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Apocalypse Now! How I Cope with Everyday Anxiety
Often it’s easy to imagine the worst When I was little I remember being enthralled with an episode of Sesame Street, where Elmo talked about the wonders of having an imagination. At the time I...
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Scourge of the Girl Crush: 7 Nearly-Gay Movies
Sam Frost and Lisa Hyde 4EVA I have this habit of erasing straightness from movies and TV shows, to the extent that I often remember things as explicitly gay, when really there’s heteroromance as a...
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No Gender December: Back to Basics
Radical idea: ANYONE can play with pink or blue toys – out of control! This week was a dismal one for the Australian Government. One of their many low points was Prime Minister Tony Abbott (apparently...
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The #Tay4Hottest100 Controversy
Lately there’s been a bit of a kerfuffle going on in social media land about the recent bid to get Taylor Swift’s song ‘Shake It Off’ into the Triple J Hottest 100 this year. Instead of a...
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The Trouble with “Natural Beauty”
An image from the Tree Change Dolls’ tumblr site Today a friend sent me a link to a new trend that basically caused me to have a rage blackout: dolls that have been “made-under”. Labelled “Tree Change...
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Date Night Films for Any Occasion
It’s that time of the year again – the dreaded V-Day. If you’re not shacked up and hoping your partner will finally buy you flowers, you’re probably single and trying to avoid restaurants filled with...
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Fifty Shades of Feelings
A few people have asked me what my thoughts on the notorious Fifty Shades of Grey saga are. After wading through endless articles arguing for and against the recently released film, I didn’t feel very...
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The Problems With Marriage Equality…But Why We Should Still Fight for it
Currently, my girlfriend and I cannot get married. Not that we’re planning our Pinterest pages or anything, but the point is: same-sex marriage is illegal in Australia. Recently a friend shared this...
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No Girls Allowed: The Gender Problem in Film
The considered greats of directing are almost always all male I’ve always been interested in the world of film, but lately (now that there is a light at the end of my PhD thesis tunnel) I’ve been...
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The Effort of Not Wearing Makeup
Makeup brushes are the worst. So. Much. Work. Earlier this year I was diagnosed with a skin condition called melasma and an eye disorder called ocular rosacea. What this amounts to is having brown...
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Vale Bowie: A Breakdown of the Occult Symbolism of Blackstar
When Elvis died, they said “the king is dead“. Now Bowie is gone, and there is nothing we can say that really sums it up. When my girlfriend broke the news to me last night, I cried and cried. I cried...
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Suffragette Comic: Christabel Pankhurst and Her Tiny Dog
Yesterday a friend told me some pretty bleak stories about the famous suffragette family, the Pankhursts. The head honcho of the Pankhurst bunch was Emmeline, who founded the Women’s Social and...
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Queering and Queening Femininity
SMA host Jenny Frost (centre) with two contestants pre-make-under Recently I published an article in the journal Australian Feminist Studies titled “Queer Femininity Versus ‘Natural Beauty’ in Snog,...
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Impossible futures and the torture of refugee women
Protestors outside the High Court in 2016 It is fair to say that Australia’s refugee policy is cruel and punitive. We have a migration act created specifically to contravene our international human...
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A Tale of Beards and Lavender: Imagining the Secret Lesbian Club of Hollywood
My Internet history is a Snow/Kendrick love fest It’s strange, but true: at least once a week I sit down and Google the celebrities I think might be not-straight. There’s Anna Kendrick and Brittany...
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Why “woman” doesn’t equal “feminist”
Emma Watson, the UN’s “He for She” spokesperson It seems that every week there’s a new feminist celebrity in town. You definitely know the drill by now: Beyoncé dancing in front of a flashing...
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Feminist Utopias and Battling Cruel Optimism in Ghostbusters
This is not a drill When I first heard about the new Ghostbusters, I was bursting with anticipation. But when the trailers started coming I quickly tuned out. Like a child who has peeked at their...
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Extraordinary Ordinariness: Cultural Imagination and the Australian Dream
In America you don’t just aim for a home, you aim for the ultimate: The White House The widely discussed “American Dream” is the belief that anyone is free to climb up the ladder of success and be...
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Review: Clementine Ford’s Fight Like a Girl
Last night I was lucky enough to see Clementine Ford launch her book Fight Like a Girl at Melbourne’s Athenaeum theatre. I was keen to hear what Ford talk, to come down from my ivory tower in the...
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The Queer World of Stranger Things
Joyce Byers: He’s a sensitive kid. Lonnie used to say he was queer. Called him a fag. Jim Hopper: Is he? Joyce: He’s missing, is what he is! Judith Butler: Crafting a sexual position…always involves...
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