Musings of an Inappropriate Woman

"Inappropriate and unacceptable began their modern careers in the 1980s as part of the jargon of..."

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:00:00 +1100

“Inappropriate and unacceptable began their modern careers in the 1980s as part of the jargon of political correctness. They have more or less replaced a number of older, more exact terms: coarse, tactless, vulgar, lewd. They encompass most of what would formerly have been called “improper” or “indecent.” An affair between a teacher and a pupil that was once improper is now inappropriate; a once indecent joke is now unacceptable. This linguistic shift is revealing. Improper and indecent express moral judgements, whereas inappropriate and unacceptable suggest breaches of some purely social or professional convention. Such “non-judgemental” forms of speech are tailored to a society wary of explicit moral language…. What was once an offence against decency must be recast as something akin to a faux pas.”

- Words that think for us « Prospect Magazine (via literarypiano)

Britney Spears and why it’s painful to be beautiful I saw...

Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:00:00 +1100

Britney Spears and why it’s painful to be beautiful

I saw her on Thursday night.

A lot has been said in Australia about the quality of her performance, most of it centred around the fact that she doesn’t actually sing. To those people, I say, “who goes to a Britney Spears concert expecting her to sing?” We established 10 years ago that it wasn’t her forte. Back then I was pretty pissed off about it too (being a self-righteous teenager at the time - and one who sang at that), but these days she’s more a symbol than she is a singer. And her show is more a Circus-with-a-capital-C than a concert.

Even on that level, it had its failings, though. It was much like one of her albums, in that there were some incredible high points (multi-media, Perez Hilton, the first three songs and the last two or three), and a whole lot of filler in the middle. And she spent way too much time off stage. I paid [ridiculous amount of money] to see Britney Spears, not her dancers.

But five-song lulls mean time for thinking, and I spent most of it thinking about just how much the success of Britney Spears - and even her mental health - is measured and predicated on the way she looks. As I’ve written before: Britney with fat on her body is read as ”off the rails”; skinny, toned Britney means “she’s baaaaack” - as much so as the quality of her albums or songs.

She looked fantastic on Thursday night, absolutely beautiful. But looking at her made me feel sad, because it reminded me of how much work - and probably anguish - goes into keeping her looking like that.

Two and a half years ago, she shaved her head. Now her hair is long, blonde and half-way down her back, but you could see quite clearly where her real hair ended and the extensions began. Her body was perfectly proportioned and toned - but we’ve all seen enough photos to know that she doesn’t look like she did when she was 20 anymore without a lot of work. (And even then I recall reading that she did 1000 sit ups each day. And possibly had bulimia.)

Recently, I wrote a feature article about the lives of the ridiculously beautiful. One of the things that came out of it was that even for the proms queens of this world - the kind of women who get approached on the street by legitimate modelling agencies and put on their books - being “the beautiful girl” takes work.

And that even if you naturally possess all the qualities that make a woman considered beautiful by the majority of people, it’s still something you can turn up and down, even on and off, at will - through clothing, hairstyle, make up, high heels, etc. So much of what we think of as beautiful is really about performing femininity, regardless of your body shape or bone structure.

For the story, I spoke to Dr Meredith Jones, a researcher from UTS. She told me that contrary to the “ugly duckling” stereotype, conventionally attractive people were actually more likely to get cosmetic surgery than less attractive people. They knew the feeling that comes from being loved and appreciated from their looks, and were terrified of it going away. Or, you know, wanted to give that “love” a little boost.

And so we see Britney Spears. A woman who has - I think, at least - all the gifts of conventional beauty, who gets shit lumped on her whenever she dares to gain five kilos, get a pimple or not blow dry her hair. And who gets showered with financial and emotional rewards whenever she follows the script.

7 popular chick flicks that secretly hate women

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 23:24:36 +1100

He’s Just Not That Into You seems like a glaring omission here, but other than that, a fun article.

