Leering at women is fine, says bloke

The SMH has picked up a story from the Tweed Daily News about a local 16-year-old model posing nude for the cover of a surf mag. The picture only shows Ella Rose Corby topless, with writing on her body and her arm covering her breasts, but I don’t know if this is all that’s on the cover or if TDN has cropped out the rest (scroll down in the story for the b&w cover).

It’s actually a surprisingly unsexual shot. There’s no cleavage, no sex face, and she’s staring straight at the camera. I like to think she’s daring you to say something pervy so she can belittle you with an awesome slapdown. Yes, 16 is too young to be nude around an adult male photographer, but that’s an issue for Ella and her parents. I’m surprised they gave her permission to pose nude for a misogynistic surf mag where her image is going to be leered at and jerked off to, rather than for a photographer like Bill Henson, but I don’t have kids and I was a nightmare teenager, so who am I to question their parenting?

Anyway, my real issue is with Stab’s writer, Mike Jennings, talking about how “a girl that age means danger to the adult male”:

“They’re moving into womanhood and they know it.

“They dress older, sneak into clubs and are easily mistaken as adults.

“And as girls in their early twenties try and hang onto their teenage beauty, lines are blurred and we’re left confused.

“You can leer at the 16-year-old as you would an adult woman, so long as you’re ignorant.

“Once you become aware of their age you must look away.”

How creepy can you get?

Mark Dreyfus, I’d vote for you if I could

Never heard of Mark Dreyfus? He’s the member for Isaacs (in Victoria, which is why this Sydney woman can’t vote for him). You should get to know him. Here’s a bit of what he said in the House of Reps yesterday ahead of White Ribbon Day:

It was a recognition that for gender based violence to be eliminated men need to take responsibility for that violence and to work to prevent it.

Preventing violence against women requires us to address the underlying issues of sexism, lack of respect for women and a sense of privilege that many men enjoy. It requires us to work to change attitudes, emotions and behaviours that support violence such as sexist jokes. Beliefs that women are inferior or that some women ‘deserve it’ or were ‘asking for it’ do not simply encourage violence; they create a culture in which silence becomes the acceptable response to violence against women.

Tomorrow, male politicians will have the opportunity to join the My Oath campaign:

I swear:
never to commit violence against women,
never to excuse violence against women, and
never to remain silent about violence against women.
This is my oath.

It will be interesting to see who doesn’t.

None of our Rann business

Does anyone really care if SA Premier Mike Rann had an affair? Like the John Della Bosca affair, it should have stayed a matter for the people involved to sort out. From what I understand, Michelle Chantelois’ estranged husband Richard Phillips had been shopping the story around to journos for years, but it’s unclear if he was trying to hurt her or him. The justification for reporting it now is that Phillips whacked Rann around the head with a rolled-up magazine and now it’s a criminal matter. But I don’t buy it.

”I don’t want people to feel sorry for me,” Ms Chantelois said, ”because I have made my bed and I have to lie in it. But Mike Rann used me to stroke his own ego and pride and unlike me he has suffered no consequences.”

How does getting very public revenge on the man you had an affair with mean “I have made my bed and I have to lie in it”?

The line of questioning on Sunday Night (never watched it, but apparently it’s on Channel Seven) takes the responsibility away from her and onto him:

It was clear to him that you were a married woman with a young child, living in Adelaide quite happily? “Yes.”

“He asked if I would like to go back to his office as he wanted to kiss me. I didn’t say no, I didn’t say no and that was the start of my nightmare.”

Just to be clear here, she’s not saying he raped her. She’s saying she had an affair with him when she was married and he was single and any “consequences” she’s suffered are all his fault.

I’m not going to speculate on who is lying – clearly one of them is – beceause I don’t care. If he had skipped Cabinet meetings to see her then it becomes newsworthy, but the revelation that a single man had consensual sex with someone else (because that’s what this is about, not that she was married) is hardly front page news. With their private lives now being reported on, who’d want to be a politician? You’d have to decide pretty early on that you’d never drink, never take drugs, never have sex, and never know anyone who has done any of these things.

So lame I had to laugh

Sam Brett has delivered quite possibly the worst piece of writing ever:

It seems lately a little trouble has been brewing among those ensconced in a little girl-on-girl.

