parismarisamadonna

Roar – Katy Perry 2013

If you ever had the pleasure of my actual physical company, you would know that I take up quite a lot of space. My Germanic heritage, mixed up with a lethal addiction to cheese and wine have afforded me a rather Valkyrian physiology; broad hips, sturdy thighs, thick ankles, an ample bosom ripped from the prow of a pirate ship and a whole 173 centimetres of skeleton coated with pinkish freckled flesh. When I walk into a room, it is with purpose, with intent and with a flurry of blonded curls that move to their very own rhythm, syncopated and staccato, often pushed behind ears that hold a pair of fire-engine red seeing glasses. Add the scarlet Doctor Marten boots, the gigantic red handbag and a habit of stumbling over just about anything (even flat surfaces) and you’ve got yourself the physical equivalent of costume jewellery; shiny and eye-catching, not very expensive and rather inappropriate before sunset.

Funnily enough, my physical presence is relatively unremarkable compared to the colossal gawp that sounds across humanity once I begin to speak.

I’m rather loud, I usually say exactly what I think, I swear like a fishwife (I even invent new swear words to further extend my vulgar vocabulary; c--tstard and C--ty McC--terston being my words du jour) and I am very expressive. I couldn’t lie if my life depended on it and even if I tried, my eyes, almost as large as my mouth, would betray me. I wave my hands around a lot and accentuate my words with extravagant gestures. My words, never restricted to the singular, pour forth in gushes of fury or frenzy or frustration or feeling. I use adjectives too frequently, I LOVE (or hate) everything, and everyone; I’m rarely indifferent and if I was, I wouldn’t be bothered to waste energy to discuss it.

You see, I am, what is referred to as, emo-wait for it-tional.

Over the course of my adult life, this word has been flung at me with the same venom that one might use to describe someone as racist, or homophobic, or Tony Abbott. Being emotional makes other people uncomfortable, sort of like when someone farts at a party and everyone looks at the ground or the ceiling in an attempt to pretend it isn’t there. In my experience, people are more at ease being farted on than seeing someone cry.

My Ruby Slippers.

 

Being emotional is worse than being stupid.

In my experience smart people tolerate dumb people without injury. In fact, surrounding oneself with intellectual vacuums is an effective method of appearing to be clever, think Kim Jong-Un. Equally, if everyone in your entourage has the intellectual capacity of a drunken gnat, they’ll be content to conduct the most menial of tasks, repetitively, without questioning the efficiency or productivity of what they’re doing. Sort of like bees; there’s a Queen, who knows what its all about, and about 1000 other bees who are either banging her to make baby bees, or buzzing around the countryside collecting her food. Queen Bee, smart, other bees, dumb. 

But no one walks up to a stupid person and says “I find it really difficult to be around you; your stupidity offends me and makes others wary of you.” We just accept the fact that some people are smarter than others and go about our business.

Being emotional is worse when you are a woman.

As a man, being emotional means screaming at the football, which is OK, because it is football. Or crying when your bride appears at the end of the aisle, which is OK, because it’s your wedding day. Or being silent when you’re pissed off, which is OK, because you’re pissed off. An emotional man who expresses his emotion freely and openly in the company of someone who is not his life partner is so rare that we came up with a word for it, and that word is gay. Whether or not the man is actually homosexual, emotional expression in a male is so uncharacteristic that it must be a symptom of something else, like homosexuality…or worse still, femininity.

Emotion in women was once named Hysteria, from the Greek for uterus, hystera. Men who wore smart ties and had certificates accrediting their expertise in medicine decided that being crazy must be the biological outcome of being female, so the two have been linked forever. Ironically, the vibrator was invented to cure Hysteria, so maybe Hysteria was simply the result of generations of men who couldn’t identify a clitoris and play with it long enough to induce a female orgasm. 

We also know that women are emotional when their hormones change; pre-menstrual, post-menstrual, any time of the menses menstrual, we can cry at a picture of a puppy, shout into the void because we didn’t crack an egg correctly, we can giggle like hyenas on crack. Women won the lottery when it comes to hormones; the exact balance between oestrogen and progesterone occurs for about 2 hours every 28 days, the rest of the time, we’re emo-wait for it-tional.

An emotional woman is normal, women have hormones rendering them the weaker sex and emotion is weakness. Even the stupid people know it.

To that, C--nty McC--terston, I say that you can take your f**kstick and run into the hills before shoving it up your left nostril.

Let’s forget your conservative missionary and try looking at the world from a reverse cowgirl’s perspective.

Being emotional makes people who are not comfortable with their emotions uncomfortable, like the fart at the party. The farter feels relief from enormous pressure by releasing his intestinal gases upon the unsuspecting party guests. For those of us who are passionate, expressing emotions provides a similar level of calm. If we were meant to keep emotions inside we wouldn’t have tear ducts, or hands that can make a fist or clitorises or mouths or ears.

Tears, squeals, shouts, kisses, high-fives and growls; all of it is unpredictable and spontaneous. Emotion, or as I prefer to call it passion, cannot be measured, or accounted for, or scheduled; every single person feels every single thing differently. Being emotional is one of the few tangible signs of your own unique personality and to some, any expression of individuality can be terrifying. No tall poppies or mavericks or crazy ones here.

Passion and enthusiasm and fire and rage and love and hate are what make us human. If we aren’t emotional, we are bees; fornicating or hunting pollen so we can make more honey, even if when there is already more than enough.

Sitting in front of someone and crying as you tell them how much you love them is not emotional, it is human. Crying, wiping away your tears then getting back to the washing the dishes requires courage, it is anything but weakness. I can’t imagine any human act braver than being honest about how you feel and then being strong enough to accept the consequences.

So in 2014 I’m lacing up my boots and shouting it to the hilltops, I’m going to scream into the chasms below and every single other human can like me or lump me. I love being the way I am. I do take everything personally… and why the fuckstickle shouldn’t I? 

I’m a person.

 

Sexual Healing – Marvin Gaye 1982

(All of the links to specific images are NSFW) 

 

Maybe you’ve heard about this show called Masters of Sex? Maybe you have a fulfilling, active life and watching successive hours of television just can’t be jammed into your busy schedule. 

