Should feminists support Julia Gillard just because she’s a female Prime Minister? [Daily Life]
Where does your slut-barometre sit? [TheVine]
The Triple J Hottest 100 countdown was a total sausagefest. [Karen Pickering]
“Who exactly reads Playgirl, anyway?” (SFW) [The Atlantic]
Is Paris Hilton relevant again? [The Daily Beast]
Is Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In a modern day Feminine Mystique? [Ms. Magazine]
xoVain recreates Lindsay Lohan’s mugshot looks.
Benjamin Law thinks all gay men should be feminists. Nay, all HUMANS should be feminists! [Daily Life]
When your mum has bad body image. This piece hits home because my mum is insecure about the way she looks and has transferred that onto my sister. [Daily Life]
The 12th Doctor Who should be a woman. [Slate]
Unfortunately, all my flights for my U.S. trip coming up at the end of the year are with Virgin, so hopefully their new “Get Lucky at 35,000 Feet” campaign doesn’t mean sexual harassment at 35,000 feet. [Make Me a Sammich]
Dissecting Law & Order: Special Victims Unit:
“The worse the stories get, the stronger [Olivia Benson] becomes; it’s the show’s unspoken dialectic…
“For all SVU’s excesses, we expect it to keep one promise: no matter how bad things get, the story will end.” [The New Yorker]
Daisy Buchanan: the ultimate Manic Pixie Dream Girl?
“Is she at fault for the fact that all of her swooning suitors idealise and project upon her? Should we pity her, even a little, for not having had the courage or desire to break free of her social caste and love whomever she pleased?” [Women in the World]
Why does Johnny Depp have a bird on his head, speak in pidgin English and bear the Spanish name for dumb in the reboot of The Lone Ranger in 2013? [The Good Men Project]
Discussing street harassment. [Jezebel]
Why the most recent viral Dove ads are bull: lots of people envision themselves as attractive or more attractive than they are. [Jezebel]
Tyler the Creator’s misogyny and homophobia isn’t “just about the music”, and nor is it edgy. It’s disgusting. [Tiger Beatdown]
There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding this piece: it’s natural to lust after randoms passing you in the street, brewing your coffee, or hanging at the bar, but this guy wonders if his perving is more of a compulsion. [Slate]
What murdered teen Trayvon Martin and Justin Bieber have in common. [This Week in Blackness]
What Amanda Bynes’ meltdown says about society: we’re all image-obsessed sexists who love a celebrity train wreck. [The Guardian]
Mia Freedman interviewed Naomi Wolf about her Vagina. [MamaMia]
#FBRape and free speech. [Daily Life]
Abercrombie & Fitch < Attractive & Fat. [The Militant Baker]
In defence of much-maligned TV wives. [Slate]
Image via Twitter.
Why does Mindy only date white guys on The Mindy Project? [Jezebel]
The onscreen virginity trend. [Daily Life]
Fuck the friend zone; what about when guys you have a purely platonic interested in put you in the “girlfriend zone”? [Insert Literary Reference]
“In The Ethical Slut, perhaps the best-known ‘catechism’ of progressive sexual morality, Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy make the case that ‘the fundamental sexual unit is one person; adding more people to that unit may be intimate, fun, and companionable, but it does not complete anybody.’ Masturbation matters, they argue, not merely because it helps you learn what you want sexually from a partner, but because it helps bring ‘your locus of control into yourself.'” [The Atlantic]
Racism isn’t about being impolite. [New Matilda]
James Franco defends Baz Lurhmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby. [Vice]
The “skank flank”: what happens when you get a tattoo and are automatically deemed a slut. [Bust]
An ode to Barbara Walters. [The Cut]
Image via Entertainment Weekly.
I’m writing about reconciling my feminism with a love of professional wrestling for TheVine.
While Beyonce may be the female version of a hustler, Clem Bastow writes that men can certainly be divas, too. It’s just that they’re never called that… [Daily Life]
In praise of The Mindy Project. [Medium]
Rapper Kitty Pryde unpacks the onstage sexual assault by a female fan of her male tour partner, rapper Danny Brown. [Vice]
Check out the latest online edition of ZINm magazine, by my friend Marc Bonnici, and contributions from yours truly and the woman who designed the artwork for this here blog, Zoe Meagher.
What the tabloids were speculating Angelina Jolie was doing while she was actually getting a double mastectomy. Sickening. [The Cut]
Not as gross as the trolls who are “mourning the loss of Angelina’s curves”, though. [Slate]
“An Open Letter to White Male Comedians.” [Jezebel]
Does Australia hate intellectuals? I tend to lean towards the affirmative. [Daily Life]
What the spate of cancellations means for the representation of gay people on television. [Slate]
Test the gender balance (or imbalance) of your retweets. And while you’re at it, follow me! [Twee-Q]
Searching for an alternative name for “stay-at-home dad”. [The Atlantic]
In response to the body- and slut-shaming surrounding Teen Mom Farrah Abraham’s porno, Jezebel reiterates that vaginal and anal sex don’t make you “loose” [SFW].
