‘Smart women aren’t supposed to care about beauty. But I do.’

Amy S Choi

This is an edited extract from Pretty Bitches by Lizzie Skurnick, left, the creator of the New York Times magazine word-coinage column ‘That Should Be a Word’, and a veritable queen of coinage. This essay is by Amy S Choi called Effortless.

Twice a year I have a ritual. I go up to Thirty-Second Street in Manhattan’s Koreatown and head into an anonymous building where I am greeted by a tiny, beautiful Russian woman who leads me to a stack of mesh disposable undies, the likes of which I hadn’t seen since slipping on some of those bad boys in the maternity ward after giving birth.