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Why Matthew Johns is an Alpha Male – and Shouldn’t Be

February 15, 2013 in Celebrity, Current Affairs, Film & TV, News, People, Sex, Society, Sport

“Man up, Sydney!” So a billboard advertisement for Triple M’s The Grill Team admonishes, glaring down from atop the Pacific Highway, Roseville at us pathetic, feminine Sydney motorists. I must confess I’ve never quite understood the phrase ‘man up’. Particularly after watching my pregnant boss carry around an energy-sapping bowling ball in her stomach for the last nine months and deal with the unique hell that is working in retail over Christmas, I can’t perceive how there is anything quite so tough as a woman. And that’s to say nothing of how the bowling ball is expelled into the world. Confusion [...]

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In defence of Elizabeth Wurtzel

January 11, 2013 in Books, Celebrity, Current Affairs, Mental Health, News, People

I have a battered-up copy of Prozac Nation stowed with a small but beloved collection of other books underneath my bed. It’s been with me since I was 15 years old and it’s never been far from my bedroom ever since. It never lived in the family bookshelf, where most of my other books end up gathering dust. For a while I even carefully hid it, fearing that a family member would find it and be upset, because when I was a teenager I felt that my depression always served to make everyone upset and was best stowed away like that, under [...]

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Where Do Fat Individuals Fit into a Healthy Society?

December 12, 2012 in Body Image, Film & TV, Fitness, Food & Recipes, Health, Lifestyle, Mental Health, Nutrition, People, Self, Society

I’m a little bit torn. Every other day I see the Ashy Bines Bikini Body Challenge or the Michelle Bridges 12-Week Body Transformation lurking in my Facebook newsfeed. Twitter brings me nutrition advice about activated almonds and I stumble over the Michelle Bridges column every weekend upon opening Sunday Life. That woman is seriously everywhere. I start to feel bombarded. I start to feel like I’m living in a society in which my body is everybody’s business. Like the excess kilos that push me to the wrong side of the ‘overweight’ mark are a burden I’m placing on Australia; like [...]

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Optimism is not a Cure for Depression

December 7, 2012 in Books, Children, Health, Mental Health, Parenting

What’s wrong with this picture? Nothing, you might say. Certainly, this book has a lot of good reviews smattered around the Internet. It’s written by qualified psychologists. I’m sure it has some good advice. I wouldn’t actually know; I haven’t read it. But when I stumbled upon it recently, I was infuriated – and all because of the title. Raising an Optimistic Child: A Proven Plan for Depression-Proofing Young Children – For Life. Well, ain’t that lovely. Apparently a debilitating illness that attacks one million Australian adults each year (1) could have been waved away, magic wand-like, if only their parents [...]

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Scared of sex? It’s not just you.

November 12, 2012 in Body Image, Dating, Gender, Health, Lifestyle, People, Relationships, Self, Sex, Sexuality, Society

It isn’t cool for a woman to say “I’m afraid of sex”. To my knowledge it never has been and it probably never will be. Yet we women are taught from the get-go to always place those two things, fear and sex, together – the inseparable flashcards in the lesson of life. I can already hear the accusations of feminism-gone-wild, of over-dramatisation. That’s okay. Let me just ask you a question. Why is it that we girls are taught early on that we must block boys’ attempts to kiss us, to ‘mess around with us’ (oh, scary ambiguities!), to ‘break [...]

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A Break Up Taught Me How Strong I Am

October 15, 2012 in Dating, Health, Mental Health, People, Relationships, Self

If we’re to believe everything that books, magazines, movies and morose teenage love ballads tell us, a break-up is just about the worst torture that a heart-possessing human being can live through. So when my boyfriend broke up with me recently, I put down the phone with bated breath, waiting to be seized by the urge to write bad poetry on tear-smattered pages. I waited. The urge didn’t come. But hold up – I’m starting this story all out of order. Let’s go back to the beginning – the months before I was dating J. As 2012 rolled in I [...]

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Real Women: I’m Talking To You (Possibly NSFW)

June 15, 2012 in Body Image, Dating, Family, Friendship, Gender, Health, Lifestyle, Mothers, Parenting, People, Relationships, Self, Sex, Sexuality, Society

Dear girls, women, fabulous females of all ages: It has come to my attention that we rather like telling each other what to do. We’re a bossy bunch, we are. So many expectations; so many standards. It takes a total of, oh, one glance at the magazines that we write for each other to corroborate this conclusion. Frolicking my way through the world wide web just now, I had Cleo tell me to shake things up in the bedroom and avoid “blow-out days” in my diet; Cosmo very helpfully informed me that I “hate to love” a whole bunch of [...]

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The Bacon Sundae: Food Nirvana or Nightmare?

June 14, 2012 in Entertainment, Film & TV, Food & Recipes, Health, Lifestyle, Nutrition

Whenever I go to the United States, something strange happens. I experience an odd bursting sensation at my hips. My arms swell up inexplicably, struggling to wrangle their way into the too-little sleeves of my tops (which must have shrunk in the dryer, surely). My figure becomes less hourglass-shaped and more reminiscent of a charcoal chicken, particularly in the thigh region. Okay, okay, so the phenomenon of prodigious weight gain isn’t exactly unheard-of for tourists in America. But if I go over there for a month and feel like I need a wheelchair to take me from Arrivals to Long-Term [...]

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The Most Admirable Quality

June 4, 2012 in Books, Celebrity, Human Rights, People

“Who are the five people you admire most and why?” I found myself pondering over this question, posed by my little grey kikki.K ‘Goals’ journal, and feeling a tad perplexed. It’s the sort of thing that no one asks. My life, like most people’s, is so full of little questions like ‘what shall I wear today?’ and ‘how much petrol is in the car?’ that the deliberate inquisition of my journal – which is so unassuming, so innocent-looking on the outside – rendered me quite taken-aback. I could think of a bunch of people to admire – mostly relatives and [...]

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When professional gets personal

March 7, 2012 in Friendship, Work

Last week someone rejected my Facebook friend request – to my face. She was a friend I’ve made through training for my new job, and after I’d hunted down many of my other training buddies in the online realm, I innocently enquired if she too had a Facebook account. “Yes, I do,” she answered, somewhat reluctantly. And may I add her? “No, you can’t.” Well hello there, awkwardness! No, she didn’t hate me – or at least she claimed not to. As she explained, she prefers to keep her work and personal lives entirely separate. She can’t be found through [...]

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