Me, I’ve had a lot of free time over the last couple of weeks. After I caught up on Survivor, HIMYM, TBBT and my weekly dose of lactose coated Glee, I sought recommendations from friends as to what could take up 6 hours without requiring too much from my exacerbated neurons. Thanks to my Tequila Sister, I dedicated two full days to The Only Way Is Essex, which will get it’s own spécial dédicace this week while the Smartarse suggested Masters of Sex. What magic, what bliss; a whole 4 days filled with a mix of bad accents, fake tans and electrode monitored female orgasms. 

Masters of Sex, like pretty much anything worth watching these days, is a TV series produced by an American Cable TV channel, in this case, Showtime. It stars Michael Sheen (Twilight’s nastiest vampire) and Lizzy Caplan (Bachelorette’s nastiest bridesmaid) as Dr William Masters and Mrs Virginia Johnson the first people to medically study the human sexual response. All translates from geeky-science-ese to “watch a lot of people masturbate and have orgasms while recording their neurological and cardiovascular activity to ascertain what makes people come”. Which in any language, makes for a very compelling little TV show. Even more compelling, Bill and Virginia, were real people, it all really happened.

The show could be loosely described as Mad Men mixed up with Game of Thrones; a costume drama set in the 1950’s, superbly acted, featuring complex interpersonal relationships, retina-scarring blood and guts, punctuated with people shagging every ten or so minutes. What’s not to love?

More interesting to me is the idea of studying orgasms; the actual science-y bit of the show is fascinating. They talk about Freud, they have a room full of fancy machines that trace out brain waves and heart rates, they practice on prostitutes and there is enough sexual tension between Lizzy & Michael to power a small village. And did I mention people shag a lot?

Juiced up on 1.21 gigawatts of my own sexual tension, I paced a ditch into the floorboards of my flat, I scrubbed and polished every flat surface, I cried and I laughed until finally, powered by the need to quell my frustration, I went to an Art Gallery.

One of the Seine facing clocks at Orsay

 

The Musée d’Orsay in Paris, a former railway station and home to most of the paintings ever painted by a French Impressionist, is the current home of an exhibition dedicated to the naked male form, Masculin/Masculin.  An entire floor of paintings, sculptures and photographs of naked men (nudes for the initiated) spanning the years from 1800 to the present day…and it is art…will someone take my money?!

The temporary exhibition traces the history of artistic expression of male nudes through various themes, the Hero (my personal favourite), The Athlete, Man in Nature, Man in Pain, Man as an Object of Desire, etc.  There was Lucien Freud, David, Rodin and a duo of French artists I’d never heard of called Pierre et Gilles.

Their work, mostly from the last ten years, reminded me of Renaissance Raphael  pe-jazzled with a bit of David La Chapelle. One image in particular features on the exhibition poster, and another, Vive La France, was my personal favourite of the whole exhibition. Naked or nude, their play on the red, white and blue of the tricolore and the cultural kaleidoscope of modern France was, to me anyway, beautiful.

Pierre et Gilles's Mercury is on the left

 

Pacing around the rooms, I teared up more than once (always happens), I learned about how Nazis used male nudes to propagate the notion of the perfect Aryan male, I learned about why Greeks and Romans fancied nude man marble more than they fancied nude women statues and I learned that a leather strap, dagger, leaf or drape will cover any manner of penis. I was perplexed to discover that, generally speaking, female nudes of any era give you full nipple and vagina action while the manly variety prefer to keep their modesty hidden behind a strategically placed scabbard.

I wonder how big of a scabbard would be required to hide a Kim Kardashian? Or simultaneously hide all the Kardashians?

Well this week, we learned that Kim don’t need no scabbard; she has a perfectly sized Kanye to cover up her lady bits while she rides her motorbike, without clothes (which is very irresponsible for a new mother who should be protecting herself with, at the very least, a crash helmet), as the latest Windows screensaver scrolls past behind her.

A week later, the world is still spinning as we collectively attempt to decipher the hidden significance of what will go down in history as the most appalling music video ever made. Are Kimye highlighting the plight of the endangered wild horse and bald eagle? Are the rolling clouds a comment on climate change? Did the tourism authority of Yosemite National Park sponsor the video? Are they both so much cleverer than the rest of us that we just can’t figure out the metaphysical subtext? Is she wearing SPF 30+? And what the actual f**k with the bouncing? We know you aren’t really in a national park Kimye; you don’t leave your house without a paparazzo or seven to document your every move.*

You might have read this far down the page and wondered, have two full days of TOWIE dulled the fabric of her mind to the point that she can write about a witty cable TV series, a properly official art exhibition and a couple that reality TV spewed onto our collective consciousness and still have a point?

Inconceivable! … well actually no, here it is.

 

Musée d'Orsay's main hall

 

I’ve spent a good part of this week questioning my own values concerning erotica and sexual imagery.  What is sexually explicit? What is erotic? What is demeaning to a man, or to a woman, and what is not? What distinguishes the male nude and the female nude? What is nude and what is naked? Who on this earth (or Mars or Venus) wants to see a Kardashian nude, naked or otherwise?

Masters of Sex is, quite simply, brilliant. Understanding the origins of an orgasm empowered our bra-burning sisters of the sexual revolution to ask for what they wanted, and get it. Without the groundbreaking work of Masters and Johnson, we may all still be faking it or feigning headaches so we can get back to watching the Pride and Prejudice in peace. While the sex is often graphic, I find the images of obstetric surgery far more uncomfortable to watch. More importantly, the sex has a point; the sex scenes are essential to the telling of the story. 

The Art Gallery filled with ten-foot tall paintings of naked men didn’t offend me at all; in fact it barely registered on my own imaginary Masters & Johnson electrograph. I’m not sure why, but I suspect that as soon as you throw a Roman God allegory at a painting, nakedness, nudeness and pornography evaporate. A golden helmet, a pair of winged boots or a sword disgorging a dragon renders a bare chest and butt cheeks invisible. Besides, I was actually inside the Musée d’Orsay, so I knew I was studiously observing artistic bottoms and penises, rather than ogling smutty bums and dicks.  

