look good, dress nice, just don’t starve yourself for the perfect figure.”

What is perhaps adding fuel to the fire is access to infinite information in the palms of our hands. Experts believe that overexposure to unregulated information can complicate how people process world events. For younger people, it has created a high-stress environment with many sharing similar experiences of feeling “triggered” or “overwhelmed”.

However, the discourse around media consumption may be overlooking the actual issue: the systems we live in are no longer working and the recurring feeling that something is not right may be a symptom of a larger problem. The business-as-usual formula is showing cracks as people, especially younger generations, increasingly express discontent towards the status quo.

But if people are unhappy with the status quo, why don’t things change? Besides all that pesky anxiety, living in an era of hyperawareness has pushed people into a state of freeze as they carry on with their daily lives amid systemic collapse. People acknowledge the need for structural change in society, but participate in those same structures every day.

While worrying can take many forms, it is important to look at this human response to the world because it has consequences for society in general.

That collective dissonance has a name — hypernormalisation.

What is hypernormalisation?

The term, originally coined by Alexei Yurchak to explain what civilians in Soviet Russia were feeling, is currently making the rounds on the internet. In his book Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More, Yurchak described the final days of Soviet Russia, where society was unable to imagine alternatives to the status quo until eventually the system collapsed.

The term was subsequently used in a 2016 documentary by British filmmaker Adam Curtis. He narrated, “The Soviet Union became a society where everyone knew what their leaders said was not real because they could see with their own eyes that the economy was falling apart, but everybody had to play along and pretend that it was real because no one could imagine any alternative. One Soviet writer called it hypernormalisation.

“You were so much a part of the system that it was impossible to see beyond it. The fakeness was hypernormal.” His documentary focused on living in a “post-truth” society where political leaders created fake narratives and counter-culture became ineffective.

“We live in a world where the powerful deceive us. We know they lie, they know we know they lie, they don’t care. We say we care, but we do nothing. And nothing ever changes. It’s normal. Welcome to the post-truth world,” reads the on-screen text in the documentary’s trailer.

Can’t stop, won’t stop

Recently a video of digital anthropologist Rahaf Harfoush went viral in which she made use of the term. “What you are feeling is the disconnect between seeing that systems are failing, that things aren’t working… and yet the institutions and the people in power just are ignoring it and pretending everything is going to go on the way that it has,” she explained in the video.

“Hypernormalisation is when everyone knows that the system we’re living in doesn’t really work, but we all go along with it anyway because we can’t imagine what else to do. It’s like we’re participating in a collective illusion,” Rahaf told Images. “It’s become popular now because so many of us are experiencing that same feeling in our digital lives. We know our feeds are full of misinformation, we know our attention is being manipulated, and we know the stories we’re told about progress don’t always line up with reality. “But because these systems are so embedded in how we work, connect, and live, it feels almost impossible to step outside of them.”

She explained that people were drawn to the term because it illustrated the “uneasy sense” that something was not right and that everyone was complicit in “keeping up the illusion”.

Speaking about that dissonance, the anthropologist noted, “Many of us are in a kind of collective freeze; we know something is wrong, but we feel powerless to change it, so we default to maintaining the status quo. That’s where cognitive dissonance comes in: the gap between what we know and how we act.”

She described climate change as an example of this. According to her, despite easily available evidence about unsustainable lifestyles, people continued with “business as usual” because the alternatives felt overwhelming or inaccessible. “We live with that contradiction every day,” she said. This was also observable in people’s relationship with technology, according to Harfoush. People are aware that endless scrolling on their phones undermines their focus and well-being, yet they are locked in due to the design of these platforms and the pressure to stay connected, she explained.

“What I find fascinating as a digital anthropologist is how widespread this state has become. It’s not just individuals struggling; whole organisations, even governments, operate within these contradictions. We’ve normalised the freeze, even when the cracks are showing,” Harfoush said.

Aaron Mulvany, an anthropologist and professor at Habib University in Karachi, described the concept as when everybody in society can see that the structures and systems that are supposed to serve the nation are not functioning, “but they’re unable to imagine a way out of this repetitive cycle of reproduction of the system [and] systems not working“. He likened it to a treadmill we can’t get off.

In a conversation with Images, he maintained that hypernormalisation strictly applied to the conditions of the Soviet Union. “I’m convinced by the argument about the late communist Soviet Union, that’s what was going on. It had been going on for a very long time… I don’t see this part happening [elsewhere] yet right now,” he said.

“Things seem to work. People keep doing their daily business. But one of the other pieces that’s missing is a despair in daily life that there is no way out of this, and what I’m seeing as an American, watching my country from abroad, is that… that despair hasn’t infected the political system yet. You still see people who see a way out… That soul-destroying despair, ‘we can’t see a way out’ — for me doesn’t exist yet.

“It could take hold very quickly,” he warned, adding that since right-wing American political commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated, something was happening “linguistically” which was “very concerning and could point the way towards the normalisation of hypernormalisation”.

“What is concerning is that I am not seeing the kind of pushback [that was expected], like the legacy media in the US seems to have rolled over and died.”

“There is a large population of the US that feels despair, 100 per cent. I can share that. There is an awful large, probably statistically, almost as large, population that thinks everything is going great. They are on board with this. For them, institutions are working. For them, the government is doing exactly what the government should be doing.”

He noted that in contrast, people on the “other end of the political spectrum do feel despair”. “But the reason that these are not shared in the same massive, nearly universal way that they were in the Soviet Union is because of the fragmentation of media through the rise of social media. We can exist almost entirely in our own little bubbles of reality.

“There are plenty of people, millions, literally millions of people in the US who look at the nation’s institutions and see them working. There are millions more people on the complete opposite spectrum who see institutions and see them failing and they have no idea what to do. These are the people who are thinking in terms of hypernormalisation.”

In Pakistan’s context, this can be observed in what Umair Javed, who teaches Sociology at the Lahore University of Management Sciences, calls the “politics of common sense”.

Explaining Antonio Gramsci’s concept and its subsequent use by Pakistani author Aasim Sajjad Akhtar, Javed described the idea as political structures being “too overwhelming” and the belief that they “cannot necessarily be changed in any meaningful way”. “So we need to make peace with it and to find a way through which we can extract some benefit for ourselves, because… systems of injustice, exploitation, chaos [and] turbulence are not necessarily going to go away anytime soon.”

Terming systemic dysfunction in Pakistan “chaos,” Javed viewed systemic issues as a driver of hypernormalisation. “The way that the state… interacts, people do not necessarily see a way out of the problem and they do not necessarily have a way of finding a solution to these very concrete and political problems… So in some ways, they have no option but to play along with it,” he said.

He added that playing along or the politics of common sense can, in turn, re-enable the state to remain in the existing “unresponsive and, to varying degrees, its failed form”.

Does it really matter?

Does any of this impact us? The short answer is yes, because hypernormalisation has consequences that go further than our individual lives. While drawing a parallel with the Soviet Union may not be entirely accurate, today’s world carries similarities that cannot be overlooked.

In May, Caroline Hickman, an American psychotherapist and instructor at the University of Bath specialising in climate anxiety, told The Guardian that people who felt the “wrongness of current conditions” might be experiencing depression and anxiety, but those feelings were “quite rational — not a symptom of poor mental health, alarmism or a lack of proper perspective”.

She was quoted as saying, “What we’re really scared of is that the people in power have not got our back and they do not give a s**t about whether we survive or not.”

People around the world have expressed discomfort with ‘business-as-usual’ attitudes in everyday life amid Israel’s devastating bombardment in Gaza following October 7, 2023, which killed well over 67,000 Palestinians. While witnessing the conflict through our screens is far from the mental trauma Palestinians have faced, seeing pictures and watching videos of dead children since the genocide began coupled with consistent inaction against Israel has caused widespread revulsion and evoked mistrust in systems of power.

The purpose of this essay is to discuss whether such feelings are merely a product of witnessing the state of the world or also emerge from the inability to imagine a different kind of world.

Speaking about the struggle to imagine alternative systems, Javed, the teacher at LUMS, said there are no existing political structures “people can engage with that will help them answer these questions and provide a pathway out or at least give them a framework to understand why the world is the way it is”.

He noted that since the 1990s, the world had converged on liberal democracy and international human rights as the preeminent framework for how the world was supposed to be run. “And then you suddenly start to see it… it always was a façade, but you start to see it completely exposed in the aftermath of the genocide in Gaza. So what is the framework beyond this? That’s what everyone is asking for.”

Reproducing same systems

When asked about implications beyond the cognitive level, digital anthropologist Harfoush said hypernormalisation can show up in “very material, tangible ways”. “When we normalise systems that are not serving us, it shapes our policies, our economies, and even the way we design our cities.”

