You may be one of my friends or family or I may have never met you but I’ve been thinking, and there’s not many other ways I can word how I feel about you. Whenever I see you, or hear of something great you did, I feel an exciting, refreshed feeling. There’s a weight lifted…
Read more
Blood is thicker than water, but for some ethnicity is the deciding factor. That’s a bold claim but as a target of family racism, it’s something that I am forced to think about. I’m what could be considered ‘biracial’, that is, my mother is Anglo-Australian and my father is Italian. All racism is bad and…
Read more
We dedicate this piece to those special women in our lives. Happy Mother’s Day, Mum(s). * ‘For nine years I grew up in a single parent-child household, but our home never felt empty. Mum’s chicken and lamb roasts were legendary and we always had plenty of friends to fill the seats around the dining room…
Read more
If you’d asked me a fortnight ago where I’d be right now, sitting in a beautiful park overlooking Sydney’s Bondi Beach probably wouldn’t have been my answer. But it’s true – and I’ve got the sunburn to prove it. You may be asking yourself a few questions right now. 1) Who are you? 2) How…
Read more
Just as Dr Frankenstein aimed to create the perfect man, my friends led me to dating app Tinder to have fun and/or find a decent one. And thus, we were all confronted with monsters. There is much to say about Tinder: it’s quick, it’s anonymous, it can be fun, but it also has a bit…
Read more
Has anyone else noticed the terrifying lack of instructions on how to actually go about loving yourself? However, there is an overwhelming amount of life improvement lists upon which this handy trick appears. Invariably loving yourself pops up in the top spot, number one in a list of ways to make yourself happy or…
Read more
Australians have always been associated with hard work and they say with hard work there is a reward. Many of us work hard to feed our families and to pay the increasing amount of bills. We give up our valuable time and forgo things we love knowing that in years to come we can retire,…
Read more
There are a few distinctive events in life that have become inextricably linked in my imagination with their depictions in film and television. Fantasies of summer holidays, first dates, road trips or international travel always play out as picturesque montages with uplifting scores and glorious sunsets. Naturally, said daydreams gloss over (i.e. exclude completely) the…
Read more
‘In 1982 I reported on fighting between Polisario Front guerrillas and Moroccan troops in the Western Sahara, and in 1988 had an adrenaline-drenched experience when caught in a South African artillery attack, during Angola’s battle of Cuito Cuanavale.’ This is Jill Jolliffe, writing in Finding Santana, her book about travelling to meet an…
Read more
On the 9th of March 2014 my sister got married to her long-term partner. Personally, I’ve never really been a fan of weddings. I don’t think that it is necessary to have a public celebration to express love for a partner; and I’ve never been one to agree with conforming to religious or heteronormative traditions. However,…
Read more
Because today is my own very special day, where I get to celebrate what its like to be a woman in my own very special way I choose to pretend that I live in the society of my dreams and I will: Walk down the street in a skirt above my knee and not be…
Read more
My niece, Ella, turns two on March 8 this year. I’m undeniably jealous that she gets to be born on International Women’s Day; but on the other hand, I get to share my birthday with the late Jeff Buckley, Isaac Hanson, RuPaul and Rachel McAdams, so I guess that can be my consolation prize. Still,…
Read more
In January 2014 I went on a volunteer trip to Nepal with an organisation called Student Volunteer Placement’s International (SVPI). SVPI is a relatively new organisation that was founded a few years ago by Neville and Banita, an Australian couple. On a visit to Nepal, the couple met Keshab, the manager of the Children’s Welfare…
Read more
In my previous article ‘The Power of Pin-up’ I wrote of how pin-up girls have inspired me since I was a teenager and my dream of one day becoming a pin-up. That dream came to fruition late last year. While scrolling through my Facebook newsfeed I noticed an advert for a pin-up photo-shoot hosted by…
Read more