Bad news for anyone who loves Pilates: Trad men have discovered the exercise and taken a liking to the “Pilates girl”.

Pilates – a low-impact, full-body movement method focused on core strength, control, alignment and breath – has surged in popularity in the past few years, especially among women.

The celebrity-favourite workout can be done on a mat at home or with a specialised machine that uses springs and pulleys for resistance. Those who practice it swear by its ability to tone the body and reduce stress.

But Pilates also has a certain reputation it can’t seem to shake: People think it’s for rich white women. Like yoga before it – the last “It” girl exercise of this scale – the practice isn’t inherently exclusionary, but the way it’s marketed tends to centre around a narrow body ideal and women of a certain tax bracket. An average 60-minute group class typically costs $30 to $65.

Then there’s the “look” it gives you. Instead of focusing on bulk, regularly practicing Pilates achieves a toned, lean and elongated body. You build strength, not muscle mass.

All of this has made it appealing to a certain type of man, who, as The 19th recently reported, expects their partners to devote hours to the workout.

“If your girl goes to Pilates, wife her up immediately,” online business entrepreneur Christian Bonnier said in a recent viral Instagram Reel, deeming the exercise “wholesome” and “the biggest green flag ever for a girl”.

“If your girl goes to Pilates, she’s probably staying in on the weekends so she can get up early and go to a Solidcore or BodyRok class,” he says in the clip. “And she’s going to come back from the Pilates class in a great mood because she went with her friends and didn’t get hit on by any creepy guys and got a great workout in.”

In another video, which racked up 564,000 views, Bonnier declares, “Bring back stay-at-home Pilates wives.” He’s not buying that women find greater fulfilment in a 9-to-5 job rather than staying home with their kids – but if they are working, it should be a job that leaves ample time to “tan by the pool, go to Pilates, go to farmers markets in a sundress and raise a family”.

Then there’s the Pilates-girl-loving bros of reality television. During the most recent season of Netflix’s popular dating show Love is Blind, contestant Chris Fusco faced backlash online for breaking up with fiancée Jessica Barrett in part because she wasn’t the type to do Pilates every day.

“Love Is Blind, as Long as Love Does Pilates,” the Atlantic joked in an article about the debacle between Barrett, an infectious disease doctor, and Fusco, an account executive and Army National Guard member.

Then last month, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives star Jessi Draper alleged that her estranged husband, Jordan Ngatikaura, told her he wanted her to do Pilates “every single day” – a request she said he tied to his want for a more traditional marriage. “He said, ‘I think I believe in traditional gender roles and I want to be more in my masculine and I want you to be more in your feminine,’” Draper said on the Call Her Daddy podcast.

How did Pilates – an exercise that has been around since the 1920s – get co-opted by gym bros with a trad wife complex? Pilates instructors have some theories.

“Pilates has a certain visual language such as long lines, control and softness that some men interpret as ‘feminine,’ ‘disciplined’ or ‘low-risk.’ That’s where the ‘green flag’ talk is coming from. But that’s projection, not reality,” said Sabrina Seymore, the owner and lead Instructor at Prevailing Pilates, the first Black-owned Pilates studio in North Carolina.

What’s happening now “feels like a mix of aesthetic culture, social media and old-school gender expectations,” Seymore told HuffPost.

It’s a strange appropriation, though, she said, because Pilates was never designed to signal anything about a woman’s desirability or “values.”

“It’s a system for strength, control, rehabilitation and full-body awareness for everyone,” she said.

Joseph Pilates, a German gymnast and physical trainer, developed the system, originally called Contrology, while interned in British camps during World War I. Lacking proper equipment, Pilates improvised by attaching bedsprings to hospital bed frames. These makeshift devices allowed bedridden patients to perform resistance exercises, forming the blueprint for modern Pilates machines like the trapeze table and reformer.

Years later in the U.S., Kathleen Stanford Grant, a Black classical ballet dancer, played a pivotal role in establishing the foundation of the workout here.

For Seymore, it’s off-putting to see the restorative exercise she loves so much turned into a personality trait or a dating filter for “trad” men. It flattens women who practice Pilates into a lifestyle aesthetic, she said, and co-opts wellness into a language of control in a subtle, insidious way.

“Personally, I don’t feel offended so much as protective of the practice,” she said. “Because Pilates, at its best, is about helping people feel strong, capable and at home in their bodies, not performing a specific kind of femininity for approval.”

Zhane Dadson, a Pilates instructor in Philadelphia who goes by Coach Zha online, feels similarly.

“The women I see in Pilates are rebuilding themselves,” she told HuffPost. “It’s not about fitting into someone else’s idea of desirable. Pilates has always been about choosing yourself. Not being chosen.”