She gave the example of modern work culture, saying, “We all know it’s unsustainable (burnout rates are skyrocketing, mental health is suffering), yet organisations still cling to outdated measures of productivity because we haven’t imagined new models that truly value creativity and wellbeing.

“That’s hypernormalisation at work: the façade of ‘business as usual’ hides the cracks that are already showing up in absenteeism, attrition, and declining innovation,” she said.

“So while hypernormalisation begins in our minds, in the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of contradictions, it absolutely manifests in the physical world, in policies, infrastructures, and lived experiences,” she explained.

According to Jorge Oliveira, a researcher in Australia, hypernormalisation can significantly impact democratic governance and social well-being. In an article titled Hypernormalisation: The Crisis of Post-Truth Society, he wrote, “When systemic dysfunction is normalised, citizens may become complacent, ceasing to question the status quo. This, in turn, enables political leaders to continue exploiting the system without facing genuine accountability.”

He added that when a society sidelines experts and favours simplistic political narratives, important issues such as climate change, healthcare, and economic inequality remain unaddressed, resulting in dire consequences. The article also discusses that that acceptance diminishes the foundation of public trust and the erosion of trust “makes it harder to mobilise collective action for meaningful change”.

In Pakistan’s case, people do not know what to situate their politics on, according to Javed. He argued that people were reacting to politics through mediated consumption in the form of social media content, which was shaping their “political socialisation”.

He explained the emergence of “deeply unsocialised political subject” as people who were only experiencing politics in a narrow, consumption-driven form, which was leading towards “disengaged citizenry” who cannot imagine alternatives or were not invested in making the state or politics more responsive.

Oliveira argued that it was hard to imagine an engaged citizenry because people were “just caught up in meeting their day-to-day subsistence requirements,” adding that they do not have much time for deeper political engagements. “All of the more fundamental issues of politics are basically put on a back burner because people are literally just trying to navigate their daily lives on a regular basis,” he wrote.

Can we do something?

The state of the world may be depressing, but there’s always hope for change. The concept of hypernormalisation can be useful because it helps us see the underlying issue and offers an opportunity to step outside the collective illusion towards actionable change.

According to Harfoush, “Once you can label an experience, you can start to work with it more intentionally.” Beyond the psychological relief, she said it also helps us diagnose where systems are failing. “If we realise that an entire industry is running on narratives that no longer match reality, that is a signal for leaders, policymakers, and citizens to intervene. It becomes a tool for critical thinking.

“So the concept is not just descriptive. It can be prescriptive too. It creates space to imagine alternatives and to start asking, ‘If this story no longer serves us, what might a better one look like?’”

When asked what we can do about hypernormalisation, she said the awareness from when people recognise the “gap between the story they are told and what they actually experience” creates “cracks in the façade”.

She spoke about practising small acts of refusal on an individual level by setting boundaries with technology, questioning productivity myths at work or choosing to engage with information more intentionally. “These actions may feel small, but collectively they signal a cultural shift,” she said.

It also means being willing to acknowledge when old narratives no longer serve us and having the courage to imagine alternatives, she said. This can be done by redesigning work to prioritise wellbeing or building new governance models for technology that actually reflect our values.

“So while hypernormalisation might always be part of the human condition, we are not powerless. Every time we choose to confront the contradiction instead of ignoring it, we open up the possibility of change,” Harfoush said.

Mulvany took a rather optimistic approach, saying he believed there are people imagining alternatives, particularly at the grassroots level. Highlighting various systematic issues in Pakistan, such as corruption, power outages and lack of access to clean water, he said, “There are plenty of other people who are imagining other ways the state could be. There’s not a hopelessness [that] ‘this is what we have and this is all we’re ever going to have.’ There are people and there have been since the 70s… who are able to imagine a different kind of Pakistan.”

The professor sees people who imagine alternatives all the time. “Every day, I spend time with students who are excited to make change. I talk with students who have ideas for how their neighbourhood can be changed, and how that change might be applied to the next neighbourhood, which could then be applied to larger systems across Karachi. I see students who are concerned about water issues, solid waste issues, general sanitation, health and epidemiology… about Afghan refugees, about higher education [and] lower education.

“I see students every day who are going out into their communities and trying to make a change. I see it every day,” he said, adding, “There are lots of people in Pakistan who still have hope.”

When Harfoush first posted the Instagram video, she made it “to reassure others that they are not alone” and that “they are not misinterpreting the situation or imagining things,” The Guardian reported. Understanding hypernormalisation “made me feel less isolated,” she told the publication.

While confronting the status quo can be a daunting task, the collective response indicates that we are not on our own. Understanding collective dissonance can help us actively respond to systemic failure and translate discomfort into collective action.

We can stop reproducing the status quo only after we break out of the illusion. Instead of following business-as-usual, we must allow ourselves to imagine and create better systems.

Digital creator by trade, husband to another influencer with-a-larger-following-than-himself by relationship status, father to a toddler, and a self-proclaimed victim to — wait for it — postpartum.

You don’t see the problem yet? Let me break it down.

What exactly is postpartum?

For those who may be unaware, postpartum refers to the period after childbirth that a mother goes through, as her body tries to recover from the massive trauma it underwent during pregnancy, delivery and beyond.

Etymologically, the word ‘postpartum’ comes from Latin, with “post” meaning “after” and “partum” meaning “birth”.

So no, Azlan, it cannot be taken as a philosophical birth; it specifically means the literal, physical act of giving birth.

I can go into the details of what exactly the process of giving birth entails, from which recovery is needed during the postpartum period. However, as important a topic as that is, it will likely make a lot of the people (read: men) reading this squirm in their seats.

And as much as I enjoy seeing the privileged feel uncomfortable at the mere mention of facts about the bodies and experiences of those different from them (which are things that should have been common knowledge by now anyway), I also need to be mindful of the restrictions posed by word limits and dwindling attention spans.

So, for now, let’s just briefly recap the few major components of this process for the education for all the Azlan Shahs out there.

The trauma a mother’s body carries

The uterus typically weighs 55 to 60 grammes pre-pregnancy, and by the time of delivery, it multiplies in size to nearly a whole kilogramme. That is between 14 to 20 times its original size.

During postpartum, it shrinks to return to its pre-pregnancy size and condition. This involves physical cramps (also known as “afterpains”), especially while breastfeeding.

Speaking of the uterus, its contractions are painful, yet important even post-delivery to prevent bleeding from becoming heavy enough that it escalates into postpartum haemorrhage.

Then come the hormonal shifts.

Delivery causes the body to undergo some of the rapidest hormonal drops in human biology. When pregnant, oestrogen rises to anywhere between 100 to 1,000 times the usual level, and progesterone rises by up to 30 times. After childbirth, both of these plummet sharply within just hours — with this rapid crash usually leading to emotional sensitivity, night sweats, temperature changes, depression, anxiety, vaginal dryness, and the all too common ‘baby blues’ experienced by an estimated 85 per cent of all mothers.

On the other hand, cortisol rises during pregnancy and usually declines after birth, though it may stay elevated in some women with chronic stress, nutrient deprivation or sleep disruption. Prolactin and oxytocin surge around delivery and during breastfeeding, supporting milk production, bonding, and uterine recovery.

These hormonal shifts, combined with the demands of newborn care (which disproportionately fall on the already exhausted mother’s shoulders, especially in Pakistan), create a complex mix of symptoms, such as fluctuating stress levels, fatigue, sleep changes, libido shifts, and altered affection. This is in addition to the largely-overlooked, unstable thyroid hormone that can cause postpartum thyroiditis and other complications.

All these hormones increase, decrease, and/or fluctuate naturally during and after childbirth, and some are further affected by lactation and environmental factors.

Imagine the uncertainty. The unprecedented pace of constant (and largely uncontrollable) change that the mother’s body goes through. And this is only the tip of the iceberg. We haven’t even touched upon labour pain, vaginal tearing/C-section surgery, mastitis, pelvic floor damage, or the multifaceted psychosocial stressors that are especially exacerbated in cultures such as ours — making a woman’s postpartum life harder than it already happens to be. Mind you, all of this is about the ‘normal’ postpartum period, which every single biological mother goes through. Meanwhile, the everliving ghost of postpartum depression continues to lurk as another possible form of struggle linked to motherhood, and a very common one at that.

Twenty-eight to 63pc of mothers experience postpartum depression in Pakistan.

“But what does Azlan Shah have to do with this?” Nothing, and yet, unfortunately, everything.

‘Postpartum for dads’

Last week, Shah made the absurd choice to put up a since-deleted carousel post on Instagram captioned, “Let’s talk about postpartum… for dads.”

Really? Did you give birth to the child?

