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!

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.?

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....

It's Raining Again...

Well, no-one expected the sunshine to last over the weekend did they? That never happens.
Continuing the theme of women in sport, this struck me as interesting. We need our own Title ix in Britain. Enjoy your day!

My New Language

I have spent the last few hours learning HTML in haphazard fashion! I know enough now to add links and put in underlining! I don't understand pingbacks yet and I can't get my blogroll button to work but hey, you can't have everything!

Feeling a bit better now.

This cheered me up somewhat! have a look and feel inspired!

It's sunny in Salford today! The sun almost cheers me up but not quite. Last night's national news left one Salford feminist feeling angry and depressed. In the middle of all the "serious" news was a lighter topic: Theo Walcott and his surprise place in the England football team. We were told that it is "every young boy's dream" to be in Theo's shoes. I suppose it is. Sadly, young women can not aspire to the same achievement since their football teams are not afforded the same television time, the same sponsorship deals and the same credibility as men's teams

During a segment documenting the daily routine of a young woman with a crippling and rare disease, we were given insight into the ambitions of "EVERY young girl" in Britain. Turns out to be karaoke. As if we needed to be told....

I am so fucking sick of it. We are constantly fed this kind of editorial bullshit about what girls desire and aspire to. It is so common and so insidious that it is barely noticed anymore. I too often feel weak and powerless in the overwhelming mass of it.

Still, there's always the good weather....

My daughter smokes (Yes, it is the title of an Alice Walker Essay)

Oh My God I cannot believe that the tiny red headed freckly baby is a smoker. I am so angry about this that I am almost incandescent. I finally gave up two years ago after fifteen years of smoking thirty a day. It was hellish but I did it. My daughter hated me smoking. She loathed the smell and my stained teeth and hands. She also has asthma. So why is she smoking now? It can only be peer pressure. Her new college friends smoke in clubs at weekends and she wants to be like them? When I ask her she shrugs and smirks and tells me I am making too much of it. I don't get it.

Alice Walker's fabulous Essay "My Daughter Smokes" in her collection Living by the Word is in part an exploration of the politics of smoking and the pain of watching your child inhale toxins and carcinogens; it also gives a short account of her father's death from pneumonia and his battle with bronchitis and emphysema. I shall be making my daughter sit down and read it. It will mean nothing to her and she will think I am stupid. I wish I could do better on her behalf but I can't. The smoker's need for a cigarette will nearly always overwhelm any common sense desire to quit. I used to long for a cigarette so much that I would be able to convince myself that I was actually warding off disease with the smoke. It is a vicious addiction and I despair for my daughter and her fine young skin and her compromised lungs.

Ooh, my very own blog.....

This is my first entry. I feel so self conscious! I read lots of different blogs every day, some of them are incredible, beautifully written and meaningful. I am jealous of anyone's ability to write well and I am always looking for people to listen to my rants so thought that I might like to give it a try.

I think that I have lots to say, particularly about being a woman, a feminist, a parent and a student. I am fervently pro-choice, pro-abortion on demand and anti-racist. I was born into a Methodist family but I now have no religious affiliations. I once thought about converting to Judaism, I have also wanted to be a nun, an opera singer and a fire fighter. I am 34 years old and am trying very hard to complete my PhD....At this rate it may never happen.

I live in Salford in North West UK, a city that I love. I like listening to (in no particular order) Shawn Colvin, the Indigo Girls, k d lang, Elvis, Dolly Parton (!) and Patty Griffin.

My favourite films are Raising Arizona, Steel Magnolias, Dr Strangelove and Spinal Tap. I read mainly short fiction, American and Canadian literature, however my current read is Andrew Martin's The Necropolis Railway. (I bought it for a pound at Waterstones. It's rather good.)

That's a bit about me then. I will add bits more as I go along. Hmmm. Still self-conscious....