Should feminists engage with the mainstream media? Of course they bloody well should.

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:54:00 +1100

Should feminists engage with the mainstream media? Of course they bloody well should.:

But I also think it’s more helpful to think of it less as “writing about feminism” and more “speaking about the issues that matter to the people reading and applying critical frameworks to them”. And probably not calling them “critical frameworks” in your pitch, because that just alienates people.

Jessica Valenti asked the same question on her blog this morning, and thankfully came to the same answer. She writes:

Yes, it’s likely that the mainstream media will always screw feminists over. If we’re older we’ll be called stodgy; if we’re younger we’ll be called do-me feminists or be otherwise sexified. Our messages will be edited out, or mocked. Only some of us will get called on to give quotes or do interviews because we’re perceived as more “mainstream friendly.” It will continue to be an unfair system. But we should participate in it anyway.

Valenti’s Feministing stablemate, Courtney Martin, is currently in the running to be the Next Great American Pundit, with a column at the Washington Post up for grabs. On the blog and elsewhere, she’s been promoted on the basis that “we need more feminist voices in the media”.

But I think this misses the point. I’d like Courtney Martin to have a Washington Post column not because she subscribes to a particular philosophical framework, but because she’s an exceptionally good writer and analyst, who thinks about issues in a way that most others don’t, presents her arguments in a nuanced way, and is able to capture visceral emotional truths.

Pop feminist commentary is everywhere, at least in Australia (and my impression is in large smathes of America as well) - good analysis and original thinking, not so much.

Good feminist writing in the mainstream media - and good writing of any persuasion - isn’t about pushing a particular philosophical barrow. It’s about communicating with an audience about the issues that matter in their lives in a voice they can relate to (hence the not using words like “discourse” or “framework” in one’s pitches), and applying frameworks (here we go again!) that help to illuminate their experience and understanding of the world.

ETA my response to Jessica’s post:

I’m glad the answer you came to on this one is “yes”.

While I can appreciate the frustration some feminists feel when it comes to MSM, I can’t imagine *not* engaging with it. You just need to pick your medium/s (personally, I prefer to converse with the convertible than battle it out with the completely opposed) and modulate your message so it speaks to the intended audience.

I also think it helps to think of it less as “writing about feminism” and more “applying feminist – and other personal-is-political – frameworks to issues that matter to the people you’re talking to, in a voice and language they can relate to. This is exactly what I do for women’s mags, and I’m getting plenty of work.

Why I’m writing about STIs: an FYI (and a request for...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:17:10 +1100

Why I’m writing about STIs: an FYI (and a request for help)

Two recent exchanges.

The first, at my high school reunion over the weekend.

Me: [blah blah blah] Sydney Morning Herald, Vogue, Cleo…
Old friend: Doesn’t Cleo publish stories about sex?
Me: Yep, that’s what I write about. (Note: Well, that and other things - see my “Kanye West syndrome” story in Cleo’s latest issue.)

Second, the above tweet, which caused some amusement (and in one case horror) for a few of the guys on my Twitter list when I posted it last week. Fair enough - I guess it was pretty bluntly phrased, and an unusual question to throw out on Twitter. But it’s also an important one.

I feel like much of the time, when we talk about sex, we’re not really talking about the actual act of it at all. And as a writer, at least, that’s certainly not where my interest lies. What I’m interested in are the processes by which people make sense of their own and others’ experiences - and sex just happens to be a particularly symbolically- and emotionally-loaded arena in which to think about this.

Some of you may remember that this time last year I was working on a story about why so many people stop using condoms once they get into a relationship. Trust is a big part of the answer to that question (as is the ‘but it feels better’ argument), but I think that the sense that STIs only happen to ‘other people’ is too. People are very quick to assume that there’s no way someone they care about could have an STI - because, you know, that only happens to dirty, slutty, unloveable people. They might not say it outwardly, but that’s the underlying assumption.

