Someone asked me a curious question last year: if my parents were parents from a television show or movie, which ones would they most resemble? After thinking about it for a while, my reply was the Penderghasts from the film Easy A. Like them, my parents have always been supportive, honest, playful, and attentive. They’ve…
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Why is Christmas so disappointing for adults? Ever since I was a kid, Christmas was the best thing in the year, the thing I most looked forward to. But as many others will probably agree, as you get older, that magic lessens and especially in my case, is replaced by a pessimism and cynicism I…
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Today I found myself justifying my relationship with my boyfriend to a bank teller. I assured her that we were “serious” and we’d talked about marriage. What I was really trying to say was: ‘I have a boyfriend; we still live with our parents, but please take us seriously’. Admitting that I have a boyfriend…
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Christmas is just days away, and as the festive season reaches its climax, the Lip HQ started thinking about our least Christmas-ey Christmases ever. Jess Barlow, Web Editor My least Christmas-ey Christmas was the year I found out that Santa wasn’t real. On Christmas Eve, my ten-year-old sister led my seven-year-old self down the hallway…
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Trigger warning for diet talk My younger sister has always “struggled” with her weight. She’s always “felt” fat. I used to be much the same and I’m sure the vast majority of girls growing up were too. I don’t know what age it started and I don’t know exactly what triggered it, but the both…
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One of my younger sisters recently went for her very first blood test. She’s 25. She has Downs’s syndrome and has never been tested, due to a combination of decent ongoing health and a large fear of needles. As I am her carer, we conquered that fear with me in the room with her and…
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I was once in the enviable position of watching animals all day and being paid for the privilege. And, like most visitors to the zoo, I was obsessively fascinated by primates. Their almost-human appearance is enthralling, grotesque, delightful. They present an irresistible mirror in which to contemplate our own behaviours. There’s the opposable thumb thing,…
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When I was in high-school, I had a lot of ‘rah rah’ opinions. I would recite them as often as I could, to whomever I could capture, ignoring the obvious suffering of my prey in the name of truth-telling. In the school yard, at the dinner table, over bikkies and tea at church. But there…
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