A naked woman sitting astride a motorbike while her male companion is dressed, who then overtly pouts at the camera as she auto-caresses her shoulders; the sheer obviousness of a naked KK is not in any way, shape or form erotic, it is not sexual, it is not titillating, it is misplaced, it is facile and it is silly. This week I’ve learned that I’m more offended by silly than I am by naked. I could care less about boobs, bums or bits; as the spectator, I ask only to be treated with respect and intelligence.

A final observation.

Gustave Courbet painted the Origin of the World in 1866. Today, it occupies the only place on an entire wall, centre-stage, as you enter one of the halls dedicated to his oeuvre on the ground floor at Orsay. The day I was there, so were half of Paris’s junior high schools. Adolescent males were pushing against each other, against me and against a couple of little old Americans, to cop an eye of the giant vagina wall. The painting has attracted a fair amount of criticism and equal amounts of praise; no one can truly decide if it is art or erotica. I’m not about to be that person, but I will assert that it hangs on display in France’s second most visited art museum not too far from Monet’s Waterlilies, Whistler’s Mother or Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. This image is not hidden behind a cigarette stained velvet curtain in Pigalle.

Among the final images displayed in the Masculin/Masculin exhibition is The Origin of War by Orlan.  As soon as I saw it, I recognised the reference to Courbet and laughed. This particular image, an intricately detailed study of a flaccid penis, was arguably the most explicit of all the sexual imagery I was faced with this week …and it made me laugh.

 

 

*It is worth noting that despite my endless days spent doing not much of anything; I have not resorted to watching KUWTK. TOWIE, at the very least, is British, so it is marginally more highbrow than anything fabricated in Los Angeles, at least as far as scripted reality goes…which is about as far as the distance between my right hand and a glass of Pinot Noir after 5pm on a Friday.

Hard Out Here – Lily Allen 2013

 

Note - tongue inside mouth 

 

About 2 months ago, I wrote Teenage Dream. Within a week, it became the most read post I’d ever written. I was complaining about something very close to my heart and over two thousand people read it, shared it, commented on it and even told their friends about it.

So now I’m going to talk about the same thing but hopefully with a little bit more positivity. Let’s all tell our friends, get them to read it and get them to talk about it. I think this is vitally important and everyone, both those with vaginas and those without, should stand up, look lively and start shaking their dimply thighs in the name of change.

 

 

I don’t see my life as harder than every single other earthling’s, far from it; I have some sort of financial security, I have 2 arms and 2 legs and the insides are holding together despite years and years of marination and fumigation.  But there is one thing about me that makes my life just a little bit more difficult than some of yours. It isn’t something I did, something I said or something I thought, in fact I have absolutely no control over it. It is the undeniable truth that I am a woman and being a woman is just a little bit more difficult, just a little bit messier, just a little bit more of an uphill battle than it often is for a man. 

Harder still, as I arm myself for battle, I am bereft of positive female role models who do stuff and say stuff and think stuff and put stuff out there into the public arena that make me proud of being blessed with a pair of (slightly uneven and again, dimply) boobs.

I am some sort of a feminist. It is hard to admit that out loud after having spent last weekend trundling across the United Kingdom to see Mr Darcy, not the most obvious of feminist icons and bonnet dramas are smugly viewed as the realm of the weak and submissive. But I really am; I think that women should be given the same rights to creative expression and freedom of speech as their men folk. We should have the same opportunities, the same pay and the same expectations. I am not talking about the heinous violent crimes against women that occur in countries far and wide or that fact that in some places, women are bought and sold as possessions; I can’t solve all the problems of the world in 1000 words and I don’t yet know enough about it all to try (but give me a month and I’ll have a go). I am talking about the fact that women just aren’t allowed to do the same stuff as men without copping a mouthful of abuse and judgement for being unladylike, for being premenstrual, or my personal favourite, for being (patronising hand on the shoulder and sad eyes) emotional.

When men slap each other about and jump in the air and cheer after playing a particularly robust game of rugby do the women of the world fold their arms, shake their head and stare collectively upon the semen carriers and sigh…you are all such boofheads? We don’t, and we don’t because we celebrate that the men are strong, that they just spent 80 minutes running into each other without snapping their spinal column and we admire them for it. We jump and cheer and shout and scream and our boobs might even wobble a bit as we do.

When men (read, most men in England), dress up in their mothers’ dresses, raid her make up case and make fun in pantomimes and Comic Relief TV specials or even make a very lucrative living out of it (Eddie Izzard, Barry Humphries), some might make a few sly remarks, some might even disapprove, but largely, they are afforded the freedom to express themselves as they wish and make a tonne of money in the process.

I’ve been having a bit of a rough trot of it lately, so to calm my nerves, I’ve been seeking refuge in the working person’s crèche that is YouTube. I’ve been watching this…about eight times a day…every day for two weeks...it soothes me. This video has gone viral, everyone’s talking about it, everyone’s writing about it and I wondered why. After wiping the drool off our chins, I chatted to some colleagues about Tom’s spectacular moves; we agreed that it is too rare to see a man really let go like this and have a proper, joyful, lips pushed out, dance. Tom Hiddleston, serious act-OR of stage and screen, idol to boys everywhere as the baddest brother of Asgard, is an out and proud dancer...and no one cares.

David Beckham, serious athlete, ten-foot tall in his undies, normal. Jay Z, serious musician, singing about a homosexual fashion designer, yawn. Jennifer Aniston and Jennifer Lawrence cut off their hair, front-page news on the Guardian. Lily Allen sings about wobbly boobs and cellulite, the Internet is broken hashtag WTF! 

Women are primed from birth to be attractive and make babies. Little girls play with dolls, dressing them up or putting them to bed while pretending to be tiny mothers. A woman’s clothing is designed to render her physically powerless (heels), accentuate our assets (bras) or serve no functional purpose at all (most items sold at Topshop). Men sing about us in songs as though we might be colourful objects to play with, to consume or to discard. If we are really lucky, one fine day, a man will get down on one knee and promise to love and protect us. He will ensure he earns enough money to buy us a roof and to feed our offspring. He’ll have nights out the boys and refer to us as “The Missus”. Before we get married, he’ll organise a Stag Do (strong, pointy, hard) while we’ll get a Hen Do (feeble, caged, pecky, ruled over by a Cock). We’ll feel wanted and special. He might get a bit on the side, we won’t necessarily mind because we are safe and warm and the welfare of our children is more important.

