After dining lavishly on lobster, caviar and truffles in the opulent surrounds of the Palace of Versailles last night, Donald Trump affixed his signature to the much-anticipated memorandum of understanding that will, all being well, begin a 60-day ceasefire between the US, Israel and Iran.

The document was subsequently signed in Tehran by the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian. “This was not easy,” the US president reportedly remarked as he wielded his trademark Sharpie marker pen – a statement that may go down as a huge understatement.

The text of the deal reveals the Iranian negotiators drove a very hard bargain in return for opening the Strait of Hormuz, which the world now hopes will enable the global economy to recover from the considerable disruption of the past three and a half months.

This war has been an utter disaster for the US and Israel, writes Arshin Adib-Moghaddam of SOAS, University of London, who has been researching and writing about Iranian affairs for many years. Trump and his ally, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have failed to secure any of the outcomes they set out to achieve when they attacked Iran on February 28.

In fact it has arguably left Iran, while battered, stronger strategically than it was before the war. It’s not as if Iran-watchers haven’t warned of the danger of using blunt force against Iran.

As Adib-Moghaddam notes here, he and fellow scholars and analysts have been stressing for years that the Islamic Republic was well prepared for the sort of asymmetrical conflict we have now seen it wage. And now, of course, it has demonstrated to itself – and the rest of the world – what a potent deterrent it has in its ability to shut down the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.

Read more: Iran ceasefire deal confirms what we’ve been saying for years: military might doesn’t work The state banquet at Versailles followed the 2026 summit of the Group of Seven (G7), which has been taking place this week in the French spa town of Évian-les-Bains.

As Natasha Lindstaedt of the University of Essex notes, this was a clever move dreamed up by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, who was desperate to avoid a repeat of last year’s summit in Alberta, Canada, when the US president walked out a day early.

On that occasion he refused to sign the usual unified G7 statement, complaining that he didn’t like the language on Ukraine. There was no such reticence this year. Macron was cock-a-hoop at what he called a “very deep change in the US approach”.

It was, he said, “re-synchronisation” for the G7 on the war in Ukraine, which released a statement pledging unwavering support for Ukraine in defending its territorial integrity, which Trump also signed after what the US president said was a “very good” meeting with Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky on the summit’s sidelines.

Key to achieving this unity, says Lindstaedt, was the approach of the other G7 leaders towards the US president: flattery. As we know, this is something that has proved highly effective in the past.

Read more: Macron plays ‘Trump whisperer’ as the US president signs Iran ceasefire deal after a successful G7 summit Republicans unimpressed If Trump’s dining companions at Versailles were effusive in their congratulations for the US president’s deal, the reaction from many prominent Republicans in the US has been less than positive.

“Reagan is rolling over in his grave,” commented Senator Bill Cassidy, who added that the war had been “the worst foreign policy blunder in decades”. It’s a view shared by much of the party’s old guard, who see the deal as a capitulation.

Quite how Iran managed to gain the upper hand in a conflict against two of the world’s best-armed militaries will make for an important case study for students of war. Jim Lamson and Matthew Moran of King’s College London explain how Iran managed to turn the tables and emerge not only undefeated, but arguably stronger.

Read more: How Iran gained the strategic upper hand in the war with the US and Israel Israelis livid Meanwhile, if the US president’s critics in the US are unimpressed, Israelis – friend and foe alike – are positively livid.

David Horovitz, the editor of The Times of Israel, called it “a catastrophic capitulation”. Others have been less polite. Benjamin Netanyahu has made no public comment since the deal was signed.

It has been reported that he wasn’t shown the finalised agreement before it was signed (Trump commented this week of their alliance that: “We are the big partner and he is the very small partner”, which will give him an idea of where he stands).

The fact is, writes Simon Mabon, a Middle East specialist at Lancaster University, that despite being close allies, the US and Israel – but particularly Trump and Netanyahu – are at loggerheads over what they want from the war from any peace agreement that ends it.

Most Israelis see any bid by Iran to develop a nuclear weapon as an existential issue, for which there can be no compromise. The war, meanwhile, is deeply unpopular in the US, where rising fuel prices and inflation are really beginning to hit home.

The war has also hurt Trump’s popularity which is at a new low, just months before November’s midterm elections, at which the Republicans are likely to lose control of at least one chamber of Congress, if not both.

Netanyahu also faces an election in October. So the idea of a ceasefire with no resolution of the nuclear issue is anathema. To further complicate the situation, the deal stipulates an end to the conflict being waged in southern Lebanon and makes the US responsible for guaranteeing that country’s territorial integrity.

This would require Israel to withdraw, something the Israeli prime minister has firmly ruled out, setting the scene for some serious discord between the two leaders. Read more: Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have different war aims – can the Iran peace deal survive?

All of which means we may well be hearing some more fairly ripe language from Donald Trump, who has recently told the Israeli prime minister he is “fucking crazy” and that he has “no fucking judgement”.

Strong words. But not without precedent. As Andrew Gawthorpe, an expert in US politics at Leiden University notes here, Netanyahu has a long track record of moving US presidents to profanity. Read more: Why US presidents end up cursing Benjamin Netanyahu

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/donald-trumps-iran-ceasefire-deal-prompts-strong-feelings-and-profane-language/

10’000 Hours/Getty Images This week, a group of Australian primary school principals called for more male primary school teachers, saying boys needed more “male role models”. The Australian Government Primary Principals Association told a parliamentary inquiry male students were struggling with their schoolwork in part due to a lack of male role models.

So, what is happening with male teacher numbers in primary schools? And what is needed for good role models for boys and for all children? Numbers in decline The proportion of male primary teachers in Australia has been falling steadily for decades.

It was around 30% in the 1980s but dropped to below 20% in 2007. As of 2025, 17.6% Australian primary school teachers were male. However, that figure reflects all male teachers in primary schools, including principals and physical education specialists.

So the actual number of men teaching in primary school classrooms is likely to be even lower. Numbers vary slightly from state to state, but are all around 15-20%. Researchers have even previously suggested male primary teachers could become “extinct” by 2067 if the downward trend continues.

Teachers as role models Politicians, parents and school leaders have all argued we need more men in primary schools. There is a view more male teachers could improve boys’ academic outcomes, that men can act as positive male role models and that increased numbers of male staff would better represent the general population.

Does the research support these views? In short, the research findings are mixed. Some students, particularly boys, say they enjoy being taught by male teachers. But large international studies suggest teacher effectiveness is not determined by gender.

This international research also indicates female-dominated primary school teaching is not causing poorer outcomes for male students. Similarly, while male and female teachers may be role models for some students, research suggests students’ role models are more likely to be peers and family members.

How schools can benefit from more men This is not to say schools shouldn’t look at increasing the numbers of male teachers. Researchers and policy makers have suggested school staff rooms should be more reflective of the student population and wider society.

This includes gender, but also demographics such as race and ethnicity. A staff group with different characteristics and perspectives could increase the likelihood of all students being able to find a teacher they can relate to.

This may promote feelings of school belonging, which can improve students’ engagement and reduce disruptive behaviour. Australian research has also indicated primary students and their parents want more male teachers for social reasons, not academic reasons.

Some young boys and girls have said they wanted to understand how to interact with men. Role models and stereotypes But there are other reasons to be cautious about claims men are needed as positive school role models for boys.

Research with primary school principals shows the phrase “male role model” can be code for men who display traditional traits of masculinity. In other words, men who display heterosexual, stoic, sport-playing, “real man” characteristics. While such role models are valuable for some students, they can exclude other students and other forms of masculinity.

They also overlook how women can model and teach traditionally masculine values. Addressing the decline Our research suggests several factors may help recruit and retain more men in primary teaching.

Research tells us male teachers may be worried about social isolation in a female-dominated workplace, uncertainty around dealing with physical contact with students, and expectations to undertake typically masculine roles in a school, such as sports coaching or maths and science teaching.

Research has also suggested that a broader definition of masculinity is required to encourage more men into “caring” professions like primary school teaching. This could involve including behaviours such as being kind, knowing childrens’ interests, listening to their worries and offering words of reassurance as acceptable aspects of masculinity.

Caring professions, typically performed by women, have traditionally offered lower pay and status than other careers. This can feed into young people’s career aspirations. So to get more men involved in primary school teaching, we need a multi-level approach.

This includes schools ensuring they welcome and encourage male teachers, and teaching degrees preparing male teachers to handle challenges in their workplaces.

More widely, we need to rethink what we expect from “male teachers”, promote acceptance of “caring” forms of masculinity and reconsider how we pay and support all teachers in these important roles.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/men-make-up-less-than-18-of-australian-primary-school-teachers-is-this-a-problem/

UnexpectedDinoLesson / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY More than 100 million years ago, a flying reptile called a pterosaur flew over the oceans hunting squid and fish. Much more recently, one of its wing bones was discovered in Brazil, transformed over the aeons into a fossil made of a complex assemblage of different chemicals and minerals.

And in new research published in iScience, my colleagues and I found that the fossil bone still holds secrets of the creature’s life, including microscopic inner structures of its bones and molecular traces of its biology and diet.

