parismarisamadonna

Teenage Dream – Katy Perry 2010

The world has gone mental.

In the same week we witnessed a horrific train crash in Spain, fatal protests in Egypt and Italians threw bananas at an elected minister, the entire world stopped (myself included) to learn the sex of Britain’s future monarch. Never before has a uterus been so tweeted or so hashtagged. Never before had a future heir to the throne of Britain been born with the entire world watching as he crowned (pun intended) and attended his first press conference, less than 24 hours after he was born.

But no one was that interested in the baby, a baby who will rule over a billion or so people. The big question was, what would Kate wear when she fronted the press? The arrival of her personal hairdresser sent the media pack insane with anticipation, which was still nothing, compared to the collective hysteria that swept across the world when we ogled the post-baby bump clad in cornflower polka dotted Jenny Packham. Within ten minutes, Jenny Packham’s website crashed (the dress isn’t for sale) and the British press toyed with the idea that Kate had chosen such a dress in honour of Diana, who wore polka dots when she showed William to the world. Polka Dots; the new political statement.

The woman had just expelled the future king of England from within her own body, but more importantly, where can we buy the dress?!

Welcome to the new world order. Women have taken back their rightful place in the shadows, or bent over their bed-heads in submission, misogyny is the new metro-sexual and very few people, least of all the next generation of XX chromosomes, seem to care.

In Texas a couple of weeks ago, abortion was effectively rendered illegal.  That is correct, Texas, not a third world religious dictatorship, but Texas, the second most populated state in the US, home to a few million more than Australia, has decided that 52% of her people will be denied the right to choose. That this law was enacted by a bunch of middle-aged men makes the decision even more reprehensible. That abortion is the hot topic in Texan politics, when so many Texans have no job, no home and no food, is simply incredible. Because what the world needs right now is more unwanted babies, or worse still, more Texans.  

But this is the country that gave us Teen Mom; a television show produced by MTV documenting the lives of teenage mothers. One of those sorts of reality shows made for the lowest common denominator that makes Jerry Springer look like Question Time. MTV could redirect their efforts to screen more music videos instead of glamorising teenage motherhood.

But then, when you watch the music videos the kids are pumping out these days, you understand why people would watch a show about a moronic teenager having a baby. The music videos are the new porn and in a world where the Kardashians can win Emmys, Teen Mom could win a Writer’s Guild Award.

In case you’ve been buried under a rock for the last month, Robin Thicke, formerly a rather credible R&B singer and until recently, most renowned for being the doppelganger-y offspring of one of the most famous TV dads of the eighties, released the title track from his new album Blurred Lines. Featuring a catchy beat and the fairytale falsetto of Pharrell, I was one of the thousands who purchased the song and began shaking my hips while squealing ‘you know you want it’.

Then I watched the video.

 Then I read the lyrics.

 

Then I was horrified that a smart savvy woman like myself would have handed over even 99p for a song about a man sexually dominating a woman; at its core, a song about rape with an accompanying ‘music video’ featuring naked women wrapped in plastic. A woman, just like 500g of mince at Tesco, a commodity, something you beat and mould into the shape you want before you consume it. A woman. 

At least Robin has never made a claim to be anything other than a purveyor of cheap pop. Step up Justin Timberlake, serious musician, serious actor and serious multi-squillionaire thanks to a serious career in ‘music’.

I’ve seen JT live. He is an exceptionally talented musician. He played no less than seven different instruments while his then girlfriend Cameron Diaz bopped away in the wings. He can sing, he can dance, he can act and apparently that is still not enough to effectively sell his popped up product.

To market his latest song, Tunnel Vision, JT decided to project images of his pretty face onto three naked women. These naked women do little more than writhe and pout at the viewer. In case you stumble upon the video and you are under eighteen, there is that famous warning word, ‘explicit’. Explicit is one way of describing it, facile is another. So narrow was JT’s tunnel vision, even his own wife, the formidable Jessica Biel is said to have described the video as tasteless.  

