In 2018 when my son and I were trying to cram as many shows as we could into our ten days at the Edinburgh Comedy Festival, I had no idea that two years later I would be on the other side of the...
Category: Popular Culture
“Be ruthless with structures and kind with people”
Having initiated one of Australia’s most successful campaigns against sexual assault, Chanel Contos shares some valuable advice: “Be ruthless with structures and kind with people.” Chanel believes...
The ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets?
Four hundred years ago Emilia Bassano raised her voice. The world didn’t listen. Who was Emilia? Was she the ‘Dark Lady’ of Shakespeare’s sonnets? What of her own poems? And why was her story erased...
Stretchy but rigid: the neoliberal complexities of yoga pants
Raise a hand – or better yet, a leg – if you own a pair of yoga pants. Marketed largely to women in Western countries, these items began to appear after yoga became a globalized mainstream practice...
‘Let’s Get Loud’: getting female expertise into the media
This is a lightly edited speech given by journalism academic Dr Kathryn Shine at the recent Women in Media national conference on the Gold Coast. I’m sure, like me, most of you have had the...
Reclaiming boobs: ‘I’ve rarely seen an unsexualised breast’
What if women’s breasts and nipples were as commonplace and accepted in the same settings as men’s are? And why aren’t they? I talked with friends about this cultural conundrum, more recently...
A whistling comedian in a man’s world
Opening a mysterious case of old photographs, former documentary filmmaker Sharon Connolly begins a search for the great aunt she never knew. Gladys Shaw was a whistling comedian, a singer and...
LateBloomerLesbians: Body through #hashtags
Some of us are married to men, some of us are dating them, and some of us are chronically single. But we all have one thing in common: we are late to the coming out game. So reads the introduction...
Stepford Wives anniversary: Suburban living turned women into robots
On August 26 1970, 50,000 women marched down Fifth Avenue in New York City in a Women’s Strike. Organised by feminist activist Betty Friedan, the march highlighted the fact women still performed the...