A fossil treasure from Brazil The fossil comes from the Romualdo Formation in the Araripe Basin of northeastern Brazil, one of the world’s most spectacular fossil deposits. The site has yielded exquisitely preserved fish, turtles, crocodile relatives, and pterosaurs.

Many fossils from the Romualdo Formation are preserved inside rounded rock nodules known as carbonate concretions. These mineral structures form shortly after burial, effectively sealing the remains from the environment. Think of them as natural time capsules.

A microscope view of a section of the pterosaur fossil shows its dark carbon coating and mineral layers. Grice et al. Our fossil is a hollow wing bone, or phalanx. Pterosaur bones were thin and lightweight to aid flight, so they are rarely preserved in such detail.

Using high-resolution CT scanning, we examined the bone’s interior without breaking it open. The scans revealed layers of minerals with different densities filling the cavity – evidence of a complex sequence of chemical events that preserved the bone.

We used several other methods to identify the minerals. Microbes helped decay – and preservation The fossil’s exceptional preservation may have begun with decay. As the pterosaur’s body decomposed on the ancient seafloor, microbes broke down tissues and altered sediment chemistry.

You had this reference as Jian et al. 2026 – I have added this link but please check it’s the right paper. ML These changes triggered the rapid formation of phosphate minerals. One mineral in particular, called fluorapatite, formed within and around the bone, stabilising delicate features before they could be lost.

Under the microscope, we could still see microscopic canals that once carried nutrients through living tissue. Mineral analysis revealed evidence of microbial activity. We detected barite and celestite, minerals associated with sulphur-using bacteria. These microbes drove chemical reactions that helped create the conditions necessary for preservation.

In other words, ancient microbes didn’t just decay the body, they also helped preserve it for science. A mineral vault for ancient molecules After early phosphate minerals stabilised the bone, a sequence of calcite layers gradually formed inside and around it.

These derived largely from carbon released during the decay of fatty tissue. First, a thin layer of fine-grained calcite formed along the bone surface, followed by a second, slightly coarser-grained one. Over a longer period of time, larger calcite crystals formed, ultimately filling the bone cavity.

Analysis showed this calcite was low in an isotope called carbon-13, which indicates it partly came from organic carbon sources, such as fatty lipids and residual bone material. In contrast, any remaining organic matter in the bone appears to have relatively high levels of carbon-13.

The multi-layered mineral barrier acted like a geological vault, protecting delicate structures and organic compounds trapped in the bone from chemical degradation for millions of years. This protection allowed molecular traces such as steroid biomarkers and collagen fibre patterns to survive, giving us a rare window into the biology and diet of this ancient flying reptile.

Molecular traces of ancient life Within this mineralised structure, we detected molecular traces of life called steranes, which are derived from steroidal lipids once present in living cells. To our knowledge, this is the first time steroid biomarkers have been reported from a pterosaur fossil.

Even more exciting, these molecules carry dietary clues. Carbon isotope analysis of cholesterol-derived compounds suggests this pterosaur likely fed on fish or squid-like marine animals, which is what we would expect from the shape of its teeth and skull.

The fossil also preserves microscopic structures resembling collagen fibres, the protein framework that strengthens bone. Although chemically altered over millions of years, the fibre patterns remain visible and resemble those seen in modern birds, which are distant relatives of pterosaurs.

Reading fossils in new ways Discoveries like this one are transforming how we study fossils. Instead of examining only bone shapes, we can now recover chemical and molecular fingerprints as well. Understanding how these exceptional fossils form may help identify other specimens capable of preserving ancient biomolecules.

More broadly, our findings show that under the right conditions, molecular traces of life can survive for more than 100 million years. Even after millions upon millions of years, ancient life can still leave behind chemical clues waiting to be discovered.

As analytical techniques continue to advance and unusual modes of preservation become better understood, there is increasing potential to recover previously inaccessible information.

In the future, we may even be able to detect ancient DNA fragments or other molecular remnants in exceptionally preserved fossils, including those of dinosaurs and pterosaurs.

Kliti Grice receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

The specimen used in this research was provided by Associate Professor Renan A.M. Bantim and Professor Antônio A.F. Saraiva at the Regional University of Cariri, and Professor Alexander W.A. Kellner at the Department of Geology and Paleontology, Museu Nacional and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, UFRJ – who also contributed to this research and related projects.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/microbes-destroyed-an-ancient-pterosaurs-wingbone-then-preserved-it-for-100-million-years/

The World Cup captures the attention of passionate supporters all around the world, as well as casual fans who get swept up in the excitement every four years.

Hardcore fans follow as many games as closely as they can, assessing not just the wins, draws and losses, but also more technical aspects such as possession percentages, expected goals, duels won, corners and more.

But for those tuning into the world game for the first time in four years, the language can be rather confusing. So what does it all mean?

Read more: ‘Soccer’ is a fine term for the beautiful game – don’t let any ‘football’ snob or president tell you otherwise this World Cup The language of the world game Soccer’s language is unique and provides fans, coaches and players with a collective understanding of what is happening on the pitch.

It may be a casual description of a player’s tactic or technique, or team strategy. For example, “park the bus” is often attributed to legendary Portuguese coach José Mourinho describing how an opponent “left a bus in front of the goal” so his team could not score.

This striking imagery actually means the opposition formed a defensive line in front of the goals so there was no space to play through. “Park the bus” and “the (defensive) wall” are now common in many sports to convey the strategy of stalling or completely shutting down an opponent’s opportunity to attack.

What about some other phrases? Here are some of the other phrases you are likely to hear in this World Cup. Build-up play is a structured sequence of passes that moves the ball from the defensive back third of the field to the attacking front third.

Corridor refers to a move in which there are three (imaginary) vertical lines on the field – a central corridor down the middle of the pitch and two wing corridors on either side of it. If a team makes a pass down the middle area, it may be said they are “attacking through the corridor”.

Inverted back/winger is when an attacking player moves from near the touchline (sideline) on the wing corridor into the middle corridor with the aim of creating more numbers in the midfield than the opposition has defenders.

This is called creating an “overload” or “superiority”.

False nine refers to a forward (or “striker”, a player who wears the number nine in the conventional team numbering system) moving into the midfield with the aim of drawing an opposition defender to them and away from defending the space in front of the goals.

This can then create space for wingers to attack the goals.

Counter-pressing is a defensive strategy in which a team that loses the ball immediately attempts to close down the opposition’s space so as to win the ball back in the area of the pitch where they lost it, rather than moving into a defensive shape behind the ball.

Zonal marking is a defensive strategy in which players are responsible for guarding a specific area of the pitch rather than defending (“marking”) a specific player.

Offside trap is when all defenders come forward together as a line just as an opponent’s pass forward is about to be played, to try to trap an attacking player, who is rushing forward, in an offside position.

Step up/push up is an instruction to the defensive line to move forward to support the midfield. Switch the play means a player with the ball passes it across the field to the opposite, less defended side of the pitch.

Drop/drop-off is when a defending player retreats to prevent an attacking player from running around or behind them. Man on is an instruction to a player with the ball that an opponent is close, or closing on them quickly and likely to tackle or corral them (restrict their movement).

Total football is a phrase made famous in the 1970s by legendary Dutch coaches Rinus Michels and Johan Cruyff. It refers to a team strategy in which all players, except for the goalkeeper, can swap roles rather than stay in a fixed position.

Panenka is when there is a penalty kick, and an attacker aims to trick the goalkeeper with a softer, lobbed shot. Instead of blasting the ball to the left or right of the goalkeeper, the kicker lightly flicks under the ball so it rises up and over a diving goalkeeper.

It can be a risky move. A language shared by many Soccer has its own vernacular that can include technical and strategic terminology, casual slang, quirky and provocative fan chants and much more.

Read more: Why the US World Cup chants are being mocked – and what makes a great one Even the name used for the sport can be polarising – soccer is used in some countries where there are other football codes, while most of the world prefers to use “football”.

Above all, the language is shared by almost four billion people whose conversations and interest are sparked by one round ball, two goals and 22 athletes on a field.

Shane Pill does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/park-the-bus-the-false-nine-and-total-football-what-do-soccers-strange-phrases-mean/

Jens Büttner/Getty Images A customer sends a WhatsApp message to a local store asking about a product. Within seconds, they receive an answer. The product they’re after is in stock. Or, if it isn’t, they’re recommended an alternative.

Welcome to the next generation of customer service bots – and the latest battleground among the world’s largest technology companies. Big tech firms are now pouring billions of dollars into artificial intelligence (AI) agents: systems capable of autonomous decision-making and task execution.

The value of agentic AI’s global market is projected to climb from US$10.9billion in 2026 to a staggering $182.9 billion by 2033.

At its annual Conversations conference in London this month, Meta unveiled Business Agent, an AI system that can answer customer questions, qualify sales leads, manage bookings and process transactions directly within platforms such as WhatsApp.

For small businesses that lack the staff or resources to provide round-the-clock customer support, the appeal is obvious. Larger organisations can integrate the technology into existing sales, booking and customer management systems. Having spent two decades reshaping the advertising industry, Meta’s move may seem like a natural progression.