Justin has buckets of taste when you compare him to another graduate of Disney’s TV academy…Miley Cyrus. I can’t even think how damaging it would be to grow up listening to your dad sing the world’s worst song, but does that make it OK to do this? 

While many of you may be thinking, who gives a crap about a couple of music videos, think about the impact that modern ‘pop’ culture and easy access internet imagery is having on the rest of the world.

The body that governs the Australian Beauty Industry has recently implemented a self-imposed restriction of giving Brazilian waxes to girls under the age of sixteen. The proliferation of Internet erotica and celebrity sex tapes has resulted in every human girl in the western world being formatted to believe that pubic hair is abnormal. Because when you are sixteen and your pubic hair has barely seen the light of day, one must immediately remove it. Porn Industry 1 – Teenage Hormones 0.

At least a Brazilian won’t leave you permanently damaged. In America, where absolutely anything is possible, anal sex is the new sex. The good Christians and anti-abortionists of the southern states have made their girls believe that their hymen is their most precious gift. The Hymen outweighs the value of the brain, the heart and certainly the rectum. The hymen, whose only purpose is to prove to the world that a woman has been broken in, must remain intact or poor Marylou will die a sullied spinster. However, Marylou can have her rectum penetrated as often as she chooses without fear of hell, purgatory or even worse, spinsterhood. It is also a nifty way to avoid messy sheets when surfing the monthly red wave.

Periods…the modern luxury.

Whenever I am laid up on bed, my boobs feeling as big as twin humpback whales and my lower stomach ready to exit the building, I always remind myself of what a luxury this experience is. All 325 times I’ve survived my menses, I’ve found it akin to Cristal, a new Lotus Esprit or a fire-engine red Lady Dior. Most countries have some form of value added tax or VAT. In Australia, it is the GST, a goods and services tax applied to non-essential items. Non-essential items like tampons. 

It is a good thing then that the good politicians of Australia have found it in themselves to keep condoms GST-free. We wouldn’t want the young boys of the land down under labouring under the impression that rooting anything that moves is anything more than their god-given right… and certainly not a luxury.

In 2013 the penetration of a warm hole with one’s penis is more than just a god-given right… it is a weapon. Armed with nothing more than your masculine sex organ, you can subjugate half of the population, regardless of age; you can also use it to spread your political point of view; you can rule the world.

A world where a woman is charged with her own rape. A world where men gather around a journalist, raping her repeatedly, while she does her job. A world where men imprison women for life, dominating them sexually, mentally and physically. A world where little girls are denied abortions after being raped by their fathers. A world where the positive role models for young girls are few and far between. A world my two infant nieces will inherit.

 

 

Time to stand up, shake my fists in the air, get angry and go mental!

…and no, it is not that luxurious time of the month.

Solsbury Hill – Peter Gabriel 1977

The first time I ever went to Bath, I was ten years old. I had not yet read Pride & Prejudice, that came 2 years later. I had not yet seen Colin emerge from within the pond at Pemberley, his white shirt drenched to highlight the curve of his strong shoulders and each individual lock of curly wet chocolatey brown hair dripping over his dark and serious eyes as he wandered over the hill toward Elizabeth and into the hearts of every woman on earth and the birth rate across Britain skyrocketed and I was only 19 but I can still remember his wry smile and the video tape wore out because we rewound that bit so many times. But I digress…I first went to Bath as a little girl accompanied by Motherbear and the man who gave me the right to my little maroon book and a flag with no stars.

World Heritage Listed..Bath.

 

As we meandered along Landsdowne Crescent my father, obsessed with the musical film Oliver!, threw his arms out by his sides, started a series of pirouettes and a pitch perfect rendition of Who Will Buy. I’ve since learned that the famous scene, featuring little Oliver Twist at his bedroom window, was in fact filmed on a sound studio in London two hours from Bath. Motherbear, the more literary of my parents, was excited to be in Bath because it is Mecca for anyone who loves Jane, former literary megastar, now the face of the ten pound note. Motherbear is also a fan of Georgette Heyer, a very prolific author who made a living filling the void that remains for any adult women who has read Jane’s six novels and needs to feed her addiction.