Which is stupid, in case you didn’t know, and blatantly not true.

So I was really excited when I came across this book, by Adina Nack, in one of the journals I follow for thesis purposes - and knew immediately that I had to write about it.

Nack, a medical sociologist specialising in sexual health and social psychology, interviewed 43 women about how contracting a sexually transmitted infection impacted the way they thought about themselves and their sexualities. She focused on women with HPV and herpes, as these particular STIs are chronic and incurable, but (contrary to that first twitter post) I’m interested in speaking to people who’ve had any STI.

So if you’re between 18 and 35 (the magazine’s demographic) and are interested in participatng, you know what to do: email me. The interviews will focus on your beliefs about STIs before and after having one, and how you felt when you were first diagnosed.

And as always, I’d be keen to hear your thoughts on these issues more generally in the comments below.

"Edward Cullen may come in a different, darker package, but he still represents your typical teenage..."

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 09:36:01 +1100

“Edward Cullen may come in a different, darker package, but he still represents your typical teenage Tiger Beat dream boat: he wants only you, girl, he’ll always be true, girl, he’ll totally wait till you’re married, girl, there’s nobody else in the world for him, girl, he may be bad, but he’ll be good to you, girl, etc. He’s the guy you can dream about making out with, because you know you’ll never make out with him. He represents the kind of love that never comes with rejection, because you know he’s not real and you could never have him anyway. He’s a safe means of falling in love for those who desperately want to know what it feels like”

- If You Were 13, Would You Love Edward Cullen, Too?

Hello, Dieter Brummer/Leonardo DiCaprio/Taylor Hanson/random boys on the bus.

Rachel's really exciting, super fun blog survey

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:02:58 +1100

Rachel's really exciting, super fun blog survey:

Image: Eric__I_E

So, I haven’t been posting much lately. There are a number of reasons for this - thesis stress, home stress, freelancing commitments, perfectionism, the sense that even though I’ve often prioritised blogging over the aforementioned, I really probably shouldn’t - but I’ll own up to what is: Bad Blogging Practice.

If I’m honest, boredom and fatigue have also played a big role in my absence. When I first started this blog, two years ago, it was a tentative toe in the waters of blogging as “myself” (whatever that means), under my real name.

In that time, I’ve connected with some amazing people around Australia and the world, and learned a lot about what works for me and what doesn’t. In the latter category: lifecasting or reblogging other people’s stuff without adding original comment (however effective that is elsewhere Tumblr); in the former, original writing and a kind of philosophical analysis, if hits, ‘likes’ and reblogs are any indication (prove me wrong by filling out my survey). You guys also seem to like advice and other meditations related to the writing process.

The trouble is that I’ve learned so much from this process that now, when I look at this blog, all I see is what’s wrong with it. Making the focus Me and My Writing, for one. Who would choose to subscribe to this blog when they could read one that’s about a clear topic, I ask myself? Not putting as much effort into these posts as I do into my paid work when - as I say all the time lately - the internet is “the ultimate free market”, and theoretically, that means we choose to read the best content available. Then again, perfectionism has been a major block to my writing here lately - my dashboard is full of drafts.

So, for a few weeks now I’ve seriously considered throwing this blog in, in favour of something newer, shinier and more exciting - something that capitalises on everythng I’ve learned over the past two years. And I will be launching a site focusing on my thesis research (or, more sensationally, talking about sex) in the next couple of weeks, followed hopefully not long after by a revamped portfolio website.

But in thinking and talking about this with other people, I realised something: whatever its weaknesses, people like this blog. It may not be perfect, but it has an audience - and an audience I’m rather fond of.

What direction it should go in is a question I’m yet to answer. My sense is that treating it as a kind of supplement to my other work is the way to go - reflections, inspirations and discussions around articles I’m working on and the like. The kinds of posts that are in my ‘best of’ section. I’m also considering a full revamp of the layout and possibly even the title.