I’m not talking about the latest spate of lipstick lesbians painted in the media as the new “it” trend and ultimate male fantasy. Nor am I referring to an all-woman tennis match, or spray tanning party. Instead, I’m talking about something far more sinister: female friendships.

Latest spate of lipstick lesbians as an “it” trend? Maybe a few years ago, but today?

Whether it be in the office, in social circles or in families, it seems the old notion of Girl Power has long been replaced with unsisterly behaviour. And the blokes are being mightily turned off…

Ah, yes, it is Samantha Brett, and everything comes back to whether men find it hot. I didn’t read the rest.

Violence at Schoolies and bullshit reporting

Everything about this article makes me cross: Girl power turns ugly and violent during Schoolies Week:

THEY are the shiny, silver bracelets teenage girls would never factor into their well-planned outfits.

Because all girls are obsessed with clothes and shopping. And I don’t get me started how lame the “girl power” bit is. The Spice Girls released Wannabe in 1996 (thanks Wiki), when most of the schoolies would have been 3-5 years old.

But an increasing tendency for young girls to booze and brawl along with the blokes is seeing them slapped in handcuffs.

Nowhere is this cultural change being seen more openly than the drunk-fest of Schoolies Week on the Gold Coast, which has become a veritable petri dish for psychologists who have seen “daddy’s little girl” morph into the rock chick from hell.

Right, if she isn’t Daddy’s little girl, then she’s a rock chick from hell. Virgin or slut.

Thirty people were arrested on Saturday night. Only three were girls, so they remain a minority, but casual observers of the event over the years say the difference in behaviour of young women is still striking.

Silly me, I thought the 27 non-girls arrested might have been the story.

“You see a lot of girls fighting each other these days, even though this year has been quieter,” said freelance photographer Marc Robertson, who has covered the event for five years. “I’m 40 but you never saw girls fighting like this when I was younger, and I grew up in Townsville.”

Even the one quote from one person there says it isn’t happening as much as it used to. But don’t let that stand in the way of a good young woman-hating story.

Victoria-based adolescent psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg fears part of the problem is role models such as the dysfunctional Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears.

“A lot of girls are modelling themselves on rock chicks in the mistaken belief that to out-bloke the blokes is somehow sexy,” he said.

Three things here. Firstly, Lohan and Spears aren’t rock chicks. Secondly, is he really suggesting that the driver behind everything girls do is to be sexy to boys? And thirdly, as a psychologist I’m sure he wouldn’t be calling someone dysfunctional in public, which would make it the journo’s word.

And why is this story in the travel section? Is it so readers can say “woo, drunk girls, let’s go”?

For our viewing pleasure

Man Friend and I finished Blackpool and season two of Mad Men over the weekend. Anyone got any suggestions for what to watch next?

There is no I in celeb*

My pet weekend peeve – because it happens every weekend – is journos including themselves in celebrity interviews. Particularly those who do it in the first sentence. You’re interviewing them, you’ve described what they’re wearing, and I’m smart enough to figure out that you’re probably there. That You Met A Famous Person. Good for you.

In yesterday’s Good Weekend Janet Hawley interviewed John Safran. First sentence:

Heading into the night after spending a long, confusing, ultimately illuminating first day with John Safran, the image that remains for me is overwhelmingly of the lonely comedian.

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for the “for me” to be there.

Third sentence:

It’s on “the Jewiest street in Melbourne’s Jewtown – 3183″, Safran had told me with a grin as we wove our way past yarmulke-wearing bearded men ambling into kosher delis.

That’s just taking the piss. The story is about Safran, not Hawley. And as much as she’d like to think so, she is no Hunter S Thompson or Tom Wolfe or Truman Capote or any number of great writers who are/were also journalists. The next sentence – the fourth, for fuck’s sake – starts with “I’d” and on it goes.

In Sunday Life, Claire Black interviewed Maggie Gyllenhaal. First paragraph:

“What does it matter? What do you mean by genuine?” I’ve annoyed Maggie Gyllenhaal, although I didn’t mean to. We were talking about celebrities who get involved with “causes”, and I made the point that it can be hard to swallow when there’s a suspicion that it’s a publicity stunt rather than a real commitment.

Again, absolutely no reason why “I” should be there. It’s just lazy, self-important writing. And fucking annoying.