“The Dad Version of Postpartum, the part no one talks about,” read the first slide, featuring a picture of him with his wife, Warisha Javed, who is holding their baby in her arms.

The 10-slide post moved through more such pictures of either the three of them together or of him alone with the baby, while one showed Javed alone on a hospital bed.

Many men don’t often post their partners and children online very much, so the opposite happening here could’ve been considered a small sign of healthy masculinity. However, Shah had other plans.

Instead, he chose to add accompanying text with each picture that sought to illustrate how supposedly difficult men have it when it comes to dealing with — yes, you guessed it right — postpartum.

What made it worse was how the post seemingly equated the very unique and stark physiological changes a mother goes through during pregnancy and postpartum, with the real yet nowhere near comparable emotional changes a father may experience during the same period.

If he really wanted to shed light on a father’s struggles with respect to new parenthood, he could’ve easily done so without misusing a term that doesn’t apply to him. The right term for that would be perinatal/paternal postnatal depression. The fact that he chose to instead hijack an issue that even mothers don’t get a fraction of support for screams attention-seeking laced with fragile masculinity and misogyny. “Because healing and support aren’t just for moms,” the post concluded by saying.

Theoretically speaking, this is absolutely true. However, we live in a country where countless mothers are expected to go back to looking like their pre-pregnancy selves within weeks and be responsible for all childcare and general domestic labour, even after going through nine months of life-altering bodily changes. Conversely, it is quite socially acceptable for fathers to not share the labour of changing diapers and taking care of the baby’s (or his partner’s) other needs, and still receive praise and support for the minuscule effort of participating in conceiving the child and (sometimes) looking after the financial needs of the family.

In this environment, does it not feel like a slap in the faces of mothers to first go through all that they do, not get enough community support to deal with it, and then be robbed of the one word that is meant to give their distinctly difficult early experiences a name?

It feels like an exercise in futility and needless frustration to quote every single sentence from Shah’s post and explain why it doesn’t make any sense, so I will not do that. Instead, what I will do is ask the men reading this: why do you feel the need to hijack issues that have nothing to do with you?

Why do you feel threatened when women take the initiative to publicly talk about problems that they are either solely or disproportionately affected by, especially to the extent that you end up centring yourself in that discourse?

I am all for men being vulnerable and seeking support, but it cannot happen at the cost of trivialising the horrors that women often have to go through in those situations.

In a society where men already feel like they are doing their wives — and, perhaps, women in general — a favor by so much as pouring themselves a glass of water every once in a while or by ‘babysitting’ their kids to ‘help’ their wives singlehandedly take on what should be the partnered job of parenting, social media posts like Shah’s further recede the bar of expectations women are socioculturally allowed to hold from men.

Proof of this lies in a comment made by his wife on the same post, glorifying her husband’s half-baked take.

Then there are the accusations that Shah copied the entire post without giving the original creator credit, which if true, meant that he took both a word that does not belong to him but also someone else’s ideas and intellectual (no matter how half baked) effort. At this point, the bar is truly 350 feet underground.

Chasing clout

The thing about gender roles and social conditioning in a patriarchal environment such as ours is that when a woman is shamed for doing something supposedly wrong, she more often than not has enough humility to apologise.

She apologises even when she shouldn’t — which applies frequently, because women are often shamed just for existing rather than doing something ethically wrong.

On the other hand, men often not only commonly lack this humility but also possess the uniquely unwanted and perverse talent of doubling down on their problematic behaviours.

This point of sociological analysis bears relevance here because Azlan Shah is proving to be a living example of it.

Mere days after being rightly shamed into taking down the postpartum post from Instagram (while still keeping it up on Facebook) and being criticised elsewhere online for posting it in the first place, we already have something new to be mad at him for.

Taking to his Instagram stories recently, he shared an “important” announcement: “I am getting married again”.

A desperate “My wife has consented to it” followed this explosive statement. Perhaps the desperation lay in the entire story itself. Desperate for attention, for views, for clicks, clout and celebrity page speculation.

With social media being an integral enough part of so many people’s lives that there’s the “attention economy” exists, I get why content creators want attention, views, clicks and clout. These things fuel their lifestyles, and trying to earn money to live comfortably is as basic a desire as it gets, which isn’t a problem. The problem arises when their content becomes problematic, and Shah’s content has become problematic.

It is content aligned with patriarchal notions, wrapped in a layer of feminist concepts like consent and men’s mental health in order to avert backlash over what he’s saying.

I could go deeper into this analysis, but here comes another plot twist: Shah isn’t actually engaging in polygamy, at least not filhaal. He announced along with his wife through a video posted two days ago that his story on this topic was referring to getting “remarried” to his first and only wife, on account of their third wedding anniversary coming up.

Oh wow! A joke so good, I can totally see a career for him in stand-up comedy — because all the people of decent mental capacity would surely stand up and walk out of the room upon hearing such tasteless humour!

It is nearly the end of 2025 — when will men start learning that patriarchal pranks are not funny? Announcing that you are getting remarried, with or without your wife’s consent, is not a new sport for Pakistani men, and for Shah to chase clout by treating such a serious issue as a frivolous prank makes one question the standard we’ve set for men across the board, because if Shah, as a man who claims to love his wife, is resorting to such misogynistic and lazy self-promotion tactics, how abysmal must the state of other not-so-nice men be?

It is a question that men like Shah, and those worse than him (which exist aplenty), must reflect on if they want to keep the hope of ending up with a woman alive. Because, as I type this, Pakistani women are posting comments calling out Shah for his insufferability — with some jokingly hypothesising this being a consequence of his ‘postpartum’.

Amidst this entire fiasco, one positive thing has emerged — we are finally seeing women in greater numbers having the political consciousness required to recognise such inexcusable attention-seeking endeavours for what they really are, which is in large part thanks to the thankless labour of feminist movements worldwide, especially those in Pakistan.

While it remains to be seen whether the reaction to his post and ‘joke’ will stop him from posting anymore embarrassing takes for the foreseeable future, what matters more is that many women are seeing through the performance — and they’re done applauding.

It’s Monster’s attempt to carve out space in the booming wellness-adjacent, female-targeted functional beverage market, but the premise itself has already sparked confusion, and a whole lot of “why is this even a thing?”

The drink launches with four flavours — Strawberry Fling, Guava Lava, Berry Tempting and Sunset Squeeze — all boasting a zero-sugar formula, no artificial colours and a rather hefty 200mg of caffeine per can. On its website, FLRT positions itself as “your new crush in a can,” and the internet is already rolling its eyes.

One X user wrote, “female focused… named FLRT… berry tempting, strawberry fling and sunset squeeze… oh we’ll never be free.”

Another couldn’t understand why the company thought Monster didn’t appeal to women.

The naming conventions, combined with the pastel-heavy visual identity also raised eyebrows.

Others questioned the premise altogether.

But the strongest criticism highlighted a larger systemic issue in branding and “female-first” marketing. As one user put it:

The brand isn’t just pushing aesthetics, it’s also promoting a suite of functional benefits — the drink will apparently provide collagen support, immunity support and skin and hair support. According to Monster, FLRT was born out of the idea that energy should be “as vibrant, fearless, and fun as the women who drink it,” built using “better-for-you ingredients”.

Long associated with extreme sports and aggressively masculine branding, Monster’s FLRT signals its attempt to court a demographic that it believes wants fun with function. However, as X users pointed out, the execution is not in the best taste. So whether FLRT will resonate with women or become another cautionary tale in “shrink it and pink it” marketing, remains to be seen.

The singer shared a video to his Instagram page on Friday in which he spoke about the emotions he felt after a recent Call performance in Lahore. During the performance, the band performed two “very important” songs — ‘Laree Chooti’ and ‘Sab Bhula Kai’.

“They’re important or valuable because we’re very emotionally connected to them,” Khan explained. “We hugged it out on stage because we’d performed after quite a while as a band. We came backstage and Xulfi was talking about what he felt, Sultan was too — and I was quiet, trying to act normal,” Khan recalled. His bandmates even asked him why he was so quiet at the time.

Two days later, he was sitting at home and watching a video of the same performance when the dam broke and he couldn’t hold himself back. “I realised after that we men do not have the licence to really express ourselves. We train ourselves over the course of years to be strong and not really be vulnerable in front of people,” he shared.

Khan said he chose not to let out his emotions while performing, because he felt that he wouldn’t have been able to get back on stage and perform if he had let go emotionally. “But at home, in a comfortable space, when I was sitting and experiencing the performance I saw what the audience felt, what I felt, while writing that song and performing that song, it was overwhelming and I had to let it out.”

He said it’s unfortunate for men that at some point, they don’t have the licence to express themselves. “We bottle [up] our emotions, we look for that safe space where we think no one will judge us or view us as weak,” Khan said.

