The 2026 Winter Olympics are going on in full swing in Milan and Cortina as the best of athletes are competing hard to collect medals and memories. One such wholesome moment came during the final of the women’s snowboard halfpipe event.

USA’s South Korean-origin athlete, Chloe Kim, the two-time defending champion of the event, seemed set to earn her third straight gold. In competition was also a 17-year-old South Korean Choi Ga-on.

Choi did not have the best of starts to the event but ultimately emerged as the shock winner to dethrone Chloe. As Choi won the event, Chloe rushed towards the teenager and embraced her. She had mentored Choi and despite losing the gold could not stop herself from celebrating the victory. While Choi’s win was big, there was another big story unfolding at the same time.

Asian powers rise in snowboarding

Winter Olympics is a stronghold of the western countries. European nations like Switzerland, France, and Austria dominated many Winter Olympic disciplines throughout the history of these events. They had the money, they had the infrastructure and they had a cultural affinity towards snow sports as well.

However, things are changing now. Not just did a South Korean athlete and another one of origins in South Korea won the snowboarding gold and silver medals, the bronze to went to an Asian country. Japan’s Mitsuki Ono clinched the bronze, to mark the first time in history that an all-Asian podium had been achieved in women’s snowboarding halfpipe in Winter Olympics history.

After years of playing catch-up, these East Asian powers are now rising rapidly. South Korea, Japan, China, and the Asian diaspora in western countries is now challenging old hierarchies of winter sports.

With more and more Asians at the podium leading the charge, expect more of them to join these sports back home. This will further boost Asian efforts in snow sports and soon other countries too will join in. The power dynamics in winter sports are being challenged and it helps the entire winter sports ecosystem if these sports go global.

One day in 2023, I was scrutinising my body in a full-length mirror.

I did this a lot, this tearful ritual of self-flagellation – but this time, I noticed something that had never been there before.

Cellulite, dappled along the backs of my thighs.

The tears started flowing, as they often did. I wasn’t crying with horror, though, but with happiness.

Two years before, I had come out as transgender. Ever since starting Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), I’d been experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions trying to reconcile my outer appearance with my inner sense of self – but seeing the cellulite on my thighs was a moment of sheer catharsis.

I finally felt at home in my body.

I knew all the messages sold to women and girls: that cellulite is unattractive and undesirable, that it should be eliminated. And yet, standing in front of the mirror, I didn’t feel any of the shame women are taught to feel.

Instead, I felt overjoyed and proud to be experiencing something that so many women experience.

In short, I felt gender euphoria.

But I certainly haven’t always felt this way – far from it.

My relationship with my body has always been complicated. As a child, I struggled with comfort eating and ended up overweight. Since then, I’ve dealt with persistent issues of body image.

Growing up, the mirror was my great enemy; it was the cudgel I used to punish myself for my (imagined) inadequacies.

This is an experience I share with lots of women – except that I first spent years of my life as a man.

I had always felt a sense of dissonance between how the world perceived me and how I perceived myself, and in puberty those issues only worsened. With each change I experienced – every new hair that sprouted on my body, every inch my shoulders grew – the gulf between the burgeoning woman I felt myself to be and the reality of my reflection widened.

Looking in the mirror felt like staring at a stranger.

Over the years, gender dysphoria manifested itself subtly in me, as a nebulous feeling of absence. I didn’t have any exposure to the trans experience so I didn’t have language that would help me describe that painful feeling of something missing.

But I felt disconnected from myself, and for years I couldn’t understand why.

When I interacted with the world outside my room, I struggled to understand the expectations ascribed to boys and men. When strangers called me ‘Sir’, I often asked myself who they could be talking to.

I spent years as a passive observer in my own life – and, consequently, spent decades dealing with persistent depression.

I truly felt as though nothing mattered. I had no investment in my own life.

Even when I came out as transgender in February 2021, aged 30, I remained in front of the mirror – because coming out only served to further complicate my relationship with my reflection.

I’d always been prone to negative self-comparison; but, while I was transitioning, this grew to include the impossible standards of feminine beauty levied upon women. ‘Your waist must be small, but not too small.’ ‘You must not have visible body hair.’ ‘You must sound, look, and act a certain way.’

I spent countless hours studying all the ways my body failed to meet the ideals of feminine beauty. I was ‘too fat’, ‘too broad’, ‘too masculine’.

It all left me feeling emotionally exhausted, depleted, and hopeless, and the irony – that comparing yourself unfavourably to other women is a common experience of womanhood – was lost on me.

I started HRT in June 2021 with the aim of raising my progesterone and oestrogen levels, and reducing my testosterone. Over the next few years, HRT slowly began to change my body in a myriad of ways – some expected, and others less so.

The redistribution of body fat, the softening of my features, the thickening of my hair.

These things came too slowly to notice any change from one day to the next, and I still contended with my reflection daily, continuing to find ways to compare myself negatively to others.

It was on one of these days, years into my treatment, that I first noticed the cellulite rippling down the backs of my thighs and cried.

I’d spent my life in a prison; now here I was, crying with joy over something many women have been taught to hate about themselves.

To me, the appearance of cellulite wasn’t some omen of undesirability. It was evidence that I was moving closer to a body I felt at home in.

And in that moment, I recognised the beauty in my experience as a trans person.

I may have lost the ease of navigating the world as the gender I was assigned at birth – but I had also gained so much. I’d been afforded the chance to know myself intimately, to become who I always was; and I could experience the feeling of watching my body slowly change into something that didn’t hurt so much to see.