But there is more at stake than another tech giant automating customer service. Converting attention to transaction Most of us know Meta as the conglomerate behind social media platforms Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. But Mark Zuckerberg’s business, which last year hit US0 billion in revenue, has long been built around advertising.

It comes down to understanding audiences, capturing their attention and then selling businesses the chance to reach the right people with the right message at the right time. Meta’s Business Agent now shifts the company into that transactional moment which follows the advert, click or message.

It’s the point where a customer is already asking themselves what to buy, whether to book or how to solve a problem. This means Meta has begun seeking a place within the customer relationship itself: whether that’s answering questions, presenting options, organising follow-up or making a shopper’s next step easier to take.

It also explains why AI agents have become such a hotly contested space for tech companies. The likes of Google, Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI and Meta have all started from vastly different corners of the market but, increasingly, their ambitions are all converging here.

Microsoft and Amazon Web Services are leveraging their massive cloud infrastructure to embed autonomous agents directly into existing enterprise resource planning and customer relationship management software, such as Dynamics 365. OpenAI is aggressively pushing custom-built, multi-agent frameworks that allow businesses to deploy tailored “GPTs” to handle complex, cross-department operations.

Meanwhile, Google is integrating agentic capabilities directly into its dominant search and workspace tools, aiming to capture intent before a user even leaves the browser search bar. Meta’s route seems especially logical because many of those interactions already happen in its messaging platforms.

Just consider a restaurant that can take bookings through WhatsApp or a fashion label able to handle product queries through Instagram. For Meta, its agent can convert those exchanges into a more fully automated commercial pathway.

Who really wins? For small businesses, the benefits are obvious. AI agents offer capabilities once reserved for banks, airlines and other large organisations able to build sophisticated customer service systems of their own. They can answer routine questions, remember product details, respond across multiple languages and free staff to focus on tasks that still require human judgement, such as handling complaints.

But convenience comes with a trade-off. The more useful an AI agent becomes, the more influence it gains over the interaction itself. It is helping determine what information customers receive, which products are recommended and how they move from enquiry to purchase.

At the same time, every interaction provides the platform owner with valuable insight into what customers want, where they hesitate and what ultimately drives a sale. For many businesses, that may seem a fair exchange.

But over time, the balance of power may begin to shift. As more customer interactions are mediated by AI, businesses risk becoming increasingly dependent on platforms they do not control. Customers, meanwhile, may enjoy faster responses and a more seamless experience.

Less visible is the role these platforms play in shaping those interactions – and the commercial value they derive from them. Just how profoundly AI agents shake up global commerce remains to be seen. But the early signs suggest they will do more than automate customer service.

They could accelerate a shift in power away from the businesses that own products and services, and towards the platforms that increasingly mediate the relationships those businesses depend on.

Guy Bate is affiliated with EdTechNZ

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/more-than-chatbots-why-business-ai-agents-are-big-techs-next-product-battleground/

Patrick Hawlik/Unsplash There’s a new trend in horror fiction: the female cannibal. In Monika Kim’s The Eyes are the Best Part (2025), a college student eats the eyeballs of the men who fetishise her.

In Delilah S. Dawson’s Bloom (2023), the love interest, who appears to be living a fantasy version of cottage life, is actually including body parts in her organic homemade goods. In Chelsea G. Summers’ novel A Certain Hunger (2021), a remorseless food critic cooks her lovers.

You can find cannibals in three more novels published last year alone: Lucy Rose’s literary folk horror sensation The Lamb, Olivie Blake’s Girl Dinner and Catherine Dang’s What Hunger. They follow Ling Ling Huang’s Natural Beauty (2023), Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings (2020) and many more.

Cannibalism is not a new theme in horror, of course. There is Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, people as food in Solyent Green – and last year’s hit Apple series, Pluribus.

But the new wave of cannibal novels are written by women. These books feature man-eaters who are gory, graphic and distinctly feminist. The female cannibal has become a radical figure, who satisfies her cravings. These are stories about women who are violent, angry and resistant.

Horror thrives in times of anxiety.

Renowned authors, such as Ann Radcliffe in the late 18th century, Charlotte Perkins Gilman in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and Shirley Jackson in the mid 20th century, have explored the themes of isolation, domestic abuse and the suffocating nature of patriarchy through horror writing.

In Cannibalism in Literature and Film, literary scholar Jennifer Brown asserts that the cannibal “reflects and embodies fears of specific times and spaces”. But contemporary feminist horror novels also encourage deeper questions. In A Certain Hunger, protagonist Dorothy turns her male lovers into gourmet meals, while lamenting the double standards within patriarchal America.

Ji-won, the protagonist of The Eyes are the Best Part, literally consumes the male gaze by eating the eyeballs of her mother’s new leering boyfriend. These female cannibals are not just committing crimes of self-defence or vengeance.

They enjoy the hunt, the kill, the meal. They are literal man-eaters, pushing the boundaries of traditional idealised femininity. Female cannibals are not thinking about weight gain or calorie intake. They relish their food and become more powerful because of it.

The female cannibal feasts, gorges and unapologetically takes pleasure in her gruesome banquet. She takes up space as a powerful (albeit bloodthirsty) victim turned villain. In The Eyes are the Best Part, the Korean-American protagonist takes advantage of harmful stereotypes about Asian women to direct suspicion away from herself.

“After all, why would he suspect docile, sweet, submissive Ji-won?” she remarks. “Why would I, a woman, let alone an Asian woman, challenge his authority?” Her novel provides food for thought about expected norms, performative activism and the prioritisation of white male entitlement.

Cannibals and body anxiety Our society’s assumption is that the “ideal” female body is white, cisgender, small and submissive. Feminist horror that centres consumption prompts a question: who benefits when women are hungry? Who benefits when we are preoccupied with becoming physically smaller?

The very first page of gender theorist Brian Pronger’s book Body Fascism (2002) describes the allure of imitating the body standards shown on our screens. People of all ages and identities, he observes, are not immune to the “personal security it represents”.

To fit in is to be desirable. To be desirable is to be safe. Striving to look like the newer, tinier, “ideal” woman is a political decision that is often unconscious. Body fascism, according to sociologist Kass Gibson, “links idealised body shapes … with notions of morally praiseworthy and responsible citizenship”.

These new cannibal novels rage against these pressures. In Kim’s book, her Asian protagonist seethes against her mother’s racist, domineering boyfriend – but craves his blue eyeballs, leading her on a binge of eyeball consumption.

In trans author Gretchen Felker-Martin’s gender apocalypse novel, Manhunt, a virus turns anyone with testosterone into a cannibal beast. And in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s 2020 bestseller, Mexican Gothic, she literalises the idea of colonisers consuming the bodies of their subjects.

In the face of societal pressure to shrink themselves, or otherwise adapt their bodies to preferred norms, these women writers are enacting fantasies of dominance and control – or using cannibalism to call out cultural dominance.

Readers’ appetite for the female cannibal suggests a shared anxiety about the policing of our bodies – whether through prejudice or the unrealistic body standards back in fashion, with the rise of Ozempic and decline of body positivity (imperfect as it was).

It also demonstrates a willingness to defy it.

Charlotte Elliott does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/female-cannibals-whats-behind-the-emerging-horror-fiction-trend/

Smoke rises from Israeli bombardment near the village of Kfar Tibnit in southern Lebanon on June 14, 2026. AFP via Getty Images The United States and Iran inked a long-awaited provisional ceasefire deal on June 17, 2026. After months of uncertainty, the people of the Gulf region can, potentially, breathe a sigh of relief, and global markets look set to be boosted by the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

What about those who have endured the war’s spillover in Lebanon? After all, the memorandum of understanding signed is not just a peace agreement between the U.S. and Iran alone. Rather, on Tehran’s insistence, the deal is intended to provide a cessation of hostilities on all fronts – including in Lebanon.

President Donald Trump is framing the deal as a win for the U.S. and the closing of the latest chapter in Washington’s Middle East entanglement. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose country was reportedly shut out of the diplomatic process, may have other plans that would challenge Trump’s authority in the region.

After news of the emerging deal broke on June 14, Netanyahu almost immediately announced that Israel will occupy Lebanon “indefinitely.” Israel then followed up with a fresh wave of airstrikes that killed four people in Lebanon.

A clearly displeased Trump publicly criticized those actions and even suggested that Syria could go in and dismantle Hezbollah, the Tehran-backed Lebanese group that has for nearly five decades fought Israel in southern Lebanon. With Israel continuing to bomb Lebanon and remove Lebanese citizens from their lands – in defiance of Washington’s wishes – the fate of the U.S.-Iran deal in Lebanon remains obscure.

As a scholar of Middle East studies, I fear the agreement leaves more questions about the delicate situation in Lebanon that it solves.

Moreover, any split in Israel-U.S. policy aims over Lebanon may have grave implications for Trump’s de-escalation attempts with Iran and also hamper hopes for a peace deal between Lebanon and Israel days before representatives of both countries plan to meet in Washington.

A defiant Israel History shows that any U.S. failure to rein in Israeli military action north of its border can have disastrous consequences. A similar scenario happened back in 1982 after Israel launched “Operation Peace for Galilee,” invading Lebanon and imposing a brutal siege on Beirut that killed over 17,000 Lebanese and Palestinian civilians and fighters.

