Naomi osaka

Saturday

Zoe Strimpel

How Naomi Osaka dressed to kill the ‘womanosphere’

From our UK edition

The landscape in which female beauty trends play out is increasingly mean and ludicrous, just when it should be less prone to obsession and caricature than ever before. We should be seeing thick hairy legs on urban streets, not just on LGBTQ activists. We should barely be hearing normal women talking about facial ageing or getting regular poison-loaded needles injected into their faces for the sake of the blandest type of beauty.  And we should definitely not be seeing the rise of teenagers making millions from hawking anti-ageing skin products to other children. And yet, here we are. What is obvious is that a female body is still the most powerful asset a human being can have, if presented correctly.

Wednesday

Om Malik

Meet Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto-enablers

Things aren’t going well for Tom Brady. His team, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, has a losing record. He is getting divorced, and FTX, the crypto exchange he was touting a year ago — and in which he was invested — has gone bust. He isn’t the only sports star with egg on his face after the collapse of FTX. Stephen Curry, Shohei Ohtani and Naomi Osaka, to name just three, also got greedy and believed the vision of Sam Bankman-Fried. Overnight, Sam Bankman-Fried has gone from crypto wunderkind to infamous huckster. The celebrities, influencers and traditional media outlets that helped make him a star shouldn’t be allowed to absolve themselves as quickly.

Tom Brady Sam Bankman-Fried

Thursday

Taki

In praise of chastity

From our UK edition

New York It’s party time in the Bagel, or at least private party time. Yours truly is an extra man nowadays as my wife and I have been separated by pandemic restrictions for six months. Alexandra is in London, quarantining after visiting two little blond things in Austria for my fourth grandchild Theodora’s first birthday. I am doing dinner parties non-stop in the Bagel, as if I were a gaywalker back in the 1970s. Actually, I’ve been seeing a lot of old friends who have thrown dinners for Lita and George Livanos. We have mostly been the same crowd, as New York society types have gone the way of wooden sailing boats and tennis players wearing all whites.

Tuesday

Philip Patrick

In defence of Naomi Osaka

From our UK edition

‘Kawaisou’ or ‘wagamama’ (poor thing or spoiled brat)? That’s the question Japanese tennis fans have been asking ever since world number two Naomi Osaka quit the French Open, having refused to fulfil her post-match press conference obligations. The tennis superstar cited mental health problems for her reluctance to be quizzed by journalists, after which she was censored sharply, and handed a $15,000 (£11,000) fine. She was told to comply, but has chosen not to, packing her bags and leaving instead.  Osaka has said that she suffers ‘bouts of depression’ and has confessed to a chronic shyness that prompts her to wear headphones to shut out the world whenever she is at a tournament.

naomi osaka
Melanie McDonagh

Naomi Osaka is tennis’s Meghan Markle

Well, it looks like the tennis world has found its Meghan Markle. Naomi Osaka, who may in theory be Japanese, but is to all intents and purposes Californian when it comes to worldview, will no longer be taking part in the French Open because she can’t handle the post match interviews, especially when she loses. She wants to go away and look after her mental health. It’s rough luck on other Japanese tennis players (and maybe the Japan Olympic team), on her sponsors (is she too shy to do endorsements too, the ones she’s getting tens of millions of dollars for?) and on the tournament organizers. But nowadays when you say you’ve got mental health issues, there’s no arguing with that. Except, of course, there is.