Gerber, 22, is the daughter of 90s supermodel Cindy Crawford, and yes, she has inherited every single cell of her mother’s asymmetrically perfect features. She’s now a successful model in her own right but also a keen reader, a book reader, and in the past few years, she’s made it part of her public identity.

Since 2020, she’s worked hard to cultivate the image of a stylish book-worm. She’s made sure the world knows she reads and that we know she’s a thinker. Gone are the days of the bookworm image, of the girl with glasses reading in her pjs in bed. 

In September 2020, Gerber posted a screenshot to her 10 million followers on Instagram of a scene from Richard Benjamin’s 1990 movie Mermaids, starring Cher and Winona Ryder. 

The image shows Cher in a bathtub, reading Grace Metalious’ 1956 novel Peyton Place, looking beautiful, focused and cerebral. Next to her, Winona Ryder, who plays her daughter in the movie, peers up towards the corner of the camera, obviously distracted by some agitated feelings towards her mother, who seems lost in her book. 

Suddenly, I was interested. 

The book Gerber was promoting that week, Chloe Benjamin’s The Immortalists, had nothing to do with the film, but that single post piqued my interest. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kaia (@kaiagerber)

A few months earlier in March, Gerber had started a virtual bookclub via her Instagram as a way for her to connect with writers, other celebrities and friends during the pandemic. The first book was Sally Rooney’s Normal People – whose fans are the OG of ‘the stylish reader’. In her first live chat, she spoke with Daisy-Edgar Jones and Paul Mascal, stars of the screen adaptation of the novel. 

Her book selections were diverse, and her intentions were noble. In May, she selected Spring Awakening, the late 19th century classic play by German dramatist Frank Wedekind, in order to “raise awareness for the performing arts industry in nyc. theaters are closed for the time being, putting so many actors, writers, and crew members out of work,” as Gerber described in a post on Instagram.

“It’s really important that we keep supporting the community that plays such a large & important role to the city.” 

Over the next few months and years, Gerber would invite the likes of Lena Dunham, Jia Tolentino, Michelle Zauner (Japanese Breakfast) and Raven Leilani onto her platform to talk about their books. These women have huge cultural capital and radiate an equal measure of affable coolness, intelligence and obtainable beauty. 

Gerber would continue to post images on Instagram of beautiful women reading, either from photos, or screenshots from movies. It didn’t matter that most of the images had nothing to do with the books themselves. Gerber knew how to get someone like me interested.

I’m a female reader, a book reader, and I aspire to be beautiful. Inevitably, in my own life, I separate these two pursuits. When I read, I’m mostly always in some loose, flimsy outfit, sprawled across my sofa chair in my study, looking more like a sloth on a tree than a presentable woman. The last thing on my mind is trying to appear beautiful. 

But these women, women like Gerber, and her fellow supermodel friends who read, including Dua Lipa, Emily Ratajkowski and Camille Rowe, have harnessed Instagram’s most fundamental currency — hot privilege, and began a movement to aestheticise book reading.

And by book reading, I mean, actual books. Physical, paper items. You won’t see a kindle anywhere here. 

The books on Gerber’s bookclub list are carefully selected to exude a certain sensibility. Think east-coast elites. Think oat-milk drinking hipsters who wear white linen shirts and own more than two pairs of Birkenstocks. Carrying a book, or at least, appearing to consume its content, has become another gesture towards aspirational living. Not only do we need to appear to be taking care of our outward appearances — we need to cultivate the right kind of intellectual and cerebral agendas. 

This week, Gerber, along with her friend Alyssa Reeder, (a New York City-bred writer and editor who writes for Into the Gloss) launched Library Science. 

The site collects all the books she’s had on her bookclub so far; all 34 books, it’s 33 authors, most of them American. Joan Didion appears twice. And of course she does. Her books (along with her cult status among liberal white women) is the basis upon which all the other books instantiate. 

Another late author on the list is Françoise Sagan, who has an equally pertinent status among women who pay very close attention to the fabric of their clothes. 

The majority of authors on Gerber’s list are women and out of the 33 authors, nine are people of colour, or mixed race. Five are late authors. There is one trans author. Most of them went to Ivy league colleges, or were born into privilege and celebrity, as Gerber has. 

Wealth and affluence can provide one with a certain cultural capital – in Gerber’s case, she’s used it to curate a literary milieu. They can be “taste” makers. But what does it mean to have “taste”? More importantly, who adjudicates this metric? Today, it seems that the answer is beautiful people who know how to market themselves. Personally, I believe the gay American writer, Ocean Vuong was the first to aestheticize that very singular, New York City-artist image. Just check out his IG to know what I mean.

Initially, I was drawn to Gerber’s ethereal beauty. I love looking at pretty people. But pretty people who read?! Irresistible. Before my private divorce from social media, my favourite Instagram account was @hotdudesreading. The female equivalent is @coolgirlsreadingbooks. Somehow, it feels less of a novelty to see an attractive woman reading than it is to see an attractive man reading. The Internet agrees with me, because the former account has more than a million followers, while the latter has only 48.7K followers. 

As I said before, Instagram runs on hot privilege. And Gerber knows how to milk it. Looking to be well read is now a visual pursuit. It’s aspirational to appear to be well-read. And though her Library Science hasn’t inspired me to amend my break-up with Instagram, I agree with the platform’s philosophy: “We learn the most from the stories that aren’t our own.”

The post The gentle, slow, agonising beautifying of book-reading appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Taking home the $100,000 Victorian Prize for Literature at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards (VPLAs), Yee’s win is the first time a poet has received the prize since 2014. She also won the $25,000 poetry prize on Thursday night, selected from a record 807 books entered for the prize.

Initially part of her PhD on Chinese women writers in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Yee has said the story is also inspired by Aotearoa’s Chinese community, which she grew up in.  

“We were impressed by how intelligently Chinese Fish braids its modes and forms, its feminist vision, and its literary and conceptual sophistication,” the judges said of Yee’s highly regarded novel.

“Chinese Fish switches between lyric, dramatic and documentary poetic forms, to tell a multi-generational tale of the Chin family’s migration from Hong Kong to Aotearoa New Zealand. Yee focuses on women’s experience; particularly, how migration tests the relationship between a mother and her daughter.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Giramondo Publishing (@giramondopublishing)

Currently working as a casual academic at the University of Melbourne, Yee told the ABC that she hadn’t even intended to publish the verse novel as she was writing it but eventually decided to send the manuscript to Giramondo Publishing, who accepted it. 