“I say, one should let I out — alone, anywhere, in front of people you really trust, we should not train ourselves to bottle up our emotions, we should just let it out, it’s very comforting, reliving, makes you feel free, that’s what I felt after seeing myself performing with my friends after a while.”

He ended his video with a message to all the men watching: “So guys, we have that pressure of being strong in front of people, in front of family, but it’s good to just let it out at times.”

He captioned the post, “We, as men, are taught to bottle up our emotions to maintain the perception that we are strong. I’ve been guilty of doing the same. To all the boys out there; I know we’re constantly under pressure to never look weak, but trust me, expressing yourself is one of the truest forms of strength. Whether you let it out alone or in front of the people you trust, it’s liberating.”

He also reminded his followers that vulnerability doesn’t make anyone less of a man. “It makes us human. The moment we allow ourselves to feel, we stop carrying the weight alone. That’s when real strength begins.”

Taking to Instagram, the actor and UNICEF Pakistan’s first National Ambassador for child rights shared a moving message about the importance of talking about mental health — especially when it comes to children. In a short video, she urged everyone to listen more, care deeply, and start normalising conversations that are too often brushed aside.

“We don’t talk about mental health enough,” she said. “And when we do, it’s often whispered, as something to hide, but it’s not. Mental health is just as important as physical health.”

In her message, Saba spoke candidly about her own journey. She revealed there were days that felt “heavy” and times she didn’t know who to turn to — but healing came from reaching out, talking about her feelings, and embracing small, grounding routines.

“For me, praying, journaling, reading, exercising, painting, and even listening to music — these are habits that keep me calm,” she shared.

Her message was also a gentle call to parents, teachers, and mentors to pay attention to children’s emotional worlds.

“Sometimes, just listening to a child or validating their feelings can make the biggest difference,” she said.

Saba’s partnership with UNICEF Pakistan continues to spotlight child mental health — an issue that’s still surrounded by stigma in many communities. With her latest message, she’s using her platform to remind everyone that healing starts with empathy and connection.

“Let’s keep talking, let’s keep listening, and let’s keep reminding each other — it’s okay not to be okay.”

She also added a disclaimer to her post, reminding viewers that her content is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for medical advice. “If you notice any persistent changes,” she wrote, “consult a healthcare professional promptly.”

In the video, Malik explained that ovarian cancer is often difficult to detect because its early signs are subtle and easily mistaken for minor issues. “A lot of people have asked me about the symptoms of ovarian cancer,” she said. “As I have mentioned earlier, it’s known as a silent cancer.”

She described some of those deceptively ordinary symptoms: bloating, loss of appetite, sudden weight loss or gain, constant fatigue, back pain, and frequent urination. The Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic also list these as symptoms of ovarian cancer.

For women over 40, she added, any irregularities in the menstrual cycle — such as excessive bleeding or changes one might attribute to menopause — could also signal ovarian cancer. These, she said, are signs many women tend to ignore because they seem “too generic, almost like an upset stomach” that come and go.

Malik went on to explain that while these symptoms can be confusing, there are tests that can offer some clarity. One of them is the CA-125 test, a blood test that checks for the presence of a protein called cancer antigen 125. Elevated levels of CA-125 can indicate ovarian cancer, though not always. “Your normal has to be below 35,” Malik explained. “If it’s beyond that, then you have something to worry about.”

According to the Mayo Clinic, a CA-125 result above 35 U/mL may suggest cancer, but benign conditions such as endometriosis, pelvic inflammatory disease, or even menstruation can also raise the level. The test can also return normal results in the early stages of ovarian cancer, which is why it’s often paired with a pelvic ultrasound.

“CA-125 isn’t 100 per cent accurate,” Malik cautioned. “If you have any of these symptoms, you should also get a pelvic ultrasound done.”

She recounted how she missed the signs. “What happened to me was, I was travelling and I had a feeling of being bloated. I thought it was something that happens when you travel, and I ignored it. Two months later, when I came back to Pakistan, the bloating did not go away. Then I got this test done, and my CA-125 was above 2,000, which is scary, because it should be less than 35.” Not long after, she was diagnosed with stage 3C ovarian cancer.

Her voice in the video is calm but resolute, and it’s clear that sharing this isn’t easy for her. “The purpose of my sharing this with you,” she said, “is to spread awareness. If you are suffering from any of these symptoms, get tested. It’s a simple test; they’ll take your blood, and the next day you’ll get the result. And if your CA125 levels persist to be higher than normal, get an ultrasound done. Don’t ignore anything out of the ordinary. Listen to your body. I do not want anyone to go through what I have gone through and am going through. Don’t ignore your health and these symptoms.”

By speaking so openly about her own diagnosis, Malik is doing what many in her position might shy away from — using her platform to save lives. Her message is simple yet vital: pay attention, act early, and never underestimate what your body is trying to tell you.

In a dire report, Unicef projected that nearly one in 10 individuals within that age group will be living with the chronic disease in 2025, fuelled by easy availability of ultra-processed foods “even in countries still grappling with child undernutrition”.

Today, “when we talk about malnutrition, we are no longer just talking about underweight children,” Unicef chief Catherine Russell said in a statement on the report’s release. “Ultra-processed food is increasingly replacing fruits, vegetables and protein at a time when nutrition plays a critical role in children’s growth, cognitive development and mental health.”

The fight to reduce world hunger is bearing fruit in some areas, with the prevalence of underweight youths on a downward trend, falling from 13 per cent to 10pc between 2000 and 2022 among 5-19 year olds, according to data collected in 190 countries. However, over the same period, overweight numbers in the age range have soared, doubling between 2000 and 2022 from 194 to 391 million.

The spike is even more pronounced for obesity, a more serious form of overweight associated with metabolic disorders such as diabetes, certain cancers, anxiety and depression. In 2022, 8pc of those aged five to 19 worldwide, or 163 million, were obese, compared to 3pc in 2000.

Failure of society

Given the distinct trends, Unicef believes “a historic turning point” was reached this year, with the global prevalence of obesity at 9.4pc of the age group surpassing that of underweight, at 9.2pc. According to the projections, 188 million children and adolescents are obese.

Unicef bluntly described the primary culprit not as poor nutrition decisions by families, but unethical business practices designed to generate profits. Children “are being bombarded by… unhealthy food marketing of junk foods,” especially at school where they are exposed to sugary drinks and salty snacks, Katherine Shats, a Unicef legal expert in nutrition, told AFP. Such products are often cheaper than fresh foods like fruits, vegetables and proteins, which are being steadily replaced in families’ diets.

Unicef stresses the fault lies neither with children nor their families, but “a failure of society to protect the environments that children grow up in”. It also criticized what it called the false narrative that participating in sports can offset unhealthy diets. “It is impossible to ‘outrun’ the health consequences of a diet high in free sugars, refined starches, salt, trans-fats, harmful additives and excessive energy through physical activity alone.”

Urgent measures

Historically, levels of overweight have been higher in more developed nations. They remain high for example, in Chile, at 27pc in the five to 19 age group, and in the United States at 21pc. But since 2000, the gap between rich and poor countries has narrowed, with obesity rates soaring in some Pacific islands, where imports are replacing traditional products. In tiny Nieu, the age group’s obesity rate has reached 38pc, with the Cook Islands topping 37pc.

For some nations, it is a double curse as they grapple with both undernutrition and growing obesity. Shats laments that in certain conflict zones or areas with humanitarian crises, large food and beverage companies are taking advantage of such situations and donating ultra-processed foods to promote their own image and their marketing tactics.

So while children lack the availability of nutritional food, what they do gain access to is “this very unhealthy food because of these really predatory tactics from the industry,” she said. Unicef is urging governments to take binding measures, including advertising restrictions, taxes on sugary drinks and unhealthy foods, and policies that encourage the production of fresh produce.

More than 3.7 million people died from illnesses related to being overweight or obese in 2021 according to WHO figures — more than top infectious killers malaria, tuberculosis and HIV combined. However the sky-high prices of GLP-1 drugs, which can cost over $1,000 a month in the United States, have raised concerns they will not be made available in poorer nations where they could save the most lives.

On Friday, the WHO added semaglutide — the active ingredient in Danish pharma giant Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic and Wegovy — and the tirzepatide used in US company Eli Lilly’s Mounjaro to its list of essential medicines for adults worldwide. To ensure these “life-saving” injectable drugs reach people who need them most, the UN agency said in a statement it encouraged “generic competition to drive down prices”.

Andrew Hill, a pharmacology researcher at Liverpool University, pointed to research showing that generic semaglutide could be mass produced in India for as little as $4 a month. “What we’re asking is for Novartis and Eli Lilly to do the responsible thing and make their treatments available on a worldwide scale at an affordable, generic price,” he told AFP.

