A Melbourne bar called Loop was the place to be on Saturday night as Lip celebrated the launch of Issue 23 and handed out some excellent prizes for the very first Rachel Funari Prize for Fiction. It was a crisp evening but many writers (and accompanying friends and family) braved the weather and joined in…
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Yesterday, I sat and watched a kingfisher on the banks of a creek. When I first spotted the chocolate brown and blue bird, I didn’t know what it was. I wondered whether it was a kingfisher, and instinctively leapt up to check the Internet. But I couldn’t, because there is no Internet where I am….
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Last week I wrote about Lorna Jane and how, in my opinion, they reinforce the notion of a woman’s looks being her number one priority, despite being a fitness-based organisation. I had some great, balanced responses, and some people asked me why I had chosen to put the spotlight on Lorna Jane. So I decided…
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Internationally renowned choreographer Myriam Gourfink and electronic musician Kasper Toeplitz will present Breathing Monster from the 14th to the 16th of June in the National Art School’s Cell Block Theatre. The work is a meditation on slowness and control, fusing together extreme physicality and experimental sound to contemplate the relationship between humans and…
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To add a healthy dollop of guilt to our days, women are now being told we’re responsible for other women’s body image issues, maybe even their eating disorders. This week, researchers at the University of Notre Dame’s Body Image and Eating Disorder Lab revealed just how distasteful women are who dare to share their insecurities…
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If you were ever a fan of Newcastle’s fantastic indie/folk outfit Like…Alaska, then you probably took their break-up pretty hard. However, there is some good news. Some members funnelled into other bands like Easy Tiger and Run Squirrel, while Jen Buxton went solo, performing her own brand of melancholy alt-country in pubs across the Australia….
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After winning TAC’s (Transport Accident Commision’s) ‘Make a film, make a difference’ competition in 2011, doors, windows and shutters have flung open for Tess Fisher. The Melbourne student (soon to be known to film enthusiasts as ‘The Nastiest Sheep’) was thrust into glorious chaos when she and a friend were selected to produce the short…
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FEMEN member and activist Amina Tyler has reportedly been arrested again in the Tunisian holy city of Kairouan. Her arrest comes as she allegedly snuck past through heavy security checkpoints, where police were preventing extremely conservative Islamists from holding an annual conference. Tyler was disguised in a veil, and after she passed through security, she…
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Well good ol’ K-Rudd is the latest politician to jump on the gay marriage bandwagon and give it his stamp of approval. Pity he’s a few years too late to action it as PM, but I could not be happier! In a post on his blog, he wrote in detail about how his opinion about…
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‘Ajax Spray n’ Wipe made everything alright.’ ‘I wash all my curtains in Stergene. I’m very fussy about the way they’re cleaned.’ One quote comes from an advertisement in a 1956 Woman and Home magazine. The other is from a 2010 television ad. In both, women give testimonials about cleaning products. We’re used to seeing…
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A new storytelling campaign has been launched by advocates in an effort to deepen conversations of LGBTI experiences in regional, rural and remote communities around Australia. The first of a series of animated vignettes has been released online, telling the story of Mini, a lesbian from rural Australia. By July of this year, four more…
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As an aspiring Lady Writer (or as feminist writer, Inga Muscio, provocatively calls herself, a ‘Word C*nt’), I was intrigued by author, Maureen Johnson’s Twitter project for her followers to ‘Redesign book covers by Literary Dudes, imagining they have been reclassified as by and for women.’ Johnson’s project, ‘Coverflip,’ shows us how there is a…
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In 2000 my class went on a school camp to Ballarat and we were given a list detailing the clothes to bring, the lollies to leave at home, and what other items were either required, allowed or forbidden. The list was long and strangely specific when it came to clothing, but somewhere in between Driza-Bone…
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We’re continuing our series on the Dale Young Mothers’ Program (YMP) from Wyong, NSW. Funded by the Youth Connections program and the Wyong Better Futures Local Solutions Local Advisory Group, the Dale Young Mothers’ Program gives young parents the chance to complete their year 12 certificate and form pathways to further education/work by creating a…
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