But as I make those moves, I’m keen to know what you think. I’ve created a survey (yep, I’m linking to it again) asking what you like about this blog, what you’d like to see more of and what you’d like to see changed. I’ve tried to make it as quick and painless as possible - it won’t take more than ten minutes, and if you’re really speedy, I reckon you could knock it over in 90 seconds. I’d really appreciate it if you filled it out. You can also leave a comment below, if you’d prefer, or drop me an email.

Thanks in advance,

Rachel

“See you at the 10-year reunion” That’s what...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:00:00 +1100

“See you at the 10-year reunion”

That’s what one of my high school friends (Gretchen Wieners) wrote in another’s (Karen Smith) year 12 yearbook, I found out a couple of years ago. Now said reunion is coming up in less than a month, and I doubt either of them will turn up.

Back in high school, I always thought the 10-year reunion would be a rather Romy & Michelle-type affair, to which my best friend (Regina George) and I would show up in brightly-coloured, self-made outfits, dance to ‘Time After Time’ and finally (if begrudgingly) be recognised for our true quirky brilliance. If it wasn’t already obvious, I’m now more inclined to view my high school years as something on par with Mean Girls - and yes, that makes me Cady Herron (ultimately good intentioned, but not good intentioned enough not to do some not-so-nice things).

I didn’t go to my five-year reunion, for similar reasons it seems a lot of people won’t be going to the 10-year one (minus Facebook, which didn’t exist back then). All the people I wanted to keep in touch with, I still spoke to. Who I was at 12, or 14 - or 17 for that matter - was irrelevant to my 22-year-old self, and trying to communicate with people who only ever knew me in the vaguest of terms seemed both impossible and pointless.

As I wrote at the end of 2006:

I only ever hated high school in retrospect.

Sure, there were things I didn’t like about it while I was there – bitchy girls, insufferable teachers, the feeling of powerlessness about one’s own destiny – but for the most part, I think I thought it was quite okay. And I’m sure that if dug out my diaries from when I was 17, I’d find a sad, nostalgic throwaway line about how, now that’d I’d left high school, I’d never have fun again.

It was only after I left that I began to grow cynical about the curriculum geared more towards regurgitation than critical thinking, the idea that you had to walk from room to room whenever a bell rang and ask for permission to go to the toilet, and the idea of a dress code.

But I think the reason I dislike high school so much in retrospect is because everything that came after it was so much better. It was like being kept in prison for 6 years, not knowing anything else, and then finally being set free and realising what a crap situation you’d been putting up with for so long.

All of which, if a tad melodramatic, is still true enough. And I totally “get” why some people don’t want to go.

But for me, the point of the reunion is not to play “fake nice” with people you have no intention of seeing for another 10 years, or to finally prove to people how awesome you are. The beauty of the 10-year reunion - and what makes it so different from the five-year one - is that enough time has passed and enough distance has been created that you can actually get to know your classmates as the individuals they actually are, rather than the blunt stereotypes you imagined each other to be.

As I wrote at the beginning of 2005:

there is this particular awkwardness between people who went to high school together, but who were never friends. There is this merge of distance and proximity – you know the person and you should say ‘hi’, but on the other hand you shouldn’t, because the only way in which you really ‘know each other’ is as a couple of ficticious “characters” which have nothing to do with who either of you actually are or ever were.

And of those people I wasn’t friends with in high school whose paths I’ve crossed with since, the surprise hasn’t been - as people always talk about - the schadenfreude of what losers they grew up to be, but of how interesting - and in most cases lovely - they turned out to be.

So while I have little desire to reminisce about days that didn’t hold a candle to the ten years that followed, I’m kind of looking forward to reconnecting. Or more accurately, connecting for the first time.

"… athletes or frat guys are more prone to gang rape not because they are athletes or frat..."