Rachel Hills’ TEDx Talk on the sex myth, the topic of her upcoming book of the same name. [YouTube]
Defending The Onion‘s Chris-Brown-“I-Always-Thought-Rihanna-Was-the-Woman-I’d-Beat-to-Death” joke. [The Frisky]
Stop calling Amanda Bynes crazy. [TheVine]
What did Tony Abbott mean when he said “women of calibre” should be encouraged to have children and should feminists be speaking out in favour of the Coalition’s superior paid parental leave scheme? [Daily Life]
“Panels Full of Women”: on fetishising female news voices. [News Junkee]
Debunking the prevalence of sex-selective abortions in Australia. [Daily Life]
“See a Woman Reading? Leave Her Alone.” The perils of reading and subsequent street harassment. [Gender Focus]
The Great Gatsby doesn’t do the “newly liberated” flapper justice. [Collectors Weekly]
Manic pixie dream guy? [Nerve]
The sexism of Star‘s Most Annoying Celebrities list. [The Times Magazine]
Denmark’s latest televisual offering: women stripping naked in front of a panel of two men who critique their bodies. Obviously, this is a crazy and sexist idea for a TV show, but is it any crazier or more sexist than, say, Snog Marry Avoid? Both have an underlying message that women aren’t good enough, with one referring to the naked body whilst the other takes aim at how and with what a woman cloaks herself. Your thoughts? [Bust]
Saying “I’m not like other girls” just buys into the myth that all women have a defined set of attributes and that those who aren’t “feminine”, “girly”, “bitchy” and don’t have many female friends (just to list some of the tropes associated with “other girls”) are somehow better than other women. I’ve been guilty of uttering those words before, but that was before I came to the above understanding. I believe I’m different from other girls, just as I’m different from other humans. We all have different character traits, values and interests; it’s just that some we can relate to more and are closer to the surface than others. [RH Reality Check]
In defence of sex work. [Daily Life]
Further to that, Mia Freedman clarifies her position on sex workers voiced on Q&A last month. [MamaMia]
“Why Would Anyone Have a Late-Term Abortion?” [New Matilda]
Ahead of its publication in new (and, might I add, awesome!) zine, Filmme Fatales, editor Brodie Lancaster writes in opposition to the Gwyneth Paltrow haters. [TheVine]
More Gwyneth: she was my thinspo. Beauty and putting women on pedestals. [Mirror, Mirror OFF the Wall]
On the merits and drawbacks of “Hashtag Feminism”, “destroying the joint”, the news sources “to whom [we] choose to listen” and the “personalised newspaper” that is social media, through which we “see only views [we] agree with”. [The Monthly]
Jennifer Aniston, ourselves. [Thought Catalog]
Is Amanda Bynes that different from us? [Clam Bistro]
Are we too old to “get” Girls? [One Good Thing]
Why talking about sexism in pop culture is important. [The Age]
How can disabled women “Destroy the Joint” when they can’t even access it? Stella Young on feminism and disability. [ABC Ramp Up]
Image via RH Reality Check.
The age disparities between leading men and their love interests. [Vulture]
I’m on Twitter! Follow me @ScarlettEHarris.
Nice Guys of OKCupid has paved the way for homosexual creeps with Douchebags of Grindr.
Why was Boston “terrorism” but not Sandy Hook, Aurora or Columbine, for example? [The Guardian]
Feminist awakenings. [Daily Life]
Sexism on MasterChef. [Daily Life]
A collection of essays on Spring Breakers. [The New Enquiry]
Shooting victim Gabrielle Giffords on the recent vetoing of background checks for gun buyers by the U.S. Congress. [NYTimes]
The Tribeca Film Festival is honouring one of its female filmmakers with the inaugural Nora Ephron Prize! [Tribeca Film Festival]
If we needed a reminder of the patriarchal corners of the world women have yet to be granted entry into, there’s now a Tumblr dedicated to just that! [Boys Clubs]
How to discuss Tyler Perry without sounding racist. [AV Club]
The symptoms of and treatment for feminist burnout. [Bitch Flicks]
James Deen on gender equality and slut-shaming (NSFW). [James Deen Blog]
Gun control does not mean penis control: guns and masculinity. [Women’s Media Centre]
How much murder and rape is there on TV? [Vulture]
Image via Vulture.
Fully-clothed superheroines. [BuzzFeed]
“The Ugly Side of Tanning”. In short, don’t do it! Embrace the pale. [Beauty Redefined]
In defence of Betty Draper. [Jezebel]
“Diary of a Q&A Appearance.” [MamaMia]
An app that filters OkCupid creeps for whom alarm bells wouldn’t necessarily initially sound. [Daily Life]
Image via BuzzFeed.
From the trailer, I never would have guessed Tyler Perry’s Temptation was a veritable hotbed of sex (and STIs), race and gender politics in the worst way. This article comes with a massive spoiler alert, but it made me want to see the movie so much more, if only to be completely horrified by it. [Jezebel]
Pro-cunnilingus lyrics in rap music. Fascinating! [The Pantograph Punch]
Beyonce finally admits she’s a feminist… she guesses. [Jezebel]
Fat-shaming on Australian TV. [TheVine]
Clementine Ford on “Reverse Damselling”, in which women seek to tame bad boys. [Daily Life]
From one extreme to the other: a few weeks ago outrage erupted over a mother’s declaration that Victoria’s Secret was “a right of passage” for her young daughter. Now, the pendulum has swung in the other direction, and anti-child sexualisation activists have come out against VS’s Pink! line in what could be deemed as a bit of an overreaction. [Jezebel]
Does Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson prove we’re living in a post-racial society, at least when it comes to his film roles? [Shadow & Act]
The best way to get a shot of positive body image is to get yourself to the beach and take a look around at all the normal people. [MamaMia]
The psychology of the original Carrie Bradshaw, Candace Bushnell, Sex & the City and The Carrie Diaries. [Daily Beast]
A substantive breakdown of exactly what feminism is and how it doesn’t mean man-hating. Well worth a read. [Jezebel]
The Scarlett Woman 