Mariel Barnes is an assistant professor of public affairs at the University of Wisconsin whose research examines the manosphere and its influence on U.S. politics. She isn’t surprised that this type of man gravitates toward women who do Pilates (or at least their weirdly retrograde image of women who do Pilates).

“Manosphere types generally want someone who’s fit, slim, generally white and also generally young. It’s why they talk about women hitting ‘the wall,’” Barnes told HuffPost. (“The wall” is a Red Pill talking point for the age – usually put at around 30 – when they believe women lose their beauty, sexual appeal and high dating value.)

The manosphere likes to argue that feminism has ruined Western women, making them too demanding, pushy and assertive. It’s the reason they prefer Eastern European and Southeast Asian women; they consider such women more compliant and less influenced by feminism.

“Similarly, I think there’s this idea that women who do Pilates are perhaps a little bit softer or are into what young people are now calling the ‘soft life,’” Barnes said.

“Soft life” is just the latest right-wing pipeline for Gen Z women. On TikTok, creators promote rejecting hustle culture – and oftentimes work altogether – while encouraging women to pursue a life of ease and husband-provided luxury.

One video from such a creator shows the woman grocery shopping, with the caption, “You woke up one day and realised you’re the Whole Foods-shopping, vacationing in Europe, Pilates-going wife.”

This genre of influencers is the perfect companion to the trad husbands of the manosphere, because the women are willing to let men be in charge while they run the household. Pilates and other “soft life” trappings are the latest window dressing for drawing women into the trad wife lifestyle.

“‘Pilates girl’ is almost a dog whistle now,” Barnes said. “Because if the manosphere were to say what they really wanted in a woman, it would come across very badly.”

Saying you want a “Pilates girl” who values her health and staying fit sounds much better than saying, I need full control in the relationship and I’m superficial and looks are the be-all, end-all for me, Barnes said.

The women of colour Pilates instructors we talked to aren’t going to give their beloved exercise over to manosphere-adjacent types so easily, though.

“The Pilates I know is adaptive, intuitive and rooted in making things work with what you have,” said Tay Milburn, the owner and lead instructor at Fringe Pilates in Brooklyn, New York.

When Milburn sees Pilates reduced to whether it makes someone look “lean” or fit a certain aesthetic, it tells her that those people don’t actually understand the method.

“They’re engaging with it as an outcome for the male gaze, not as a wellness practice,” she said. “I think the current conversation is less about what Pilates actually is and more about how it’s been marketed. At its core, Pilates is a tool for connection, healing and strength.”

They’re intent on making the exercise more welcoming, too.

“It’s true that it has had a reputation as being for white women,” said Sonja R. Price Herbert, a Pilates instructor and founder of Black Girl Pilates, a space where Black female instructors can network.

“When I started Black Girl Pilates in 2017, there was more intimidation felt due to the lack of Black instructors,” she told HuffPost. “Because of our advocacy and because of Black instructors, there are more safe spaces for all of us.”

The Star Wars series The Acolyte is enjoying an unexpected resurgence, almost two years after Disney made the decision not to renew the show.

In 2024, The Acolyte premiered on the streaming platform Disney+, starring Amandla Stenberg as twin sisters Osha and Mae, leading a cast that also included the likes of Manny Jacincto, Jodie Turner-Smith and Squid Game’s Lee Jung-jae.

Regrettably, the show’s diverse casting was met with a backlash from more narrow-minded, far-right members of the Star Wars fandom, resulting in it being “review bombed”.

Eventually, it was cancelled by Disney after one season.

However, fans have spotted in recent days that it has been enjoying an impromptu renaissance in recent history, to the point it’s made its way into Disney+’s list of most-watched shows right now.

In the summer of 2024, Amandla had some thoughts to get off their chest about the show’s cancellation, lamenting the “rampage of vitriol”, “hyper-conservative bigotry” and “prejudiced hatred and hateful language” levelled against them and their co-stars.

While Amandla said they feel “very sad about the show being cancelled”, they also insisted it had been “an honour” to be part of the Star Wars universe, particularly as a long-time sci-fi fan, and praised fans of The Acolyte who did their best to support for the show.

Months later, Amandla’s co-star Jodie Turner-Smith admitted she was not impressed with the way Disney handled the conservative backlash against The Acolyte.

“They’ve got to stop doing this thing where they don’t say anything when people are getting fucking dog-piled on the internet with racism and bullshit,” Jodie said. “It’s just not fair to not say anything. It’s really unfair.”

Her comments were similar to quotes from Star Wars actor John Boyega, who has also been critical of Disney since his time playing Finn in the reboot trilogy came to an end.