After all, if we choose to be something else, we’ll be marked as a Bitch.

I’ve been called a Bitch more times than I can count. I’ve been called odd, different, out of the box, aggressive, shouty, eccentric, maverick. I’ve even stared into the mirror and called myself most of these names through a veil of emotional tears.

This week, I finally felt as though someone had read my mind, had said what I wanted to say, had given me a voice. Importantly, she is married, she has two babies and she is mates with Karl Lagerfield, who famously doesn’t like rounded ladies. She has a brain and she and her song have made my life a little less shit...her and off course Loki thrusting his hips.

Women today need more Lily’s, more positivity, more variety, more intelligence, more boobs and fewer tits. We need more women celebrating women being whatever we want to be, however we want to be it. We need more discourse about Lily and her ilk and a little less time spent ogling or debating the cultural merits of anything that Terry Richardson has ejaculated onto the ether. We need to be each other’s strongest supporters rather than giving two flying f**ks in hell about the length of a Jennifer’s hair.

We need to be each other’s own role models because it is Hard Out Here for a Bitch.

Love is a Battlefield – Pat Benetar 1983

 

Have you ever been stood up?

You had planned to meet. You’d set a time and a place. You had butterflies in your stomach. You spent three days deciding what you were going to wear. You muttered in hushed tones to your girlfriends, each word heavy with the anticipation of meeting the mystery man; after all, this one might just be The One. You spent hours reflecting on how it will go; will he smile, will he make you laugh, will he kiss you goodbye, will he call you again?  You shaved your legs and everything else that might be exposed to a living human male for the first time since the Internet was invented. You made sure it was a hairwash day and cracked out the heavy artillery to whip it into shape. At the end of it all, you look about as perfect as you might if Glinda the Good, your Fairy Godmother and Tinkerbell drowned you in magic and enchantment. 

At no point, not once, ever, did you imagine that he wouldn’t show.

I’ll go you one better…I flew half way around the world…and he didn’t show.

More about the Douchebag later, let’s focus on what’s been filling the endless hours I spend on conference calls wishing that the floor beneath my desk would transform into a sinkhole and suck me all the way to Sydney.

Tinder.

Zoltar spoke...but he didn't make me little..though I did dance on the Piano

 

Loosely dubbed Grindr* for straight people, Tinder is the latest, greatest thing that happened to Smartphones since, well since the Smartphone was invented.

Using your Facebook profile, you upload an App that picks out your photo and your basic information then sends you the profiles of others in your immediate vicinity. Sounds simple right? You ‘match’ with people and start chatting, then you can arrange to meet up, set a time to hook up or in my case (for the second time in a week) be stood up.

I have friends in London who swear by Tinder. It is the latest bandwagon to jump upon since the Olympics. London’s single Tinderers date a different person every night. They assured me it was the most time effective way to meet decent men who live nearby, decent men who are interested in meeting decent ladies.

Of course, I live in Paris; a place that is, in every imaginable way, the diametric opposite of London, so the same cannot possibly apply. Just as Parisian cars drive on the opposite side of the road, or that Parisian palaces have no Queen, Parisian Tinder is designed to light fires in adulterous hell, rather than in my Victoria’s Secret knickers.

The first guy I started chatting to seemed funny, which in my life, is the single most important characteristic of any person, most especially someone who might consider intimacy with me. His photos certainly demonstrated his humour, one with jokey sunglasses, one with gaffer tape over his mouth. This guy, thought I, could make me laugh. If I were permitted to write anything about my professional situation, you’d understand my craven need to laugh, regularly, to giggle away the sinkhole (and AK47) fantasies that invade my consciousness. To protect his anonymity, let’s call this guy Patrick. Patrick as in Bateman, not Swayze.

Patrick was the first guy I matched with. He made me laugh, and he was patient. He kept chatting through the 14 days I was far, far away. He was anxiously counting the days until my return to Paris. He was a writer, he voted Left, he had a preference for brown haired women and messaged in near perfect English. We joked and texted and in the third week, we planned to meet up that Saturday.

At that point, after three weeks of flirtatious messaging, he decided to share a minor detail that until now, he hadn’t deemed important enough to share. “Oh by the way, before we meet, I should let you know, I’m married.”

At least now I know to ask…and I do…every time…and have now been matched with three more married men who messaged their interest in me. Three more married men, looking for a quick and easy shag, with a quick and easy single lady. Preferably, I assume, doted with her own abode; after all, we wouldn’t want to be discovered in flagrante in the spare room while little Jacques snoozed in his IKEA cot. 

Central Park...no Friends.

 

So Patrick was a colossal knob. Marcel, as in Marceau (he who does not speak), was not so much a knob as plain frustrating. I don’t mind if someone is an introvert; I’ve got enough personality for three others and relish a captive, tacit audience. But have you ever tried having a text conversation with someone who says nothing, who divulges nothing, but who responds to everything with only one word. It was kind of like texting a French waiter; oui, non, bon, d’accord, ok…Marcel, I can reduce it to less than one word. F.O.

More recently I met The Chef, ostensibly the only other unmarried (never-married) person my age in France. He was Italian, we both love Pacino and De Niro, we both love food and wine, he made me laugh, he never called after we met. Next!  

Those among you, who know me personally, know that I am not a dater. I don’t have enough patience to waste more than an hour with someone who does not immediately declare his or her undying love for me. Besides, I am far too busy during the week with the Clan of Unmitigated Neurotic Tools^ to waste my time with pricks, knobs, dicks and cocks… unless of course it was a real one attached to a man with a brain. So being dicked around for a whole year by someone so intrinsically sadistic he’s in the Army, has given rise to a rage-fuelled righteousness burning white-hot within a woman so scorned that hell hath no fury#…and any other Shakespearean quote you can think of.

That a man passes weeks and months at a time laying in ditches staring down (and then I assume annihilating) the Mujahedeen of Central Asia but that he cannot show up for a date in New York City, is unsettling.  Is a woman with a full-time job and an opinion so terrifying? Was it me? Is it you? Was it the full moon? Should I have not shaved my legs?