Pulteney Weir..Seagull Paradise.

I’ve since been back to Bath a couple of times. I’ve visited the Jane Austen Museum, I’ve peered into the windows of shops that sell bonnets and bayonets, and I’ve walked every street of Somerset’s capital desperately hoping to run into Colin. I’ve sat by the Pulteney Weir* surveying the Avon waiting for any human man with a wet white shirt to surface, but alas, screeching seagulls are the only errant bachelors to be found in modern day Bath.

My most recent visit was for a weekend with friends, a couple of days rest and respite in the countryside. A couple of days R&R that coincided with what the English call a heatwave and what Australians call ‘thirty degrees in a country with no air-conditioning’. It also coincided with Australia losing the first test of The Ashes. Not exactly the best weekend to be on that side of the Channel.

The Avon

Unfortunately, most people who visit Britain rarely get to see much more than London. That may be down to the diamond-studded price of a train ticket anywhere past Clapham. Given the exorbitant price, I was surprised not to be assisted into the carriage by Darcy himself. Or possibly it is because the purchase of a full tank of petrol requires a meeting with your personal financier and a loan from The Queen. Either way, visitors to Britain should do their best to get as far away from London as possible; the grass is greener, the beer is cheaper and there is a noticeable absence of soot lingering 200 years after the demise of coal-burning chimneys, soot that lingers for the sole purpose of rendering the interior of your nostrils pitch black. 

Sydney Gardens...a bit different to the other Sydney Gardens

While the capital is an impressive metropolis where every available space is crammed with theatres, museums, restaurants, pubs and a giant Palace whose monolithic presence at the centre of London reminds one that the United Kingdom is a Kingdom first and United second, London proper is not my favourite part of Britain. I would happily trade in the sardine-can Tube for a leisurely stroll through the Parade Gardens and pass up on the cacophony of curry for a mature-cheddar and pickle sandwich. But even more importantly, my chances of being whisked away from my boring Bridget days by a man named Darcy increase exponentially as I approach Somerset. Well…a girl can dream.

I didn’t find my Darcy, but I did see find some Morris Dancers. They were the only people on Earth who, covered in black velvet, flowers and bells as they were, were hotter than me on that Saturday afternoon. They are also the only middle aged men on Earth who can dress up like Russian grandmothers, shake sticks at each other while slapping their thighs and not be whisked off to a sanatorium.

Morris Dancers..or Pride.

Bath, named as such for the magical powers of the magical waters below, has for centuries been the place where English people go to drink water that magically restores all of one’s ills. Gout, a cold, acne, lacklustre sexual performance, anything can be cured in Bath. Everyone from the Romans to the Georgians and Victorians has been making the journey west of London to restore themselves to magical-water induced health and vitality.

Perhaps I should have drunk more of the water and less cheap French Rosé. Returning to London on Sunday with 48 hours worth of sunburn and a first class hangover, I felt decidedly less vital than when I arrived. 

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a good fortune (a career, a dodgy foot, a big mouth and 38 rented square metres in Paris) must be in want of a husband.   

Or at the very least… very expensive French Rosé.

Better than Vegemite?

 

*Random trivia moment, Pulteney Weir doubled for the Seine in the recent film version of Les Miserables. Russell threw himself into the Avon in Bath, not La Seine in Paris. I’d have happily settled for Russell in his wet white shirt, but only dads and geriatric tourists were available that day

Finally, another semi-related random trivia moment, semi-related because in Jane Austen’s time the women wore corsets and we all know that Georgian corsets were strengthened with the bones of a marine mammal. The French word for underwire is the same as the French word for whale. Baleine. Isn’t that cool!

Battleships – Bernard Fanning 2013

I wonder if Rupert Murdoch ever wonders how to get red wine stains out of his shirt. I wonder if the Sultan of Brunei ever wonders how you cook a steak medium rare. I wonder if Sheikh Al Maktoum ever wonders how to change the tyre on his bulletproof range rover. I wonder if Prince Charles wonders how much time people allow in peak hour traffic to get to Heathrow.