President Donald Trump shakes hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago in late 2025. AP Photo/Alex Brandon In an angry phone call in August 1982, U.S President Ronald Reagan asked Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin to stop the heavy bombardments of Beirut.

“Menachem, this is a holocaust,” Reagan recalled saying. But Israel ignored the U.S. demands for a ceasefire. As a result, Reagan sent a an international peacekeeping force into Lebanon. Composed of French, Italian and American troops, this multinational force in Lebanon was tasked to act as a buffer zone between feuding parties and provide port security to Palestinian fighters leaving Lebanon.

Not only did Israel ignore Reagan’s attempts at de-escalation, it also defied the multinational force, harassed its troops and endangered their lives, according to U.S. military leaders. Ironically, when Israel invaded Beirut in 1982 and threatened the American troops, it did so using weapons supplied by Washington as part of the two countries’ long-standing defense arrangement.

History repeats itself A similar scenario is unfolding today. Just like Reagan and Begin’s clash in 1982, Trump and Netanyahu are engaged in what looks like a deadlock. In a recent phone call about Lebanon, Trump was reportedly overheard yelling at Netanyahu, “You’re f–king crazy.

You’d be in prison if not for me,” while pressing the Israeli government to scale back its operation in Lebanon. Today, as in 1982, Israel continues to benefit from U.S. support and arms sales.

Congress has even moved to integrate U.S. and Israeli militaries. Also, just like 1982, the American president is considering sending foreign troops into Lebanon.

But despite the American military and political support, Israel continues to brush aside any U.S policy that aims to place limits on its regional power, effectively showing a glaring limitation of U.S. dominance over the region.

A man passes by a giant billboard in south Beirut that shows the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, center, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, with Arabic writing that reads: ‘Thank you Iran.’ AP Photo/Hussein Malla Lebanon as an afterthought When the U.S. and Iran initially agreed to a two-week ceasefire in April 2026, there was confusion over whether Lebanon was included in that deal.

While Iran asserted Lebanon’s inclusion, Israel denied it and continued to bomb the country. Lebanon became part of the equation because of Hezbollah’s actions after the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran in late February 2026.

Similar to how the Tehran-backed group vowed solidarity with Hamas after Israel bombed Gaza in response to Palestinian militants’ attack on Israeli soil on Oct.7, 2023, Hezbollah struck Israel when Iran was hit. It reignited the simmering Hezbollah-Israeli war.

Today, Israel occupies south Lebanon and is threatening to annex it. The U.S.-released text of the latest Iran peace plan explicitly includes Lebanon. While that will introduce serious points of friction with Israeli designs on the country, the people in Lebanon, too, will have many questions and concerns.

I believe the deal will be seen as a welcome step but also a potential blow to Lebanon’s sovereignty.

While the text aims to protect Lebanon’s “territorial integrity,” it does not reference Israel’s actual withdrawal from these lands, and it is unclear whether this issue will be discussed in future negotiations between Israel and Lebanon or between the U.S and Iran.

Furthermore, the new deal ignores Lebanon’s efforts to free itself from Iran’s influence in the country through its Hezbollah ally.

In an unprecedented moved in May, Lebanon filed a formal complaint against Iran at the United Nations Security Council, directly accusing Tehran of violating the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations for interfering in its sovereign decisions and dragging the country into war.

In spite of Hezbollah’s open threats against the Lebanese government, Lebanese representatives held the first of several planned direct negotiations with Israeli counterparts in Washington. Israeli troops cover their ears as they fire their American-made howitzer in June 1982.

AP Photo/Harry Koundakjian Lebanon, Syria and a rocky path forward Indeed, the new U.S.-Iran deal can be interpreted as a step back for the strength of an already weak Lebanese state. Indirectly, the deal cements Iran’s control on the country’s politics and, by extension, Hezbollah.

Furthermore, and just like in 1982, the U.S. is proposing a foreign force to enter Lebanon and help end the violence.

In fact, Trump has now twice mentioned the possibility of Syria playing a role in Lebanon to enter and execute “a surgical attack on Hezbollah.” It is unclear whether the U.S. president is using these comments just as a way to pressure Israel over Lebanon or whether there is an actual plan that includes a Syrian role in the country’s future.

But just the mention of Syrian intervention evokes that country’s longtime occupation of Lebanon. In fact, at the end of the Lebanese civil war in 1991, Syria established what amounted to absolute political, military and economic hegemony over Lebanon, during which thousands of Lebanese disappeared.

The assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005 and the Cedar Revolution that followed forced the Syrian troops out of Lebanon. The fact that the new leadership in Syria is Sunni adds another complication due to Lebanon’s delicate sect-based balance of power.

If Damascus interferes in Lebanon, sectarian violence could follow, as the Syrian military presence would likely be interpreted as direct opposition to Hezbollah’s Shiite fighters. This is particularly true since Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government was accused of violence against religious minorities in Syria, including the Alawites – a religious sect close to Shia Islam – and the Druze.

Whether Syria plays a decisive role in Lebanon going forward, there is little doubt that the future of the U.S.-Iran deal depends on both Iran and Israel’s actions. So far, Israel seems uninterested in following Trump’s leadership in the region and is gearing up to play a spoiler role.

For now, and absent new breakthroughs, Lebanon, with its sovereignty almost entirely eroded, seems destined to remain at the mercy of its larger neighbors in Iran, Israel and Syria – and the erratic involvement of the U.S. abroad.

Mireille Rebeiz is affiliated with the American Red Cross.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/us-iran-deal-leaves-the-future-of-lebanon-uncertain-and-subject-to-israel-playing-the-spoiler/

Twenty years ago, 16-year-old Taylor Swift released her debut single, Tim McGraw. To understand everything that has come since – the confessional genius, the brand strategy, the carefully constructed persona – this three-minute-and-fifty-two-second country ballad is a good place to start.

As we argue in our edited collection Taylor Swift: Culture, Capital & Critique, Swift is a cultural phenomenon worthy of critical attention – a lens through which we can examine culture and power in contemporary life. The making of a country superstar In 2004, 14-year-old Swift and her family relocated from Pennsylvania to Nashville, Tennessee, so she could pursue her dream of country stardom.

During her recent induction as the youngest woman into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, Swift said: it couldn’t have been easy to just pick up and move our entire family … But after it became obvious that this was not even remotely a temporary phase their tween daughter was going through, they uprooted their entire lives to move me to music city.

Swift became the first artist signed to Big Machine Records, an independent label founded by Scott Borchetta, who signed Swift after seeing her perform at Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe. Shortly after, her stockbroker father invested about US$500,000 into the label in 2006, becoming a shareholder.

Swift went to work on her first album, Taylor Swift (2006), with Tim McGraw as the lead single. Confessional songwriting Swift has said that when she wrote Tim McGraw, she was dating a boy who was leaving for college.

So instead of a breakup song, she wrote a pre-breakup song about her desire to be remembered by her future ex-lover. The song’s emotional logic is anticipatory grief. This is remarkably mature lyrical instinct; she was already aware of the long shadow cast by first love.

She was also taking control of the narrative of her own life through lyrics. What makes the song even more significant is the form. Swift writes from a confessional “I” that collapses the line between songwriter and subject.

As one of our book chapters (by Faichney) explains, confessional songwriting conveys raw emotion and authenticity through its association with the autobiographical. This has become emblematic of Swift’s oeuvre; the most intimate parts of her life have been immortalised in song.

Tim McGraw exemplifies much of Swift’s early work: songs that nostalgically capture the experience of being young and in love. It was no accident that this connection felt so immediate and personal. Swift was cultivating it directly through MySpace blogs and personal fan responses.

This laid the groundwork for what became one of the most sophisticated parasocial relationships in pop music history. Borrowed capital: the original brand strategy It may seem an audacious move for an unknown teenager to borrow the name of country’s number one star, Tim McGraw, as her song title.

It was also a clever strategy. Using the name of an artist with crossover mainstream success on a debut release immediately communicated country music legibility. This gambit of adopted cultural credibility worked. Swift went on to open for McGraw and Faith Hill on tour.

Her single peaked at number 6 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, and reached number 40 on the Hot 100 – foreshadowing her future success. This was the first iteration of a repeated pattern in Swift’s career, in which she leverages association as a form of cultural and ideological capital.

As one of us (Whatman) argues in our collection, this approach is also visible in Swift’s relationship with feminism and whiteness.

Her celebrity “girl squad” of the 1989 era – including publicly “feminist” figures such as Mariska Hargitay and Lena Dunham – was borrowed capital of a different kind: a strategically timed visual embodiment of Swift’s public declaration of feminism.

In the Bad Blood music video and on tour, female solidarity is performed as a spectacle. The girl gang didn’t simply express “feminist” politics; it constructed them, producing a palatable, marketable, and overwhelmingly white feminism.

The limits of this strategy became visible in 2023, when Swift collaborated with rapper Ice Spice – the first Black woman to feature on one of her tracks – after she was publicly criticised for her silence on then-boyfriend Matty Healy’s racist comments about the rapper.