And that is why I’m not a dater; the flood of insecurity that accompanies every rejection or unsent text or unread message or missed date tests the strongest swimmer… and I am landlocked. There are enough people in my life (and some dead ones) who make me sad, who make me question myself, who make me angry; I don’t need to lengthen the list by inviting new people in to be cruel to me.  This Aries warrior is polishing her armour, sharpening up her sword and fighting only the good fight.

Like Candy Crush.

 

The new me...A Golden Warrior...at the Met.

*If you’ve never heard of it, you don’t know any gay people. If you don’t know any gay people, we can’t be friends anymore and you should stop reading.

^See what I did there?

#Yes, at risk of offending the whole Blue Mountains, maybe even hotter than the bushfires.

Popular – Stephen Schwartz (from the musical Wicked) 2003

Rock Hudson and Freddie Mercury both died of AIDS related illnesses in the 1980’s. Both of them were homosexual and so to avoid alienating a public largely uneducated about alternative lifestyles; both of them pretended they weren’t. Their friends and family knew about their illness, their friends and family fiercely protected their privacy, and ultimately, both men died with dignity. The tabloid magazines of the day hinted at the possibility they’d contracted AIDS as a result of their sexuality, but hashtag outRock or Instagrams of Freddie in leather didn’t pique curiosity and invasion like it might today.  

Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the Internet in 1989.  His brilliant, knighted mind, coded and programmed and logarithm-ed and spat out the information age upon an unsuspecting Generation X who were still trying to get their heads around typing, snorting cocaine and Nintendo Gameboys. Tim BL gave the world instant access to anything and everything at the click of a (right or left) button. Like a perfect storm, around the same time, some lonely Finns crawled out of an ice-cave in Lapland and gave every human being the opportunity to carry an affordable and lightweight mobile phone.

Today, in 2013, we can find out anything we want to know, from anywhere we might be, even 30,000 feet in the air, and we can share it with the entire world. Instantly.

In light of recent events I wonder, is that such a good thing?

Nigella, the way she should be.

When Nigella Lawson married Charles Saatchi, she promised to love and honour him. He promised to stick with her in sickness and in health. They had both been married previously; one assumes they knew what they were getting into, beyond the stupid-expensive paintings on the living room walls and a lifetime of chocolate puddings. Their marriage vows said nothing about sharing each other with the masses, about exposing their most private moments to millions, about becoming the unwitting and unwilling poster-girl for domestic violence.

Before the girls shout me down, to be very clear, I am not condoning domestic violence, in fact, I’m not even talking about domestic violence.

I’m talking about a woman and a man who are married. She is quite well known because she bakes cakes and he because he buys and sells French Impressionists. Despite the rather sensitive subject matter, I don’t care about their private lives, I do not want to know, more to the point, I don’t need to know. I want more cakes and more cookbooks. What she does when she is not teaching me how to dribble and smash and ooze and dollop, is her affair, not mine. That this was daubed on the front pages and made out to be a newsworthy story shows how we are losing our way, losing our focus, losing our shit.

The cult of celebrity has done something dangerous to the world. Fatally combined with the power of social media, instantaneous communications and hysterical teenagers, we spend more time discussing Beyoncé Knowles’ haircut than we do our own.

 

A news article in The Guardian this week.

I also do not care that Simon Cowell is having a baby or the marital status of the unfortunate woman he has impregnated with his smarmy sperm.  My life does not need more pictures of Simon Cowell in swimsuits lounging upon luxury yachts in St Tropez. The role he plays in my life is to be Simon Cowell; snarky, snide and funny with David Walliams on the telly. Simon Cowell is an entertainer, a television personality, a step above belly-button lint and certainly not more worthy of journalism than Edward Snowden being granted asylum in Russia. 

I suppose, in Simon’s case, one could argue that he deserves it. Making nobodies into somebodies is the source of his phenomenal fortune. He took 5 boys who could barely sing in tune, taught them to smile and swagger, gave them each a pair of skinny jeans and a microphone and transformed them into the five most popular hairdo’s since John and Paul. In fact, so popular are the five luscious lads of One Direction, they are now owned by the Internet. After their website crashed under the weight of hormone charged adolescent discontent, GQ may consider asking twitter what the cover headlines should be before suggesting that Hirsute Harry is playing for both teams.

And this is where it gets interesting…

Nigella never asked for her photos to be splashed across the front pages, but many of the celebrities we read about do. Most of Simon Cowell’s empire has lit up the world powered with the firebrand of social media. The boys themselves aren’t talented enough to sell their wares, but accompanied by stories in papers, hashtags and blurry Instagrams, they became a worldwide phenomenon in less than three months.

Using the lightening speed of the internet to publicise a pop group is hardly going to bring down the social fabric as we know it. But it is the precursor to what will.

Just beyond the grainy shots of Harry kissing Taylor Swift, or Rob Pattinson and Kristen Stewart hiding behind their baseball caps, a fetid world of scandal, voyeurism and self-promotion has noxiously multiplied and taken up all the space left for real information.

The celebrities and their business have infiltrated that wonderful cyber-powered universe that TimBL invented to educate and connect every human being. They took his w.w.wonder to use as their own electronic billboard. And then the scum of celebrityland stumbled, bumped their heads to free the Botox from their brain and realised that they could create popularity from nothing.

Justin Bieber’s mother, enamoured of her little man and lacking the company of sentient human adults, obsessed over his cute pout and melodic trill. Rather than sit in her living room and encourage him to finish his homework, she posted videos of her little protégé on YouTube. There he was discovered by record company executives too lazy to get out to a bar and sign an actual musician.  Bieber and his Momager then hashtagged and hashed their way to global domination.

Miley Cyrus, not content with encouraging Hannah Montanas to take ecstasy and twerk used twitter to shame her father into admitting to extramarital affairs. Raven Symone tweeted her coming out and Amanda Bynes has Instagrammed every second of her mental decline and eventual incarceration in a psychiatric facility. Disney graduates and Popstars are relatively innocuous but when The Prime Minister of Australia tweeted a Selfie with a shaving cut this week, I was perplexed. How will this end?

If you use the internet to create love, it can be used against you to create hate. 

 

Hearthrob or colossal knob?

