January 2012
15 posts
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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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The best of the rest of the internet
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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