This is the second time a piece of writing from Giramondo has won the VPLAs, as Jessica Au took home the Victorian prize for literature last year for her novel ‘Cold Enough for Snow’. 

“I wrote it for myself, Yee said about ‘Chinese Fish’. “I had absolutely no ambitions for publishing it… [and when I finished my thesis, it sat in the top drawer.”

Now that she’s won the prize, Yee says the award money means she “can relax a little bit” and have more time and space to write further.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Giramondo Publishing (@giramondopublishing)

Yee’s work has appeared in Overland, Island, Meanjin, Southerly, Westerly, Rabbit, Cordite Poetry Review, The Shanghai Literary Review, Women’s Museum of California, Hainamana, Poetry New Zealand Yearbook, and Best of Australian Poems 2021, and 2022, among others. In 2020, she was awarded the Patricia Hackett Prize, and the Peter Steele Poetry Award. Her next work to be published in 2024 with Cordite Books is a collection of poems, Light Traps: A History.

In other categories, the prize for fiction went to Melissa Lucashenko for her novel Edenglassie. Ellen van Neerven’s book, Personal Score: Sport, culture, identity received the prize for non-fiction, and the prize for Indigenous writing went to Daniel Browning for Close to the Subject: Selected Works. The people’s choice award was given to The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World by Antony Loewenstein. 

The Victorian prize for literature last went to a work of poetry in 2014, when Jennifer Maiden’s Liquid Nitrogen was chosen. 

Australian female poets have been blazing trails in recent times. Last year, the Queensland Premier Literary Awards went to a collection of poems– Sarah Holland-Batt’s poetry collection, The Jaguar. It was fresh off her 2023 Stella Prize win, with the previous years’ winner, Evelyn Araluen also a celebrated poet for her 2022 collection, Drop Bear.

The post Melbourne poet Grace Yee wins Australia’s richest literary award for debut ‘Chinese Fish’ appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Lennan has a turbulent homelife – he looks up to his father, a powerful policeman, but holds on to the secret about the harm Lennan’s dad causes his mother behind closed doors. 

Smallsy is Lennan’s rock. Smallsy helps Lennan navigate it all and helps him understand how to be a better man.

This is the story of Lennan and Smallsy created by author and cartoonist Sara Yan. The Lennan and Smallsy comics are one of the first of its kind – educating readers about domestic violence, toxic masculinity and, overall, being a good human through fun, entertaining comic strips.

“People don’t usually expect cartoons to have any kind of power,” Yan told Women’s Agenda recently. “And that’s exactly how they do.”

Where it began

Sara Yan grew up in Queensland and has always nurtured her artistic side. She loves movies, books, comics and all things creative. She studied to be a nutritionist and was happily working in the field – that is until her life was turned upside down.

“A lot of people say they’re victim survivors of DV – I’m one of those,” she said.

Yan entered what would become an abusive relationship with her ex partner. Once she emerged from her unsafe situation, she had the opportunity to participate in a victim support program.

“On the one hand, I was really touched to have that chance to heal and connect with other people in that space,” she said.

“But another part of me was quite furious.”

Yan was angry because there were so many avenues for victim-survivors of abuse to help them recover from domestic violence – yet very few to address the aggressors perpetrating the abuse.

“Are we just going to keep pouring out symptomatic treatment for DV survivors – healing victims, rescuing victims, educating people on victims?” she said.

“Where is the accountability to address the people who are causing the problem, who are doing the harm?”

It was at this point in her life, perhaps the hardest period to date, that she decided to do something about.

That’s when two young boys came into her life: Lennan and Smallsy.

The story of Lennan and Smallsy

After her experience with domestic violence, Yan returned to her love of movies, television and stories – and decided to take a turn in her career.

“And it’s been a hell of a turn,” she said. “I just noticed in cinema and film and television… there’s very little representation about (domestic violence) in the arts beyond something that’s kind of sensationalised for cheap views. So I just thought that was a hole that could be filled with potentially amazing consequences.”

Yan filled the gap in the arts and literature sector with the Lennan and Smallsy comics. The comics follow a non-linear storyline starring two school-aged boys who are best friends – Lennan and Smallsy.

While Smallsy grew up with two loving, progressive parents and is becoming a confident young man, Lennan has trouble in adolescence. His father, a powerful policeman, is a huge role model in his life, but Lennan knows about how his father abuses his mother. It’s a secret that eats him up inside and causes him grief as he goes through school and navigates relationships.

Each comic strip – around four squares per comic – features different characters and their interactions with one another, which ultimately send a message about toxic masculinity, conversations around domestic and family violence, and so much more.

“I find that as a visual medium, comics can teach people something in two seconds. The brain subconsciously and rapidly processes images,” Yan said. “Essentially anyone could pick up a comic from either a few years ago that I’ve written or just yesterday, and they would quickly get the message about what it pertains to.”

Yan has been writing since 2019, and in July last year, she published Volume 1 of the Lennan and Smallsy Comics. While Yan’s core audience is Gen Z, Yan hopes people of all ages can learn something from the Lennan and Smallsy comics.

“I wanted something palatable, something easily relatable for people around that sort of age bracket,” she said.

“It’s fair to say the younger group will appreciate it more, but the stories themselves – they relate on a personal level to any human.”

Healthy Masculinities Project

Last October, the federal government announced a three-year trial project tackling harmful messages of toxic masculinity on social media.

The government has funded the trial with $3.5 million to run both face-to-face and online presentations at schools, sporting clubs and other community organisations. The project will teach school-aged boys about respectful relationships not just with their peers, but also with themselves.

As a key stakeholder in the space of educating young people about healthy masculinities, Yan was thrilled with the government’s announcement.

“I was really excited to hear that this had been erected because it was something that was more addressing the cause, rather than swooping up and reducing victims or, what personally offends me, teaching girls how to project themselves,” she said.

But Yan warned the trial should not “preach to the choir” – that is, the trial should be aimed at people who need to be educated on the subject. She said the project should also be delivered in a way that’s engaging for young people.

“I’m cautiously optimistic about the trials,” Yan said. “I think if they take a novel approach to it, it’s going to be very promising.”

“I just think they have to watch that they don’t preach to the choir in the sense that people who are already inclined to that way are going to be more receptive than the mainstream middle, who maybe don’t know yet how important it is.”

The Healthy Masculinities Project would go a long way for someone like Lennan. Most of what Lennan believes about being a man comes from the male role model in his life: his abusive father. It seeps in to how he treats other people, in particular Justine.