Whether he is pissing in a mop bucket or spitting on his fans, Bieber’s image is pasted onto our consciousness from Helsinki to Harare. It backfired. The images of Bieber sprogging over his adoring minions went viral within a nanosecond. Nor he, nor his mother’s lawyers, nor his record company could find a way to wipe those images from the public retina. Bieber, the boy born on YouTube, may just die on Twitter. Hashtag #heshouldhaveswallowed

Arguably, Bieber can sing and dance, and by contemporary standards, is handsome. In our new world of instant information, talent is an optional extra to becoming the most famous person in the world. 

I give you, the Kardashians. 

Barack Obama is the leader of the United States of America. This week, in an actual political interview, with actual journalists, where he was actually talking about actual American policy Barack Obama referenced Kimye.

Within hours of the offending syllables exiting his resonant throat, his words hit the front pages of every online publication. I could argue that he did it on purpose, that he knew that by referencing her, his words would be heard. That he may of considered this is a sad indictment of our collective priorities. No one documents what the President of the USA has to say unless he includes a fly away statement about a pair of media hungry celebrities who’ve contributed nothing more to humanity than some poorly designed handbags and a back catalogue of expletives. To be fair, he was saying something very similar to what I’m saying here.

Tim BL made the Internet so we could Google the answers to pub quiz questions, not stay attuned to the intrauterine activities of a family whose alphabet does not know letters beyond K. The guys at Nokia commercialised mobile phones so that we could find each other in a crowded train station, not so that we could vine a video of a drunken woman in a bus. We have information and we have access, but why can’t we use it for good?

Let’s all get down on our knees in supplication.

We are saved.

Thank you Stephen Fry.

 

When you are talented, people talk about your talent.

Instead of taking over the internet with photos of Dzohkhar Tsarnaev’s bleeding torso, or the cell where Ariel Castro’s doomed prisoners were held, this week’s internet was almost sucked empty by the 750 words penned by one of the most brilliant minds of our time.

Recognising that no one was listening, that there was not enough space in the news for the truth about the abuses of LGBT Russians, Fry wrote to the world, and the world heard. He tweeted, he Facebooked and he blogged. His letter was picked up by every major news agency within a day. 

Fame is useful when used for good. Being Popular can be leveraged to make a point, whether it is one you or I agree with or not. Being Popular wins elections and wars. It serves to unite humans around a common cause for the betterment of all.

 

 

Being popular is not one’s life goal but the outcome of the excellent work one does.

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.

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?

Fear – Sarah Maclachlan 1994

The definition of terrorism according to the Oxford English Dictionary:     

                        “The unofficial or unauthorised use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political                             aims”           

 

Terrorism, by definition, aims to frighten people, intimidate them and force them to acquiesce to the demands of their terroriser. 

Flying passenger aircraft into the tallest buildings of Manhattan or exploding cocktail bars perched upon the white sand tourist-filled beaches of Kuta, rest, morbidly, in the annals of our unfortunate history of terrorism. We have become accustomed to hearing about Jihad and Allah and the Qur’an as easily as we hear about The Voice or the political repercussions of the carbon tax. We’ve seen Damian Lewis on his knees with his arms in the air as he prayed, Claire Danes went crazy-eyed, and we’ve watched…

We’ve heard that women in Saudi Arabia aren’t allowed to drive. We’ve heard that Abu Qatada can’t leave England for fear of torture in Jordan. We’ve heard that women in France cannot wear a face-covering veil. We’ve heard that Barack Obama may or may not be sympathising with the Syrians.

We’ve heard it all. 

We’ve heard that Islamist revolutionaries want to teach us all a lesson. We’ve heard that evangelicals in the Southern States believe that Heath Ledger died because he glorified the life of a homosexual. We’ve seen the photos of the soldiers that have given their lives to keep us safe. We’ve seen the clerics that preach against a woman’s right to wear a bikini or terminate an unwanted pregnancy. We’ve seen that respected actors and DJs might be paedophiles. We assume that these same men, of all faiths, take advantage of numerous women, numerous times, in numerous ways, with, or without, the modesty of a face-covering veil.

We’ve watched Syrians on both sides decimate their own population. Or maybe we haven’t, depending on which news you watch. Some of us have paid attention, some of us haven’t. The Syrians haven’t yet taken to flying passenger aircraft into tall buildings, but maybe they will, in an effort to get their 15 minutes. 

We’ve watched as women were beaten, or ostracised, or stoned, or raped, or insulted and assaulted in every which way and said to ourselves that it won’t happen where we live. But it did.

We watched as men who lived in suburban towns, with suburban jobs owned up to hiding away their female prisoners in their suburban prison cells, in their suburban dungeons under their suburban homes and we said to ourselves, this doesn’t happen in our WASP-y neighbourhoods… even though it did.

And we said to ourselves, this wouldn’t happen in my neighbourhood. Not on my watch. Not while Jesus, or Allah, or Abraham, or Rupert Murdoch, or Richard Branson is watching over me. Not while I am too busy marching in the streets to protest the right of two men to marry, not while I am voting to protect the right that my country affords me to free dental. Not while my government is paying me a salary while I search for employment and certainly not while I am watching Simon Cowell destroy another teenager’s dream in the interest of better ratings for ITV. 

We said that we would not bow our heads to the demands of terrorists. We said that we would not cower in fear. Bush Frappuccino-ed our love for the hysterical with our need for the factual and said we would hunt them Dead or Alive! We sent our men and women off to foreign lands with guns and bibles. We had no reason to be frightened.

And then…on a day when no one was listening, and no one was watching: we did exactly what they wanted us too. 

We decoupaged the front pages of every publication, in every country, everywhere, with the picture they wanted us to see. A man, wielding a knife, hands covered in blood, hurling forth words that were translated for the benefit of the uninitiated, the uncaring, the uneducated, words that defined a whole congregation of believers as terrorists. Words that will forever be used to decry the mal of a religion rather than help anyone to understand what they faithfully and democratically believe. Whether we eat bacon, we wear a veil, we eat beef, we believe in polygamy or we believe in reincarnation, we are afforded the democratic right to believe that our God is great.

Why give a couple of freaks their 15 minutes? Is this not the same as bowing to the terrorist demands of the post-Sandy Hook NRA?