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 12:30:00 +1100

“… athletes or frat guys are more prone to gang rape not because they are athletes or frat guys, but because being frat guys or athletes confers on them an elite status that is easily translated into entitlement, and because the cement of their brotherhood is intense, and intensely sexualised, bonding.”

- Michael Kimmel in Guyland, which I’m re-reading at the moment as I crunch theory for my thesis.

The always interesting Kimmel is also interviewed in this week’s “Feministing Five”.

Seems Crikey agrees with my Walkleys assessment

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:20:00 +1100

Seems Crikey agrees with my Walkleys assessment:

Andrew Dodd writes:

There is another bias, which might be worth thinking about.

The list of judges heavily favours the traditional media. Surely in the all-media categories there is some room for judges from outside the old radio, TV and print media?

Also chuckled at this bit:

… pretty well all the entrants are self-nominated. All the self-effacing, modest people in the media are out of contention to begin with. It’s just as well there are only about seven such people in the entire nation, and they all work in the record library at ABC Classic FM.

Walkley list revealed - mUmBRELLA

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:52:00 +1100

Walkley list revealed - mUmBRELLA:

via buyhercandy:

Annabel Crabb is nominated for Magazine Feature Writing, while Kate Geraghty is nominated for Press Photographer of the Year and is part of a group nominated for Best Online Journalism for their amazing multimedia piece on sexual warfare in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Steve Cannane is also nominated with three others for an ABC2 episode of Hack.

On a more entertaining note, check out some of the best headline nominations: “Ludwig bans vote haven”, and “Regrets? We’d had a flu”.

To be honest, I was a little underwhelmed (if not surprised) by the conservatism of their choices. Annabel Crabb’s Turnbull essay was outstanding piece of feature writing - undoubtedly one of the best of the year - but only at the greatest stretch of the imagination is Quarterly Essay a magazine (really, it’s a short-form book). Similarly, the Weekend Australian (which took out both of the other nominees in this category) and other newspaper magazine supplements very much teeter on the boundary between newspaper and magazine journalism.

I understand why the Walkleys privilege this more newsy style of journalism - there’s a lot of crap out there in magazine land - but there’s also some brilliant writing in them too. In The Monthly, most obviously, but also in Vogue, in YEN, Madison, Marie Claire and other, non-womensy publications.

I was similarly disappointed to see all the online nominees come from newspaper websites. All these stories are technically outstanding, but I think the most interesting online work is happening elsewhere: in Crikey, in New Matilda and in the blogosphere.

And again with the non-fiction book award: there seems to be a self-consciously serious, establishment sameness to them.

Perhaps it’s time to launch a new set of awards? Especially on the online front.

Disclosure: yes, I did submit work for consideration; no, I was never delusional enough to think it might win. A nomination does equal a party invite, though, and I never say no to a good party. ;)

‘Everything’s cool as long as I’m getting...

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:00:00 +1100

‘Everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner’: how Karl de-fanged Lily Allen

I felt strangely sad when I read about Lily Allen’s big debut onto the fashion scene, performing at the Chanel show in Paris last week.

Strange because, well, she certainly seemed happy about. She’s ‘one of them’ now: friends with Kate Moss, one of Karl Lagerfeld’s British darlings. I wouldn’t call it ‘selling out’, because it’s not like it has affected her music - or like she ever wasn’t a mainstream pop star to begin with. And yes, she does look pretty fabulous in the photo above.

But I’m wondering if this newfound ‘fabulousness’ comes at too high a price - namely, her shrinking body. In this week’s Grazia, Maxine Frith writes:

After the show, Karl gave Lily a massive bunch of roses and told her she was a Chanel girl now. Her appearance came after months of dieting and exercise to ensure she looked her best.

“She and Karl had been talking for ages about what she should do for the show,” says an inside source. “Lily’s really slimmed down but she’s never going to be a size zero so she didn’t want to walk the runway and be compared to the models.