As high-profile misogynists like Andrew Tate grow in prominence around the world, everyone could benefit from the Healthy Masculinities Project.

Or, perhaps, a best friend like Smallsy.

The post Author and cartoonist Sara Yan is teaching healthy masculinity through comic strips appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Scomo’s book, Plans For Your Good: A Prime Minister’s Testimony of God’s Faithfulness, will be available on the market on May 21, marking exactly two years since Prime Minister Anthony Albanese defeated him in the 2022 Federal Election.

The 288-page book will also have a special foreword written by the former Vice President of the United States, Mike Pence.

Morrison and Pence are thought to have a strong relationship, developed during their time in office. According to reports from The Sydney Morning Herald, Morrison phoned Pence, not Trump, when the Trump administration failed to secure a second term in office at the 2020 US election.

Pence is also very open about his strong Christian faith. In 2022, Pence released his own faith-centred memoir, titled So Help Me God.

According to an article in Politico, Mike Pence often says: “I am a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order.”

Who is Mike Pence?

After a relatively short career as a lawyer, Mike Pence began running for Congress in 1988 when he was 29 years old. It took him 12 years before he was finally elected in the House of Representatives in 2000.

For his whole life, and particularly since entering the US politics world, he has held strong conservative views driven by his Christianity, including anti-LGBTQIA+ and anti-abortion stances.

In the 2016 US election campaign, Pence was chosen as Trump’s running Vice President for the Republican party. 

He served as the second-in-charge of the US and throughout his term in office, Pence unabashedly stood by and defended Trump no matter what.

The Trump administration lost power in the 2020 election when President Joe Biden was declared as the winner. In the final days of the Trump administration, Pence was scapegoated as somehow having the power to meddle with the election results and cause a Republican loss.

The scapegoating intensified at the January 6 2021 riots at the Capitol building in Washington D.C. where Trump supporters chanted “hang Mike Pence”, the Jan. 6 select committee found.

Pence entered the race as a presidential candidate for the Republicans in the 2024 election. While former Vice Presidents generally have greater support and greater success in the running for the presidency, Trump created a lot of enemies for Pence. In October 2023, Pence withdrew his bid for the Republican presidential nomination.

More on Scomo’s book

Mike Pence will write the foreword and feature on the cover of former Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison’s new book, which is months away from release.

The book will detail how Morrison, the 30th Prime Minister of Australia, was guided by his Christian faith in leading the country during 2018-2022, throughout “one of the toughest periods since the second world war”.

His publisher, Thomas Nelson, a branch of the Harper Collins Christian Publishing, writes on its website that unlike other books written by former Prime Ministers, Morrison’s will be “less political memoir and more pastoral encouragement”.

The inclusion of Pence’s foreword is expected to assist the book in expanding its market interest globally, especially in the US.

According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the US religious publishing market made $US757 million ($AUD1.175 billion) in 2022.

The post Mike Pence will feature in Scott Morrison’s new tell-all book appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Barber illustrated all her books, and garnered a large global fan base with her books being translated into 18 languages, including Bulgarian, Estonian and French. Her books and spinoff calendars and diaries have sold more than 10 million copies since she began producing them more than two decades ago.  

On Tuesday, her publisher, Brolly Publishing, released a statement announcing that Barber had died peacefully in her sleep earlier that day. 

The statement described her books as “rich detail, animated characters” with “strong visual narratives,” and stories that teach “gentle messages of kindness, caring, friendship, and peace, never overstated but simply conveyed by the characters in her stories and their actions.”

Barber’s first book, Martha B. Rabbit: the Fairies’ Cook, was published in 1988, when she was in her mid-fifties. According to her publisher, she had written the book as a child and made a little prototype of the book herself with red ribbon tie attached. 

The book went on to win first prize at the Critica Erba Awards at the Bologna Children’s Fair in 1989. 

Her books inspired hundreds of spin-off products, including colouring books, jigsaws, dinnerware, clothing, stickers, and bedding — featuring images of fairies, bunnies, mermaids, and other character’s from the books. 

Barber was born on the Channel Islands in 1935, emigrating to Victoria in the mid-1960s. 

In 2008, she gave a rare interview for The Age, reflecting on her own work. 

“I have always felt that it’s really, really important for children to have a world to escape into,” she said, otherwise they might lead children “to go wrong later, and do dreadful things”. 

“I had very vivid dreams and nightmares as a child. I found it difficult to tell the difference between a dream and what was real.” 

“I think some people perceive energies which they actually see as fairies and elves.” 

As a child, Barber said she saw fairies go by in her window.

“I didn’t go off to sleep easily and I thought I saw in the twilight this flight of fairies . . .”

The post Beloved children’s author Shirley Barber dies, aged 88 appeared first on Women's Agenda.

Sad Bad Girl novels combine the best – or should I say the worst? – elements of these narratives. Titles like My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, Luster by Raven Leilani and Animal by Lisa Taddeo all feature disaffected or disturbed young women acting out, or wilfully sabotaging their lives.

Despite the impressive writing of authors such as Leilani, Moshfegh and Taddeo, too many of these stories fail to keep up with their own ideas. Trauma is sensationalised, damaged characters are diminished and complicated, and challenging situations are compressed into marketable entertainment. Sometimes this is alarming, but mostly it’s just disappointing. It also means the Sad Bad Girl was a trope from the outset.

Typically in her late 20s or early 30s, the Sad Bad Girl is insecure and adrift, seething with self doubt and drowning in denial. Her family is dysfunctional if not abusive, she drinks too much, makes terrible relationship choices, resents her boring job, and dreams of becoming a successful creative. Her friends, if she has any, act as sounding boards or barometers for her emotional messes. She is self-obsessed, self-serving and self-destructive, and I’m afraid I’ve had enough of her.

It’s not that I’ve had enough of stories about women. Far from it. As a writer, I have spent most of my career focused on female narratives. I have challenged the misrepresentation of women in the music industry, explored essentialist ideas about the female psyche and confronted the diminished antiheroine of thriller fiction.

But the one thread connecting my work is a call for more complex stories about psychologically nuanced women.

So as a reader, I’m cynical. I’m frustrated by the proliferation of stories about two-dimensional women behaving badly when there is such rich potential for transgressive Sad Bad Girls.

Green Dot’s lost millennial woman

Unfortunately, the much-buzzed-about Australian debut novel, Green Dot, with its tale of a young, white, messed-up woman searching for meaning in all the wrong places, fails to break new ground.

