Dear Agony Aunt: What Should I Do?
No teenager is in a hurry to talk about sex with their mother. But, there being no Google to advise my 16-year-old self in the Eighties, my mother it had to be. All my friends were as clueless as I was and, since my mother had given birth to me, I deduced that she must have – gross – at least done the deed at some point.
Pre-internet, if you wanted advice on boyfriends, girlfriends, acne or period pains, you had two options: asking your mum (cringe) or your peer group (cringe, and also fairly useless). Or, you could write to an agony aunt, who might eventually sift through her bloated postbag and answer your query within the pages of which- ever esteemed oracle you read. For me, it was Jackie magazine, and while its agony aunts, Cathy and Claire, never did respond to my question ‘Why is one breast bigger than the other and how can I ever let a boy see me naked?’, they did respond to myriad other problems submitted by nameless girls whose issues, I soon deduced, were uniformly similar to mine.
Many years later, I’d discover that Cathy and Claire weren’t real, a betrayal akin to finding out the truth about Santa. ‘They’ were Gayle Anderson – a woman, yes, but not an agony aunt by trade, a fact that did nothing to stem the steady stream of 500 letters a week she received, alongside the occasional scab or urine sample. Then again, what is an ‘agony aunt’? The current surge in their popularity seems an apt time to ask. No longer confined to the pages of a newspaper or magazine, today’s iterations are as likely to be found on TikTok or Instagram, the mostsocial-media-savvy of whom are using theirplatforms to carve out not just a niche but anentire career – and, in some cases, an empire.Take Tinx, the 33-year-old American TikTok sensation (real name: Christina Najjar)with 1.5million followers, whose videos havebeen liked over 90 million times, and whoForbes lists as the 26th highest-earningcreator of 2023, amassing £6million last year.Or Call Her Daddy, a TikTok account with2.9million followers, whose co-creatorAlexandra Cooper, 29, spun her success intoa £47million podcast deal with Spotify.
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Huge and loyal followings this new breedof agony aunt may have, but what they don’tpossess is any formal qualifications. Nor, in many cases, have they acquired the wisdom that decades of lived experience brings. Sophia Rundle and Mia Sugimoto were 17 when they started the advice site Girlhood, inspired by the Barbie film. They launched in August last year: three weeks later, they’d had 20,000 requests for advice and 8 million views.
Their fans would argue that their age and relatability is a positive, as is the fact that, since launch, they’ve fielded requests from over 6,000 volunteers wanting to help answer their peers’ dilemmas. The most common problems they’re asked about, says Sugimoto, are boy troubles, friendship drama and tips on making new friends. ‘We try our best to put [advice] on our blog so more girls have easy access to it. That so many of us have similar troubles really shows that every girl is not alone. It’s our goal to spread that message as much as we can,’ she explains.
As digital natives, they’re also well placed to understand the pressures of being a teen in 2024. ‘Negative feelings centred around adolescence are amplified now as a result of social media and the toxicity that circulates online,’ says Rundle. ‘Teenagers and young people spend hours every day scrolling TikTok or Instagram and comparing themselves to others. This can be harmful to development and instil a dire sense of self-lack. So many young people struggle with self-love and acceptance because they’re constantly succumbing to a vacuum of comparison, which is why we’ve seen such a noticeable increase in mental-health-related issues and a need for advice,’ she says.
With Britain and the rest of the world in the grip of a mental-health crisis, it is no surprise that agony aunts are enjoying a resurgence. ‘One of the things human beings struggle with most is a lack of certainty. With the pandemic, modern wars, financial and environmental crises, identity politics and so-called culture wars, the world has never felt so uncertain and rapidly changing,’ notes Dr Kate Younger, a clinical psychologist at The Blue Door Practice in London. ‘People are losing the ability to self-soothe, and can be drawn towards sticking-plaster approaches to appease their uncertainty, including being told what to think or do,’ she adds.
She acknowledges that for people who are in a desperate state emotionally or financially, who can neither access NHS therapy nor afford private care, advice from an agony aunt may appeal. But she advises caution. ‘I see untrained agony aunts as advice givers for people they’ve not necessarily met. When it comes to psychological and emotional matters, this is tricky and potentially dangerous territory to navigate. People’s psychological wounds and distress are typically idiosyncratic, and best understood in the context of a complex num- ber of events that have spanned their entire life. Advising on one aspect may destabilise in another area. Of course, there are some people that only want or have the capacity to receive advice, whereas therapy may feel too intense, exposing or costly, so I am not saying that therapy is all good and agony aunts are all bad,’ she says.