Why give more airtime to the perpetrators than to the victim? A victim, whose family wished him to remain anonymous, but were forced to acquiesce to the demands of a media happy government.

Why does our sensationalist media continue to bow to the exact expectations of the afore-defined terrorists?

Why don’t we devote more time to talking about feeding people…or housing people…or letting people who love each other get married…or FFS talking about anything other than the singular tragic act of two singularly tragic fools. 

Surely, the mass tragedy at a factory in Bangladesh should stop us in our H&M frenzied shopping delirium more readily than the photo of a man with a machete?

I pray to my own spiritual saviour that we will be more concerned by what is real and true for us all than what CNN tells us we should believe. I get down on my knees and I pray. I pray to all the gods…including Aries, God of war, under whose stars I was born.

I pray that we will focus on our neighbours, our families, our friends…I pray that we will stop reading our newspapers and turning on our televisions.

I pray that we will be brave enough to form our own opinions…without Rupert’s help.

 

 

 

Dude looks like a lady – Aerosmith 1987

Margaret Thatcher was many things; a trailblazer, a politician, an especially committed wearer of cobalt blue, a dedicated user of litres of super strength hairspray and a woman. At risk of adding to the millions of missives that have circulated during the past two weeks, missives that have swung from the pedantic adoration of Daily Mail to the spewed vitriol of the Socialist Worker, here is mine. I get it, I understand, she was a divisive as Vegemite, you either loved her or you hated her, but she was ousted from power over 20 years ago so is it not time to just get over it? 

In the years since Margaret Thatcher last Ruled Britannia, our world has changed.

We have Internet, mobile phones, Simon Cowell and a Russian space station. Since Maggie ruled the roost, the UK became part of the EU and adopted Poland as its poor relation, much to the chagrin of her forgotten adopted son in the sun Australia. Twenty years ago we had to rely on the keen eyesight of the referee to decide if John McEnroe was indeed out or in at Wimbledon while in today’s modern society we have Hawkeye to tell us that Federer just missed the chalky white line. In fact, that one Black Woman, let alone two, let alone sisters, let alone black sisters wearing neon yellow spandex micro skirts, are permitted to hit the green ball across our the hallowed grass court, rather than scoop it up from the sidelines, is proof positive that our world is not the same one that Maggie bequeathed in 1990. 

So why the hatred? Why the burning effigies? Why bother?

I am convinced it was because she was a woman.

Last week, in a watershed moment for the BBC, Britain’s national broadcaster refused to play the number two song on the weekly top 100. They refused because that song, a tune of barely 60 seconds that was written in 1939, was Ding Dong the Witch is Dead. The polite, god fearing, Queen loving and pedestrian-crossing-obeying people of Britain got themselves organised enough to purchase enough copies of the song to depose the latest of Simon Cowell’s protégés from the silver medal position. Ironically, it was only possible today because we can download music quickly and easily rather than go to a shop and purchase the record, just as you would have when the witch reigned supreme. 

I was in London last week and stayed in a hotel that looks onto the Strand (that is a red one on Monopoly for those of you that, like me, measure out your London existence on a game board). The police, as in the blokes from Scotland Yard, and not the tantric tuned Sting, were positioned along the streets, every 10 metres, placed strategically to prevent anyone from getting up to too much mischief. I approached one; I noticed that he, like all of his colleagues, was wearing his Bobby hat rather than the comfortable cotton hat they usually wear. I asked him if he was wearing his fancy hat because he was going to be on telly, his answer “Love, I just do what I am told”.

That is what was so strange about the POMs reaction to Maggie’s death; they weren’t doing what they were told. They were out in the streets, shouting and burning and screaming and throwing. They were disobeying. The only western nation that creates actual rules with the actual intention of following them, ran out into the streets and shouted in dissident accord at the demise of the dentally distended grocer’s daughter from Grantham who once waved a manicured hand and ended their way of life.

I was alive and remember her as the Prime minister of England who rocked up to Diana’s wedding wearing a slightly less frightful hat than Princess Anne. I don’t remember the strikes; I don’t remember the hatred, my father, who arrived in Australia only ten years before she claimed power, appeared ambivalent. He had adopted the land of the poor cousin to the south and never looked back. 

Like him, I prefer to look forward.

If I stopped for longer than ten minutes to reflect on the way that our world is descending into chaos and individualistic obsession, I’d lose the will to live.

In one week we watched in horror, as Boston became a real life C-rated Tom Cruise movie complete with tweets from the police chief. We’ve watch in stifled amusement as Texas was blown up by actual bullshit, not just the abstract kind that Bush used to blow up the rest of the world. We watched in disbelief as the United States Senate refused a bill to restrict gun ownership. I thought that the demise of Charlton Heston might have warranted a mite more nastiness than that of Maggie, but then, she never parted the Red Sea, she just prevented the Reds from owning the North Sea. One is a biblical myth, one is real; spot the difference.

And then there was no more news. The Boston Bombers were shot half to death, the Texan bullshit factory stopped burning and the Iron Lady was laid to rest. And that is when the real news broke…

 

The Wobble Board Waving Wattyl paintbrush Wielding Wandering Walkabout-er Rolf Harris was accused. The second most powerful man on earth, Rupert Murdoch*, accused him via one of his journalistic cowpats, but Rolf has been accused all the same.

Like all of us, I’m not sure what it means, if it is true, if it is not; but we all know that when your full name is used in the same sentence as ‘child sex-offender’ it does not end with a Knighthood.

Maggie may not have been your cup of tea, but she ruled at a time when politicians had to stand up and speak. They had to argue and convince. They didn’t hide behind social media gossip, lobbying gun associations and phone-hacked journalism.

She did something. She did something while wearing her skirt instead of lifting it.