If you haven’t already heard about Green Dot, you will. The buzz is growing and the book is set to be a huge summertime success. Sharply observed, funny and tender, set between Sydney and an unnamed British city, it’s a likeable enough narrative. Fans of Dolly Alderton will probably love it. But take a closer look at this frothy, sassy story and you might begin to question the appeal.

Put simply, Green Dot is the tale of an office love affair between 24-year-old Hera and Arthur, her older, married colleague. The unique pain and pull of first love is beautifully depicted at times, and Gray is a competent writer. “I am aware that a past version of myself, one who is not so embroiled, would likely see this all with much greater clarity,” thinks Hera, when she can’t get hold of Arthur. She reflects that the old Hera “would likely stick up for herself more, would find Arthur’s entitlement galling, or she would never wait around in the first place.”

But for much of the novel, the tone is trite and the characterisation, although astute, is patchy. While this starts out as a fun page-turner, by the midway mark the singular theme of Hera’s yearning for Arthur begins to weigh.

Conforming to the trope of lost millennial woman, Hera brims with fragile confidence and pernicious self-doubt. Disaffected, cynical, irreverent to the point of positively irritating, she inhabits her story with wit and humour. But her relentlessly interior perspective lacks self-reflection.

There is nothing much in the story to alleviate this. Hera’s friends, Soph and Sara, exist mainly to let the reader know Hera has friends with opinions about her behaviour. Other characters function mainly to witness Hera’s affair or remind her that she misses Arthur.

As for Arthur, a charmingly uncool intellectual from England, he is essentially a prize who offers Hera self-validation in the form of her own emotions. “What I really wanted was feelings to protect,” she confesses. “And here they were.”

Self-abasing ‘almost for the sake of it’

Long after her affair has run its course, Hera realises “my dedication to this relationship was in fact a dedication to my belief in myself”. Yet this declaration, which appears at the start of the story, doesn’t afford her any insight beyond the fact Arthur once represented comfort, and the promise of a life “which didn’t require me to make decisions anymore”.

Hera makes Arthur sound like a pet rock she has tried to use to orient herself. Gray makes him sound like a cliché. An English man who manages to combine “a high-powered job with the nervous shyness of someone who was bullied in high school”, he resembles an early-career Hugh Grant, bumbling around in cargo pants and “chemist-bought sunglasses”.

But for all his awkward British sensitivity, he avoids the subject of his marriage like the plague, which renders him spineless.

The plot is littered with oversights that raise questions about the editing process. For example, when Hera moves to a strangely unidentified city in the UK, seemingly on a kind of vengeful whim, the entire episode is treated with remarkable gloss.

In a country where work and accommodation are notoriously hard to acquire, Hera finds both with miraculous speed, and once there, does nothing except sleep with lots of terrible people and moon over Arthur. This, together with Gray’s painfully inaccurate stereotyping of British culture, including “trash” British coffee, pretentious British art students and small-minded British pub-goers, continues for 50 pages, while Hera’s emotional arc remains stagnant.

When COVID hits, lockdown and isolation ensue, and again, Hera traverses these with ease. Weirdly, she makes no friends in the UK and her flatmate, Poppy, barely a whisper on the page, inexplicably comes and goes sporadically despite government restrictions. Despite being entirely alone overseas during the outbreak of a deadly virus, Hera continues to be preoccupied with nothing more than missing Arthur.

Another example occurs when Hera and Arthur find themselves in Hera’s estranged mother’s neighbourhood. By coincidence that feels contrived, Hera spies her mother outside a restaurant. But Gray skims past this detail, opening and shutting down a valuable plot opportunity within two paragraphs, making you wonder why it was included in the first place.

Gray’s writing is intelligent and effervescent, and this is an entertaining debut. But at almost 400 pages, given the one-trick plot and skinny characterisation, it’s far too long: which seems to be another editing issue.

Hera is amusing, but far too preoccupied with herself to be in touch with her vulnerability. She asks questions of herself that she doesn’t bother to answer. She is self-aware but unable to think analytically. And while her flaws are central to her character, like too many Sad Bad Girls, she is self-consciously self-abasing almost for the sake of it.

Insightful exploration of a traumatised woman

By contrast, Lucy Treloar’s new novel, Days of Innocence and Wonder, explores the search for meaning and connection with depth and sensitivity, from the perspective of trauma.

This is the author’s third book and her first foray into contemporary fiction. It refreshingly defies familiar genre categories, being neither a straightforward thriller nor crime. Needless to say, this is not the story of a Sad Bad Girl, but an insightful and sensitive exploration of a traumatised woman.

Protagonist Till is a 23-year-old woman on the run from a devastating childhood experience that continues to bleed into the present. Angry, haunted and scared, she’s not so much flawed as scarred. Disrupting ideas about safety and refuge, unsettling the boundaries of space and time, this is a story about how the past shapes the present. Ultimately, Till must learn what this means for her and what she can do about it – or not.

Written in response to the ongoing problem of male violence and misogygny that propelled the 2021 women’s March4Justice movement across Australia, the novel poses questions about reckoning and the loss of innocence. Occasionally led by an unidentified first-person perspective that breaks through the narrative with leading questions, it also raises the issue of shattered identity. The final page responds to this in heartbreaking fashion.

At the start of the novel, Till is newly terrified and flees her parents’ home in Melbourne, driving with no destination in mind, finally stopping at the fictional ghost town of Wirowie in South Australia. Here, she sets up camp in the old, crumbling railway station and, despite her wounded, defensive, suspicious disposition, slowly begins to find a sense of community among the scattered inhabitants.

But the deserted township, with its dusty streets and abandoned buildings, harbours dangers of its own, forcing her to choose between running again, or claiming her precarious ground and facing down the threat.

Elegantly written, the novel possesses a dreamlike quality reminiscent of Kate Hamer’s mystery novels,though at times the evocative atmosphere can feel disorientating. Perhaps this is a conscious decision, designed to pitch the reader into Till’s fractured psyche – where hazy memories blur the line between dreams and fleeting impressions of the past.

Certainly, in its depiction of psychological trauma, and the ways children adapt in order to survive terrifying experiences, the narrative is astute and considered.

Addresses structural misogyny

There are inconsistencies. For example, I found it wholly unfeasible that the guarded and mistrustful Till would invite shopkeeper Ken into her home within minutes of meeting him. And without providing spoilers, the way Till’s past continues to track her is hard to believe and not adequately explored or explained.

While this preserves a mysterious quality, it leaves too many important questions unanswered, and too many loose threads hanging. Just a few more well-placed beats would have made all the difference.