Girlhood’s Sugimento and Rundle emphasise they have no formal qualifications, but believe, since many of their followers are unable to access the professional support they need, they’re providing a valuable resource. ‘Mental-health services are so important in a world plagued by depression, anxiety and more,’ says Rundle. ‘The purpose behind Girlhood isn’t to stop girls from receiving the mental-health support they need, as we are not qualified to provide this, but rather to let them know they aren’t alone.’
Given that ‘Cathy and Claire’, aka Gayle Anderson, was 19 when she first started answering Jackie readers’ anguished letters, it’s a reminder that a paucity of age, experience or qualifications has never been a barrier to becoming an agony aunt. As documented in Never Kiss a Man in a Canoe, Tanith Carey’s 2009 book on the history of agony aunts, the first one can be traced back to 1691, when bookseller John Dunton took matters into his own hands after having an affair. Realising he had no one to advise him, he launched The Athenian Gazette, complete with agony column. It proved so popular that he had to hire a team of writers to help him – including Daniel Defoe, who in 1704 started up his own publication, The Review, and became its ‘agony uncle’. Not until the 1740s did agony aunts start swelling in popularity, with names such as Haywood and Frances Moore pioneering the idea of advice columns as a female fiefdom.
Today, two of the most prominent names in the UK are journalist and author Dolly Alderton, who writes for The Sunday Times’ lifestyle supplement Style, and Philippa Perry, a qualified psychotherapist with a weekly column in The Observer. I ask Perry what the trick is to being a good agony aunt in 2024. ‘What I seek to do is get some nice, interesting questions in,’ she says. ‘That’s really important. And then you have to not only answer them correctly, but remember that you’re a journalist as wellas a psychotherapist, and try to entertain orinterest the reader. You can’t just say, “go andsee a counsellor” – you have to say somethinganother person might not have thought of.You also might have to reframe their questionbecause they’re not asking the right one,or get them to look at the problem fromanother angle. Because sometimes the presenting problem isn’t the problem. It mightbe, “Why can’t I get my wife to do whatI want?” And I’ll go, “That isn’t your problem.Your problem is that you want to get yourwife to do something, and you’re not secureenough to let go of control”.’ Does Perry everworry she’s given the wrong advice? ‘Notreally, because I never say, “You must do this” – I’d suggest that they look at it from another angle.’
It’s a similar spirit of suggestion rather than pedantry that informs the advice of Dami Olonisakin, the British and Nigerian relationship adviser whose Instagram account, @oloni, has 204,000 followers, and who has been featured as a sex expert on Netflix’s Sex: Unzipped. ‘I always make it clear that I’m not a therapist or a doctor – I’m just here to give my opinion. I always let them know that ultimately it’s their decision, and they should always do what they feel is right.’ Olonisakin started her Simply Oloni blog in 2008, aged 18. When her readers started sending her anonymous questions, she realised there was a gap in the sex and relationship advice market addressing Black women’s sexuality, and her career as an agony aunt was born. She now runs the podcast Laid Bare, which tackles difficult topics such as STIs, abortion and sexual assault. The question of why, historically, agony aunts have been not only female but white is a valid one. The answer: white privilege is as rampant in the world of self-help as it is in every other sphere. But things are changing: social media is nothing if not democratic, giving marginalised voices a bigger platform. ‘Growing up, I never saw women who looked like me, who I felt could relate to me; a common experience for Black British women in the UK,’ Olnisakin says. ‘My followers know my advice is coming from a relatable place, because I understand their culture and backgrounds. Many of us couldn’t talk about sex comfortably with our parents. We were taught that sex was for procreation and grew up in very strict homes. The way we saw relationships was shaped by our culture.’
Like every agony aunt I spoke to for this feature, Olonisakin has been shocked by the tragic stories she’s heard, and the desperation of some of her followers. ‘I remember a girl who DM’d me on Twitter [now X] many years ago, who seemed suicidal. I made her give me her number because I was extremely worried. I called her, and for a good five min- utes she just cried. I continued to check in on her, and still do now and then. She’s good now, which is amazing. But I wish we were taught more about how to deal with our emotions, or given the right resources to get help.’
As anyone who has sought professional help will know, the right resources are increasingly overwhelmed and hard to access. Since 2019, the number of young people referred to CAMHS (Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service) across the UK has increased by over 75%. Waiting lists for help can be up to three years long, due to staff shortages and chronic underfunding. Whatever the pitfalls of soliciting advice from an agony aunt, the cold, hard truth is that, for many users, they are the only resource available. For advice on spots, sex and sisterhood, agony aunts are invaluable. But for anything serious, they’d be the first to suggest seeking professional help. A problem shared is a problem halved – just always be mindful who you share it with.
This article appears in the March 2024 issue of ELLE UK.
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