Sarah Moss

A collection of articles by Sarah Moss

The prize for everyday sexism on the high street goes to hairdressing salons

Sarah Moss: The men I know have much more demanding haircuts than the one I want, so why am I being charged a fortune?

Every piece of clothing I buy is matched by a parting: one in, one out. It focuses the mind

Clothes well made by fairly paid people out of good quality fabric are not cheap, nor should they be

Jewellery might not always leave us with a clear conscience but it’s fun, and pleasure is not trivial

Sparkle is not a necessity for survival but aesthetic delight is part of what makes us human

People trying to sell diets enrage me on good days. On bad days I feel inadequate

We keep coming back for more, hoping for rules that will allow us to feel okay about inhabiting ordinary bodies in a culture committed to anxiety and hierarchy

Women are safer on the streets and men are safer at home, despite the stories we tell ourselves

Fear is determined by storytelling more than by data, and women have been taught to fear being outside for centuries

Here’s why you should never set ‘reading goals’ in an effort of grim self-improvement

The idea that reading is innately virtuous, other than religious material, is modern

I navigate new places without the internet because I believe in getting lost

I am convinced that way-finding without a phone schools us to pay attention in a way that we lose when we merge with a blue dot on a screen

There’s a clear difference between those who grew up taking photos of themselves and those of us who didn’t

Unlike the generation which has grown up with mobile phone cameras, when I am photographed I look awkward, wooden, smiling like someone who just wants this to stop now

If we really wanted to be good and healthy in 2025, we’d resolve to pester our politicians

Childhood rickets is back in Britain – and it’s not because ill-health is the logical outcome of poor choices

Fiction to look out for in 2025: From Eimear McBride to Ben Okri

Emma Donoghue, Joseph O’Connor and Colum McCann are just some of the big names with new books coming out in 2025. Here’s our pick of fiction for the year ahead

Christmas - and the perfect family life it represents - is an oppressive fantasy

Most families have someone missing even if the table is holly-decked and groaning

Assisted dying: Do we understand it properly?

I’ve seen the slow loss of dignity and the increase of pain that mark the last years of lives drawn out by healthcare in modern society

We should stop moving so fast. Resist where you can. Hold space to grow and digest

We should stop moving so fast. Resist where you can. Hold space to grow and digest

How did ‘granny’ become the byword for dimness? That’s so wrong

Some of the grandmothers I know are a surgeon, a judge and professors, while many others belong to the English literary canon

Eating disorders in later life: Some of my peers have had teenage weight levels for decades

In fact, a locally-made, organic doughnut might well be better than green beans grown with scarce water in Namibia and air-freighted in plastic wrap

I’m a Brexit-era ‘citizen of nowhere’, trying to settle in Ireland

If I have a family tradition, it’s moving, being an outsider, starting again

I was taught to avoid the ‘trap’ of cooking but I take pleasure in domestic life

I long for ways of thinking and writing and cooking that admit in the most serious and simple way, food is love

I had my kids in my mid-20s, which was unheard of among women of my class and generation

I’m making friends who are much younger and much older than me, because many women of my age are still ferociously juggling work and childcare and not free for coffee or a film

Men are deemed more masculine for taking up more space, women more feminine for taking up less

Binary categories hurt everyone, especially those whose natures or physiques are non-compliant

Only mothers who find recognition in professional life seem to be guilty of ‘having it all’

Society considers mums suspected of working by choice to be playing a zero-sum game where career ambition comes at the cost of motherly love

Some say you’re not a writer if you’re not willing to sacrifice your family to your art. Not me

Sarah Moss: Writers have the same responsibilities to family, friends and community as everyone else

Being English in Ireland, I often sense I’m being too frank

An English person in Ireland speaks with eight centuries of history gesticulating over her shoulder

I’m a university professor but I’ve never been greatly invested in my own kids’ grades

It’s hard to see how training students to concentrate on their own fear of inadequacy and desire to beat their neighbour is likely to open paths out of the death spiral of climate change and capitalism.

It was only after moving to Ireland from England that I had deep conversations about emigration

It was only after moving to Ireland that I had deep conversations about emigration with Irish friends who’d moved to England

As a teenage girl in the 1990s there was a level of harassment that I hope is unthinkable now

I’m a parent, tolerating worry is in the job description, and so is the gradual handover of physical safety from parent to child

My friend’s effortless joyful incompetence sets an example that’s difficult to match

It’s an interesting challenge to start something without the aim of mastering it

I’m not against HRT but are we once again medicating women for being angry?

It is horribly regressive to say that all women lose their minds in midlife. Did you know that men have hormones too?

My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss: A bleak, often brilliant personal history

The desire to be worthy, or the fear of not being worthy enough, is explored in this moving memoir

Friends said that I’d ‘let’ my hair go grey. That’s not what happened

It’s interesting to think about the difference between ‘letting go’ and ‘letting yourself go’

Changing your mind is more interesting and more useful than changing your body

Fennel, yellow and yoga: Liking food or colours or activities I once disliked reminds me that preferences aren’t fixed

I do the same thing and expect different results, but thinking reality remains the same is sheer fantasy

Time continues to pass, the world of next time is not the same as the world of last time for anything we do

If you’ve read the literary canon, you know how to think like a bourgeois white man

Part of the work of art is to allow us glimpse worlds we don’t inhabit, or see worlds we inhabit through others’ eyes

Sarah Moss: Until recently, I assumed everyone had infinite worlds of light, sound, scent, taste and touch in their heads

It was a surprise to find other people had such different experiences of being conscious

The problem isn’t me and my sourdough and my kale. Access to nourishing food should be a right

We have accepted the baseline that what we all deserve is highly processed food

Sarah Moss: I find the phrase ‘first world problems’ deeply objectionable

It suggests that humans live on different planets, determined by economic conditions, which lets us off many hooks we would have to discuss if we accepted that all global resources are inequitably shared

I fly too much and I feel guilty about it, but I keep doing it

On a burning planet with limited resources, we need more international understanding, more curiosity about other lives in other places

I’ve always been suspicious of writers’ block. Nurses don’t get nurses’ block

There is a time to count and a time to be counted; the work is to know when that time comes

The man I met while out running thought I was wrong not to track my miles

Counting time and distance when I run would quickly turn joy to punishment

I don’t use social media and of course I sometimes wonder if the cost is worth the benefit

It’s mostly comfortable for me to be away from my phone because I don’t use social media, which means that probably not much has changed since I last looked

You’re so brave, people say, to cycle in Dublin

The danger is in the interaction of drivers and cyclists, almost exclusively to the disadvantage and sometimes to the death of the cyclist

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