Overall though, this is a moving novel that addresses the structural misogyny in Australian society, as well as the ways it intersects with the persistent issue of racism. It constitutes a quietly powerful response to these things in the form of a psychological suspense novel that refuses the heightened drama of conventional thriller territory.

Though set in a dilapidated rural area around a tiny community impacted by tragedy, the story avoids the trappings of outback crime and heroic metropolitan detectives.

Instead, like Emily Maguire’s An Isolated Incident (which was shortlisted for both the Miles Franklin and the Stella Prize) Treloar’s novel foregrounds the female experience of violence and trauma considerately and thoughtfully. It confronts the legacy of male brutality without sidestepping the horrors or overdramatising them.

A slow-burning tale about the power of female self-agency, Days of Innocence and Wonder carries a quiet sense of hope and the promise of a protagonist who is finally able to grow up. And that, in itself, sets Till apart from the Sad Bad Girls.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The post I’ve had enough of Sad Bad Girl novels and sensationalised trauma – but I’m hungry for complex stories about women appeared first on Women's Agenda.

More than 100,000 Australians, including myself, live with Crohn’s Disease or Ulcerative Colitis, facing an unseen struggle that impacts not just our social and work lives, but also our personal relationships. For women in particular, it can have a devastating impact on our self esteem, body image and sex drive. 

Crohn’s Disease is an autoinflammatory condition and, while treatment can result in remission, there is currently no cure. I have symptoms of chronic fatigue, unpredictable bowel movements and stomach pain that can be unbearable. I was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease at the tender age of thirteen, just as I was stepping into adolescence and womanhood, I was also stepping in and out of a hospital bed. 

I not only had to learn how to navigate puberty and friendships, but I had to learn to fight to keep my body alive, too. It was a rough start, missing out on the important milestones most girls experienced. While my peers were exploring friendships, dating, and intimacy for the first time, my teenage years revolved around being poked and prodded, surgery and endless medical examinations. Looking back, these experiences affected my self-esteem, body image, and sexual inhibitions that went on to create challenges in my personal relationships. Imagine having to navigate intimacy for the first time with a colostomy bag – it was far from easy.

Navigating the world of dating is nerve-wracking for most people, but when you have an invisible and often debilitating illness, things can get really tricky. Bringing up health struggles becomes a delicate balancing act – too soon, and it might overwhelm your potential partner; too late, and it might feel like a betrayal of trust. 

Amidst the long days in the hospital, there was one saving grace that helped pass the time: reading. I was a fantasy book enthusiast, getting lost in fearless adventures of dragons, elves, vampires, and werewolves. As I grew older, my preferences shifted towards more mature themes – epic romances with lots of spice.

Pouring over the pages helped me realise the power of womanhood and all of its fragile, beautiful, messy, and gorgeous complications and provided me with a sense of escape of a different kind. I discovered my own desires for the first time, what appealed to me sexually, what kind of men I was interested in and what my own sexual desires might be. Romance fiction, along with erotica, was the only genre that I could see that was written by women for women, that put women at the centre of the narrative and the desire.

As a woman living in a world that often assumes that people with disabilities, both visible and invisible, are sexless or infantile – this aspect empowered me. The truth is that we have the same desires as most able-bodied individuals. 

Rediscovering my femininity and embracing my newfound desires inspired me to become a romance and erotic fiction author. I wanted to provide escapism for other women like myself and give them a safe avenue to explore desires and kinks without judgement. 

While reading spicy romances didn’t solve all of my medical problems or heal my emotional trauma of living with a chronic illness –  it did offer a fictional world for self-discovery and sexual liberation. Something that I probably would not have discovered had I not been diagnosed at all.

Through my own experiences, I have learned that the path to reclaiming sensuality is worth every effort and should be part of the process. Living with chronic illness is no joke and you learn to embrace the small wins, the little acts of empowerment that allow you to better work through the challenges. 

It would have been easy to assume that my chronic illness is at odds with my femininity, but as I explore my writing further, I believe that the opposite is true. Being unwell has allowed me to see through the hypocrisy of stereotypes and the stigma attached to living with a chronic illness. It has forced me to find my own version of feminine power and to accept that being traditionally desirable is not the only way to exist in the world. 

The post How Jade May reclaimed her sexuality while living with Crohn’s Disease appeared first on Women's Agenda.

The famed author, speaker, activist, and feminist launched her latest book “I Don’t: The Case Against Marriage” with fellow revolutionary Yumi Stynes, untangling the myths of the fairy-tale wedding and happily ever afters that young women are taught to pursue with hungry teeth. 

Ford’s searing and insightful conversation with Stynes was met with a theatre-hall full of nodding heads. 

Attacking the system of the marriage requires one to look into history — something Ford read deeply into to uncover the toxic provider and protector myth at its foundation. 

“All throughout history, leading right up to today, the thing that has infuriated men who rely on patriarchy to give them value and power, that men rely on — is women never looking up and realising that they might have power of their own,” she said. 

“It’s that protector and provider myth. So many of you will have heard men say— “Well you need us to protect you, and provide for you…” 

And you’re like, “Who are you protecting us from?” It’s not sharks. 

“The protection thing is a bit wishy washy for you right now. You’re not doing a very good job of it, lads. And also, what are you providing?” 

“So many women historically were unable to care for and provide for themselves because legally, we weren’t allowed to have any fucking money.” 

Ford noted that in Australia, women weren’t allowed to have bank accounts until 1975.

“There are women in this room, who were adult women in 1975, who could not get a bank account by themselves without the signature of their father or their brother or their husband.” 

She reminded audiences that she is not anti-married people. She is anti-marriage.

“I want to say as well to the people who are married in the room. This is not an attack on you at all. I say that in the introduction, it’s not an attack on individuals. It’s about systems. And it’s about cultural conditioning, and about questioning how and why we come to the choices that we come to.”

“What is different about a marriage that you can’t get in a long term relationship? It is about questioning why we do these things.” 

Ford has written about the harmful stereotypes the patriarchy enforces on both men and women in her previous books, including “Fight Like a Girl” and “Boys will be Boys”. In “I Don’t”, she criticises the way women are made to believe true love is our only reason for being.

“We can say probably pretty factually, that whether or not you buy into marriage yourself, as a young person in the world, and particularly as a young woman, you have been subjected to an onslaught of romantic fairytales and fantasies and myth-making, that largely targets you.” 

