Thursday, May 18, 2006

Front Bottoms and Other Unmentionables...

While I was over at Yclepta reading the recent post on body hair I remembered seeing this fantastic cartoon and thought I would share it with you. It is by Mikhaela. Pop over there and have a good look at her political cartoon series, it is excellent.

I volunteer in a youth centre and there is a poster in the girl's toilets that actually reads: "some of your bits aren't nice" !! It then goes on to explain how to keep armpits and front bottoms all nice and shiny and inoffensive. I understand that some young people do need advice on personal hygiene but this takes the piss. It is offensive and every time I go to the loo the clean and hairless girl on the poster winks at me and defies me to challenge her. I shall be ripping the poster from the wall this week.

I may even take it into the car park and set fire to it.

Pippa is on Time!


I made my deadline! I am so bad at meeting academic deadlines that actually being on time is quite amazing for me.

What I have to watch for now is my tendency to think that I can have a few days off to recuperate from the stress of submitting some work! I usually think that I can have a few days in the garden poking about at seedlings and uprooting things that have overgrown their space. I like being muddy and disheveled. I can allow myself a little bit of down time but I can't let it get out of control. There's too much to be done...


Here, for your admiration, are some of my tulips!

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Just When You Think You've Heard And Seen It All...

I introduce you to THIS. Have a good look round the Purefreedom site. It's wise to familiarise yourself with new concepts of freedom for women. Can anyone here spell L.I.B.E.R.A.T.E.D.?

Monday, May 15, 2006

I Really am Trying to Work...

I am in the umpteenth year of my PhD. I have a deadline in two days for my latest written piece which is a mapping out of a potential introduction. I am working on a rationale piece; a few pages explaining my choice of primary texts. I feel like I am getting nowhere, just swimming around in circles in the soupy swamp water that is my academic life.

Research is a lonely occupation. Nobody believes that I really am working; no-one gets what I am talking about and nobody actually wants to. My family thinks I am available all the time and at a moment's notice for hours on end. My friends make stupid comments like "when will you eventually have a job?" and "you don't know how lucky you are not to work". I am paid nothing and feel guilty all the time about not earning a living.

I often forget why I even started this process and dream of getting a full time job in a bakery with plenty of company, a living wage, no solitary thinking days and access to all the cakes and pies I can eat...

A comment!! All for me!!

Feminist First gave me my first welcome today! I am chuffed with this so I am linking to her excellent post: Anti-Porn Activism. I completely agree that we need to make the public more aware that porn is about violence and power and not sex.

I have taken to giving derisive snorts of laughter when I find myself standing near any man flicking the through the tit mags. This is merely my best defense mechanism; I don't really find it funny when men leer at porn in W H Smiths. I use my laughter to try and rid myself of the the feeling of revulsion and intimidation that overwhelms me when I am in that situation. I hope it embarrasses the men within earshot. It probably doesn't.

What worries me most about porn is how insidious it can be. Images that were at one time indicative of soft porn magazines are now becoming mainstream. Through "lad mags" like Loaded and Nuts, the standard shot of an open mouthed, spread-eagled blonde in minimum clothing has filtered into mainstream media. My snorting, feeble, uncomfortable laugh is lost in the ether....