The patent for semaglutide will run out in some countries including Canada, India and China next year, which could also result in a surge in generic production.

GLP-1 drugs, which have some side effects including nausea, were originally developed for diabetes, but research has increasingly suggested they could help with a broad range of health problems including addiction. A study published in the JAMA medical journal this week found that patients with heart problems taking the drugs had more than a 40 percent lower risk of being hospitalised or dying prematurely.

One in eight people worldwide are now obese, while in 2022 more than 800 million people were living with diabetes, according to the WHO. The organisation also named a range of cancer drugs to its essential medicines list.

Alongside Saeed, the show also featured Karachi South ASP Nida Junaid, and clinical psychologist Dr Uzma Ali, who broke down how unchecked mental health struggles can escalate to extreme situations when left untreated.

Saeed, however, spoke directly to the root of the issue: the lack of preparedness among many parents who take on the responsibility of raising children without first addressing their own mental, emotional and relational readiness.

“Most people in our country aren’t capable of parenting. Not every couple deserves a child. Not every couple at every point deserves a child. Because are they themselves prepared for that child? Is their relationship sorted? Do they know each other enough? Are they mature enough to cope with problems and responsibilities?” she asked.

Yasir noted how societal pressures often push couples in the opposite direction, saying, “Here, we are told the opposite, that if the husband and wife don’t get along, they should have a child so they start getting along.”

To this, Saeed responded with a pointed critique: “Because we want to tie them together with a responsibility that they’re not able to or equipped to take.“

She added, “A person who can’t even be responsible for themselves, a person who is already dealing with issues, and people here don’t even go to mental health professionals, how can that person take on the responsibility of a child? Even if their mental health symptoms are manageable. I have seen so many well-educated people say things like they don’t believe in mental health, and how can someone fix you just by talking to you?”

Dr Ali also highlighted that we are all human and prone to making errors based on our ability to understand things. “We all have emotions,” she said. “We all learn how to cope with those emotions, healthy or unhealthy, by looking at the people around us, and in some families, people don’t know how to regulate their unhealthy emotions, so children don’t know how to regulate them either.”

Saeed’s comments echo what many people have long been stressing: until Pakistan normalises seeking therapy, acknowledges that mental illness is real, and breaks free from stigma, tragedies like these will continue to surface.

Parenting, Saeed argued, isn’t just about providing food and shelter; it’s about having the emotional capacity to nurture another life, something that cannot be done when one is struggling to cope with their own.

The conversation was a rare moment of mainstream television tackling mental health not as a taboo but as a social necessity. And it highlighted what Saeed put most plainly: before bringing children into the world, parents must first ask if they are ready — mentally, emotionally and relationally — to take on the responsibility.

This story of a cervical cancer survivor and mother of four from India, narrated in a World Health Organisation (WHO) report, is not unique. Cervical cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer deaths among women around the world, especially in low- and middle-income countries such as India and Pakistan.

But here’s what many people don’t know — the disease is one of the few cancers that can be almost entirely prevented with early screening and vaccination. There are two approved vaccines that can reduce the risk of cancer by protecting against the infections that cause them — the hepatitis B vaccine and the cervical cancer or human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine.

Pakistan is launching its first-ever cervical cancer prevention vaccine drive this month, and doctors and government officials are pushing to make it a success.

Virtually all cervical cancers are caused by persistent infection with HPV. Two high-risk types, HPV 16 and HPV 18, are responsible for 70 per cent of cases.

In 2006, the United States Food and Drug Administration approved a vaccine to be administered to females nine through 26 years of age. Gardasil, as the vaccine was called, aimed to protect from diseases caused by certain types of HPV, including cervical, vulvar, vaginal, and anal cancers as well as genital warts.

Nearly four years after its licensure, researchers who surveyed vaccinated women aged 14 to 59 found that among vaccinated girls aged 14 to 19 years, vaccine-type HPV prevalence dropped from 11.5pc to 5.1pc — a staggering decline of 56pc. Among other age groups, however, the prevalence didn’t seem to differ significantly.

In 2020, the WHO launched a global strategy aiming to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer as a public health problem. By 2023, around 140 countries introduced the HPV vaccine into their national immunisation programmes, including those with large populations and cervical cancer burden, such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Nigeria.

In Pakistan, however, the vaccine has largely remained out of reach and unknown to most people — until now.

In August, the WHO announced that it is partnering with the Government of Pakistan to train over 49,000 health workers for the country’s first HPV vaccine drive, planned from September 15 to 27. The campaign is being described as a “historic milestone,” and is set to target 13 million girls aged nine to 14 years across Punjab, Sindh, Islamabad Capital Territory, and Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

The Federal Health Ministry announced that it is launching the campaign in Sindh in collaboration with the provincial health department and urged close coordination with the education department to ensure as many girls as possible are covered in the campaign. Sindh Health Secretary Rehan Iqbal Baloch said the campaign aims to vaccinate about four million girls in the province.

Gavi, a global health alliance that helps lower-income countries access vaccines, is also providing support, he explained. The necessary doses will be available free of charge through the government-led Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI).

Why is the drive important?

According to infectious diseases epidemiologist at the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi, Dr Muslima Ejaz, the initiative is important because it targets adolescent girls, a group often left out of health interventions. “By reaching them early, before they’re exposed to HPV, we’re literally safeguarding their future health,” she told Images.

She explained that the drive sets a precedent. If Sindh succeeds, it can become a model for scaling up across other provinces. “This campaign is not only about vaccination, it’s about building systems, community trust, and a roadmap for integrating HPV into routine immunisation,” she said. Essentially, it’s a public health breakthrough for women in Pakistan.

Gynaecologist Dr Uzma Chishti said adolescent immunisation is crucial, noting that although cervical cancer has traditionally affected women who are in their 40s to 60s, she has recently seen patients in their 30s.

She pointed out that the WHO now endorses a single-dose schedule, which simplifies delivery and increases the likelihood of uptake. While skepticism towards vaccines in general poses a challenge, she argued that it can be overcome with the right communication.

“Healthcare workers need to build trust, explain the disease, and highlight how vaccination protects girls before they are ever at risk,” she said, adding that counselling on preventive measures such as delaying early marriage and promoting safe practices is equally important.

Beyond vaccination, Dr Chishti highlighted screening as another critical tool. Simple tests such as pap smears or HPV testing can detect precancerous changes years before cervical cancer develops.

The rollout

Dr Sohail Raza Shaikh, additional project director of EPI Sindh, explained that the campaign will use a multi-pronged strategy, including fixed-site services at existing EPI centres, outreach programmes for communities unable to access those sites, and mobile vaccination teams.

Schools are expected to serve as the main vaccination sites, supported by the province’s education department, which has already trained teachers and conducted sensitisation workshops. Dr Shaikh added that around 48.5pc of the target population is enrolled in schools, while the remaining out-of-school girls will be reached through the Lady Health Worker programme and civil society organisations such as HANDS and the Sindh Rural Support Organisation.

He explained that approximately 3,611 vaccinators will take part in the drive, each working in a four-member team with assistants and social mobilisers, bringing the total to over 14,000 field workers. Supervisory structures are also in place, including 1,190 first-level supervisors, mostly doctors trained to handle adverse events following immunisation, and 393 second-level supervisors. A breakdown of the vaccinators includes 490 fixed-site workers, 2,990 outreach workers and 31 mobile teams.

To monitor coverage, the campaign will use the Sindh Electronic Immunisation Record (SEIR) system, with an additional HPV-specific module, along with vaccination cards distributed to recipients.

“Even after the campaign period, there will be a catch-up drive to vaccinate any missed children,” Dr Shaikh told Images. He stressed that the vaccine would become a routine part of the immunisation programme, with the Sindh government already having allocated budgetary resources for the next three years.

He highlighted the key role of teachers and parents in ensuring the success of the campaign. “Teachers, in particular, hold significant influence. If they support the vaccine, parents are more likely to follow,” he said. Districts with higher proportions of out-of-school girls, such as Kashmore, Qambar-Shahdadkot, Shikarpur, Larkana, Umerkot, Tando Muhammad Khan and Badin, are being prioritised for intensified mobilisation efforts.

Potential roadblocks

Epidemiologist Aneela Pasha noted a potential challenge for the drive: while the EPI mainly administers vaccines for infants and toddlers, such as polio, BCG and typhoid, the HPV vaccine is different as it targets adolescent girls, a group that does not routinely visit paediatricians.

She said myths related to the vaccine causing infertility might become a key hesitancy driver. However, she noted that the vaccine actually protects you from infertility because “it’s the HPV infections that could compromise your reproductive system”.