“It doesn’t really target men, it doesn’t target men in the same way.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cracked and Spineless Books (@cracked_and_spineless_books)

“There is an assumption in the world that men will end up married, because when they decide that they’re ready to settle down, of course, there’s a woman there who’s just been waiting for the last 15 years to be picked,” she joked. 

Yet for women — we are taught to pursue a wedding ring like nothing else — a goal that Ford believes is harmful. 

“The biggest predator that risks women’s lives is men,” she said. “That is the statistical reality of it — look at the number of women just in the last week who’ve been murdered by men in this country.” 

“If we create a cultural impetus for women where we say the only way that you can do this thing we say to you is your biological inevitability, your biological responsibility, and also the only thing that you will ever truly be happy in having and in doing…without it, you will always be bereft of emotional satisfaction…then they end up stuck in scenarios where the only way that they can do that thing is to put themselves in a situation where they living with the most dangerous predator, and that is all to serve as patriarchy, and to serve as men living for patriarchy.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Clementine Ford (@clementine_ford)

Beyond that, there’s limited lifestyle choices available to women who don’t necessarily want the things we are told to want, ie. marriage, children. 

“If you’re a woman in your 30s, and you feel in any way, shape, or form that you might want to have a child…what do you do when it starts to feel like time’s running out?”

“My friend says that it’s like women playing a big game of musical chairs. And then the music stops. They’re 35. And they’re like, ‘Well, I guess you’re the father of my baby.’ 

“This is the chair that I’m sitting on. And it’s a bit rickety, but there’s no other chair.” 

“If you don’t want to get married and you are determined to live by yourself for the rest of your life, it doesn’t mean you don’t want to date, it doesn’t mean that you don’t want sex, it doesn’t mean that you don’t wanna fall in love. [A friend] says that the options are so bereft at the moment, especially for women.” 

“Not everyone who can have a baby wants to have a baby. Women are made to feel like somehow [motherhood] is our only purpose in our life…only then will we become a fully realised human being, if we pass another human into the world. We’re like a subway station.”

Ford laments the contradictory messages about relationships women are told everyday — “We’re told that we’ve got to find the soulmate, The One, the best friend…to be with him for the rest of my life. 

“The idea of The One is such a dangerous idea. But then if your relationship breaks up, we’re then told — ‘you’ll find someone else soon’. So…which is it? 

“Is it really, really hard to find a decent person to spend the rest of your life with…or is it just like…get on the apps? It has to be one or the other.” 

Ford told audiences that she co-parents her son with her ex — something she feels “very grateful” for. 

But she doesn’t want women to use the word “lucky” when we’re describing male partners. 

“I don’t want to say ‘fortunately’, because that’s often how women talk about their relationships— I’m really lucky, I’ve been really lucky. I’ve got a good one. It’s like, it’s just we should just not be saying that we’re lucky to have men who treat women like human.” 

Despite the horrors behind marriage and its systemic inequalities, Stynes reminded audiences that Ford’s book is one of clear optimism and hope. 

Hope for a better future for all women. 

She mentioned Alexandra Collier’s book, “Inconceivable”, as a “really brilliant” story. 

“If you’re thinking that you want to have a child, but it doesn’t seem possible for you right now — you can,” Ford said. “It’s not easy, but it’s possible, you can do it by yourself.” 

“There are ways to build community and family with other people.”

“I Don’t: The Case Against Marriage” is out now, from Allen & Unwin.

The post Don’t say you’re ‘lucky’ to have a man who treats you like a human : Clementine Ford appeared first on Women's Agenda.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the 42-year old announced she’d signed a two-book deal with the Random House Publishing Group (PRH), and that her memoir will delve into the struggles and challenges she faced during her childhood, early tennis training, and subsequent rise to the top. 

“For so long, all I was focused on was winning, and I never sat down to look back and reflect on my life and career,” Williams said in the statement. 

“Over the last year I’ve really enjoyed taking the time with my growing family to celebrate my accomplishments and explore my other passions. I couldn’t be at a more perfect place to be able to take-on such a personal intimate project, and there’s no one I would rather do it with than the team at Random House.”

The first book does not yet have a title and the publishers have not yet announced a release date.

Its North American rights were acquired by PRH vice-president and executive editor Jamia Wilson and publisher Andy Ward. 

“Through stories that have yet to be told, Serena will pull back the curtain to reveal new layers about her experiences on and off the court and what it took for her to make such an indelible mark on sports and culture,” Wilson said.

Williams’ memoir will give “a full and open account of her remarkable life, from her childhood in Compton, California, learning to play with her mother and father, to her academy years in West Palm Beach and her decision to turn professional at age 14, to her rise and reign as the top women’s tennis player in the world – and one of the most accomplished athletes in history.”

The memoir will be an “open-hearted exploration of the experiences that have shaped her life,” according to the publisher. 

Williams will reflect on “overcoming scrutiny and attacks in a predominantly white and male-dominated sport, navigating devastating losses on and off the court, falling in love with tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, celebrating body diversity and expanding the confines of style in sports and pop culture, bringing awareness to maternal health disparities, and being a devoted mother to her daughters, Olympia and Adira.”

The second book, also untitled, will be an “inspirational” work, according to Random House. 

“Williams will offer rules for living that draw on her experiences as a philanthropist and advocate, her career as an investment unicorn with Serena Ventures, and someone who has long sought to lift a diverse and emergent generation of young women whose aspirations are not confined to the court,” the publishers revealed. 

Ben Brusey, the publishing director at Century — the imprint of PRH that acquired the books’ UK and Commonwealth rights, said he was honoured to be publishing “these deeply personal and inspiring books by Serena Williams.”

“[She is] a true cultural icon and one of the greatest athletes of all time,” he said. “Her upbringing was the subject of an Oscar-winning movie. But the full story of her journey off the court, told intimately here for the first time, is even more remarkable.”

“Full of the energy, passion and commitment Ms Williams has demonstrated throughout her life, these empowering books will present to readers a profound blueprint of how to conquer nearly insurmountable challenges, and how to thrive.” 

Random House group president, Sanyu Dillon described Williams’ life as “one of deep commitment, fierce talent, unabating passion and love.”

“The team and I are honoured to collaborate with Serena on her literary endeavours, and we can’t wait to publish what will no doubt be landmark books of inspiration from a truly singular woman, athlete, mother, and business leader,” he said.

Widely considered to be the Greatest of All Time, Williams announced her retirement shortly before the U.S. Open in 2022. Throughout her career, she won 39 major tennis titles and is a four-times Olympic gold medalist. 

In an piece published in Vogue last year, Williams spoke about her thoughts on the next phase in her life.

