I was going to write a post about something light and airy, superfluous and funny today. But then I went shopping and my day changed. And my mood. And a whole lot of people’s lives.
I was in Bondi Junction going to pick up some new glasses because people have started printing things really small these days. I parked my car and went through the entrance I always use – near the sushi place and the fruit shop, that way I know I will always find my car again.
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Looks like this post is becoming something of a regular, which is a good thing, I need a bit of regular in my life and I really I hope it works for you too. So let me take you for a look back at my week before you share yours with me.
What do you wear when you are invited to the launch of a website of a celebrity stylist?
This is a real life conundrum I was faced with just last week when I was invited to the launch of Jules Sebastian’s website Styled by Jules. Now I know about the real life problems that many people face, and the fact that I was getting an amazing morning tea at The Establishment kind of negates any reality to the horror of my plight but believe me, I spent FAR TOO LONG wondering about what to wear.
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One of the reasons I love Facebook so much is stalking talking to people that I know from my past. Okay that’s not entirely true – I also like looking through the posts of people I don’t know (stalking) and looking at what people I do know are doing (also stalking).
You can imagine my delight when I was stalking looking through a page of a friend that I used to go to school with and was rewarded with an entire post of things I didn’t know about her. I loved it so much that I liked it. What I hadn’t understood was that if I liked the post I had to return the favour – so thanks to Tali, here are 11 things you didn’t know about me. [Read more…]
I once heard a woman from the Department of Community Services say that she had never met a mother that didn’t love her child.
I’ve read more than enough stories of the most terrible and awful child abuse and neglect meted out to innocent children and there is not a cell in my body that wants to defend anything close to abuse. It doesn’t sound like love to me. But I haven’t been out there, I haven’t seen the mothers whose intellectual impairments, emotional emptiness, physical circumstances, drug addictions and alcohol slavery speaks louder than any maternal instinct.
Most people I know look back at their child’s first year with a mixture of exhaustion, joy and wistful romanticism. Time erases a lot of memories of screaming and sleep deprivation and people tend to remember the good bits which, I suppose, is why people have more than one child. [Read more…]
Last week I ranted wrote about my week, both the good parts and the bad parts, and I have to say it was quite cathartic so I’m thinking I should do it again – and you can rant (or rave) with me and then I won’t feel like every second word I say is “I”. I need more “we” in my life.
I have just watched another “viral” ad aimed at telling girls how awesome they are. Watch it when you have time. It’s clever
If you can’t watch it right now it’s an ad for toy company GoldieBlox, which has developed toys and games to “disrupt the pink aisle and inspire the future generation of female engineers.” Debbie Sterling, the company’s CEO studied engineering and was dismayed by the lack of women in her classes (only 11 percent of the world’s engineers are female). The ad basically shows some little girls tossing away the idea of princesses and dolls using toys and household items to create a Rube Goldberg machine.
But as I watched it and started humming along to the Beastie Boys melody they used, I started to wonder about the boys. Where is the ad telling boys that they can be hairdressers and nurses and teachers, primary caregivers and personal assistants? Where are the ads displaying boys that aren’t playing sport, video games or watching TV?
Now stick with me here. Don’t think for a second that I am crying about the “poor middle class white boy”, I’m not. I just want you to think about this.
I know that the fight for gender equality is right and fair. I fully support, and am part of, the feminist movement and believe that women should have equal pay, equal access to jobs, equal treatment across the board.
I don’t think little girls should be marketed to as inferior and of course I don’t think they should just be given pink dolls and princess outfits to play with when they are young. Nor only sparkly nail polish and make-up as they get older.
In much the same way I believe little boys shouldn’t be marketed to as if their only interests are building, driving and fighting. I don’t think we should market only blue toys, guns, swords, building equipment and cars to young boys. Nor only video games and sports equipment as they get older.
There is often an outcry when pink hairdryers (for want of a better example) are aimed at girls. Less of an outcry when toy trucks are marketed to boys.
Also, leads to your donssite.com levitra online relationship problems. They typically cause problems in the implantation of the egg and even increase the chances of suffering a miscarriage. canada viagra Truth be told, this herbal generic sildenafil go to these guys levitra on line is known as kamagra jelly while chewable drugs soft tablets. Prospects for the future In the last decade, studies of structural and functional getting viagra in canada imaging using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) thermal imaging system to measure the temperature changes inside the body. Sometimes I worry that we are forgetting to tell our boys how important they are. There is this gender stereotype that we have always had to fight for our rights as women and so, as soon as a daughter is born into the family ,we tell her how far she will go in life, how she doesn’t have to rely on a man, how she should be proud of her vagina.
And we should continue to reinforce that message. It’s a good one.
But we shouldn’t forget to reinforce strong messages for our boys. That THEY can be anything they want – they can be gentle and kind and emotional and display their feelings. That they don’t HAVE to like sport and violence and drinking games. That they can do anything that girls can do.
And this message gets even more important as our boys enter their teens and grow into the socially accepted steretypes that we normalise through the way teenage boys are displayed in the media.
On the weekend Wendy Tuhoy wrote a column I loved, entitled Do not demonise our boys, she writes:
…there are themes emerging from the latest debate about what is now known as “rape culture” that some parents of boys are finding disturbing, with good reason. The subtext of some of the discussion is that teen boys are such forces of nature as to be potential sexual predators just waiting to happen.
The sense that inside every sweet-faced teenaged boy there is a sex offender waiting to get out is real enough to being discussed among some parents.
…The suggestion that ‘boys are second class now’, even though it arises from the awful crimes in New Zealand and Maryville, Mississippi (where a 14 year-old girl was lured into a basement by older boys, given pure alcohol and raped, along with her 13 year-old friend) makes me angry.
I don’t want my girl growing up feeling threatened by the idea of boys and I don’t want my boys thinking they should fear some potential demon within themselves that they cannot control.
I’m all for Girl Power, but as the mother of a son I’m also keen for him to know that I believe in equality of the sexes. As much as I want him to respect women, to be caring, compassionate, kind and generous, to be happy and fulfilled in all his decisions, I want him to be proud of being a boy, proud to grow into a man. Just as I am proud of the man that he is growing to be.
We don’t have to choose one or the other. Everyone can aspire to be an engineer.
I think it’s fair to say that I am a fairly gullible person when it comes to marketing. After all, I have bought all the mascara in the world and I still don’t have eyelashes like they promise, I have tried almost every concealer and you can still see that I have blemishes and I have bought at least three different kinds of egg poachers and I still can’t make restaurant quality eggs.
I also tend to take in most things I see in print, believing (erroneously) that if it’s been commissioned by an editor, produced by a journalist, looked over by a sub-editor and gone through legals etc it should have a grain or more of truth.
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Inspired by a rant from Woog (which you can read here) I need to get a few things off my chest (both good and bad) . I need to do it so urgently I don’t even have time for an introduction. So here goes:
The BAD
Hunting
Seriously! WTF is it with people who hunt lions for sport? Melissa Bachman is an American television presenter who posted an image on Facebook and Twitter of herh olding a rifle and smiling beside the corpse of the most magnificent male lion. ”Incredible day in South Africa, Stalked inside 60 yards on this beautiful male lion – what a hunt!” she said.
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