August 2010
36 posts
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Blog love: New to the Musings of an Inappropriate...
You’ve seen them through ‘The Best of The Rest of the Internet’ and guest posts around the traps, now see them on the right hand column of this site. These blogs are consistent “me”-pleasers, and hopefully will soon be “you”-pleasers, too.
Comic Mummy - Aussie comedian Jenny Wynter on creativity and life. Fashademic - Rosie is a PhD student at Sydney...
How to be Friends with an Extrovert →
(via ultraprison)
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Making magic, part 2: on the tyranny of image
I’ve been thinking a lot about fabulousness lately. Mostly for a couple of articles I’ve been working on, but as a perpetual shifter (not in the True Blood sense, but in the sense of one who is always making minor adjustments to her life) I guess it’s something I think about a bit anyway.
As I’ve written here before, one thing I believe quite firmly is that we’re...
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The best of the rest of the internet
Too much work, not enough internet reading this week. (Who knew there could be such a balance?) But never fear - I’ve still got your weekly mix of gender, politics, and creativity.
If you read one thing this weekend, make it the fabulous Fashademic (I love her! Subscribe to her blog!) on girl culture, style blogging and about 50 mentions of Style Rookie:
Fashion is not trivial and neither...
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Nerd alert: So, about that social research... →
There’s some discussion going around the Tumblrsphere at the moment in response to a recent post on Jezebel. Titled, ‘Another reason to take psych research with many grains of salt’, the post discusses a paper arguing that we don’t know as much about human psychology as we think we do, because most of what we do know is based on studies of USA-ian college students.
...
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Want to work in magazines? How to score a work... →
(via Journalism.co.uk)
Related: Seven enviable lines: advice for freelance writers How to get an entry level job in the creative industries
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The Great Singledom Backlash?
Back in 2002, Australian journalist Virginia Haussegger famously wrote in The Age that her generation had been fooled by the women that came before them that “female fulfilment came with a leather briefcase”, and had missed out on marriage and children in the process.
Just eight years later, the world feels like a very different place. Educated women may still be holding off on marriage and...
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Whenever I wish I was more successful, I think:...
Image credit: John Lamb. Artist: John Lamb’s daughter.
Related: My name’s Rachel and I’m a workaholic. And I think the internet may have something to do with it. Aspiration, longing and Alain de Botton.
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“[I]f only, undecided voter, you were undecided for an actual reason. If only you...”
– The problem with undecided voters: bluemilk @ Hoyden About Town
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The best of the rest of the internet
Weekend reading on sex, media, creativity and the Australian election (coming to a head today - get your vote on!).
If you read one thing this weekend, make it: If you read Australia’s election campaign shows a country that wants to cut itself off from the rest of the world:
From [McTernan’s] vantage point, although it’s not articulated clearly by any of the parties, the election...
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If the Herald-Sun can do it, why can't I?
And it turns out we agree on something for once. Kind of. With a few minor edits.
In which I reluctantly endorse Julia Gillard and Labor for your second-last preference:
This has been the worst federal election campaign in memory.
Neither Julia Gillard, who will have been Prime Minister for 58 days, nor Tony Abbott, who won a party spill by one vote just six months earlier, has shown the...
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"At seventeen I was engaged to a man I had never... →
Read this. And then subscribe to her blog.
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Reblogged: No words for what hurts
Because sometimes, neither ‘abuse’ nor ‘but he/she’s such a nice guy/girl!’ cut it.
tiaramerchgirl writes:
I was talking with a friend the other day about relationship issues and we both hit on how difficult it can be to find resources and help that fall somewhere in between “oh it was just a misunderstanding! you’ll be right!” and “this is ABUSE! get the hell out...
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“UK ELLE is tailored to please both insatiable intellects and insatiable...”
– Check out my review of new mag love UK Elle at Girl With A Satchel.
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Five days, done and dusted. Reflections on a...
I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who donated to my Live Below The Line Campaign. It was your support (and this blog) that kept me going through the five days - nothing works like accountability. I’m only about half-way to my fundraising goal, so if you haven’t donated yet and would like to, please click here to contribute. I won’t be crushed if I don’t...
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Guest post: Success envy
This post by Jenny Wynter definitely resonated with me - although like Jenny, I’m usually able to talk myself out of it.
For me, ”success envy” usually manifests itself in a sense of anxiety and acute insecurity. “Oh shit, why aren’t I doing that? How can I make myself more like that person? Nobody cares about the work I do. I’m worthless. I have to work...