She also highlighted the prevalence of cervical cancer in Pakistan, with more than 5,000 women diagnosed annually and over 3,000 losing their lives to the disease.

Up-to-date figures are difficult to obtain from the Global Cancer Observatory due to the absence of a comprehensive national registry. However, data compiled by Islamabad’s National Institutes of Health from various registries between 2015 and 2019 shows cervical cancer is the fourth most common cancer among women in the country.

While misinformation and vaccine hesitancy are genuine concerns, paediatrician Dr Fyezah Jehan said the vaccine’s relative unfamiliarity might work in its favour. “No information is better than incorrect information,” she said.

Since widespread misconceptions have not yet taken root, health authorities have an opportunity to shape the narrative with accurate messaging. She warned, however, that misinformation could emerge once the campaign begins, making its management, and the timely delivery of correct information, critical to its success.

Influencers on platforms including TikTok and X are fuelling a growing wellness obsession popularly known as “sleepmaxxing,” a catch-all term for activities and products aimed at optimising sleep quality.

The explosive rise of the trend — generating tens of millions of posts — underscores social media’s power to legitimise unproven health practices, particularly as tech platforms scale back content moderation.

One so-called insomnia cure involves people hanging by their necks with ropes or belts and swinging their bodies in the air.

“Those who try it claim their sleep problems have significantly improved,” said one clip on X that racked up more than 11 million views.

Experts have raised alarm about the trick, following a Chinese state broadcaster’s report that attributed at least one fatality in China last year to a similar “neck hanging” routine.

Such sleepmaxxing techniques are “ridiculous, potentially harmful, and evidence-free,” Timothy Caulfield, a misinformation expert from the University of Alberta in Canada, told AFP. “It is a good example of how social media can normalise the absurd.”

Another popular practice is taping of the mouth for sleep, promoted as a way to encourage nasal breathing. Influencers claim it offers broad benefits, from better sleep and improved oral health to reduced snoring.

But a report from George Washington University found that most of these claims were not supported by medical research.

Experts have also warned the practice could be dangerous, particularly for those suffering from sleep apnea, a condition that disrupts breathing during sleep.

Other unfounded tricks touted by sleepmaxxing influencers include wearing blue- or red-tinted glasses, using weighted blankets, and eating two kiwis just before bed.

‘Damaging’

“My concern with the ‘sleepmaxxing’ trend — particularly as it’s presented on platforms like TikTok — is that much of the advice being shared can be actively unhelpful, even damaging, for people struggling with real sleep issues,” Kathryn Pinkham, a Britain-based insomnia specialist, told AFP.

“While some of these tips might be harmless for people who generally sleep well, they can increase pressure and anxiety for those dealing with chronic insomnia or other persistent sleep problems.”

While sound and sufficient sleep is considered a cornerstone of good health, experts warn that the trend may be contributing to orthosomnia, an obsessive preoccupation with achieving perfect sleep.

“The pressure to get perfect sleep is embedded in the sleepmaxxing culture,” said Eric Zhou of Harvard Medical School.

“While prioritising restful sleep is commendable, setting perfection as your goal is problematic. Even good sleepers vary from night to night.”

Pinkham added that poor sleep was often fuelled by the “anxiety to fix it,” a fact largely unacknowledged by sleepmaxxing influencers.

“The more we try to control sleep with hacks or rigid routines, the more vigilant and stressed we become — paradoxically making sleep harder,” Pinkham said.

Beauty over health

Many sleepmaxxing posts focus on enhancing physical appearance rather than improving health, reflecting an overlap with “looksmaxxing” — another online trend that encourages unproven and sometimes dangerous techniques to boost sexual appeal.

Some sleepmaxxing influencers have sought to profit from the trend’s growing popularity, promoting products such as mouth tapes, sleep-enhancing drink powders, and “sleepmax gummies” containing melatonin.

That may be in violation of legal norms in some countries like Britain, where melatonin is available only as a prescription drug.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine has recommended against using melatonin to treat insomnia in adults, citing inconsistent medical evidence regarding its effectiveness.

Some medical experts also caution about the impact of the placebo effect on insomnia patients using sleep medication — when people report real improvement after taking a fake or nonexistent treatment because of their beliefs.

“Many of these tips come from non-experts and aren’t grounded in clinical evidence,” said Pinkham. “For people with genuine sleep issues, this kind of advice often adds pressure rather than relief.”

The study, conducted by researchers from Australia, Spain and the UK, reviewed past papers for correlation between levels of exercise and risk factors of various ailments such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, depressive symptoms and dementia.

Taking a baseline of 2,000 steps, which is something most adults manage even without taking extra time to exercise, the study compared the reduction in rates of disease incidence. The findings indicate that those who walk 7,000 steps are 47 per cent less likely to die of cardiovascular disease and 37pc less likely to die of cancer. The same group has a 25pc lesser chance of developing cardiovascular disease in the first place and a 14pc lower risk of diabetes.

Compared to this, those who completed their 10,000 steps were only marginally less likely to develop these diseases, the differences being in single digits. The study even found that the more active group was very slightly more prone to dying from cardiovascular disease.

On the mental health front, the study found those who exercise had a 38pc lower chance of exhibiting depressive symptoms and a 22pc less chance of developing dementia. They also found that the 7,000-step group had better balance and coordination, being 28pc less likely to suffer falls; this number went down for those walking over 10,000 steps a day.

Another 2019 study by Japanese and US researchers found a similar peak benefit point at 7,500 steps; the same paper said walking backwards was more beneficial for cognitive ability and coordination. A 2011 paper from the University of Nevada backed up the correlation between brain health and backward retro walking; it also said walking backwards strengthens hamstrings and reduces pain in the lower back.

The advent of digital journalism has eliminated temporal restrictions on receiving news; no longer do you have to wait patiently for the next day’s paper. Or receive a messenger at your doorstep narrating how half your state was annexed while you had the most ordinary day of all time. Our generation has never experienced that — we’ve only known how to scroll for hours, anywhere and anytime, trying to process as much global news as we can at once, since everybody’s in a race to make sure they’re more aware than anybody else in the room.

Psychotherapist Shafa Rashid from Synapse, a Karachi-based neuroscience institute, told Images, “The cumulative emotional and sensory dysregulation resulting from constant exposure to distressing and tragic news at such a tender age, especially when these anxieties are not adequately addressed by their surrounding environment, but enhanced instead” complicates how people process these events. “This dysregulation and heightened sensitivity of their nervous system is what many teenagers unfortunately carry with them into their twenties,” she added.

“The pressure to have the right opinion” and constantly thinking about how to say the right thing, whether to say anything at all or whether you’ll be cancelled or embarrassed for saying one thing or the other is one of several reasons that create a high stress environment for young people.

Today, awareness has transformed into hyperawareness as minute-by-minute updates on everything from the US electoral campaign to a local influencer’s dog’s digestive issues are a single tap away. While this easy access to news helps us stay up to date on the atrocities being committed around the world, making it easier to raise our voices, recognise political propaganda and hold the right people accountable, it is also an immense burden on our sensory systems and causes burnout.

The issue lies not with the availability of news but with its endless nature. From the Palestinian genocide to the one in Congo, the much delayed controversial Pakistani election, the regime overthrow in Bangladesh, the PTSD triggering return of Donald Trump in the White House, the Pakistan-India war or the Iran-Israel conflict— the doomscrolling is never-ending, precisely because the doom around us is never-ending.

Clinical psychologist Afrah Arshad, founder of Teen Therapy Wellness, told Images that frequent exposure to tragic information can lead the brain to go into emotional overload, initiate a defence mechanism and lead to emotional numbness and detachment. Many teenagers have shared similar experiences of feeling “triggered” and “overwhelmed”.

A sensory overload

Romman Adil, a 19-year-old writer who has penned heartfelt poems for the Palestinian resistance, said that at one point, “seeing numerous reels and posts took a toll on me, and there have been occasions where I have cried and felt hurt for them”. People on internet platforms such as Reddit have shared similar sentiments of emotional arousal.

A forum on Reddit dedicated to Pakistani teens, TeenPakistani, saw similar reactions during the Indo-Pak conflict.

However, this fatigue isn’t exclusive to any one nationality; people across the world share these sentiments.

This doesn’t mean that we have been sentenced to some form of intense torture, but it does hamper our ability to process future atrocities. Especially when we witness graphic media of bloodshed, bombings, burnt bodies, and amputated children over a casual cup of coffee, and study for A-level exams while listening to news of missile attacks destroying geography-defying structures like the Lahore Port, living quasi-dystopian lives.

Over the course of the past two years, many younger people have simply become desensitised to tragic news and those who used to regularly share updates and resources for help now do it less often.