The template of the ‘all-American girl’ Tim McGraw also introduced the persona Swift would maintain: that of the relatable “all-American girl”, with her boots, guitar, and wholesome girl-next-door energy. Her beauty and talent might be intimidating, were it not for her approachable awkwardness and down-to-earth sincerity.

Swift had only been in Nashville for two years, yet recorded a song soaked in the iconography of a rural American girlhood she was still, in real terms, auditioning for. The song conjures the image of a country sweetheart, referencing Chevy trucks, sun-soaked fields and eyes like the “Georgia stars”.

While she has long since shed the Southern twang and cowboy boots, this persona has proven durable. It has been updated to something more urban and self-aware: the billionaire auteur who is somehow still the girl next door.

Importantly, this persona has never been neutral; it encodes whiteness and class privilege as an unmarked default. It is a form of girlhood capacious enough to be country or pop, apolitical or activist, and bestie or billionaire, precisely because whiteness and class privilege operate as its invisible foundation.

Swift’s extraordinary success speaks not only to her talent and work ethic, but to the structural conditions that determine whose version of American femininity gets to count. Twenty years on Tim McGraw hit the airwaves like a comet.

It launched a pop ingenue who would become the most “relatable billionaire in the world” – a blueprint that every debut pop artist has since tried to follow.

Although she once borrowed his name and cultural capital, these days when people think of Tim McGraw, they almost certainly think of Taylor Swift.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/tim-mcgraw-at-20-how-taylor-swifts-debut-single-set-her-formula-for-success/

Solovyova/Getty Images A coronial inquest is this week examining the death of Melbourne wellness influencer Stacey Warnecke after a freebirth at her home in September. About 25 minutes after her son Axel was born, Warnecke had a postpartum haemorrhage (severe blood loss after birth) and without timely treatment, went into cardiac arrest.

The inquest is trying to determine why Warnecke decided to have a freebirth, in order to prevent similar deaths in future. It heard Warnecke believed a freebirth was the only way to have a baby entirely on her terms.

But what does the research say about other women who seek a freebirth? My colleagues and I have been researching this question for the past decade. Here’s what we’ve found. What is a freebirth and a birth keeper?

A freebirth is when a woman chooses to have a birth, usually at home, without a registered health professional, such as a midwife or doctor, in attendance. This is different to a homebirth, where women are cared for by a registered midwife.

Freebirths are also referred to as unassisted or wild births. Sometimes only the partner or a friend or relative are there, but more often women hire an unregulated birth worker such as a “birth keeper” or doula for support.

Unregulated birth workers don’t have the formal training, medical equipment or skills to detect and manage any complications. But our research has shown unregulated birth workers often provide care that is clinical, such as assessing the growth of the baby or listening to the baby’s heart during labour.

Read more: What’s the difference between a home birth and a free birth? What are the risks of freebirth? There are risks with freebirths that a trained midwife at a homebirth could pick up early and manage, or that would prompt a timely transfer to a nearby hospital.

Home births with a registered midlife linked to a responsive health system have a good safety record in Australia. Midwives now provide more than 20 publicly funded homebirth services linked to public hospitals across Australia as well.

But most homebirths are with privately practising midwives that families pay for out of pocket. Even when a woman’s pregnancy and birth is considered low risk, emergencies can occur: postpartum haemorrhages, the newborn baby needing resuscitation, or the mother needing extra medical care.

These emergencies require specialised skills and equipment, and timely transfers to hospital.

Rising popularity but little data about harms We don’t know how the statistical risks of freebirths compare with homebirths that have a private registered midwife or are linked to a hospital, as this data isn’t collected.

However the number of coronial findings and media reports of harms from freebirths over the past few years is a cause for concern. In recent years, and particularly since the COVID pandemic, social media influencers have set up communities of like-minded people to share content about freebirths.

These messages have gained momentum and interest, while trust in institutions and experts has declined. Why women might make this choice Women who choose to freebirth are more likely to have had a baby before (77%), be white and well-educated.

Freebirths seem more common in regions with higher rates of homebirths, where communities seek a more natural approach to life. A previous negative birth experience – which may result from a traumatic event, health provider abuse, coercion or care delivered without consent – is a major motivator to have a subsequent freebirth.

A previous negative birth experience may include an unwanted medical intervention such as a caesarean section, or a lack of choice, such not being able to have a homebirth or a vaginal birth after caesarean in mainstream maternity care.

Some women who have a freebirth tried to make the process safer for themselves and their baby. They may have tried to find a midwife to see them at home but couldn’t afford the cost or were not able to access a homebirth because it was considered too risky.

Sometimes, a women had a birth that went very well the first time or was very fast, which made a freebirth seem like a safe alternative. It’s not that women who choose a freebirth are unaware of the risks.

Women carefully consider the risk but often consider things such as unwanted intervention and birth trauma as a risk in itself that they find unacceptable. The recent New South Wales Birth Trauma Inquiry received thousands of submissions from women who reported their traumatic experiences.

We analysed 1,213 of these publicly available submissions and found over 75% of reported birth trauma was due to disrespect, abuse or health care provided without consent. What can we do to reduce freebirths? Our maternity system needs to give women choices and humanise the care it provides.

Sometimes health services unintentionally recreate conditions and memories of a previous traumatic experience or a past birth experience that prompts women to avoid this care in the future. Health-care providers need to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Like any skill, they need training in informed consent and trauma-informed care. Read more: What does being ‘trauma-informed’ actually mean? A landmark Victorian judgment in March clarified the legal stakes of coercive maternity care.

Plaintiff Larissa Gawthrop’s birth plan stated: “I decline all vaginal examinations unless there is an urgent medical reason to do so.” When she arrived at Bendigo Health in labour, she was told she would not be admitted unless she agreed to a vaginal examination.

After several hours, she relented. Bendigo Health was ordered to pay A$275,000 in damages as consent was not given in a free, informed or voluntary way. This judgment, alongside the 2024 NSW Birth Trauma Inquiry, represents a significant shift in how women’s autonomy and informed choice must be respected.

Addressing systemic changes and behaviours would then reduce the numbers of women choosing to freebirth. High rates of birth intervention in Australia is also leading to more birth trauma and fear about birth.

Likewise, the lack of birth centres and availability of homebirth without huge private fees needs to be addressed to provide women with safe and acceptable options.

Hannah Dahlen receives funding from NHMRC, ARC and MRFF

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/what-drives-women-to-have-a-freebirth-without-a-midwife-or-doctor-heres-what-the-research-says/

Iran and the United States are about to sign a peace deal that will reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that carries about one-fifth of the world’s oil. Oil prices reacted quickly to the announcement of the tentative deal, dropping from highs that had pushed gasoline prices toward record levels in North America.

The global supply chain, however, will take the better part of a year to recover, and the relief at the pumps may prove more gradual than the relief in oil markets. The strait’s closure began on Feb.

28 after the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran. Tehran responded by effectively shutting the strait to commercial traffic, attacking ships and laying sea mines. Traffic through the passage fell from about 100 vessels per day to roughly six at the height of the blockade, and more than 1,500 vessels were left waiting to pass through at one point.

That backlog has caused a months-long global energy crisis. Supply chains operate on a different timeline than politics. German shipping giant Hapag-Lloyd estimates it will take their firm at least six weeks to regain a fully normal network, assuming vessels can leave the Persian Gulf fairly soon after reopening.

But that estimate may be too optimistic, since several of the prerequisites for normal traffic still aren’t in place and different accounts put different timelines on how long it will take for the backlog to clear and traffic to return to pre-conflict levels.

Insurance and mines slow the restart The Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed by insurance companies before it was declared closed by the Iranian navy.

War-risk insurance premiums surged from 0.25 per cent of vessel value before the conflict to between three and eight per cent, which could translate to up to US$8 million for a single tanker transit in insurance costs alone.

Mines cannot be cleared overnight, and mine clearance is itself a prerequisite for insurers to lower premiums again. That alone could take up to six months, meaning the financial cost of transiting the strait may stay elevated.

Once vessels do return, the congestion won’t disappear — it will move to other trans-shipment ports.

The traffic released from the strait will need berths, cranes, labour and feeder connections at ports such like Jebel Ali, Colombo, Singapore and Tanjung Pelepas, where operations are already running at elevated capacity after absorbing diverted traffic during the closure.

The sudden flood of new traffic at these ports will create further delays across the global container supply chain. Think of an accident on the highway: once it’s cleared, the traffic stacked up behind it disperses, but that dispersal itself can create new slowdowns at the next on-ramp or exit.

In this scenario, the strait was the accident, and the ports are the on-ramps.

No analyst has yet modelled the clearing of this secondary congestion, but drawing on port throughput data and the volume of traffic released from the strait, a reasonable estimate suggests a return to normal at global transshipment ports won’t be achieved until three to four months from now.

Diverted routes won’t simply snap back The disruption also affected shipping routes themselves. Within hours of the U.S.-Israeli strikes in February, many vessels scheduled for Suez Canal routing were diverted around the Cape of Good Hope.

By early March, all four of the world’s largest container carriers — Maersk, MSC, CMA CGM and Hapag-Lloyd — had suspended Hormuz transit. De-escalation doesn’t mean these diverted shipments will simply snap back to the strait.

