January 2012
13 posts
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"There is this nagging thought that says, “what if... →
Solid advice from 22 Idea Street.
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The best of the rest of the internet
A short but sweet collection of links on feminism, creativity and the politics of everyday life.
Low-Commitment projects: making stuff happen with little time and energy. (Low-Commitment Projects)
Hilarious. The Purity Bear will cock block you until you’re married. (Jezebel)
Why #mtrsues is good for feminism. (The News With Nipples)
“Tory feminism” is feminism for the 1%....
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Notes on a scandal
It is a rare weekend in the life of this journalist that five opinion pieces are published in major newspapers in response to something I wrote. (Paging you Julia Baird, Crispin Hull, Anne Summers, Miranda Devine and Melinda Tankard Reist. And for good measure, paging you too, Eva Cox, even though your article wasn’t published on the weekend.)
Actually, let’s be honest - it is...
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someonetrying asked: Hi Rachel! What did you study in university? Did it help you write the way you do now? Also, on a completely different note, what made you choose over Tumblr to Wordpress? I mean, yes, Tumblr is a pretty rad place for a blogging platform. It's just that most post entries are more photo-based and less of a place for long reads. Thank you so much for taking the time to reading/answering my...
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The best of the rest of the internet
If you read one thing this weekend, make it Tami Winfrey Harris’s Not everyone is laughing at Shit White Girls Say To Black Girls:
The discussion is hard because it requires good, well-meaning people to admit to and examine their own racial privilege. It requires those who may think of themselves as anti-racist allies to do more than tsk tsk along with black friends about some madness, say,...
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Ask Rachel: How do you score interviews with...
Mihal asks: You’ve interviewed some fabulous women, do you have any tips of the best way to approach people for an interview - someone like Caitlin Moran, did you approach her directly or go through a publicist?
As a general rule of thumb, the more famous the person is, the more likely gatekeepers are involved. So, interviews like Tina Fey, Natalie Portman, Kate Moss? Were all organised via...
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Melinda Tankard Reist and me: meditations on my...
There are some people in this world who make us irrationally angry. For me, Melinda Tankard Reist used to be one of them. Maybe it was her stance on abortion, or maybe it was the way her name always seemed to pop up in newspapers articles about primary school children getting bikini waxes and exchanging sexual favours in the playground.
Whatever it was, I didn’t like her. And it wasn’t just her...
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It’s a couple of weeks old now, but Clementine Ford’s essay on body image is full of “yes”:
Girl, you look much healthier now! Girl, stay just like this! Girl, do you think you need that second helping? Girl, you need to start watching what you eat again. Girl, you made me promise I would tell you if you ever started getting fat again and I’m just keeping my promise. Girl,...
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“When Miranda July tried to explain why she and [Carrie] Brownstein had stayed...”
– Stumptown Girl: The New Yorker
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Happy New Year, y'all!
Just as people say the twentieth century didn’t start until 1914, for me 2012 began around six weeks ago, for various reasons including this and this.
The past few weeks have been less about winding down and celebrating the year that passed, and more about getting started on the year to come: hence all that stuff about living the beautiful life.
So, here are some things I’d like from 2012:
Finish...
December 2011
9 posts
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Ten things I wrote (but you probably didn't read)...
Mostly because a) they weren’t published online or b) I didn’t talk about them here. My top picks from my 2011 paid work… with some end of year reflections thrown in for good measure.
The New Sexual Double Standard - CLEO, March 2011. Hooked to one of my all time most popular blog posts, this story explored the radical notion that (*gasp*) men don’t want sex all the time....
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On living “the beautiful life”
“Lately, I’ve been obsessed with living a more beautiful life,” I commented to a friend a couple of weeks ago when I was visiting New York.
“Maybe it’s because you just got married,” she suggested, presumably imagining some combination of designer shoes, cross stitch, DIY and freshly baked scones.
But no, I told her, it didn’t have anything to do with getting married at all. Nor did it have...
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“she was also fascinated by non-literary Internet it-girls like Cory Kennedy and...”
– The new model for Literary Seductress is Part Feminist, Part ‘Famewhore’ and All Pseudonymous.