The Acolyte is available to stream on Disney+ now.

Donald Trump has threatened to slap extra tariffs on UK goods unless the government drops its plans for a digital services tax on tech giants.

The US president accused the government of “targeting American companies” and said they “better be careful” or face the consequences.

Ministers hope to raise around £5 billion over the next five years from the digital services tax, which imposes a 2% levy on the revenues of search engines, social media services and online marketplaces operating in the UK.

The White House has previously lobbied the government to reduce or abolish the tax as part of trade discussions between America and Britain.

Asked about the tax on Thursday, Trump accused the UK of trying to “make an easy buck” from American tech firms.

He said: “We don’t like it when they target American companies, because basically you’re talking about our great American companies.

“Whether we like those companies or don’t like them, they’re American companies. They’re top companies in the world.

“We’ve been looking at it. The UK did it, a couple of other people did it. They think they’re gonna make an easy buck, that’s why they’ve all taken advantage of our country.

“We can meet that very easily by just putting a big tariff on the UK, so they better be careful. If they don’t drop the tax, we’ll probably put a big tariff on the UK.

“They shouldn’t be doing that. It’s really targeting great companies, but they’re our companies. It’s like us targeting their companies, which we could do very easily.

“But you don’t have great companies like that. It’s not fair. I have an obligation to protect our companies – that’s how they became great.”

A spokesman for Keir Starmer hit back at the president and insisted the government’s policy would not change.

He said: “It is a hugely important tax in making sure that those businesses continue to pay their fair share. It is a fair and proportionate approach to taxing business activities in the UK.”

Trump’s comments, which come ahead of a state visit to America next week by King Charles, are further evidence of the decline in relations between the two governments in Washington and London.

The president is furious at the prime minister’s refusal to support the war in Iran, and has repeatedly criticised the prime minister since the conflict began nearly two months ago.

Subscribe to Commons People, the podcast that makes politics easy. Every week, Kevin Schofield and Kate Nicholson unpack the week’s biggest stories to keep you informed. Join us for straightforward analysis of what’s going on at Westminster.

A recent article in the Journal of Agriculture and Chemistry said that the term “superfood” is tossed about too readily.

“There is no regulation; the main source of information is the Internet,” they wrote.

Nonetheless, they add, there is a food that they believe qualifies: “Based on actual scientific data, grapes have earned what should be a prominent position in the superfood family.”

That includes benefits for our bones, heart, brain, and gut, they added.

Here’s what research says about those, though most say more studies are needed to prove the links are causal:

A 2015 rat study found that rats who’d been fed grapes showed slower bone turnover and improved calcium utilisation, resulting in better overall bone quality.

Another study found that resveratrol, a compound found in red or purple-skinned grapes, improved bone density in postmenopausal women, who are at increased risk of osteoporosis.

They also contain bone-healthy vitamins and minerals like manganese, potassium, and vitamins B, C, and K.

Grapes are rich in polyphenols, antioxidants which might reduce your risk of death by heart disease. These include flavonoids, phenolic acids, and resveratrol.

Grapes also contain phytonutrients like catechins, proanthocyanidins, anthocyanins, leucoanthocyanidin, quercetin, kaempferol, stilbenes, ellagic acid and hydroxycinnamates, which may help to lower your cholesterol.

A 2017 study involving older adults who took grape extract for 12 weeks found that their attention, memory, and language skills all improved after the trial.

Separate research found that grape juice seemed to boost younger adults’ mood and cognitive ability as little as 20 minutes after consumption.

Some research found that people who ate the equivalent of three servings of grapes a day seemed to increase the presence of certain beneficial gut bacteria.

Speaking to UCLA Health, Dr Zhaoping Li, chief of the university’s division of clinical nutrition, said grapes “also [give] us nutrients that feed our gut bacteria, making the microbiome a much better community of good bacteria while promoting gut health”. That’s thanks in part to their fibre content.

On Sunday, 26 April, the 2026 London Marathon is set to take place.

Over 59,000 runners are expected to take part in the race, which is set to run from Greenwich to the Mall.

Here’s when and where to catch the best views of the event, as well as the least busy points to access it.

The marathon kicks off in waves. For non-elite runners, these run from 9:30 am to 11:30 am.

For elite participants, the times start:

• Elite wheelchair races, men’s and women’s: 9:50 am
• Elite women’s: 9:05 am
• Elite men’s: 9:35 am.

Fun fact: last year, runner Tigst Assefa ran a record-breaking 2:15:50 marathon at the London Marathon. She’s running again and is hoping to beat her record; even if she gets the same time or slightly more, she’ll still have completed an entire marathon before the last wave of non-elite runners even starts.