When you are wealthy, when you are spoiled for choice, when you are a platinum level resident of the first world, do you ever really take a moment to think about the rest of the un-gilded universe? Do the goings on of the little people trouble your 10000 thread-count nights? Do you ever wonder how the other half is forced to live? Do Australians realise how bloody lucky they’ve got it?

Australia, a country blessed with more than she requires, her ground bursting with the richness of treasured minerals, an island the size of Russia, home to the population of Scandinavia. Australians are doted with more space than they know what to do with; so they invariably play cricket on it…for five days at a time. Australians eat well. Australians breathe fresher air than anyone North of the Equator. Australians can pray to Allah, Buddha, God or Yoda, simultaneously, without fear of torture or execution. Australia has known only one terrorist attack upon her soil, an attack that killed three people and 35 years later, no one knows who did it. Once the site of the worst mass homicide committed by a single person, Australia quickly changed her laws and is now a land free of semi-automatic weapons and the right to bear arms requires a truckload of paperwork, a psych test and a litre of blood to prove you aren’t Dexter.

Recently, Australia, the Lucky Country, the land girt by sea, the land where we can all advance fairly has become a victim of its worst characteristic; distance. Australia is Eden on earth but for one thing, it is really, really far away from the rest of the world (except New Zealand, which counts only if you are Bilbo Baggins). Being so far way from what’s going on everywhere else (let’s say real problems) lends itself to an insularism and an ignorance that has dumbed down the everyday lives of everyday Australians.

Listening to the news, or watching the television, you may be forgiven for thinking that Australia is under constant threat of alien invasion. Not a day goes by without some reference, in any or all of Australia’s media, to the ‘invaders’. While I was in Sydney, the national, public broadcaster, the ABC, made constant reference to the ‘boat people’ to ‘people smugglers’ and to ‘asylum seekers’.

It is true that thousands of refugees attempt to illegally enter Australia via overcrowded fishing boats. Many of these people are from the Middle East, many of them pay people smugglers to bring them in, and most of the dangerously overcrowded boats sail from Indonesian ports. Some of them die trying, some of them don’t make it and some of them do. Those that do are then shoved into detention centres while they wait for their cases to be heard, sometimes for years, before they are granted the right to stay in Australia or sent home.

It is wrong; refugees should not circumnavigate the system…because no one in Australia ever does. 

No one in Australia ‘chucks a sickie’. No one in Australia leaves work early on a Friday afternoon to suck down the first weekend beer. No one in Australia cheats the welfare system. No one in Australia remembers that modern Australia began as the UK’s biggest prison; a beachside colony surrounded by barbed wire, filled with convicts who were obviously sent to die in Sydney because they always followed the rules.

So refugees should follow the rules. They should apply for asylum in their home country, they should await ‘processing’# in a desert camp on the border of Sudan, Somalia and the Styx and pray that Angelina and her new boobs come to save them. Refugees should follow the rules and do what they are told, just like Australians do.

[The preceding paragraphs were written two weeks ago when I was in Sydney, the remainder was written the morning after Kevin’s Rudd announcement]

 

 

 

Last night, Kevin Rudd, Australia’s new Prime Minister who, up until a month ago was our ex-Prime Minister, and member of the left leaning Labour Party, announced that no person who arrives in Australia on a boat would be resettled in Australia. Instead, they will be sent to Papua New Guinea, where they will be processed (more sausage) and resettled if they meet requirements.

On the surface, this would appear to be in no way connected to the fact that there is a Federal Election later this year. It would also appear that in an effort to combat the increasing approval ratings of the budgie-smuggling, homophobic, misogynist, conservative Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, Kevin has become about as “left leaning” as Alexander Putin. It would also appear that everyone in Australia has forgotten about what a government should focus on; schools, health, economy, education, transport, welfare, in fact anything at all that occurs within Australia, rather than an exaggerated, FOXnews’ed problem of a twenty thousand people who arrive each year by boat. Sort of like squeezing a pimple on your nose while your legs rot with gangrene. I am guessing that they don’t mean the people who arrive on the Sapphire Princess of the Queen Mary II. Those people are wealthy octogenarians so they are allowed to arrive by boat.

