Hi, I'm Rachel Hills.
I'm a London-based (via Sydney, Australia) writer, researcher and contributor to publications including the Sydney Morning Herald's Sunday Life, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Glamour, Jezebel, Alternet and more. I'm also writing a book about Gen Y, sex and identity. This is my blog.
I'd love to hear from you. Submit a question to my Ask Rachel column here, send me an email here, connect with me on Twitter here or find out more about my paid work at www.rachelhills.net.
I'm a London-based (via Sydney, Australia) writer, researcher and contributor to publications including the Sydney Morning Herald's Sunday Life, Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Glamour, Jezebel, Alternet and more. I'm also writing a book about Gen Y, sex and identity. This is my blog.
I'd love to hear from you. Submit a question to my Ask Rachel column here, send me an email here, connect with me on Twitter here or find out more about my paid work at www.rachelhills.net.
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Posts tagged "sticky"
bellesbookshelf Asks:
I would love your opinion. I have always been what is traditionally considered "feminine" but I have also always considered myself a feminist. I haven't felt that the two were mutually exclusive, but lately I've been starting to worry. Is there anything wrong with wearing makeup & being "girlie" as a feminist? I've also seen radfem statements that heterosexuality is antifeminist. What's your take on this? I can't help being hetero - and my relationship is very equal and independent. So confused!
rachelhills Said:
I think you know the answer to this already, but of course! Are feminist arguments about make-up and compulsory heterosexuality valid? Sure. It is absolutely true that we inhabit a culture that tells women that we are prettier and altogether better people if we wear make-up (or if we just look like we’re wearing it). It’s also true that we live in a society that makes it a hell of a lot easier to be heterosexual than, well, anything else.
But that doesn’t mean that putting on make-up or dressing yourself in a traditionally feminine way can’t be a positive and (dare I say it?) empowering experience. And there are certainly plenty of women out there who are heterosexual… because (shock, horror) they just like having sex with men. I definitely don’t buy the argument that heterosexuality is innately sexist or disempowering.
I’ll leave you with a quote from Tavi Gevinson: “girls … think that to be feminists they have to live up to being perfectly consistent in their beliefs, never being insecure, never having doubts, having all the answers… And this is not true. And actually recognising all the contradictions I was feeling became easier once I realised that feminism was not a rulebook but a discussion, a conversation, a process.”
She’s a smart cookie.
See also: We’re all bad feminists, really.
Sexual trend spotting makes for big business. Want to give it a try yourself? First, you’ll need to make some sweeping generalisations: what a popular novel, for example, reveals about the fantasies of “working women” or, as an article in the UK Times declared, how “no one” (literally no one!) “under the age of 40 seems to have pubic hair”. Second, you should avoid doing too much actual research to prove your claims – forget the joke that “three examples makes a trend”, and instead try no interviews with flesh and blood human beings at all. Third, it must have broader implications. Your story isn’t about a single erotic novel, cult TV show, or video you saw on YouTube, but about the dark and hidden underbelly of human sexuality. Et voila! Instant internet traffic gold.
A trend spotter’s guide to female desire
My latest at Daily Life.
![I talk body image, “real girls” and the difference between problematic cultures and problematic individuals, in this month’s Girlfriend magazine:
The real girl resurgence in recent years isn’t just a response to increasingly unrealistic images of beautiful women – it’s also a response to the increasingly “un-real” technologies used to create them (we’re looking at you, Photoshop and universal Hollywood cosmetic surgery). … [R]ather than taking that out on individual girls and women whose physical appearance might be more culturally celebrated than our own, we should direct our anger and activism at the systems that create those narrow images of beauty and privilege them over everything else.
It is not girls who are skinny or symmetrically featured or who wear lots of makeup who are the problem, but a culture that says girls who are all those things are cuter, cooler and more worthy of our attention than girls who aren’t – not to mention a culture that says even if you are all those things (whether you got there through your own efforts or the genetic lottery), you could still look “better” if you had Photoshop to trim your waist, thicken your hair, enhance your breasts or straighten your nose.](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m2zs4kLcJy1qz6gl2o1_1280.png)
I talk body image, “real girls” and the difference between problematic cultures and problematic individuals, in this month’s Girlfriend magazine:
The real girl resurgence in recent years isn’t just a response to increasingly unrealistic images of beautiful women – it’s also a response to the increasingly “un-real” technologies used to create them (we’re looking at you, Photoshop and universal Hollywood cosmetic surgery). … [R]ather than taking that out on individual girls and women whose physical appearance might be more culturally celebrated than our own, we should direct our anger and activism at the systems that create those narrow images of beauty and privilege them over everything else.
It is not girls who are skinny or symmetrically featured or who wear lots of makeup who are the problem, but a culture that says girls who are all those things are cuter, cooler and more worthy of our attention than girls who aren’t – not to mention a culture that says even if you are all those things (whether you got there through your own efforts or the genetic lottery), you could still look “better” if you had Photoshop to trim your waist, thicken your hair, enhance your breasts or straighten your nose.
Mirror Self Shot of Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring”. (Rawz via Something Changed)
Most articles on sugar daddies? Yawn. Laurie Penny on sugar daddies? Actually interesting:
Frantic ads like this did not begin with the global downturn, nor with the Internet. You can find them in the back pages of newspapers, scrawled on toilet walls, probably even etched on stones flung into rivers by anguished Romans centuries before Christ was born. The Internet has made the process less furtive, formalizing it within the antiseptic human catalog of online dating. And the current crisis of capitalism is altering gender and sexual relations further, not only by obliging more poor men and women to sell sex to survive, but by bringing financial desperation into our most intimate socio-erotic fantasies. (Salon.com)
“We’ve got to be artists of some kind.” On Girls, Young Adult and The Hunger Games. (3quarksdaily)
Speaking of which… What it cost eight women writers to make it in New York. (The Awl)
And also: how to actually get a job with a liberal arts degree. (Yes and Yes)
What happens when moms tell their daughters they’re too fat?:
When your mother is essentially siding with society that something’s wrong with you, girls don’t have a safe haven to go to when they’re home. You’re being watched and that creates a lot of self consciousness; and the message the girl is receiving quite widely is that when you’re overweight, “I’m going to be on you and you’re going to need me to take over for you because you’re unable to take care of yourself.” And when you’re thin, you’re going to get a lot of accolades and, “I’m going to put you in Vogue and I’m going to cheer you on and be proud of you.” That can backfire. (Buzzfeed)
Ten things to do when you’re feeling hopeless. (How to Save the World)
If childcare and housekeeping were important, men would do them. (Clutch Magazine)
Can the Tea Party take Japan? (The Atlantic)
