The commodification of sexuality ‘Veronica’ is a 21-year-old Australian woman who has taken up film director-cum-pimp Justin Sisley’s offer to auction her virginity for his film. “I need to do something with my life” is one of the justifications she gives here: [vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/11616540[/vimeo] Being paraded in a meat-market style display in a Nevada brothel in […]
[vimeo]http://www.vimeo.com/11540975[/vimeo]
Lindsay Lohan goes with the (blood) flow [Trigger warning. Images of violence, self-harm] It seems nothing is off limits to be sexified for the purposes of grabbing attention and flogging stuff, whether it be a company’s products, a music video, or reviving a celebrity’s flagging career. Glamourising violence against women as sexy is the latest […]
In ‘Girl Slavery in America’, a recent post published on Huffington Post, Executive director of the Rebecca Project for Human Rights, Malika Saada Saar, highlights (like this earlier piece I published) that there is a marketplace for the bodies of girls in the West as well as other parts of the world. She also makes […]
Anne Summers review of Natasha Walter’s Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism was published in the Australian’s Review section on the weekend. In the review, titled ‘The tyranny of self-perfection’, the long-time Australian feminist campaigner for women’s equality admits she had “no idea” about how bad things were for girls in a hypersexualised culture: …This […]
Today, two guest posts which are critically important contributions to the recent push for compulsory child weigh-ins and other interventions to supposedly reduced childhood ‘obesity’. The first by a Melbourne writer, (who asked that her real name not be used but who is known to me), who says poignantly: “When my parents started weighing me, I […]
This article in the Sydney Morning Herald on the weekend about Kick-Ass, a school holidays film starring an 11-year-old girl who shoots a man in the face, impales another and says things like: “OK, you c—s, let’s see what you can do now.” The film is described as containing “scenes of carnage and massacre played for laughs.” […]
Emma Rush, who co-wrote the Australia Institute reports Corporate Paedophilia: The sexualisation of children in Australia and Letting Children be Children: Stopping the sexualisation of children in Australia and who I’ve published here before, wrote a response to a piece by Emma Tom in The Australian last weekend. It didn’t get published there, but it will […]
“I was startled by what some young women were saying to me about their inability to access dissent; their inability to hear voices that were presenting an alternative” – Natasha Walter I’m half way through Natasha Walter’s new book Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. It is a compelling read, laying bare the forces of […]
Nice to know I’m not the only one with a negative critique (also published in On Line Opinion Friday)of the Lady Gaga machine. Here’s an extract from a piece by Jim Schumacher and Debbie Bookchin titled ‘What’s Next From Lady Gaga: A snuff film?’ recently published on Huffington Post: What if glitzy Lady Gaga is exactly […]
Since my last piece on the cyberbullying taking place through Facebook, other sites targeting girls for their alleged flaws have been found. One identifying young women not considered “marriage material”. Another naming and shaming ‘12-year-old sluts’. Another for girls labelled “bitches”. British girl Poppy Bracey recently took her life as a result of a cyber bullying campaign […]
On the weekend – on the eve of International Women’s Day – I wrote about a Facebook slut page, arguing it enabled cyber bullying, stalking and harassment. On the page, photos were posted of girls and women who were labelled ‘sluts’. One was 10-years-old. Another had been bashed (she deserved it, she was a slut). A […]