Maybe Kevin, a born again Christian, has forgotten that Jesus, and all of his people, were refugees too. Maybe Kevin doesn’t sing the second verse of the Australian national anthem; a few lines that bang on about us welcoming people from afar to join our happy sunbathing family. Maybe Kevin should go and visit some of the countries from whence these people flee, countries where setting fire to sleeping children in a school dormitory is an acceptable method of encouraging people to join your religion.

Papua New Guinea, a country known for its rock solid human rights record, if by rock solid you mean constructed upon the San Andreas Fault, is an island nation of about 7 million people. Given the absolute absurdity of Kevin’s oxymoronic ‘solution’, I can only imagine that he has paid the good people of PNG enough money to retire early, encouraging them to take on a responsibility that Australia, a much bigger, richer, developed country, won’t.

Forgive me, but, what the unimaginable fuck?!

I’m going to take a moment to think about the Australians I know. Me, and half my family are either born in Britain, or half British. On the non-British side, there are some Polish ones, some Maltese ones, and among my generation of ones that are for lack of a better word pure Aussies, by marriage there are Argentineans, yet more British and even a rogue Russian. Perhaps my family are a rare multicultural exception; so let’s examine my friends and exes.

I’ve had one long-term Australian boyfriend whose entire family were from Northern Ireland and the short-term boyfriends, Lebanese, Korean, Pakistani and a parade of POMs. My friends are a mash up of Jewish, South African, German, Greek, Italian, Kiwi and naturally, more Brits.

Let’s face the undeniable truth; all Australians who aren’t Aborigines are immigrants, maybe eighth generation, but immigrants all the same. Many of the immigrant populations of Australia were at some point refugees. The Eastern Europeans after WWII, The Lebanese and The Greeks after their civil wars, Koreans after the Korean War and half of Central Europe after the Balkan conflicts. We had Vietnamese, the original Boat People, arrive after the US napalmed their country and more recently, we’ve welcomed Iraqis and Afghans.

The British, who aren’t known for their flamboyant spending, could only be encouraged to come when the air ticket price was reduced to be the same as a train ticket to London and many of them were fleeing Thatcher. Ironically, I’ve only ever known one person who lived illegally in Australia, and that person was a British backpacker who overstayed his visa by 12 months. Many of them do it. They know they’ll never be allowed to return but they figure the risk is worth it. They don’t follow the rules, but we don’t send them to detention centres. I wonder if it is because they speak the same language as Australians? I wonder if it is because they are white? I wonder if it is because they pray to God? I wonder if it is because their Airlie Beach tan and Havianas renders them so much more attractive than a man with a beard and a long white robe?

That these people, even the English, fought to get to and then remade their lives in Australia is what makes Australia great. It is the reason that the batting order for our cricket team reads like a menu written in South East Asia, it is the reason that Australia has developed to become the regional power she is. It is what makes us a largely peaceful nation, made entirely of people who sought to better their personal circumstances, people who’ve worked hard to make a better life for their children.

Kevin, in 2008 shortly after I arrived in Paris, you made a speech that made me proud that I’d voted for you. The Sorry Speech has gone down in history as your finest moment. You apologised for the wrongdoings of governments past, shameful wrongdoings that by today’s standards, were contrary to our native people’s basic human rights. Last night, for the first time in 7 years, I was ashamed to be Australian. I was ashamed that my nation, blessed with so much, would act like a spoiled child, holding onto all of her toys so no one else could play with them. 

Last night I wondered who will be the brave person to make a Sorry Speech a few years from now, a Sorry Speech apologising for your heinous, election-grabbing mistake. 

 

 

 

#Because they are sausages and we process them?