Archive for October, 2008
Posted by Irresponsibility I am rarely rendered speechless. But mark your calendars my friends, today is such a day. You may have noted my ongoing Britney fascination. The craziness, the suppression, the gross injustices. Now that she’s back looking strong and happy and beautiful comes the news that daddy Spears is in charge of her [...]
Posted by Irresponsibility At risk of expounding on the bleeding obvious I’m going to venture into Feminism 101 territory here and give myself a quick refresher course in the Beauty Myth. Naomi Wolf’s book of the same title (along with Susan Sontag, Luce Irigaray and a metre-high stack of women’s magazines) formed the basis for [...]
Posted by irresponsibility This women’s magazine shit doesn’t appear out of a vacuum. It starts with marketers using antediluvian gender stereotyping to flog their crap, as is beautifully demonstrated in these Marks & Spencer’s ads for school uniforms. “Boys will be boys…” apparently, so they get “tough stuff” trousers. Meanwhile, girls who want to “shine [...]
Posted by irresponsibility After serving up Angelina on a spite-platter for daring to spend time with her children and not being ‘nice’ enough to Brad, Grazia helpfully illustrates what women should aspire to: Cheryl Cole-ness. Here’s their four-point guide to appropriate feminine behaviour. A) Stand by your (philandering idiot) man “Throw in her back story [...]
Posted by irresponsibility I am finding it increasingly hard to justify buying woman’s magazines. They read like self-hatred indoctrination manuals. And they are insidious. The crude “look who’s put on five pounds!” Heat-style covers have given way to the sinister sophistication of magazines like Grazia (“Voted magazine of the year”) – a de facto weekly [...]
Before anyone starts feeling sorry for Rio let’s remember that he gets paid £94,000 per week to play football. His girlfriend doesn’t.
“Tories this weekend called for a freeze on new employment rights”
… it’s those damnable uppity employees and their rights we should be blaming for the “global economic crisis”
As quoted in the excellent and informative The Zoo: “hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home.” This adds a retrospective frisson to the many rambling, bitterly anti-Bush/anti-war conversations held between me, in my South London bolthole, and my activist mum back in Oregon.
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