Because the course runs from Greenwich up through to the Isle of Dogs and on to The Mall, there will be opportunities to cheer the runners on from both sides of the river.

But with tens of thousands of runners, supporters are expected to be plentiful. The race organisers themselves say that:

• Cutty Sark,
• Bermondsey,
• Canary Wharf,
• Limehouse,
• Tower Hill,
• Westminster, and
• St James’ Park Tube stations will be “extremely busy”.

Westminster station will be exit-only from 7am to 7pm.

London Marathon says that if you’re going to popular spots on the route, they expect it’s best to walk from:

• Deptford,
• Greenwich,
• Island Gardens,
• Maze Hill,
• London Overground Rotherhithe,
• London Rotherhide Surrey Quays,
• London Bridge station,
• The Canary Wharf DLR,
• Crossharbour,
• South Quay,
• Shadwell station via Cable Street,
• Westferry station,
• Poplar station,
• Bank,
• St Paul’s,
• Southwark,
• Cannon Street,
• Mansion House,
• Charing Cross,
• Piccadilly Circus,
• Victoria,
• and Waterloo.

There are five accessible viewing points planned for the London Marathon. These are located at:

• Cutty Sark,
• Canary Wharf,
• Rainbow Row,
• Tower Hill,
• Victoria Embankment.

Head to the London Marathon’s site for more details.

These are expected to include:

• Rotherhide Peninsula,
• The Highway,
• Isle of Dogs,
• Westferry,
• Poplar.

These are expected to include:

• Cutty Sark,
• Greenwich,
• Canada Water,
• Bermondsey,
• Rotherhide,
• Tower Bridge,
• Tower Hill,
• Canary Wharf,
• Limehouse,
• Westminster,
• Rainbow Row, and
• Victoria Embankment.

“These routes will be clearly signposted and diversions will be in place to assist with crowd flow so please listen to marshals’ instructions,” said the London Marathon’s site.

Much of the criticism is levelled at the fact that Michael – which was financially backed by the late musician’s estate – ends in 1988, meaning it does not include the multiple allegations of child sexual abuse made against the singer in his lifetime.

While promoting the movie, which is now in cinemas, the cast of Michael have been questioned about the decision not to include any of these abuse allegations.

Colman Domingo, who plays Jackson family patriarch Joseph in the biopic, pointed out the film’s timeline during an interview with the Today show, when questioned about claims that the project “whitewashes” the Billie Jean singer’s history.

“The film takes place from the ’60s to 1988, so it does not go into the first allegations,” the Oscar nominee responded. “So, basically, we centred it on the makings of Michael.”

He continued: “So, it’s an intimate portrait of who Michael is… through his eyes. So, that’s what it is, that’s what this film is.”

Domingo also addressed speculation about a potential follow-up to Michael, which could explore the allegations, explaining: “There’s a possibility of there being a part two that may deal with some other things that happened afterwards.

“This is about the making of Michael, how he was raised, and then how he was trying to find his voice as an artist and be a solo artist. That’s what I have to say about that.”

In the same interview, Nia Long – who plays Jackson’s mother Katherine – didn’t directly address the film’s avoidance of abuse allegations, but chipped in on the possibility of a sequel about the Grammy winner’s later years “if the price is right”.

While other cast members – including Jackson’s nephew Jaafar, who plays the star in the film – have yet to comment on the matter, Michael director Antoine Fuqua has raised questions about the allegations themselves.

In a piece published in the New Yorker, the US outlet claims that “Fuqua is not convinced that Jackson did what he is accused of doing, despite the number of accusers (five) and the fact that Jackson publicly talked about sharing his bed with boys”.

The article goes on to say that Fuqua hadn’t planned to downplay the controversy of Jackson’s later years, but “envisioned a film that might have read as a provocative defence of its subject”.

Fuqua himself said: “When I hear things about us – Black people in particular, especially in a certain position – there’s always pause.”

Variety previously reported that Michael was originally supposed to include a scene in which police arrived at Jackson’s Neverland ranch in 1993 to look for evidence.

However this was apparently scrapped, along with the biopic’s initial ending, which featured a depiction of one of the star’s accusers, for legal reasons.

Lawyers for the Jackson estate reportedly realised after filming was complete that a legal clause in one settlement barred the depiction or mention of the accuser in any movie, triggering an expensive 22-day re-shoot and talks of a follow-up or sequel to the biopic including these subjects in a different way.

Despite the controversy over the film’s lack of controversy itself, Michael has had a strong start at the box office, pulling in $18.5 million (around £13.7 million) on its opening day.