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‘I look deranged, but my baby looks happy!’ Nine writers on their favourite photo booth picture

This year marks a century since the birth of the photo booth, and friends and families are still squeezing into them for fun and unflattering snaps - capturing the highs, lows and loves of their lives

I didn’t find early motherhood easy. It wasn’t my daughter’s fault – she was, mercifully, a wonderful and cheerful baby – but I underestimated what a huge shift it would be at an already stressful time. When I was pregnant, we moved to a new town, to a wreck of a house we planned to do up. My mum, who was ill, moved in with us, and then I was the carer of a newborn and a dying parent – at the two extremes of life, but sharing many of the same needs, and often at the same time.

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© Photograph: Courtesy of Emine Saner

© Photograph: Courtesy of Emine Saner

© Photograph: Courtesy of Emine Saner

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Why the anger with Billie Eilish? Because it’s against the rules to say what we all know about billionaires | Zoe Williams

The singer is giving away millions – but the parameters for criticising the super-rich are very narrow, and hardly anyone qualifies

What exactly happened with Billie Eilish at the Wall Street Journal Magazine Innovator awards last week? Look it up, and you have a perfect thumbnail of the modern information environment, its highs and lows. You can find out the exact words used by the event host, Stephen Colbert, as he introduced her and announced that the 23-year-old singer was giving away $11.5m (£8.8m) to fight food poverty and the climate crisis. You can find out the exact words she used after she took the stage. “We’re in a time right now where the world is really, really bad and really dark and people need empathy and help more than kind of ever, especially in our country,” she said. You can also get straight to the controversial bit. “Love you all, but there’s a few people in here that have a lot more money than me. If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire? No hate, but yeah, give your money away, shorties.”

You can get an instant read on Mark Zuckerberg’s reaction, at least if you believe the New York Post – he was there while his wife, Priscilla Chan, received an award, and he signalled his displeasure by reportedly refusing to clap. You can do a deep dive on what Eilish meant by “shortie” (was it a catcall, an endearment or a simple statement of that fact that Zuckerberg is 5ft 7in and, by sheer coincidence, so is Jeff Bezos?). And you’ll find plenty of global backlash, so familiar and predictable that it feels almost naive to question its assumptions. “As gen Z are wont to do,” one Sky News Australia presenter said, “she seems to be a bit of a socialist, despite the fact that she has millions and millions of dollars in the bank.” He segues straight to Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York City, noting that his biggest support is from “high-income earners”.

Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist

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© Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for WSJ. Magazine Innovators Awards

© Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for WSJ. Magazine Innovators Awards

© Photograph: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for WSJ. Magazine Innovators Awards

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‘I thought ‘Bond girl’ was such a demeaning term’: Famke Janssen on acting, ambition and Woody Allen

She came to prominence as a model, before starring as Xenia Onatopp opposite Pierce Brosnan’s 007. Then, instead of pursuing glamorous roles, she got gritty. She discusses sexism, success and why she won’t be stripping off on social media

Famke Janssen is dressed for her photoshoot at the Covent Garden hotel exactly as her character, Betty, would dress in the new Netflix crime drama Amsterdam Empire – lacy and floral but tailored and mini, with long school socks. Is the look sexy in a sardonic way, or irony expressed through fashion? We spend a lot of time, one way or another, talking about objectification, the beauty myths of the patriarchy, the collateral damage of the self – sexism, basically. Janssen has been in more than 60 films across a 30-year career, and before that, she was a model. There’s a lot to talk about.

So it hardly seems the time to mention how smoking she looks; her face as flawless and cheekboney at 60 as it was nearly 30 years ago, in the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye. It’s almost unnerving – if she were a man, I would mention it without hesitation. She puts it down to clean living: “I get judged very quickly, that I must have had work, which I haven’t. We shame women into it, and then we shame women when they do it. I support everyone’s decision to do whatever they want, it’s just not my cup of tea.”

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© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

© Photograph: David Levene/The Guardian

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