Disney has announced a new Princess: Merida from Pixar’s Brave. They’ve given her a makeover to celebrate the promotion, and many of her fans believe the company has robbed the character of her very being. Their anger has led to a petition with more than 93,000 signatories. When Pixar and Disney released Brave in…
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Ita Buttrose says female PM is treated differently Australian of the Year Ita Buttrose said that Julia Gillard is treated differently because she is a woman at the National Press Club on Wednesday. The media trailblazer said it was unfair that Ms Gillard is criticised for her clothes and appearance. She also used the speech…
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Following the brutal torture and rape of a five year old girl in New Delhi barely a week ago, three six year old girls have been attacked, one murdered, in separate incidences in India. The body of one girl, found bleeding last Thursday in the eastern state of Jharkhand, had been bound by…
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It is feared that a girls’ school in Takhar province in northern Afghanistan has been hit by poison gas, causing up to 74 girls to be hospitalised over the weekend, with some in a critical condition. Events like these, causing mass illness and forcing girls to stop attending school, are not uncommon even in post-Taliban…
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**Spoiler Alert** The second season of Girls finished up a few weeks back, tying up what was a pretty mediocre season with Hannah and Adam back together after his champion’s run to her house (that was weird, right?). The pair had spent the entire season foxtrotting around each other whilst she macked on Donald Glover…
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There are few shows that generate as much online content and controversy as Lena Dunham’s Girls. Every week there is a new piece breaking down the last episode and either celebrating or criticising its creator. But because we’re more than halfway through Season 2, it seems about time we got back to discussing what’s at…
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While seated on an overcrowded Melbourne train a few days ago, I had the pleasure of listening in to a conversation between two teenage girls. Both in their final year of high school, wearing the classic checked-dress public school uniform, they were discussing what they thought life after school would be like. ‘I can’t wait…
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Lena Dunham won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy Series, and Best TV Comedy for Girls, and the wins have sparked yet more internet furor about the show, her body, and whether or not Girls is even vaguely representative of young women’s experiences. I have seen Season One of Girls, and enjoyed…
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In season one of Girls*, one of my favourite plotlines is that of Shoshanna, the cousin and roommate of Jessa. Shoshanna is slightly awkward, very endearing, and most significantly, a 22-year-old virgin. Her virginity is somewhat of a burden to Shoshanna. She feels cut-off, left out, like she can’t join in with the girls when…
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In episode 2 of Girls, protagonist Hannah gets panicky about her vagina. Specifically, what might be happening inside it. A firm believer in the use of condoms, Hannah is confident she has always had safe sex. But that doesn’t satisfy her paranoia – as she says repeatedly throughout the episode, ‘what about the stuff that…
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By now, just about everyone in the feminist blogosphere has seen and/or read about Lena Dunham’s new HBO show, Girls. This is because we feminists in particular get super excited about anything that might change the representation of women in the media. And Girls, with its awkward self-awareness and even more awkward sex scenes, seemed…
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The Girl Effect, n. –The unique potential of 600 million adolescent girls to end poverty for themselves and the world. Girls can change the world. At least, that’s the philosophy behind The Girl Effect, a movement founded by The Nike Foundation in 2008 in collaboration with the United Nations Foundation and the Coalition for Adolescent…
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As many of you know by now, I am extremely opinionated. To the point of being completely unreasonable sometimes. After reading Emma Rush’s piece, I was understandably on edge and ready to rip Witchery to shreds. After seeing pictures of the girls I was even more horrified; they look their age. Yes I have been…
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Whenever I tell people now that I didn’t have the best time at high school, they make a weird sort of face and say, ‘What was so bad about it?’ They dismiss my painful memories as melodrama; they don’t believe for a second that life was really as bad as I say. Someone even said…
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