Now, Grazia is the classiest of the weekly magazines, but I’d be silly if I didn’t consider that the above was probably at least a bit made up - like most celebrity gossip stories. But the overall narrative strikes me as true. Allen has dropped a dress size or two over the past year or so.

And, well, ew. It’s not like she’s alone in her body shrinking as her fame grows (the same could be said of almost any female celebrity), but there’s something particularly uncomfortable about it in her case, because she’s always been so open about her insecurities - in her lyrics, her blog posts and her comments to the media.

I wish my life was a little less seedy
Why am I always so greedy?
Wish I looked just like Cheryl Tweedy
I know I never will

One thing some people seem to miss about Lily Allen’s lyrics (I’m thinking all those people who hate the song 22 here) is that they tend to be three things at once: part facetious comment on society, part facetious comment on her own shortcomings, and part painfully honest admission of her insecurities.

So in the case of 22, when she says of a woman in her late-20s “it’s sad but it’s true that society says her life is already over”, I don’t think she’s saying that she, Lily Allen, thinks that women are “past it” once they hit 30. I think she’s saying that certain segments of society imply this is the case, and that if you’re the kind of woman who believes that her value resides entirely in her looks, ‘it girl’ qualities and ability to attract a man, there’s an element of truth to it.

Similarly, when she sings “I’m not a saint, and I’m not a sinner, now everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner”, she’s a making a social comment, yes, but it’s a comment that works because it’s something a lot of women actually think, if only secretly. Including, I’m willing to bet, Lily Allen.

Which is why the Karl Lagerfeld connection is so off-putting. Because it hinges on her meeting his ridiculous body standards. And because it backs up what her lyrics suggest she has long believed, at least on an emotional level - that social acceptance and affirmation come from being as thin as possible.

First published in New Matilda. If you grew up in Australia in...

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:00:00 +1000

First published in New Matilda.

If you grew up in Australia in the early 1990s, the rubber bracelets above probably look familiar.

Known as “pash bands” — or “fuck bands” if you wanted to be really naughty — the idea was that each coloured bracelet symbolised a different sex act. According to an article published in a UK paper last weekend: “Yellow represents a hug, while pink means a love bite and orange or purple for a kiss, before moving through different sex acts until black, which means full sex”. Some people would joke that purple actually stood for marriage, being the colour of sexual frustration.

If somebody broke your bracelet, you were supposed to perform the corresponding act on them.

Nobody ever actually did it, of course. Even the most sexually precocious kids I went to primary school with didn’t do more than attempt an unsatisfying first kiss in the playground after school. (To my knowledge, no pash bands were involved in these incidents.) When I was in high school, they made a brief retro resurgence, and my best friend and I at the time bought the black ones — known as “fuck bands” — which we vowed to wear until we lost our virginity.

We lost the rubber bands long before that happened.

Pash bands — or “shag bands” as they’re apparently now known — have always been about shits and giggles, about kids playing at being grown-ups. The humour comes from the fact that most primary school kids think sex is icky. Accordingly, it’s fun for them to talk about it, and gross their friends out by teasing them that they might partake in it someday.

If you read the Courier-Mail over the weekend, however, they represent a rather more sinister — and “new”, which usually seems to correlate with dangerous — trend; “a parent’s worst nightmare”. According to conservative “feminist” commentator Melinda Tankard-Reist, they “[set] up girls as service stations for boys” and “invite sexual assault”. Because nothing invites sexual assault like wearing a coloured bracelet — and nothing says “feminist” like suggesting kids “invite” sexual assault.

Given that most people aged between 25 and 55 having either worn one or parented someone who has, it amazes me that any journalist could find these innocuous pieces of plastic worthy of such fear mongering.

But our readiness to jump on the moral panic train says a lot about our tendency to assume the worst of people younger than us. Even in my own research, which aims to unpack media myths about young adults’ sexual behaviours, the 20-somethings I speak to bemoan how much more “out there” today’s teens are than they were 10 years ago — conveniently forgetting that the same complaints were made about them less than a decade ago. Talk to some actual teenagers, and you’ll get a far more nuanced story.