I didn’t always know when I was suffering through gender dysphoria, but I certainly knew when I’d found relief from it. It was like I’d cast off a weight, and in place of that weight was gender euphoria. A storm of butterflies in my stomach. A smile that nearly broke my jaw.

Happiness. Bliss. Relief.

It’s been two and a half years since that day, and I cannot say my gender dysphoria is cured. If you’ve lived with body dysmorphia, you understand that your self-image can fluctuate from day to day.

I’ve heard it said by cis women over and over again – both on social media and in my day to day discussions with friends – that their trans sisters give them new perspectives on womanhood. 

That knowing and loving trans women helps them find new ways to appreciate the many joys of their gender, to divorce themselves from the insecurities packaged and sold to them as products.

And so my hope is that, in hearing my joy, in knowing my freedom, you can experience it for yourself. 

Perhaps the next time you look in the mirror and see the cellulite on your thighs, you’ll remember my story and the elation I felt; my hope is that you can learn to see it not as a burden but a bounty, and a reminder that it is a beautiful reflection of your womanhood staring unapologetically back at you.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jessica.aureli@metro.co.uk. 

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A churn of saliva. A clashing of teeth. Way too much tongue.

These are just some of the components of a kiss many of us would rather forget.

So, it might come as a surprise to hear that more and more Brits have been searching for this kind of smooch on porn sites.

In fact, in the past two years, searches for the term ‘kissing fetish’ have surged by 67% on adult content marketplace, Clips4Sale, making it one of the most lucrative categories.

That’s kisses that are ‘wet’ and ‘smokey’, according to search terms, as well as those that you might associate with a good snogger, including ‘erotic’, ‘romantic’ and ‘SFW (safe for work)’.

In the r/dating subReddit, users have been sharing their love of a ‘sloppy and wet make-out session.’

‘I yearn for a sloppy make out session,’ wrote one user, while another said: ‘I love spit swapping, tonsil wrestling, tongue tied make out sessions.’

Our jaws hurt just thinking about it, but sex therapist Courtney Boyer is hardly surprised that kissing fetish is finally having its moment.

‘Kissing sits right at the intersection of emotional intimacy and physical arousal,’ she tells Metro. ‘The lips are packed with nerve endings, so even light contact can send strong sensory signals through the body.

‘Throw in eye contact, anticipation, scent, and emotional connection, and it becomes a powerful erotic trigger.

‘This is often more psychologically charged than overt sexual touch.’

Why are so many Brits getting off to kissing videos?

Courtney explains that, like most fetishes, our penchant for the intimate act develops through early imprinting. ‘Because kissing is often our first intimate act, it can hold emotional and erotic significance that carried into adulthood.’

That certainly makes sense, but what’s the appeal of the ‘washing-machine’ style snog?

Well, Courtney says the wet noises can hold a particular allure.

‘Sound and sensation amplify arousal,’ Courtney adds. ‘Wet kissing noises can heighten realism, and signal a mutual desire and immersion in the moment.’ Essentially, it shows that the pair are really digging the smooch.

Specific searches for things like ‘smokey kisses’ also point to a desire for sex acts that feel a little bit wrong.

‘These refer to kissing where smoke, often from cigarettes or vapes, is shared mouth-to-mouth,’ Courtney says. ‘For some, the appeal lies in taboo, the combination of all senses (taste and smell), and the intimacy of sharing air.

‘It blends rebellion with closeness, which can feel edgy and erotic.’

The fetish can also overlap with kinks like breath play, oral fixations, sensory play and even romantic dom and sub dynamics.

‘All of these center on closeness, control, and sensory immersion, which are core elements of erotic kissing,’ Courtney explains.

Keeping it PG

On the other end of the spectrum, SFW (safe for work) kisses were another frequently searched-for term, suggesting there are those out there looking for a more PG exchange.

‘Despite an increase among the younger generation in more aggressive acts like choking, there is also a growing appetite for softer intimacy,’ Courtney says.

‘Kissing that feels affectionate, slow, and emotionally grounded rather than overtly sexual.

‘In times of stress or digital overload, people often crave comfort, safety, and nostalgia. “SFW” content offers arousal rooted in connection rather than explicitness.’

While the kissing fetish spans all genders, Courtney says that research and clinical insights suggest women are more likely to eroticise kissing because they tend to ‘link arousal with emotion’.

‘That said, men absolutely share the fetish,’ she adds, ‘particularly when kissing is framed as a marker of mutual desire or conquest. It’s less about gender and more about how individuals eroticise intimacy.’

But why the sudden uptick?

With a dramatic increase in demand for kissing fetish videos in the past two years, you do have to wonder what sparked the surge in interest.

For Courtney, post-pandemic psychology plays a major role. ‘Periods of isolation heightened our awareness of touch deprivation,’ she says.

‘Kissing, intimate but accessible, became symbolic of reconnection. At the same time, dating culture has been recalibrating toward slower, more intentional intimacy.’

And while the act of kissing itself has always been erotic, the expert suggests its rise as a standalone fetish is tied to online culture, too.

‘Particularly, it’s the growth of searchable, niche content over the past decade,’ she says. ‘As people realise their specific turn-ons are shared by others, interest and visibility increases.’

Do you have a story to share?

Get in touch by emailing MetroLifestyleTeam@Metro.co.uk.

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