Many shipping firms have already restructured schedules, contracts, vessel positioning and fuel procurement for the rest of 2026 around the Cape of Good Hope route. Unwinding those arrangements takes time. History suggests why changing routes is not an easy fix.

After the last Houthi attack on shipping in September 2025 in the Bab el-Mandeb, a highly strategic maritime chokepoint connecting the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, a formal ceasefire was declared on Nov.

11. Yet Suez Canal traffic remained 60 per cent below pre-crisis levels 100 days after that final attack. The same pattern could play out here. The two primary shipping routes between Asia and Europe. Ships scheduled for the Suez Canal (dashed line) were redirected to the Cape of Good Hope route (solid line), adding roughly 16 days to each trip.

Stars mark major transshipment hubs that absorbed diverted cargo during the closure. (Datawrapper), CC BY A container imbalance adds to the strain Under normal conditions, container positioning runs on a tightly managed cycle: loaded containers move one way, and empty ones move back on a schedule that keeps equipment where it’s needed.

The blockade broke this cycle, leaving loaded containers trapped inside the Persian Gulf, and empty containers at trans-shipment hubs like Colombo and European terminals. The cape route made it worse, adding still more empties in Europe.

That imbalance means Asia is scrambling to find empty containers to ship cargo, while European ports are drowning in empties awaiting shipments from Asia. The containers trapped inside the Persian Gulf are only half of the story: an estimated two million shipping containers have been disrupted across the global network because of the blockade.

The strait crisis didn’t land on a perfectly balanced system to begin with, so meaningful improvements are achievable three to five months from reopening, while a return to pre-crisis balance levels may take nine to 12 months.

Estimated recovery timeline after the Strait of Hormuz reopens in weeks. Solid bars show best estimates, lighter extensions indicate uncertainty ranges.

Start times reflect dependencies between mine clearance, insurance normalization and freight recovery. (Behrouz Bakhtiari), CC BY What comes next Policymakers and logistics leaders shouldn’t assume the backlog will clear itself on a political timeline.

Insurance normalization lags behind the realities on the ground by months. Shipments that diverted to the Cape of Good Hope need to be redirected back to the Suez Canal-Red Sea route, a process the Bab el-Mandeb experience suggests will be slow and partial.

Container imbalances need to be resolved and secondary congestion at trans-shipment hubs needs to clear. The strait may be open, but for a global supply chain already strained by the COVID-19 pandemic and now by months of blockade, the work of recovery has only just begun.

Anyone budgeting around an assumption that prices will normalize as soon as headlines about the ceasefire fade should expect a longer adjustment, measured in months rather than weeks.

Behrouz Bakhtiari does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/the-strait-of-hormuz-is-reopening-but-global-shipping-wont-return-to-normal-for-months/

If vaccine access is shaped by structural factors, then solutions must go beyond changing individual behaviour. (Unsplash/CDC), CC BY When vaccination rates drop — as is the case with adult influenza vaccinations in Canada and child measles vaccinations in British Columbia — the explanation is often that people are “hesitant.” The unvaccinated are frequently described as influenced by misinformation, cultural beliefs or religion.

The solution, then, is assumed to be health education or clearer messaging, suggesting that the main barrier to vaccination lies within individual attitudes, fears or choices. There is some truth to this. As ample research demonstrates, beliefs do matter and misinformation does influence vaccine decision-making.

But focusing only on individual behaviour and beliefs risks overlooking the context in which decisions are made. Across multiple Canadian studies, barriers to vaccination consistently extend beyond personal choice. They are embedded in policies, institutions and everyday experiences with the health system.

In other words, vaccine uptake is not just a behavioural issue. It is also a structural one. When access isn’t truly accessible One of the most consistent findings in Canadian research is that access to vaccines is uneven.

Vaccination clinics may be located far from rural or lower-income communities, or operate only during standard working hours — despite the fact that 60 per cent of Canadians work shifts or non-traditional hours. For others, logistical barriers create challenges.

Parents may struggle to find childcare. During the initial COVID vaccination campaign, for example, adults were able to take paid time off work to get themselves vaccinated, but not to get their children vaccinated. Immunity and Society is a new series from The Conversation Canada that presents new vaccine discoveries and immune-based innovations that are changing how we understand and protect human health.

Through a partnership with the Bridge Research Consortium, these articles — written by experts in Canada at the forefront of immunology, biomanufacturing, social science and humanities — explore the latest developments and their impacts. Transportation may be limited.

For some people, this may mean unreliable public transit, transportation costs or difficulty travelling with children, older family members or those with mobility challenges. In Northern Ontario, for example, one survey found that about one in four residents in rural and northern communities had cancelled a medical appointment because of the distance required to travel for care.

Administrative requirements can also exclude people. Identification rules, for example, can create barriers for undocumented individuals or those experiencing housing instability. These challenges are rarely captured in public conversations about hesitancy. But they play a major role in shaping who gets vaccinated.

Trust is built through systems, not slogans Public health strategies often emphasize improved communication based on the assumption that better information will lead to higher vaccine uptake. But trust is not just about receiving facts.

It is about experience. For many communities in Canada, particularly Indigenous, Black and racialized immigrant populations, interactions with health systems have not always been positive, and in numerous cases have been outright negative. Experiences of discrimination, exclusion or neglect shape how public health messages are received.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, frequent policy changes and inconsistent messaging further undermined confidence. In some cases, even health-care providers struggled to keep up with evolving guidance. In this context, hesitancy is not simply a lack of knowledge.

It can reflect a lack of trust — rooted in real experiences. Top-down approaches can create gaps Another important factor is how vaccination programs are designed and delivered. Many public health strategies, particularly during public health emergencies, rely on top-down approaches, with limited input from the communities they aim to reach.

This can result in services that do not reflect people’s needs, whether in terms of language, culture or accessibility. Community organizations often step in to connect specific communities with public health providers. They may offer translated information, help people book appointments, organize mobile or pop-up clinics, provide transportation support, or work with trusted community and faith leaders to deliver culturally appropriate outreach.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, some public health units partnered with faith-based and ethnocultural organizations to host vaccination clinics in places of worship and community centres, helping improve trust and accessibility among racialized communities. However, these efforts are often short-term and underfunded.

Despite their effectiveness, they are not always integrated into formal health systems. This highlights a broader issue: the people closest to the problem are not always included in the solution. What a structural approach looks like If vaccine access is shaped by structural factors, then solutions must go beyond changing individual behaviour.

Research points to several key shifts: Designing services that fit people’s lives — including flexible hours and accessible locations Removing unnecessary administrative barriers Investing in community-led approaches and partnerships Improving consistency and transparency in communication Involving communities in decision-making processes These changes focus on the conditions that enable sound vaccine decision-making.

Changing how we think about vaccination Reframing vaccine hesitancy as a structural issue does not mean ignoring individual choice. Instead, it recognizes that choices are made within a context. When access is difficult, trust is low and systems feel unresponsive, lower uptake should not be surprising.

Balancing the conversation, from a strong focus on vaccine acceptability, to include the structures that support vaccine accessibility, can help advance vaccine decision-making that is more equitable.

Muhammad Haaris Tiwana receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research as part of the doctoral research award.

Julia Smith has received funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Health Research BC

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/why-dont-some-people-get-vaccinated-its-more-complicated-than-you-think/

Steven F Granville/Shutterstock The UK government has issued a denial after mounting speculation that 90% of Dartmoor hill ponies were to be culled. Speculation started over confusion around current grazing policy. So why have these animals been dragged into a political storm?

Britain’s semi-wild pony herds should otherwise be a conservation success story. As concern grows over biodiversity loss and habitat degradation, these animals are increasingly recognised for the role they can play in restoring damaged landscapes.

But on Dartmoor, policy decisions intended to improve the condition of protected habitats appear to threaten the long-term future of the very ponies helping to maintain them. UK government agencies are again pushing for reductions in grazing animals on Dartmoor’s commons.

If those changes go ahead, one of Britain’s most distinctive semi-wild pony populations could face an uncertain future. That comes despite the findings of a recent independent review commissioned by Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

The Fursdon review was launched in 2023 after a bitter dispute over how Dartmoor’s protected moorland should be managed. Its aim was to find ways to improve the condition of the moor while supporting the people and traditional practices that help shape it.

The review concluded that ponies are an important part of the solution. Unlike sheep and cattle, ponies occupy a distinct ecological niche, as my research has shown. They eat more vegetation relative to their body weight than ruminants (such as cattle, goats and sheep).

They also graze differently. Dartmoor hill ponies on frosty morning. Blister Brady/Shutterstock Like cattle, ponies are generalists, willing to eat rougher and less nutritious plants that sheep tend to avoid. Ponies are more likely than cattle to graze purple moorgrass (Molinia caerulea), a species that has spread widely across parts of Dartmoor and many other upland areas.

Managing molinia was identified by the review as an important conservation priority. These characteristics help explain why ponies are increasingly being used by organisations such as the National Trust, RSPB and local Wildlife Trusts in habitat restoration projects across the UK.

In many places, they are now recognised as valuable conservation grazers. So why are semi-wild ponies such as the Dartmoor hill pony, the Carneddau pony (of parts of Eryri, also known as Snowdonia) and the Welsh hill pony under threat?

