A year or so ago, when the reality of my impending graduation from university and borderline-desperate financial situation hit me, I began applying for ‘professional jobs’ in a bid to pad out my resume. I traded in skater skirts, leather boots and brilliantly executed smoky eyes for pencil skirts, patent pumps and natural make-up. My…
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The nominations for the 87th Academy Awards came out last week. Amongst the deserving successes for films like Birdman, The Grand Budapest Hotel and Boyhood, there is a certain noticeable pattern emerging from the nominees in the major categories. For the first time in almost 20 years every single person nominated in the acting categories…
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White washing throughout television is completely normalised to the point where audiences rarely question it. As a result, we are subconsciously digesting white supremacy. White supremacy is not necessarily always overtly expressed, as avid viewers of white washed television, we regularly intake and express white supremacy in more subtle ways. Consider some of the…
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US clothing brand, American Apparel is no stranger to controversy, but the retailer’s latest campaign featuring a Bangladesh-born model with the words ‘Made in Bangladesh‘ sprawled across her bare chest has raised a few eyebrows, and sparked a lot of misguided criticism. The marketing scandal portrays a culturally-conflicting image of an exotic, Bangladeshi-American woman in…
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Lupita Nyong’o, winner of the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in 12 Years a Slave, has spoken powerfully at the annual Black Women in Hollywood Luncheon organised by Essence, about the intersections of race and beauty. Nyong’o, in addition to her acclaimed role in 12 Years a Slave, has also nabbed…
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ONOMOllywood, is a project that challenges our perceptions of race in classic films. Unfortunately, looking back at the well-known classics brings to mind protagonists who are almost exclusively white. But Dakar-based photographers, Omar Victor Diop and Antoine Tempe, are changing the way we think about this. ONOMOllywood consists of a series of 20…
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Playwright Michele Lee admitted in a recent interview that writing a memoir at such a young age could be interpreted as ‘self-absorbed.’ However, Banana Girl thrusts us into her twenty-somethings with such intimate realism that any self-indulgence on her part is completely excusable. In the lead up to a four month literary residency in her…
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Marvel, the US comic book giant behind Spiderman, The Hulk and Captain America, are bringing back 1960s heroine, Ms Marvel. But rather than the tall, blonde air force officer, her new persona will be a 16-year-old Muslim girl from New Jersey. Ms Marvel’s new alter ego, Kamala Khan, is a high school student living with…
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Elaine Riddick’s uterus was removed without her consent when she was 14 years old. Doctors sterilised Riddick following the caesarean birth of her son, who was conceived of rape. It was 1968 and the decision to sterilise was authorised by the North Carolina Eugenics Board. Riddick’s story is just one of an estimated 7,600…
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Ali Cobby Eckermann was too afraid to cry, and I was too afraid to put down her memoir till I had come to the end and knew that she was going to be okay. This is the extraordinary true story of Eckermann’s upbringing as a child of the stolen generation—taken from her Indigenous family at…
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As a movement, and speaking in very general terms, feminism has been guilty of marginalising the voices of other people. While it has been rejected on ignorant grounds which rely on stereotypes (feminists are hairy, scary people who hate men and burn undergarments), it has also been quite fairly rejected on the grounds that it…
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Do we have low standards? The past few weeks have had us questioning the popularity (or lack thereof) of Australian film, literature and culture generally. There’s talk of us still subscribing to ‘Cultural Cringe’, and failing to value Australian cultural products. This analysis has been largely related to film and literature, but does it apply…
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