Tankard-Reist has a new book to promote, about the sexualisation of girls, and if the recent extract on New Matilda is any indication, she has some interesting and relevant arguments to make on the subject. It’s hard to muster up the enthusiasm to listen to them though when she, and others like her, persist in discrediting themselves by participating in this kind of shrill — and factually incorrect — hysteria.

The sexualisation of children is a real issue, but as UQ academic Karen Brooks showed in her 2008 book Consuming Innocence, it’s about a lot more than sex. It’s certainly about a lot more than kids having sex — which, by the way, most of them aren’t. And I’ll tell you one thing: it’s got very little to do with the humble pash band.

"Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying..."

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:08:19 +1000

“Much more important than working hard is knowing how to find the right thing to work on. Paying attention to what is going on in the world. Seeing patterns. Seeing things as they are rather than how you want them to be. Being able to read what people want. Putting yourself in the right place where information is flowing freely and interesting new juxtapositions can be seen. But you can save yourself a lot of time by working on the right thing. Working hard, even, if that’s what you like to do.”

- Caterina.net: Working hard is overrated (via blanchomme)

Media140 comp: and the winner is… Last week, I offered one...

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:00:00 +1000

Media140 comp: and the winner is…

Last week, I offered one reader a two-day pass to Media140, a Sydney conference that’s part of an international collaboration seeking to answer the question: “What is the future of journalism in the social media age?”

In return, I asked you guys what you thought the best journalistic use of social media you’d seen was, and why. There were some great responses, but the one that came out on top was from Jacinta Isaacs. Jacinta wrote:

Burma’s Saffron Revolution: In August and September 2007 tens of thousands of monks led what became the biggest protest in Burma’s history since the country’s 1988 popular uprising. It was journalists’ use of Burmese bloggers’ contacts, leads, and eyewitness accounts that ensured that much of the brutality that took place during those days made it into our television or newspaper reports, despite the junta’s shutting down of the country’s nationalised ISPs. It was through these bloggers’ accounts that we saw the now iconic bloated body of a monk floating face down in a muddy pond and heard rumors of the junta’s secret mass cremations. It became clear that, far from being usurped by citizen journalists, mainstream journalists and bloggers needed each other, and even more so in a repressive media environment.

Media140 founder Ande Gregson explains: “For me this embodies the power of ‘social’ media. A repressive regime can be exposed through the simple means of a network of individuals using a community to relate information about a given event to a global audience in real time without any censorship or control, fundamentally undermining the very foundations on which certain political regimes are founded and built.”

Big congrats to Jacinta. And for everyone else, you can still buy tickets here.

via littlem:heuteund: ABC News Online

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:03:05 +1000

via littlem:heuteund: ABC News Online

"There are only a few periods in the life cycle at which there are high rates of sexual activity or..."

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:57:00 +1000

“There are only a few periods in the life cycle at which there are high rates of sexual activity or sexual activity that is complicated by passion and high intensity of affective investment. These are usually adolescence in the male, the early and romantic years of marriage for both men and women, and the highly charged extramarital experiences that can be called affairs. Most of the time, sex is really a relatively docile beast, and it is only the rare individual who through the process of self-invention or alienation from the normal course of socialization is prepared to risk occupation, present comfort, spouse and children, or the future for the chancy joys of sexual pleasure.”

- Sexual Conduct (Gagnon and Simon 1973: 103-4)

7:10am Wake up via text message. Skim read.7:11am Check email on...