Rahim*, an 18-year-old from Lahore, shared what made him post less frequently, “It’s been going on for so long, I feel like a few story reposts don’t make a difference anyway. When I would post constantly, my Instagram got overloaded with pictures of beheaded babies and people burning alive. Then my exams started, I would open the app after a long day to unwind, and couldn’t bear to look at it. It only made me feel depressed — I know it’s selfish, but it’s what I felt.”

Many teenagers, including Rahim, also feel that the waning of boycott movements around the world is a manifestation of that same hopelessness.

Several 14 to 15 year olds I spoke to related to this feeling.

“Deep down, I do feel the need to notice such matters like Gaza. I do feel bad, but I don’t engage with social media content about it frequently,” said Fariha from Karachi.

On the flip side, many young people hold entirely non-serious feelings towards wars happening around the world, including those involving Pakistan. “Political matters like Trump and his policies, and wars speak nothing to me. The only concern I have is that I cannot die without getting married,” said the teen. This mindset may certainly be novel among teenagers now, but running off and starting a new life in the mountains? That’s something we’ve all wanted to do long before living through World War III.

Arham*, a 20-year-old college student who campaigned and created a petition to remove all boycotted products from his college canteen, remarked that “the availability of instant news and information became a bit overwhelming”, and even ended up doing the opposite of its intention as people around him became more ignorant, fatigued from the information overload. Teenagers as young as 15 have made comments like “I just don’t feel like anything anymore”, because they can simply scroll past a global crisis to a skincare or makeup routine video, indulging in rapid switching that our brains are not programmed to process.

While both mental healthcare professionals, Arshad and Rashid, spoke up about the desensitisation, dissociation, and emotional blunting that they’ve observed in their teenage clientele, they repeatedly emphasised the involuntary nature of it. “It does not mean a person has started lacking empathy. They do care, but their brain shuts down the intensity of their emotional reactions as a defence mechanism,” said Arshad.

Another coping mechanism that is extremely common among teenagers is humour. The meme war during the India-Pakistan conflict — the one in which one side indulged in humour and the other got offended and spewed curse words — is a prime example of how Gen Z will laugh and joke their way through anything. Statements like “the world’s ending anyway, so why should I care?” stem from a sense of powerlessness and self-preservation.

If you poke fun at your own mental health or appearance, or the other dozen crises you’re going through in a tongue-in-cheek manner, nobody will be able to use them against you. Similarly, cracking jokes and laughing off world events is practically a mental blockade to help you dissociate.

Amid the countless tragic videos to come out of Gaza, there have been a few by young Palestinians that make use of humour and sarcasm to get their point across, which is also a commentary on the sad state of affairs that our cognitive processes have boiled down to.

During times when every single day churns out “a major historic event”, headlines flow like water, and a single search takes you down a rabbit hole where you now know the name of Benjamin Netanyahu’s grandfather’s third cousin’s sister-in-law’s cat? Not only does it dampen your spirits, but over time, regular doomscrolling can cause anxiety and desensitisation.

In an article published by Harvard Health Publishing, Dr Aditi Nerurkar, a lecturer in the Division of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, says that doomscrolling can give us “popcorn brain,” which happens when we spend too much time online. “It’s the real, biological phenomenon of feeling your brain is popping because you’re being overstimulated online.”

Such instances of information overload are common during political happenings. In the wake of the 2016 US presidential election, psychologist Dr Steven Stosny coined the term “headline stress disorder”, defined as a “high emotional response to endless reports from the news media, such as feeling anxiety and stress.” Psychotherapist Rashid remarked that when lives go on as usual during a major event such as the Indo-Pak conflict of May 2025, “it creates a disconnect from the gravity of the horrible things happening around us”.

According to Arshad, the clinical psychologist, many teens have described feeling “helplessness, emotional numbness and powerlessness”. They’ve told her that after witnessing years of terrorist attacks and threats, bombings, violence, and school shootings are no longer scary but just another headline to them.

Growing up in Karachi, where news of murders and targeted killings were more readily available than water, I have been witness to how years of exposure have desensitised many to have little to no reaction when they hear this news today. Al Hamd Khalid, a 19-year-old from Karachi, described these circumstances as “living in a dystopian world with a bomb aimed at us at all times”.

Cocomelon for adults

A major contributor to headline-induced anxiety and a sense of impending doom is the dynamic nature of information delivery. Traditional newspapers are one-dimensional in the way that they have limited visuals and stimulate minimal senses. When you had had enough of politicians playing the blame game, you could simply fold your newspaper and toss it into the growing pile of papers give to the raddi wala or ragpicker.

On the other hand, digital media is multidimensional with flashy graphics and trending audio — basically, Cocomelon for teenagers, and you can’t get rid of it even when you’ve had enough. No one’s out here tossing away phones, and deleting Instagram only takes you so far before you redownload it as your primary source of news and communication.

But wait, there’s an even more adult version of Cocomelon available in the form of television talk shows where up is down, down is up, everybody’s screaming, and Firdous Ashiq Awaan is slapping members of the National Assembly. While adults condemn kids hooked to Cocomelon or Miss Rachel, they too are addicted, just to a slightly different drug.

Arshad commented on how “emotionally loaded, bite-sized pieces” of information overwhelm the nervous system, leaving little space for empathy or reflection. “Constant stimulation of audio-visual information can lead to a sensory overload, where the nervous system is in a constant state of hyperarousal, and it can lead to anxiety, irritability, restlessness and physical fatigue.”

Emotional stimulation can impact people differently. For Arham, it forced him to become “more aware and responsible”; scrolling through Instagram and coming across videos from Gaza helped him educate himself, and “in truth, the flashy graphics and trending audio led [him] to support Gaza”. Khalid said, “I feel overstimulated, but I also believe it is necessary for me to feel that way”.

I would like to add a disclaimer — in no way do secondhand stress, anxiety, and fatigue compare to what people who are living these tragedies go through, and teenagers struggling with feelings of overwhelm acknowledge that as well. Adil said, “The ability to look away is a privilege, and it is my responsibility as a human being not to turn away from the tragedy others are facing. While I do think the influx of such information has desensitised me to some extent, I keep reminding myself to never let such tragedies be normalised.”

Echoing similar sentiments, Arham admitted, “I won’t say it hasn’t desensitised me, it definitely has, but my determination to boycott, and my beliefs still stand strong! I am used to this dehumanisation, and that makes me want to stop it even more.”

It is important to navigate these emotions with accountability and channel your privilege to be a force for change, but also acknowledge the biological limitations of your sensory system and try to remain sane.

While it was a sincere attempt to raise awareness about the reality of those living with dissociative identity disorder, it was ultimately misguided. The creators of Ishq Zahe Naseeb (2019) essentially end up reiterating the same misconceptions and stereotypes about already exist: that they are a danger to others and themselves.

This narrative choice, among other things, is part of a bigger problem in Pakistani television, which is that Pakistani writers, at their best, don’t understand mental illness, and at their worst, conflate mental illness with morality.

The morality and the personal responsibility of those who suffer from psychological concerns is a topic that is often debated in many scientific and judicial circles, but the point of apprehension is how morality is woven into mental illness as a form of punishment in Pakistani dramas.

Teaching a lesson

A clear message is sent when the fight between good and evil in a drama ends with the bad or immoral character succumbing to madness due to their hubris. Here, mental illness serves as a plot point, a moral lesson for the audience. The mental illness exhibited is not a component of a wider whole of the character, but rather a consequence of their own actions. In Madness & Civilisation: A History of Insanity in Age of Reason, Michel Foucalt differentiates this ailment from mental illness, and calls it a madness that is a social construct, that is meant to serve a purpose. In our dramas, the purpose is caution.

Those who err will be served divine justice. They might escape the law but they won’t escape God, which is why Syed Jibran’s character goes mad in Chup Raho (2014) — it is divine retribution for sexually assaulting his sister-in-law played by Sajal Aly. Similarly, Riz Kamali’s character in Bubbly Kya Chahti Hai starts losing her mental bearings after being divorced by her husband (played by Shahzad Raza) for her infidelity, only to then be immediately be rejected by her lover (played by Salahuddin Tunio) too. Her madness is the consequence of her own greed and duplicity. Both of these characters’ lunacy is their punishment for all the wrong they’ve done and the sins they committed against other people.

Losing faith and culture is also often shown as a downfall. The modern, westernised woman — outspoken, greedy, and ambitious — is painted as unstable compared to her quiet, modest, and religious counterpart. One is seen as ‘bad’ for being too bold, the other as ‘good’ for sticking to tradition. Weak faith equals weak identity in these stories, making the modern woman seem neurotic and fragile; someone who can’t handle failure or disappointment.