“I have never liked the word retirement. It doesn’t feel like a modern word to me. I’ve been thinking of this as a transition, but I want to be sensitive about how I use that word, which means something very specific and important to a community of people. Maybe the best word to describe what I’m up to is evolution.”

She also wrote that she hoped that due to her success, “women athletes feel that they can be themselves on the court. They can play with aggression and pump their fists. They can be strong yet beautiful. They can wear what they want and say what they want and kick butt and be proud of it all.”

Williams is not new to authoring books. Her previous titles include a memoir from 2009 “On the Line” and a picture story, “The Adventures of Qai Qai” released in September 2022. 

In August this year, she gave birth to her second child, Adira River Ohanian. She and her husband, tech entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian, welcomed their first child, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. in September 2017.

Several high-profile memoirs have recently made headlines across the West. 

They include Jada Pinkett Smith’s “Worthy” (released earlier this month), Britney Spears’ “The Woman in Me” (coming out October 25) Barbra Streisand’s “My name is Barbara” (released on November 7 — and it’s a whopping 992 pages!) and Paris Hilton’s “Paris, the memoir”) released in March this year. 

The post Serena Williams to write an ‘intimate’ memoir appeared first on Women's Agenda.

While Women’s Agenda is yet to read the book, published extracts have seen the pop legend opening up about some of the most extraordinary moments in her lif and career, including her father’s conservatorship arrangement, dancing with a snake at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards and when she shaved her head.  

In the first of such extracts published by People magazine on Tuesday, Spears opens up about getting pregnant while she was dating Timberlake, with him not being “happy” about the news.  

“For me, [the pregnancy] wasn’t a tragedy. I loved Justin so much. I always expected us to have a family together one day. This would just be much earlier than I’d anticipated.”

“But Justin definitely wasn’t happy about the pregnancy. He said we weren’t ready to have a baby in our lives, that we were way too young … I don’t know if that was the right decision. If it had been left up to me alone, I never would have done it. And yet Justin was so sure that he didn’t want to be a father.” 

The pair began dating in 1999 when Spears was 18 and Timberlake was 19 and broke up in 2002 when she was 21 and he was 22. Timberlake, now 42, has not commented on Spears’ account.

Her conservatorship

“Thirteen years went by with me feeling like a shadow of myself,” Spears wrote on the controversial period of conservatorship.

“I think back now on my father and his associates having control over my body and my money for that long and it makes me feel sick … I became a robot. But not just a robot – a sort of child-robot. I had been so infantilised that I was losing pieces of what made me feel like myself.”

“The woman in me was pushed down for a long time. They wanted me to be wild onstage, the way they told me to be, and to be a robot the rest of the time.

“Feeling like you’re never good enough is a soul-crushing state of being for a child. He’d drummed that message into me as a girl, and even after I’d accomplished so much, he was continuing to do that to me.”

“I became more of an entity than a person onstage. I had always felt music in my bones and my blood; they stole that from me … I didn’t deserve what my family did to me … It was death to my creativity as an artist.”

In December 2022,  Spears’ father, Jamie Spears, made the following statement about the issue: 

 “Where would Britney be right now without that conservatorship? … I don’t know if she’d be alive.”

“For protecting her, and also protecting the kids, conservatorship was a great tool. Without it, I don’t think she would have got the kids back.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Maria River Red (@britneyspears)

Shaving her head

In February 2007, Spears entered a salon in LA and shaved off her hair. 

Spears writes how doing so was an opportunity to push back.

“I’d been eyeballed so much growing up. I’d been looked up and down, had people telling me what they thought of my body, since I was a teenager,” she wrote in her memoir.

“Shaving my head and acting out were my ways of pushing back. But under the conservatorship I was made to understand that those days were now over. I had to grow my hair out and get back into shape. I had to go to bed early and take whatever medication they told me to take.

“If I thought getting criticised about my body in the press was bad, it hurt even more from my own father. He repeatedly told me I looked fat and that I was going to have to do something about it.

“I would do little bits of creative stuff here and there, but my heart wasn’t in it anymore. As far as my passion for singing and dancing, it was almost a joke at that point.”

Her first movie and what acting did to her mind

In 2002, Spears starred in her first film, Crossroads, which was slammed by critics.

“The experience wasn’t easy for me. My problem wasn’t with anyone involved in the production but with what acting did to my mind. I think I started Method acting — only I didn’t know how to break out of my character. I really became this other person. Some people do Method acting, but they’re usually aware of the fact that they’re doing it. But I didn’t have any separation at all.”

“I ended up walking differently, carrying myself differently, talking differently. I was someone else for months while I filmed Crossroads. Still, to this day, I bet the girls I shot that movie with think, She’s a little…quirky. If they thought that, they were right.”

“That was pretty much the beginning and end of my acting career, and I was relieved. The Notebook casting came down to me and Rachel McAdams and even though it would have been fun to reconnect with Ryan Gosling after our time on the Mickey Mouse Club, I’m glad I didn’t do it. If I had, instead of working on my album In the Zone I’d have been acting like a 1940s heiress day and night.”

“I imagine there are people in the acting field who have dealt with something like that, where they had trouble separating themselves from a character.”

“I hope I never get close to that occupational hazard again. Living that way, being half yourself and half a fictional character, is messed up. After a while you don’t know what’s real anymore.”

The Woman in Me is released in Australia on October 25, 2023. 

The post ‘The woman in me was pushed down’: Britney Spears on conservatorship, abortion and shaving her head appeared first on Women's Agenda.

It was written in 2019 by New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino, in her best-selling book of essay, Trick Mirror. The quote explains so many narratives in the world about women and non-binary folks who are ostracised, marginalised, belittled, and disrespected. 

I’ve been thinking about this quote in the past week after Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner’s extreme views on women and people of colour went viral. You may have seen his name in the headlines.

So what happened, what did he say, and why are his comments getting such traction? 

What happened?

In an interview with the New York Times published last Friday, Wenner discussed his upcoming book The Masters — a 300 plus page book of interviews he conducted with rock legends he selected over the years, including Bob Dylan, John Lennon, Mick Jagger, and Bruce Springsteen.

Wenner was asked by the NYT interviewer, David Marchese – a man who used to work at Rolling Stone, why he had chosen seven white guys in a book titled The Masters. Marchese also pointed out that in his introduction to the book, Wenner acknowledges that musicians of colour and female artists were “just not in [his] zeitgeist.”