At a time when nature recovery, biodiversity and rewilding dominate environmental debates, why are we in danger of losing animals that have lived on Britain’s hills for thousands of years? Part of the answer lies in what these ponies are not.

They are not “proper” breeds. They have no breed standard, no stud book and no pedigree registration. They will never appear in the ring at the Horse of the Year Show.

They are classified as semi-wild or feral because the takhi or Przewalski’s horse (a rare and endangered wild horse originally native to the steppes of central Asia) is considered to be the only remaining wild horse.

But that can obscure something important. For thousands of years, the physical and behavioural characteristics of these local pony populations have been shaped largely by natural selection rather than human breeding. These animals are fundamentally different from modern native breeds that have been selectively bred by people.

The Dartmoor pony and the Welsh mountain pony, for example, were both formalised in the early 20th century and include Arabian bloodlines. Despite their similar names, they should not be confused with the semi-wild hill ponies that continue to roam the uplands.

Semi-feral Dartmoor hill ponies grazing on Dartmoor. Peter Turner Photography/Shutterstock Not livestock nor wildlife Nor are these animals really livestock. Although they are technically owned by the commoners and pony keepers on whose land they graze, they are not kept for agricultural production.

Their numbers are managed through periodic round-ups, but the animals have little commercial value. The Fursdon review recognised this distinction. It recommended that “ponies and cattle should not be linked for the calculation of stocking rates” and that any actions likely to reduce pony numbers should be avoided.

Yet new countryside stewardship agreements are setting grazing limits for “cattle and/or ponies” as though the two are interchangeable. Meanwhile, wild deer, which are also large grazing herbivores, are excluded from those calculations. Read more: Wildfire risk is now spreading to cool climates like the Scottish Highlands and Irish uplands Semi-wild ponies do not fit neatly into the category of wildlife either.

They receive none of the legal protections available to wild species and their habitats. Despite their semi-wild status, they are often overlooked in rewilding projects that seek to restore natural grazing processes. Instead, some projects have favoured imported Konik ponies (a Polish pony breed), often based on questionable assumptions about their origins and suitability.

As a result, semi-wild pony populations have spent years falling between the cracks of conservation and agricultural policy. That would be a remarkable fate for animals that have been part of Britain’s uplands since the Bronze age.

Dartmoor hill ponies were already grazing the moor as the peatlands that dominate today’s conservation debates were expanding across the landscape. They have lived through Saxon settlement, the rise and decline of tin mining and successive waves of agricultural policy that encouraged both overgrazing and undergrazing.

Today, these ponies are more than a cultural symbol. They are living components of upland ecosystems and are increasingly recognised as valuable partners in habitat restoration. If society is serious about nature recovery, it should attempt to find ways to protect and support these unique herds.

It would be a bitter irony if animals that can help restore damaged landscapes were lost because environmental policymakers failed to recognise their value.

Mariecia Fraser receives funding from UKRI.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/claims-of-dartmoor-pony-cull-reignite-row-over-how-to-save-britains-moorlands/

LittleDogKorat/Shutterstock Official NHS maternity statistics show that caesareans accounted for 45% of deliveries in English NHS hospitals in 2024-25. More recent monthly NHS maternity data reported that 27% of deliveries under NHS maternity services in January 2026 were emergency caesareans.

But a recent BBC analysis noted that this increase has not been accompanied by similarly clear reductions in stillbirth or neonatal mortality rates. If outcomes are not improving at the same pace as interventions, what is driving the growth in caesarean births?

Common explanations include workforce shortages, litigation concerns, maternity safety scandals and changing perceptions of risk. However, focusing solely on clinical factors risks overlooking how ideas about safety, responsibility, trust and uncertainty all shape childbirth decisions.

Fear, anxiety and uncertainty In Bangladesh, where I recently completed doctoral research on childbirth and rising caesarean section rates, caesareans accounted for around 45% of births in 2022. Approximately 69% of institutional births were delivered surgically. Unlike England’s NHS-based system, childbirth in Bangladesh increasingly takes place within a commercial healthcare market.

This includes private clinics, out-of-pocket payments and maternity packages. In practice, this can make paid access to scans, senior doctors, private facilities and fixed packages feel like routes to safety. Caesarean birth may then be understood less as an exceptional intervention and more as the managed, predictable option.

For many families in Bangladesh, safety was a medical, emotional and financial concern. It was sought through spending, testing and access to trusted doctors.

As one husband put it: “If I could afford 20,000 BDT [around £120], why not pay 25,000 BDT for better care?” Yet improvements in maternal mortality have been far less pronounced, raising questions similar to those emerging in England.

My research explored how childbirth decisions are made. Women and families frequently described caesarean section as “nirapod” (safe). Yet many also experienced it as a lifelong “khoto” (wound), associated with pain, emotional distress and financial burdens.

As Monisha, one of the mothers I interviewed, reflected: “Caesarean leaves scars (khoto) that last a lifetime.” This contradiction reveals an important feature of childbirth decision-making. Caesarean birth is both a medical procedure and a social and moral experience shaped by fear, anxiety, uncertainty and the promise of safety.

As Nadia, who underwent two caesareans, recalled: “I felt I had no space to express my choice, and I ended up convincing myself that they were doing it for my good.” Decisions were shaped by medical advice, family expectations, trust in doctors and economic pressures.

Among surveyed mothers, 44% underwent elective caesareans and 56% emergency procedures. Yet 60% reported that the decision had been made at least a month before delivery, suggesting that many birth pathways were established well before labour. Trust in medical expertise was central: most women surveyed, 71%, underwent caesareans recommended by doctors, while only 6% reported making the decision themselves.

Trust in medical authority often became a way of managing uncertainty. As one woman said: “I trusted her more than anyone else.” Decisions were rarely framed as personal preference. They were presented as responsible actions taken for the baby’s wellbeing.

One participant recalled: “The doctor left the decision to me, so I decided. That was my weakness, but also my right.” Although responsibility was shared across families and healthcare providers, it often fell most heavily on women.

Related tensions around responsibility, risk and professional accountability can also be seen in England, although they take different forms. Scrutiny and litigation In England, clinicians work within systems shaped by scrutiny, inquiries and legal claims following adverse outcomes.

In Bangladesh, the pressures described by doctors in my research were often more immediate and personal. As one obstetrician observed: “If something goes wrong, I always worry about the risk of violence.

I have to prioritise my safety first.” The contexts differ sharply, but in both England and Bangladesh caesarean section can become a way of managing uncertainty, avoiding blame and producing a form of safety that is as institutional and social as it is clinical.

In Bangladesh, these pressures operate within a healthcare system facing severe workforce shortages. The country has approximately seven physicians and six nurses or midwives per 10,000 people. By comparison, the UK has around 33 physicians and 95 nurses or midwives per 10,000 people.

Opportunities for continuous labour support and counselling are therefore limited. Midwives in my research often described having little influence over birth decisions. In both clinical and family narratives, caesarean section frequently emerged as the most predictable and controllable option, while vaginal birth remained associated with uncertainty.

Yet the promise of safety did not end vulnerability. Most women left hospital within days of surgery, while recovery was largely managed by families. Participants described ongoing pain, restricted mobility and emotional distress months after birth.

As Maya reflected: “I did not understand why I was feeling like that… When my baby cried at night, I felt anger rising inside me.” Looking back, she felt she had experienced postpartum depression for almost a year.

Others described similar experiences, including chronic pain, sleep disruption and emotional distress during recovery. Mothers I spoke to in focus groups also repeatedly described chronic back pain as part of their post-caesarean recovery. These accounts suggest that caesarean birth often redistributes rather than eliminates risk.

While hospitals manage the surgery itself, much of the work of recovery is transferred to households, where families assume responsibility for ongoing care and support. Emergency caesareans remain necessary, vital and often life saving. However, rising emergency caesarean rates in England, alongside very high rates in Bangladesh, suggest that broader social and institutional pressures shape how risk is understood and managed.

The rise in caesarean births is often framed as a clinical or public health issue. Yet evidence from England and Bangladesh suggests it is also social and political. Rising intervention rates cannot be understood through medical factors alone, but through how safety, uncertainty and responsibility are organised within maternity systems.

Increasingly, birth is shaped by efforts to anticipate and prevent future harms, placing responsibility for uncertain outcomes on women and families even when many of the forces influencing those decisions lie beyond their control.

Childbirth therefore becomes a question of medical necessity, and of how societies organise safety, risk and care.

Dr Halima Akhter received funding from the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission, UK, and she completed her PhD in Anthropology of Health at Durham University, UK.

Doctoral Thesis, “The Preferred Option”: C-sections and Bangladeshi Women’s Navigation of Fear, Responsibility, and Care in Childbirth, completed under the primary supervision of Professor Dr Nayanika Mookherjee, Department of Anthropology, Durham University, UK.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/why-more-births-now-end-in-caesarean-section/

After an injury, the body shifts the workload elsewhere. pics five/ Shutterstock A sports injury can feel like a single setback: a twisted ankle, a strained calf or a sore knee. But for many people, the real problem starts when they try to come back too soon – only to end up with a second injury.

