Angelina Jolie: Growing Up In Public

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At 24 years old, Angelina Jolie was picking up an Oscar for her role as disturbed psychiatric patient Lisa Rowe in ‘Girl, Interrupted’. Rumours of self-harm and unhinged decision making followed her like loyal, if irritating, acolytes and these rumours only served to accelerate her journey to the pedestal of iconic female imagery. Back then, young women were starting to feel nauseous from the buckets of sticky sweet Girl Power feminism we were being force fed and were looking for a different kind of empowerment.

One that made room for attempted suicide where appropriate, as long as the harassed protagonist looked absolutely scorching in a pair of lycra shorts seemed like the ideal alternative.

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$5 Billion Dollars A Year: What Do You Think?

 
UntitledThis video examining gender roles in advertising  is petrifying.

Not because the creators chose to articulate their point by replacing the skinny female models used in some ads with furry, rotund geezers, although you may argue if you check out the still at 3:27.

Not even because you know their assertion that people’s lives are negatively affected by images featured in ad campaigns is true.

It’s petrifying because it’s only when you’re forced to examine advertisements individually and non-contextually that you realise how dehumanising they actually are.

For all of us.

Gun Control: Anatomy Of “A Crazy Accident”

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Screenshot via crickett.com.

Two-year-old Caroline Sparks is dead today. She was shot in the chest and killed by her five-year-old brother, Kristian, at their home in Burkesville, Kentucky. Cumberland County Coroner Gary White described the event as just one of those crazy accidents.”

pink_crickett_7275The above image is a screenshot of the ‘Kids Corner’ section on the Crickett website. Crickett are the manufacturers of ‘My First Rifle’ – a range of guns designed to appeal specifically to kids. They come in a selection of colours and matching  accessories are also available. Kristian Sparks was given one as a gift last year.
So yeah. It was an accident. But only in the same way that it’s an accident when someone has been riding Jäger-trains for 24 hours decides to drive to the food court for a burrito and smashes into a wall/nunnery/family saloon/bus taking excited kids to the zoo for the first time.

Grimes: Too Much To Ask?

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Via tumblr. H/T JC.

I used to be in a band. Thanks to the people around me at that time – my band mates, venue staff, promoters, the selfless souls who would hump equipment up and down flights of stairs, the fans who followed us everywhere to ensure we never had to play without at least twenty people throwing crazy shapes in front of the stage – it was one of the most exciting, petrifying, weird, maddening, exhausting and ultimately thrilling experiences of my life.

Regular readers will know that I’m perpetually primed to be pissed off when I read about incidents of misogyny, but a Tumblr post from Canadian musician Grimes that popped up on my FB feed yesterday touched an especially tender nerve of the festering feminist within.

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Garden Grrl: In Winter, A Young(ish) Grrl’s Thoughts Turn To Hospital Treatment

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You know, I think we’re a bit beyond a spray on de-icer here. 

Once upon a time,  a truck load of snow dumped over my house would have sent a shiver of excitement up my spine.

It wasn’t just the school closure that inevitably followed such an event that thrilled me. School was closed at other times of the year too, but only snow, lots and lots of snow, saw me actively encouraged by the responsible adults around me to engage in all manner of dangerous and anti-social behaviours that were strictly prohibited in other seasons – building effigies in the garden and festooning them with produce purloined from my mother’s vegetable basket, throwing dangerous missiles at other people and piloting my own craft (constructed entirely from binbags, wood and bits of plastic) over steeply graded terrain at extreme speeds with no brakes.

But when you’re a grown up, the sense of immortality that encourages you to engage in the kind of activities that end in thrilling injury and worrying bloodloss has passed, hasn’t it? A snow covered garden should be met with a gentle sigh or raised eyebrow of indifference, shouldn’t it?

Yes. If you’re a proper grown-up. If you’re like me, it’ll go a little more like this.

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Vladimir Putin & Angela Merkel: They’re Just Tits!

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“…when female nudity is placed outside a sexual context, both men and women recoil from it.”

A big thank you to Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin and assorted other dignitaries, who this morning took it upon themselves to prove my theory about the efficacy of FEMEN’s topless activism, whilst attending a Hannover trade fair.

The amount of criticism they’ve been receiving lately from women I respect was making me doubt myself.

The Class War: Divide & Conquer

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Image via bbc.

The British class system is far more complex than the traditional working, middle and upper tiers we were once content define ourselves within. These tiers, which emerged as a response to the unprecedented disparities in wealth generated by the Industrial Revolution, are “too simplisticaccording to Professor Mike Savage of UCL. He claims that cultural and social capital are as relevant as economic capital in defining an individual’s place in society and once these are factors are taken into consideration, the number of class categories rises to seven.

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