This lesson is driven home by the suicides of Naveen Waqar and Aisha Malik’s characters in Humsafar (2011) and Mann Mayal (2016) respectively. Sara (Waqar) is shown to wear western clothes, work at an office and belong to a upper class background, in contrast to her rival (Mahira Khan), who is seen with her head covered in a dupatta, teaches tuition at home and belongs to a lower-middle class background. In the same vein, Jeena (Malik) is a woman who works at an office, has no family and hence is self-reliant, very unlike her rival (Maya Ali) who is simplistic, eastern, docile and often shown praying. After repeated failures and rejection in their pursuit of love, Sara and Jeena find no solution except taking their lives, while their rivals persevere through their hardships with patience, faith and humility.

By repeatedly presenting mental illness as ‘punishment’ for immorality and injustice, or a consequence of weak faith or weak mind, mental illness itself becomes synonymous with immorality, and mentally ill individuals become wicked and feeble minded.

Women and madness

Under the patriarchy, being “feeble-minded” has long been linked with being a woman. For centuries, women have been stereotyped as emotional, irrational, and a bit too simple. So it’s no surprise that when stories show someone “going mad,” it’s usually a woman.

Even psychology (a field built to understand people) has a history of labelling women’s feelings and experiences as problems that need ‘fixing’.

Women losing their minds has been a go-to trope for ages, it has even been used by Shakespeare — think of Ophelia’s fate in Hamlet. That’s because madness is often seen as the opposite of masculine logic and control. And since society treats emotion and delicacy as “feminine,” it’s easy to link mental illness with womanhood. Women are viewed as closer to guilt, melancholia, and hysteria, which makes them easy targets for being labeled as mentally unstable. In a way, madness has become feminised: seen as something women naturally fall into just by being who they are.

Phyllis Chesler theorises in Women & Madness that men are typically allowed a broader range of acceptable behaviours than their female counterparts: “Thus, since women are allowed fewer total behaviours and are more strictly confined to their role-sphere than men are, women… will commit more behaviours that are seen as ill or unacceptable.”

When it comes to traditional gender roles, women are expected to be soft-spoken, kind, and dependent on men. Those who deviate from these expectations are often portrayed as antagonists, characterised by traits like cunning and ambition. Such female characters engage in manipulation and deceit, leading the more naive characters to fall victim to their schemes.

Meanwhile, men who make mistakes don’t always face the same judgment. In fact, they’re often given the chance to grow, redeem themselves, or just walk away from their mistakes. Take Bashar Momin (2014), for instance, whose titular character is a money launderer, an arrogant and egoistic man prone to fits of anger who mistreats his employees and his wife alike. At the end of the show, after some self-reflection, he is a changed man, soft-spoken, respectful and loving.

The narrative suggests that women who violate societal norms face severe repercussions, often culminating in their madness or victimisation like Nimra in Jhooti (2020), Nisha in Jalan (2020), Gohar in Nand (2020) or Nayla in Titli (2017), while men frequently evade punishment. In 2017’s Khani Feroze Khan’s character may have committed murder, but he found God at the end of the show, and hence gets to be redeemed, highlighting the harsher penalties imposed by the patriarchy on women. Consequently, ‘bad women’ are portrayed as irredeemable figures, stripped of nuance and rationality, learning the weight of their transgressions solely through divine retribution.

A heavy crown (for the ladies)

The antagonists/anti-heroes in Jhooti, Jalan, Titli and Nand are power hungry, which is impermissible in a patriarchal society. Iqra Aziz’s character in Jhooti is a greedy woman, who will use any means necessary to marry rich, whether she has to lie, cheat, steal or harass her sisters-in-law, even causing a miscarriage. Similarly, Minal Khan’s character in Jalan is incessantly and obsessively jealous of her sister, whose husband she is in love with, eventually scheming her way into marrying him while her sister sets herself on fire in grief.

Bewilderingly, despite having an equal part in the affair that lead to Mishu’s (Areeba Habib) death, Emmad Irfani’s character doesn’t go mad like Nisha, and simply dies. Faiza Hasan’s character in Nand (2020) ruins her brothers’ married lives through her manipulative tactics, while Hania Aamir’s character in Titli (2017) is vain and greedy and eventually abandons her husband and children to be with another man, culminating in her downfall.

The message is clear: women who seek control are seen as irrational, and their punishment is madness. Because power, in these stories, is still treated as a male trait.

Virtuous women are docile, while unconscionable women are ambitious, as aptly shown in Kasak (2020), in which the ‘good’ woman (Iqra Aziz), obediently accepts her marriage to man who has a young son, while the ‘bad’ woman (Ayesha Toor) is a modern working woman who is both a bad mother and wife.

The only time women seem to be shown using their agency is when they’re trying to control other people (or their own lives) and then they’re punished for it by being driven to madness. This demonises the mere thought of women’s agency. The domination of men’s lives by women is unacceptable, like in Balaa (2019), in which Ushna Shah’s character slowly kills Taimoor’s (Bilal Abbas) entire family to be the only thing he has. However, the domination of women’s lives by men can be exonerated, such as in Mann Mast Malaang (2025), in which Danish Taimoor’s character ties up the female lead to keep her from leaving him, or in Ishq Hai (2021), where he kidnaps his lover and forces her into marriage.

The patriarchy puts women in a tight box. If a woman reaches for power, she’s seen as not feminine enough and is often portrayed as going mad — like Gohar in Nand, who is controlling and overbearing, which are ‘unfeminine’ qualities. On the flip side, if she sticks to traditional femininity, she’s seen as weak and ends up breaking down emotionally — Mahira Khan’s character in Hum Kahan Ke Sachay Thay (2021) who is a victim of her cousin’s schemes and envy, but too innocent to know how to be taken seriously, has a slow mental breakdown; or like Samina Peerzada’s character in Balaa (2019), who goes mad with grief because of her daughters’ deaths.

But what about men?

Mental illness in men is heavily stigmatised because of toxic ideas about masculinity; showing emotion is seen as weak or a loss of control. Since mental health struggles are mostly shown through women’s stories, it makes these issues seem “feminine,” which can make men feel ashamed or less manly for going through the same thing.

We do see women dealing with trauma — like in Chup Raho and Dar Si Jati Hai Sila (2018), whose protagonists are survivors of sexual violence — but men who also face serious trauma, such as soldiers, victims of community violence or car crash survivors, rarely get that same attention, even though they’re just as likely to suffer from PTSD. This further erases men’s mental health issues.

The bare minimum

Even when dramas do attempt to portray mental illness as part of a greater whole, the representation is reductive and simplistic. Depression is only sadness and constant sobbing, anxiety is being fidgety and scared, PTSD is temporary.

Characters with autism are infantalised and presented as intellectually impaired —like Imran Ashraf’s Bhola in Ranjha Ranjha Kardi (2018), who is coded autistically and shown like a child in an adult’s body — despite the fact that autism is a spectrum. Female characters are often seen fainting and immediately diagnosed with a “nervous breakdown” (an outdated term) after being driven to their emotional limits.

To top it all off, there is rarely any representation of treatment, which ties back to themes of morality; bad people get punished, and good people recover on their own — like how Bhola’s intellectual impairment seems to improve on its own. With this lesson, madness is a desired outcome, a fitting punishment befalling the sinner.

When Taimoor drives Nigar mad towards the end of Balaa, the audience feels vindicated, further discouraging them from feeling compassion towards individuals with mental illness; immoral people deserve it, and moral people don’t remain mentally ill, divorcing treatment entirely from the conversation.

Why does this matter?

These kinds of portrayals just add to the stigma around mental illness in our culture. Seeing the same negative images again and again makes people afraid of mental health issues and of those dealing with them.

A 2023 review by James Goodwin and Laura Behan found that media stereotypes lead the public to hold biased views and keep their distance from people who use mental health services. A study from the Czech Republic also showed that these portrayals can stop people from getting help. They lower self-esteem, make it harder to stick with treatment, and get in the way of recovery.

Good mental health representation shouldn’t be a second thought, but the most primal part of the drama the writers set out to create. A critical media lens is essential in challenging harmful portrayals and advocating for more compassionate, realistic depictions of psychological struggles, because these portrayals have real life consequences. Pakistani television is still in the early stages of offering good representation of mental illness, for both men and women. If Pakistani creators must insist on portraying mental illness, they can at least take a page out of international media like Midsommar (2019), which explores female madness through a critical feminist lens.

Mental health issues aren’t ‘good’ or ‘bad’ nor are they the consequences of someone’s actions — they just are. Offering nuanced stories where mental illness doesn’t exist solely to serve a moral narrative is the only way to dismantle the taboos of our culture.