Reading, eating, sleeping: are these not the very foundations of wellbeing? Most else, I could take or leave (exercising is only for emergencies; handsome lovers and disco dancing and holidays in sunny places are the extras we get if we’re lucky and/or persistent). As a kid I avidly read cereal boxes at the breakfast table […]
Category: Feminism
Review: The Party Givers’ Book by Mary Gallati, 1957
I try to buy everything I need or want from charity shops. Because: 1. Through excessive charity-shop lingering, I’ve slowly become dependent upon shopping in a 1980s timewarp. Everything is sequinned and £5 is the average cost of a dress. When I venture into normal high-street shops, there are NEVER ENOUGH sequins and it’s all […]
Secret Style Icons No.21 & No.22: Thelma and Louise
‘I don’t ever remember feeling this awake’ – Thelma It starts the way all films should – two gals, a convertible and a loaded gun, off on a road trip together. They’ve got high-waisted jeans and enormous swaying hair. They’re getting away from hard work, boredom and Thelma’s cretin of a husband. What could possibly […]
Banned Books, Pseudonyms and a Secret Magazine
“Secrets, silent, stony, sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants willing to be dethroned.” James Joyce, Ulysses Maybe it’s a symptom of living in almost certain safety, to find the idea of banned books romantic. Imagine: the soft crackling of a paper bag containing a hard-back first […]
Let’s Look at 1963: Glamour, Beauty, Housework, Chevrolets and Gin
I get all excited about Christmas. I start making plans around August time. Right now I can’t wait to get Halloween out of the way so that the rest of the world will start joining in with the christmassing (oh, the snowball cocktails; the consensual glitterfication). I’ve been contemplating layering. How much merino is too much […]
Secret Style Icon No.19: Margaret Mead
“I was wise enough to never grow up while fooling most people in to believing I had”. Queenly, formidable, curious and peculiar, Margaret Mead is as an example of what happens when someone has some seriously sturdy self-esteem. Her social scientist Quaker parents, along with her grandmother, raised Margaret to believe in her own capabilities, […]
Let’s Talk About Why You’re so Damn Sexy
While trying to maintain a contented life amid the milieu of our consumerist, capitalist end-days, sometimes, you just stumble upon something really bewildering. Face primer. I have now met face primer, and it’s a real thing. Does my face need priming? I did not know. I just did not know. Face primer made me […]
The Wonderful Life of Mary Hatch
Christmas is here, season of goodwill and morning drunkenness. It’s my favourite time of the year. Everyone wears wool. We all eat pastry a lot more than usual, and take a moment now and then (lackadaisically dusting pie crumbs from our jumpers) to think of those less fortunate than ourselves. So let’s do that. Join […]
Feminism: Back By Popular Demand
I’ve been thinking about the word feminist for a long time. I’ve been thinking about it, but for most of my life, I haven’t been saying it. There were big reasons and small reasons. For the most part, it was to do with my feelings about privacy and the right to be a weird little […]
“Self-Esteem is a Lifetime’s Work” and Other Celebrity Endorsements of Being a Mess
I read that quote in an interview with a celebrity years ago… obviously it was a celebrity whose body wasn’t sylph-like enough to grace a magazine cover. A celebrity who had to avoid humidity because it made their hair go all bouffant. A celebrity with squinty teeth. And a mono-brow. No, ofcourse, it wasn’t. It […]
Amy Jardine 