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 07:48:00 +1000

7:10am Wake up via text message. Skim read.
7:11am Check email on phone.
7:12am Hang on, why is my bedroom tinted orange?
7:13am Open blinds. Holy shit, the whole world’s turned orange!
7:14am Bomb? Chemical attack? Climate change?
7:15am Jump online and go to newspaper website. Ah, dust storm.
7:16am Re-open blinds, take photo (not the one above - I don’t live near Sydney Harbour) and MMS to boyfriend.
7:18am Leave bedroom and marvel to flatmates.
7:20am Jump on Twitter.
7:25am Jump on Facebook.
7:30am Post to Tumblr.

Sydneysiders woke up this morning to a Fanta-tinged city. Seriously the trippiest thing I have ever seen in my life.

On why it pays to have an audience

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:05:00 +1000

Ten years ago, I completed my first fiction book: off my own bat, with no expectations of it ever being published, just for the fun of it. The secret? I handed over a new chapter to my friends every Monday morning.

I mention this because I was just procrastinating over at Three Guys One Book (found via Lisa Dempster’s post today on book reviews), where Jonathan Evison advises:

My advice to the overwhelming majority first time novelists: first, finish the fucker, even if you sense it’s not working on any number of levels— you’ve got to get into the habit of seeing things through, or you run the risk of being a serial starter, or worse one of those people that has “a novel in them” who spends more time talking about it, than laying bricks.

“Oh god,” I thought to myself, cringing inwardly, “I’m going to be a serial starter.” It’s not out of the question: I am, after all, an ENFP.

And then I remembered that dramatic, emotionally tone deaf “saga” I wrote over the course of 1998. I had finished something! (Well, now that I think of it, I’ve finished lots of things, actually - my degree, Interface, countless articles - but this was something long and involved that required prolonged commitment and sitting by myself.) It wasn’t particularly good - were I ever to submit it to a publisher, it would require major rewrites (let’s just say teenage me didn’t have the most accurate grip on the nuances of human trauma), but it was finished. And I suspect the reason I finished it was because I had a handful of friends (and later, online readers) hanging out for fresh meat each week.

The truth is, while I’m driven to write in a general sense, I’m most driven to write when I know there’ll be someone reading - even better when that audience is a group of people who respond, and whom I can respond to in turn. It’s why I put - well, I would say “so much time”, but compared to people who post 20 times a day, it’s nothing, so I’ll just say “time” - time into this blog, which would probably be more practically spent working on my thesis, or book, or freelance stories. That, and as I’ve written before, I think it’s an essential part of the vocation of a contemporary non-fiction writer.

But it occurs to me that perhaps this energy can be chanelled for good, rather than just procrastination. I’ve been planning on launching a website for my major research project (which feeds into said thesis and book) for a while now - domain name and launch posts all ready to go - but have been holding off until a certain article I’ve been working on goes to market.

Maybe, if I want to hurry this book along more, I should just throw caution to the wind and blog it, much like I use to hand out those new chapters to my friends every Monday morning.

Confession: post Kanyegate (possibly my all time favourite...

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 10:00:00 +1000

Confession: post Kanyegate (possibly my all time favourite internet meme) I’ve been feeling quite partial to Taylor Swift.

I’d never really thought about her much before - beyond the fact that some teenagers apparently liked her and she reminded me a bit of Carrie Underwood, another blonde American singer whose songs I wouldn’t recognise on the radio - but Kanye’s outburst got me to watch her awardwinning clip, which while not excellent, had me thinking, “Awww, isn’t she sweet?”

I kind of want to adopt her as a younger sister or cousin, much like Blair Waldorf and Hilary Duff before her.

And of course, the reason her video probably won in the first place is because no matter how cool, popular or together she is, pretty much every girl has entertained thoughts like: “She wears high heels / I wear sneakers / She’s cheer captain / I’m on the bleachers”. Even the undeniably dishy Jean Hannah Edelstein tweeted last week, “I wish I’d had giant glasses like that in HS - perhaps I would have been surprisingly hot behind them.”

So as awards-show-upsets-turned-publicity-drivers go, I’d say this one worked.