This may be true, but it also made me sad.
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Guest post: Body love
This is a guest post by Muireann Campbell, first published at her brilliant blog Bangs and a Bun.
A couple of weeks ago, I saw an article in The Evening Standard that had three female athletes done up to the nines (the go to fashion shoot for female sportswomen – ‘let’s make them ‘girly’ and ‘pretty’!). All three of them are 2012 hopefuls, at the top of their game. I look up to female athletes...
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The best of the rest of the internet
If you read one thing this weekend, make it Veronica Grow’s adorable and accessible (yet thought provoking!) introduction to race relations, A Kit For Uptight White People.
Chally tackles the bizarre media coverage of the severe maiming of beautiful 23-year-old Lauren Scruggs, who fractured her skull and severed her hand when she accidentally walked into the propeller of a small...
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She who tries, wins
A few weeks ago, the best thing that has ever happened in my life happened to me: I sold my book. To a publisher I joked about to my nearest and dearest towards the end of the proposal process in the same way I might joke about going out on a date with, I don’t know, George Clooney.
That is to say, something that would be totally awesome if it happened, but is so awesome that you don’t ever...
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"Is there a failure more immediately public than...
I related to Autumn Whitefield-Madrano’s post on failure and beauty a couple of weeks back on all manner of levels.
There was her failure of her first driving test (Autumn at 16, me at 18), which both of us had assumed that as “smart, level-headed, ‘good’” girls, it couldn’t be that hard to pass. (Turns out were wrong.) There was the idea – which I’ll write about later this week – that success...
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The Sex Myth: Book interviewees wanted
I’m currently working on the “normality” chapter of my book, The Sex Myth: where our ideas about what’s normal come from, how they’ve changed over time, and how they impact us as individuals and as a society.
And if you’ve ever felt like, when it comes to sex and relationships, you’re just not “normal”, I’d like to speak to you.
Whether you started having sex “too early” or you haven’t had it at...
November 2011
16 posts
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bowietobowie asked: recently I had a night out with some girl friends, and we went clubbing. towards the end of the night, as I was walking through the dance floor a guy lifted up my skirt and tried to grab me. I rushed away and immediately told my friends how offended and grossed out I was about the incident. They laughed it off and were genuinely surprised that I was so worked up about it, and told me that i should...
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“[Benjamin] Franklin is arguing hard about whether there ought to be hereditary...”
– Adam Gopnik, “The First Served,” The New Yorker, November 21, 2011 (via screwrocknroll)
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If you read one thing this weekend, make it Hugo Schwyzer’s The Lolita Myth and the Lingering Lie of Male Weakness:
Some teens do want, or think they want, sexual attention from older men. But the reality that underage girls (be they 11 or 17) occasionally behave seductively towards older men doesn’t mean that older men can “be seduced.” The word “seduce” means “to be led away” or “to be led...
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Howling Clementine: Australia's Next Top Germaine →
An except from an email received today by my friend Clementine Ford:
You are no real feminist and will never be Germaine Greer. You dont have enough stamina to understand the issues, and only hurt the real victims. See you around. - ******** BTW I am the Germaine Greer of our generation, and I won’t be taking any advice from immature girls that know nothing of the world or issues they comment...
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Spoiler alert: a quick word on Dan and Blair
I wanted to write you a post about my honeymoon, the East African savannah, biological determinism and the meaning of life, but that proved too hard. So instead I’m going to write about … Gossip Girl.
Like many fans of the show, I’ve spent much of this year a quiet cheerleader (well, online at least - offline I’ve been quite vocal about it) for the...
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Ask Rachel: How do I write a killer...
Image: Chris Peplin “Pitching” - or emailing/calling an editor to sell them a story idea, for those unfamiliar with the jargon - is something that vaguely terrified me when I first started writing professionally. This is unfortunate, because being able to pitch well, and doing it often, is possibly the number one factor that differentiates those who do and those who want to do in the...
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I can't be the only person who's noticed that so...
By Rachel Hills. First published in Cosmopolitan, November 2011.