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“One of the great achievements of feminism, he said, was to make women’s gender...”
– Michael Kimmel on male entitlement, anger and invisible privilege - Chloe, Feministing (via orchidaceae) (via sarahgraham7)
I often think about this in relation to my thesis, albeit in a different way. People who have had reason to think about their sexuality, whatever that reason might be (a sense...
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The best of the rest of the internet
Weekend reads on gender, politics, popular culture, creativity and more.
If you read one thing this weekend, make it The Baby Sitters Club, Bret Easton Ellis style:
There is nothing more depressing than coming home after last bell at StoneyBrook High, trying to get my room in order for the Baby-Sitters’ Club meeting, and then realizing that you really don’t even give a shit anymore. Like, sorry...
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If women can say 'no' to sex, why can't men?
Probably the most interesting post (certainly the most popular) I’ve published here this year is this one, interrogating the idea that men are uncontrollable beasts who want sex anytime, anywhere and will do anything to get it.
It’s a stereotype that excuses men of committing sexual assault (“he couldn’t control himself!”), whilst making it inconceivable to imagine...
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Anonymous asked: Even though I am old I don't have any experience in relationships. I got asked out by this guy who to tell you the thruth I am not into and because of the fact he is moving out of state I cant imagine a relationship with him. My friends are telling me I should go to get used to first dates. While I agree I am torn as I am worried that if it goes bad or he asks me stuff that I feel...
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Making magic: you are not your wardrobe
I’m currently developing a story on what makes some people charismatic, magnetic and more apt to lead a charmed life than others. It’s a women’s magazine cliche if ever there was one, but I’m hoping the subjects I’m choosing to include will make my article a little different - and more useful.
As women, one of the most pervasive myths we’re sold is that if...
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And another quick comment on elegance.
It’s not brain surgery, but it often strikes me that the aesthetic promoted by the glossies is a mark of privilege: an indicator that we have money (and time) to spend on beauty products, that we don’t need to walk far (which would mean comfortable shoes and mussed up hair), that we have someone else to carry our belongings for us. What we view to be attractive or hot is often as much...
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The best of the rest of the internet
Weekend reads on gender, race, politics, creativity and more.
If you read one thing this weekend, make it Seven Years as a Freelance Writer, or How To Make Vitamin Soup. So hilarious and so quotable that it’s impossible to narrow down to a single golden quote.
Kanye West’s tweets meet the New Yorker’s cartoons. (New Yorker)
‘A Woman’s Vagina - In Public - Faces...
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Guest post: A postcard from the West Bank
Image: Israeli West Bank barrier, Kamamye
In the old days, they used to say there were three topics you should never raise at a dinner party: politics, sex and religion. These days, I’m inclined to think any dinner party that doesn’t touch upon at least two of the above is a party that isn’t worth attending.
There’s still one subject on the intersection of politics and...
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“I offered to take her to a divorce court if she was skeptical that sex in a...”
– Amanda Marcotte in No laughing, no screwing, no learning to read.
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Reblogged: On avoiding the male gaze. →
JGH writes:
“I like it when women wear dresses,” he said, “and men wear suits. I think that’s how it should be.”
“But you wear grungy jeans and Converse and hav tat-sleeves. You’re not exactly the picture of conforming to upper-class masculinity, you know?”
“For the last time, I’m not telling you WHAT to do. I’m saying that’s what I like. And you could tell me what to wear. That’s what...
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Quick note to everyone who said I could vote...
Of course I could. And I will. But the fact of our preferential voting system - and the one we use for federal elections in particular - means that most of us (people living in the seat of Melbourne possibly excepted here) have to send our preferences to Gillard or Abbott somewhere down the line.
Normally this wouldn’t bother me - I love preferential voting! I advocate it excitedly to...
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Australians: is it just me, or is this the...
I don’t want to vote for either of them, but sadly that’s not allowed.
Anyone feeling more optimistic about this whole shebang than I am?
Related: Last night I dreamt Julia Gillard won the election… Four articles I’d like to read on Julia Gillard, K-Rudd and the ‘spill’ Was Abbott the only choice the Liberals had?
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My feminist agenda. What's yours?
Last week, Lena Chen wrote a post entitled ‘What my feminist agenda looks like’, in response to this post on Feministe, and to comments that it was outside feminists’ jurisdiction to care about issues such as poverty, class, race or disability.
It got me thinking about what my own feminist agenda might look like. I went to a school where liberal feminism was pushed down our...