* Yes, I know there’s one in celebrity, but that would ruin my headline

Let’s just call it a vagina

The SMH is running another article on designer vaginas. I’m sure they ran one in June or July, but you can never have too many stories about female body parts on a news site.

This time it’s an opinion piece by Suzy Freeman-Greene, but the odd thing is that it’s out of context. The was a story on designer vaginas on the ABC website on the 12th, but c’mon, it’s now the 20th:

Aren’t women insecure enough without fretting over their genitalia?

Funny, I didn’t think I was insecure. Am I supposed to fret over my vagina? Fretting over my vagina sounds like a sex move. Is there something wrong with my vagina? Does it not work? How many times do you think I can write vagina in this post?

An ability to dance like a stripper seems depressingly necessary for many of today’s female pop stars, with videos virtually shot from the floor up. This new focus on women’s genitalia is mirrored elsewhere in pop culture, with suburban pole dancing classes and Brazilian waxes that impose a pre-pubescent beauty ideal on adult parts.

Didn’t we have this conversation a few years ago?

Dr Ted Weaver, president of the Royal Australian and NZ College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, told Freeman-Greene: “She doesn’t have to conform to a picture that she might have noticed in a girlie magazine”.

Because women never look at porn unless it’s accidental.

Raunch culture has a lot to answer for here. And as the shape of the vagina becomes a crazy new source of angst, we still don’t even have an affectionate word to describe it. Where is the cosy, non-threatening equivalent to ”willy”?

I dunno, why not just call it a vagina? Or vulva, if that’s what you’re referring to.

Update: Freeman-Greene blames Britney’s 3 video clip for making women insecure about their vaginas. The way she described it, I was expecting clit cam and a few damp patches. So I watched it. And I disagree. You’d have to be trying really hard to see the detail Freeman-Greene writes about. The only interesting thing about the clip was that the men were fawning over Britney, rather than the other way ’round. And that’s nice to see.

Oz experience

I had a very Aussie experience last night. As I went to flush the toilet, I saw a quick movement out of the corner of my eye (pun intended). It looked like a filthy big cockroach had darted across the bowl and up under the porcelain lip. I could see the tips of two feelers poking out.

Ha ha ha, flushing you away is going to give me so much joy.

It wasn’t a cockroach. It was a huge huntsman spider. They weren’t feelers, they were legs.

Mind your manners

I went to boarding school in years 7 and 8. If I’d stayed longer (my parents moved and I didn’t like not knowing anyone in my new home town) I’d have done deportment with June Dally-Watkins. It’s not surprising that this anachronism was still being taught to the girls – once a fortnight we had a free afternoon where we could leave school grounds to go shopping, but we had to wear full uniform of tartan dress, white shirt, tie, granny stockings, shiny shoes (checked before we could leave), blazer and tam o’shanter. Even in summer.

As far as I know, the boys were not taught how to be gentlemen. I guess it was just assumed that they already knew. But girls, well, they’re too daft to know how to be ladies. It seemed strange that their parents were spending so much money on their education, yet they were being taught to to be seen and not heard on their future husband’s arm.

Anyway, back to June Dally-Watkins. She’s having a very ladylike rant in the Herald Sun today, about how young people will ruin your business.

“Young people these days are the ‘me’ generation and are totally involved in themselves,” she said.

“They have no right to refer to people by their first name, ever. There is a lack of respect to other people on the other end of the phone. Those values of the past are ones that must be maintained.”

How quaint her manners are. Young people don’t have rights. Even when they’re adults, they’re still young people and don’t deserve any rights.

Ms Dally-Watkins also advised people to avoid asking “how are you?” when they greet someone on the phone.

“I think ‘how are you?’ is absolutely terrible … What do people say if they are terribly sick and dying?”

They usually don’t say anything. Or, they tell you. But Dally-Watkins would prefer we all lived in a time when no one discussed anything personal, people were locked up for having a mental illness, and women had no rights – which would be a blow for Dally-Watkins who was a candidate for Fred Nile’s Christian Democratic Party in the 2007 NSW election.

She also said you should only employ good-looking peole on the front desk:

“If you are sincere about running a worthwhile business, the very first thing you do is employ someone on the front desk who not only looks attractive but who answers the phone in the correct and caring way,” she said.