You know who I’m talking about here: Alexa Chung, Daisy Lowe, Olivia Palermo, Whitney Port, Lauren Conrad, the Kardashians, the Middletons… They’re all famous because they photograph well and have the wallets and bodies to carry off the latest trends with ease. Often, they have rich and/or famous parents. Sometimes they’ll do a...
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Seven enviable lines: advice for freelance writers
This post is based on a speech I gave at my favourite writers’ festival - Melbourne’s Emerging Writers Festival - in 2009.
1. It’s true, the media industry is about who you know - or more accurately, who knows you - but you don’t have to know people to get started. Getting to know people who will publish you and getting known is process that happens over time, and in...
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"We are all bad feminists, really"
A couple of weeks ago, I was talking to a male friend about a particular sexual practice common amongst some of his female friends that he found baffling.
He found it particularly so because the friends in question were mostly of the feminist persuasion, and the preferences in question struck him as rather, well, patriarchal. One of them had even said to him, “You know, this really makes...
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The Hook-Up Myth
By Rachel Hills. First published in Sunday Life, 2 October 2011.
Thanks to raunch culture and “Jersey Shore”, it’s easy to believe that young people are at it like rabbits. The truth is a bit more complex, writes Rachel Hills.
In her first semester at university, Shannon played a game of the drinking standard Never Have I Ever. If you haven’t played it, the rules go something like...
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The joys and sorrows of being a misfit
Warning: this post may be triggering.
Last year, I was approached by one of the magazines I freelance for to write an article on the Hermeler twins. If you’re not familiar with their story, Candice and Kristin are/were the 29-year-old Australian sisters who tried to take their lives on a Colorado gun range last year, shooting themselves simultaneously. Their attempt took Kristin’s life and left...
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The Musings of an Inappropriate Woman Guide to...
Picture: Amanda the Page Girl and Nick the Flower Man. Image thanks to Gabrielle.
One thing I can say about writing a “feminist wedding planning” series: it really puts a downer getting married.
Last week, I sat down to write the final instalment in this series. I wanted to write about how confronting I’d found it, the questions it had raised about myself and the institution, and my reasons for...
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October 2011
14 posts
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The best of the rest of the internet
If you read one thing this weekend, make it Jess Zimmerman’s takedown of “choice feminism” - pertinent in light of recent discussions on this blog about beauty privilege and positivity. Thoughts?:
Until the woman who doesn’t want to be seen as sexually available can go out with certainty that she won’t be harassed or ogled, your choice to turn heads and revel in attention is a...
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acualquierotrolugar asked: Hi! I was hoping you could recommend me some books about the treatment of women in the media. Thanks in advance :)
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The Musings of an Inappropriate Woman Guide to...
It feels funny that I’m writing this post now, right as the feeling of “oh crap, there actually is rather a lot to do, isn’t there?” has begun to descend on me. Funny because, throughout this whole process, one of my most oft repeated lines – more than the whole money thing, even – is that wedding planning is not nearly as time consuming or all encompassing as the industry and the bridalsphere...
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Slut shaming: it’s not about how much sex you've...
Slut shaming – or dissing chicks who get more action (or appear to get more action) than you do – is a shitty was to behave, we can all agree. So why do we do it?
Okay, so maybe you never have – and in that case, I applaud you. But adding to my ever growing pile of politically incorrect bad feminist confessions, I’m ashamed to say I have.* And so have a lot of my friends.
Why? Because...
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The best of the rest of the internet
My favourite media finds in a very, very busy week.
Best magazine cover ever of the month? I think so! (New Statesman)
Sadie Doyle compares SlutWalk and Occupy Wall Street:
I had been staying away from Occupy Wall Street. I wasn’t sure why; I, like every other progressive in the city, had been exhorted to attend, reminded that it was both my right and my duty. As a recession casualty, and a...
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Ask Rachel: Why do you write for women's...
Wyn writes: I would love for you to just bite the bullet and write a post about how troubling it is for you to be both a) a feminist and b) a regular writer for potentially anti-woman magazines like Cosmo, and how you deal with that dichotomy… since it keeps on slithering around under the surface of so many of your posts.
I’m guessing you wouldn’t believe me if I told you I...