Secondary injuries happen for a simple reason. After an injury, the body often changes the way it moves. This is a normal protective response. If one area hurts, feels weak or isn’t working properly, the body shifts the workload elsewhere.

That strategy can be helpful in the short term. It allows us to keep walking, climbing stairs or doing our normal, everyday tasks.

But in sport and exercise, where the body has to run, jump, turn or absorb force, those small changes can place extra stress on muscles and joints that were not meant to do the extra work.

Take an ankle sprain as an example. Someone recovering may limp slightly, shorten their stride or put more weight onto their other leg. They may also rely more heavily on the muscles around the hip and pelvis to compensate.

Over time, that can lead to pain or injury somewhere else, such as the knee, hip or lower back. Another reason secondary injuries happen is because pain and recovery are not the same thing. The pain you experience from your initial injury may improve quite quickly, especially with rest.

But that doesn’t mean strength, balance, fitness and confidence have returned. This is where many people get caught out. They feel better, so they assume they’re ready to go back to training even though the body isn’t yet prepared for the demands being placed on it.

As a result, other limbs, tendons or joints have to take on more load to compensate for the weak area, leading to stress and strain. Some injuries are also more likely than others to lead to a secondary problem.

Lower-limb injuries are a common example because they affect how we move through almost every activity. An issue with the foot, ankle, calf, knee or hip can change walking, running and landing patterns in ways that then affect the rest of the body.

Sports that involve repeated impact or frequent changes of direction may also carry a higher risk. Running, football and basketball are obvious examples because small problems in movement can be repeated hundreds of times in a single session.

Age can play a part too. As we get older, muscles, tendons and ligaments tend to become stiffer and slower to adapt to load. Recovery may also take longer. That does not mean older people should avoid exercise – far from it – but it does mean recovery often needs to be managed more carefully.

What you can do To heal from a secondary injury, the first step is to avoid treating it as a completely separate problem. It’s important to ask not just “what hurts now?” but also “what changed after the first injury?” Even if you feel okay, you might not be fully recovered from your initial injury.

Prostock-studio/Shutterstock If someone develops hip pain after an ankle injury, for example, treating the hip alone may not solve the problem. The ankle may still be stiff or weak. The person may still be moving differently without realising it.

Unless those issues are addressed, the secondary injury may keep coming back. Treatment usually starts with reducing unnecessary stress on the injured areas and allowing symptoms to settle. From there, the focus should shift to restoring normal movement, rebuilding strength and gradually returning to activity.

A widely discussed modern framework for soft-tissue injury management is “Peace and Love”, which moves beyond the old “rest and ice” approach. The Peace and Love strategy better supports the body’s natural mechanisms for repair.

The old rest and ice approach causes too much restriction in blood, which limits the repair process. After an injury, you should first focus on Peace – protection, elevation, avoid anti-inflammatories, compression, education (identifying risk factors, a weakness or movement pattern that can be worked on when training resumes).

After that, the emphasis shifts to Love (load, optimism, vascularisation, exercise). This means focusing on gradually increasing load on the injured joint, movement, exercise, blood flow and a positive mindset. The aim is not just to reduce pain, but to restore function and reduce the chance of another injury.

This is where rehabilitation matters. Good rehab is not just about waiting until pain fades. It’s about preparing the body for what comes next. That might mean rebuilding calf strength after a strain, restoring balance after an ankle sprain or regaining confidence in turning and landing after a knee injury.

Recovery should be gradual and, ideally, should match the demands of the sport or exercise a person wants to return to. The good news is that many secondary injuries can be prevented. Avoid rushing back.

Feeling better is not always the same as being ready. Before returning fully, it helps to ask: has strength returned? Is movement back to normal? Can I do the key tasks my sport requires without pain, weakness or hesitation?

It’s also important to pay attention to new aches and pains during recovery, especially if they appear in a different part of the body. These may be early warning signs that the body is still compensating.

The best way to prevent a secondary injury is to treat the first injury properly.

That means allowing enough time to heal, completing rehabilitation and building back up in stages rather than jumping straight back in.

James Brouner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/why-one-sports-injury-can-sometimes-lead-to-another/

Naomi Osaka’s appearance at this May’s Met Gala in New York – which she wittily dubbed “the grand slam of fashion” – was a whirlwind business engagement jammed between two of tennis’s major tournaments.

With stacked schedules, tennis superstars are usually found taking ice baths between events. Not Osaka, who donned a 9kg Robert Wun couture gown in response to the Met’s “fashion is art” theme. Her presence at the Met Ball was more than a celebrity detour.

Osaka is not just a professional tennis player – she has moved beyond the limiting boundaries of the sport. For me, as a researcher of Black fashion culture and identity politics, this raises interesting questions: is Osaka first in line to define what tennis looks like in the future?

How does a tennis player secure a place on Anna Wintour’s notoriously strict guest list of cultural power brokers, celebrities and creatives? Well, Osaka is simultaneously an athlete, fashion collaborator, businesswoman, activist, mother and global celebrity.

Superhero? Maybe. The scandalising tennis ring walk I was lucky enough to watch Osaka at the Madrid Open this spring, striding onto court in a custom Nike dress and baseball visor. From the stands, my son and I bellowed our support during her high-octane contest with Aryna Sabalenka.

We love her point of difference and her cause. Part of that difference lies in how she occupies and owns the court. Like a boxer making a ring walk, Osaka’s arrival has become part of the spectacle itself – she has turned the walk into a runway.

The outfit, the styling and the anticipation all contribute to the performance before a ball is struck. Yet discussions about Osaka’s clothing often miss the bigger story. Tennis has always been a performance culture in which clothing communicates status, belonging and authority.

French tennis player Suzanne Lenglen scandalised audiences in the 1920s with shorter skirts and sleeveless designs. American tennis champion Billie Jean King used sporting appearance as part of her broader challenge to gender inequality in the 1970s.

In 2026, we would be forgiven for thinking that some of the more traditional values have been relaxed. Wimbledon has allowed women to wear dark undershorts for good reason, so why does Osaka’s sequinned on-court arrival provoke such division, outrage and racist hate?

Unapologetically Black Historically, Black athletes in women’s sports who used fashion as a form of self-expression often attracted criticism for causing distraction and approaching sport with a lack of seriousness. Take, for example, record-breaking US track and field athlete Florence Griffith Joyner, Flo-Jo.

Her one-legged racing suits, long decorated fingernails, elaborate hairstyles and unapologetically glamorous aesthetic challenged assumptions about what elite athleticism should look like. But they were not random eccentricities; they drew upon longstanding traditions within Black beauty culture where hair, nails and dress function as forms of creativity, identity and self-definition.

It’s impossible to talk about the burden of legend, flamboyance and legacy in tennis without mentioning one of the greatest athletes, icons and sporting performers of all time: Serena Williams. She transformed the visual politics of tennis, forcing a traditionally white sport to reckon with a Black woman as its defining image.

As a young woman, Williams discovered Flo-Jo’s lace and hooded speed suits – part of her lineage, part of her future legacy.

“I was inspired by Flo-Jo, who was a wonderful track athlete … when I was growing up,” was the response Williams offered when being probed on the one-legged Nike catsuit she wore at the 2021 Australia Open.

The lineage between Flo-Jo, Williams and Osaka – with their striking sportswear, luxury fashion, activism, global celebrity and desire to challenge the status quo – points to a longer tradition of Black women using style not as decoration but as cultural authorship.

Who gets to embody tradition? If Williams challenged who could belong in tennis, Osaka represents a generation asking who gets to define its future image. This is why companies such as Louis Vuitton and Nike invest in Osaka.

Not because she wears clothes well but because she embodies a globally marketable story about race, gender, resistance, femininity, identity and youth culture. Afterall, Osaka is exceptional. A multiple grand slam champion and the first Asian world number one, she belongs firmly within tennis’s elite.

Paying tribute to her multicultural roots, Osaka said last year: “My heritage is my power.” She has forged a complex public image combining influences from Black diasporic culture, Japanese aesthetics, luxury fashion and contemporary celebrity branding.

Constantly challenging expectations of her Japanese identity – femininity, humility and modest public behaviour, Osaka moves between these worlds with a fluency that reflects the global nature of modern sport itself, negotiating her own cultural identity.

Perhaps this is at odds with the traditionally quaint world of tennis. Misogynoir is the sexism that is experienced particularly by Black women.

This could explain why expressions of individuality that are commended as innovative in some athletes, such as Roger Federer’s military suit at Wimbledon in 2009, are more likely to be treated as controversial – as the furore around Williams’s outfits has shown.

A few days after Osaka’s latest couture arrival at the French Open, her opponent Laura Siegemund was asked what she thought about all the fashion. “I come here to play tennis, not to put on a fashion show,” she replied.

Fair enough. But let’s not forget that tennis has always been a fashion show. From Lenglen to Serena Williams, athletes have been using clothing to communicate identity, aspiration and difference for more than a century.

Naomi Osaka’s fashion intervention is not a distraction from tennis.

It is part of a much older struggle over who gets to define the sport’s image, its values and ultimately its future.

Andrew Ibi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/18/my-heritage-is-my-power-how-young-black-women-like-naomi-osaka-are-using-fashion-in-sport/