 

 

 

*Cowell is obviously numero uno

Woman – John Lennon 1980

One of the greater pleasures of a short holiday on the other side of the globe, aside from the desire, and more importantly the time, to eat and drink non-stop for 15 days, is the opportunity to read the news. My employment requires that I stay up to date on certain matters, matters mostly related to the technologisation of our world, the daily gossip on the internet and the frailty of the European employment market…all riveting stuff, I know it keeps me quivering with an..tici…….pation.^

On holidays at the end of the calendar year, one can spend hours poring over the online broadsheets, reading all of the “Best Of” lists and “Can You Remember” quizzes that the astute journalists at The Guardian can churn out. One can watch endless videos of idiot news anchors in America on YouTube, one can read commentary on a single dreadful happening in the media of differing nations, comparing the points of view, which facts are included, which are omitted, which stories did the NRA pay for, you catch my drift.

After hours dedicated to reading, browsing, perusing and arguing the toss with Motherbear, it struck me, these last few weeks have been dominated by a two news stories, both related to singular women.

Beautiful dusk in Sydney to offset angry writing

The first of these stories was the shockingly barbaric attack on a young student in Delhi. Anyone who has stood within sight of a Newsagent in the last 3 weeks would know that this unfortunate woman has now died as a result of the sexual violence she was subjected to at the grubby hands of five even grubbier men. The fact that such an assault could still take place in 2012 is, I suppose, inevitable. There are f**kwits everywhere, even in the world’s largest democracy with a relatively educated population. I just cannot fathom why men think it interesting or validating or gratifying to violate a woman in such a manner. That they would have such perverse impulses and then practise them with an audience is so hopelessly depressing that I had to stop reading.

Why? What possible pleasure, be it carnal or psychopathic or even misogynistic, could be garnered from committing such violence, most especially committing such violence with your mates watching? In 2012 a man survived a 24-mile jump to earth, NASA landed a robot on Mars, scientists discovered the God Particle, and then this kind of thing happens and I am left wondering. Have we, the human race, advanced at all since Sir Thomas More spent his weekends burning heretics on Tower Green?

What is simply unprecedented is the outpouring of grief and solidarity on the part of India’s 1 billion Brahmins, Vaishyas, Shrudas and Untouchables. That so many people, women and men, young and old, have walked the streets in support of the young woman who died has afforded me a modicum of hope that the plight of so many of the world’s women may improve. 

I’ve never read the Female Eunuch or The Beauty Myth. I shave my armpits and wear a bra everyday. I’m not a cliché feminist but I am certainly not a Stepford Wife. I’m not Betty Draper, but I still can’t decide if I’m Peggy Olson or Joannie*. What I am is really pissed off, increasingly so. I am angry at the sad truth that having a vagina implies that anyone without one can shove anything inside it, at his discretion, wherever he chooses, whenever he wants, however short and unsatisfying it may be for a woman, however violent and degrading, however badly copied the act may be from his hours spent watching B-grade pornography, however committed the relationship betwixt them is (or isn’t), however short a time it is that he will treat you well (or not). I am pissed off that they get to choose. I am pissed off that in so many places often legally they own their women.

The worst is that in so many places, the forenamed Vagina Impaler can mandate his ownership (or not) of any issue of the woman. He can subject her children to all manner of medieval ideals, forced marriage practices and again, and depressingly all too often, more violence. So I am aggrieved that so many men, usually Fundamentally Religious Ones, feel it their God-given right to legislate on whether or not a woman has a right to choose to terminate her pregnancy. Pregnancies that are so often the result of unwanted sex, which will result in unwanted children possibly even uneducated ones, who will think violence on women is natural and normal, and so the sad cycle continues.

But fear not! The light still shines! 

Thank God, and all that is good and bountiful, for the other big news story that closed out my 2012. Kim Kardashian is pregnant! Even better still, that role model of sympathetic masculinity, Kanye West, is her impregnator! 

It is depressing that violent uneducated men with religious stars in their eyes attack women. It is depressing that women are second-class citizens in so many second-class places. What is most depressing is that mixed together with the news that the young Indian woman had died was the news that one of the most famous women on earth, she who has contributed absolutely nothing to the advancement of even an amoeba or a plankton let alone actual human beings, was going to further spread her DNA. Worse still, that she would mix hers together with that of a man who personifies the worst kind of misogynist, a man who uses semi-naked juveniles to sell his music, a man who has let his undeniable musical talent become sadly overshadowed by his macho moronic persona.

I watch my fair share of reality TV. I watch Survivor. I love anything where people are required to cook, preferably if Ramsay is swearing at them while they sauté. I am obsessed with Project Runway and I love me a good X-Factor Sing-A- Long. The attribute that all of the people who feature in these kinds of shows share is that they have some degree of talent. They have a skill. They can cook, sing, dance, design very beautiful clothes or light a fire without matches and stab a crab with a hand-hewn spear. They can do something other than take a photo of themselves wearing a bikini.

Ms Kardashian, her sisters and their Momager have become famous for doing absolutely nothing. Kim, she of the 72 day marriage, she of the slightly larger than usual bottom, she who shares her intellect with a gnat, and the gnat comes off better. She who has proven to the world that a woman can simply pout, wear increasingly smaller items of swimwear, spend the GDP of Bangladesh on hair extensions and become a worldwide phenomenon for regressing the standing of the rest of the world’s women in less than ten years on our screens.

One wonders…could it be that the acts of Kardashian and company, rendering themselves as nothing more than glossy lips and barely covered butt cheeks, give men the petty excuse they need to objectify us back? Will the kardashianation of a generation of young women lead to a generation of young men who think it not only normal, but also expected, to treat their women mean in order to keep them keen? Will there ever be a place or a time where women are respected for more than the way they look or how often she is willing to lie back and think of nothing#? 

Drawing parallels between a television show and an act of horrendous violence thousands of kilometres away will appear facile and simplistic. I ask you to see this as a Golden Book summary of a Homeric Saga. I am a very busy woman, working, travelling and generally keeping myself afloat. Next time I take a holiday, I promise to read less and write more. Until then, I will do what I can, in my small life, to ensure that the young women I know hear a voice that doesn’t use the phrases ‘totes amazeballs’ or ‘my bitch is sizzlin’.

 

Beautiful photo of Wooloomooloo in Sydney to offset the ire

 

 

^ If you got that reference you are at least as old as me, if you didn’t, google Dr Frankenfurter

*If you don’t watch Mad Men, you should, it is excellent and the clothes alone make it a visual feast

# I fear that even thinking of England would be looked down upon in these modern times as that would require a basic knowledge of geography.