Wenner then further explained: 

“The selection was not a deliberate selection. It was kind of intuitive over the years; it just fell together that way. The people had to meet a couple criteria, but it was just kind of my personal interest and love of them. Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.”

Let’s just repeat that… ” Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.”

When Marchese hit back, saying “Oh, stop it. You’re telling me Joni Mitchell is not articulate enough on an intellectual level?” Wenner managed to actually double down on his original comment.

“Joni was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll. She didn’t, in my mind, meet that test. Not by her work, not by other interviews she did. The people I interviewed were the kind of philosophers of rock.”

Wenner went on to say that Black artists, such as Marvin Gaye or Curtis Mayfield – also “…just didn’t articulate at that level.”

Unsurprisingly, the internet went wild. Celebrities and music critics called Wenner’s comments racist and sexist. 

Hip-hop historian Nelson George said the remarks were ”condescending and stupid” and “reflect a continuum of thought” that shaped the magazine’s music coverage.

Gender and Journalism professor Evelyn McDonnell said on Facebook that Wenner’s “decades of sexism and racism” have “resulted in so many false ‘master’ narratives about music history.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by LIVING COLOUR (@livingcolourofficial)

Members of the funk-metal band Living Colour took to their socials to criticise the comments, calling them “absurd on its face.”

“For someone who has chronicled the musical landscape for over 50 years, it is an insult to those of us who sit at the feet of these overlooked geniuses,” they expressed. 

“To hear that he believes Stevie Wonder isn’t articulate enough to express his thoughts on any given subject is quite frankly, insulting. To hear that Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Tina Turner, or any of the many Woman artists that he chooses not to mention, are not worthy of the status of “Master“, smacks of sexist gatekeeping, and exclusionary behaviour.”

In the thirty-six years Wenner has ruled over the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, only 7.7 per cent of new inductees have been women. In an interview with The Times in 2019, Wenner said he didn’t think those numbers were a “real issue,” and added: “People are inducted for their achievements. Musical achievements have got to be race-neutral and gender-neutral in terms of judging them” – translation: I don’t see race. I am unaware of the unequal treatment of Black, trans, disabled, women, persons of colour. I am impartial.

So let me just now translate his most recent comments, so we can understand and unpack the insidious bigotry and prejudice this powerful man has cast upon the music industry since 1967. 

Wenner said: “The selection [of the seven male artists] was not a deliberate selection.”

What he meant: I have never once sat down and thought about my biases. I have none. I like what I like and I’ve never questioned the political undertones of my tastes. My tastes are the centrist and universal. I am not influenced by my politics. 

Wenner said: “The selection was intuitive.”

What he meant: I didn’t think about my blindspots. I just went with what I like and know. 

Wenner said: “The people had to meet a couple criteria.” 

What he meant: The people had to meet my criteria. 

Wenner said: “Insofar as the women, just none of them were as articulate enough on this intellectual level.”

What he meant: Women artists don’t speak in a way that I understand. They don’t use the same language as me, as men I know, as what I am familiar and comfortable with. Women artists don’t represent my version of the universal truth, therefore they are not worthy of being included in this book, which I have called, “The Masters”. 

Women who don’t use the same lexicon are therefore, in my view, not articulate. For me (and many other men like me in positions of cultural power), we equate being articulate to being intelligent. And so, women who are not able to speak our language, are therefore, not intelligent. 

Wenner said: “Joni [Mitchell] was not a philosopher of rock ’n’ roll.”

What he meant: Joni [Mitchell] didn’t have a penis. 

Wenner said: “Joni [Mitchell] didn’t, in my mind, meet that test.”

What he meant: Joni [Mitchell] didn’t meet a test I created.

Wenner said: “The people I interviewed were the kind of philosophers of rock.”

What he meant: The people I interviewed spoke to me and my experience as an able-bodied straight white cis-male. 

Wenner said: “Pete Townshend or Jagger, was writing about…deep things about a particular generation, a particular spirit and a particular attitude about rock ’n’ roll. Not that the others weren’t, but these were the ones that could really articulate it.”

What he meant: Pete Townshend or Jagger, wrote music that confirmed my experience as an able-bodied straight white cis-male. I saw myself in their music. 

Wenner said: “You know, just for public relations’ sake, maybe I should have gone and found one Black and one woman artist to include here that didn’t measure up to that same historical standard, just to avert this kind of criticism.”

What he meant:  Black and women artists are sub-par, in my opinion. But maybe I should have just tokenistically added them in so I’m not seen as a racist or sexist.

Wenner said: “Maybe I’m old-fashioned and I don’t give a [expletive] or whatever.”

What he meant: I grew up in the good ol’ days when people weren’t cancelled for saying things that are racist and sexist. I grew up in a world that allowed me, no, even encouraged me, to raucously celebrate white patriarchal ideologies.

Marchese asked Wenner, What are valid criticisms of your generation? Wenner replied: “I have no fundamental, deep criticisms.”

What he meant: My generation was perfect. 

So what has happened since Wenner shared those quotes?

The day after the interview was published, Wenner released an official apology on his socials.

“In my interview with The New York Times I made comments that diminished the contributions, genius, and impact of Black and women artists and I apologise wholeheartedly for those remarks,” he said in the statement.

“[My book is] not meant to represent the whole of music and it’s diverse and important originators but to reflect the high points of my career and interviews I felt illustrated the breadth and experience in that career.”

“I totally understand the inflammatory nature of badly chosen words and deeply apologise and accept the consequences,” he added.

Sadly for Wenner, it was too late — on Saturday afternoon, just over a day after his brutal comments were first published, Wenner was ousted from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation board. 

Several excellent think-pieces have popped up online since this news first set the internet on fire, including one from Craig Seymour, a Black, gay music critic, who said that the world needs “a complete rethinking of the criteria by which artists are deemed important, influential, and relevant, especially since many of the critics and editors who were trained by or influenced by Wenner are still working in journalism and book publishing.”

Me? I’m returning to the words of Tolentino, who in the same essay as the line I quoted at the start of this article, said, so fittingly: “We are all defined by our historical terms and conditions and these terms and conditions have mostly been written by and for men.”

What a perfect explanation for the downfall of Jenn Wenner. 

The post ‘No woman was articulate enough’: We translate this music gatekeeper’s sexist and racist comments appeared first on Women's Agenda.

When Penny Moodie hears people say that they’re ‘a bit OCD’ about cleaning or tidying, she can’t help but feel frustrated. It took her twenty-three years to be diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder – a debilitating mental health condition involving intrusive thoughts and accompanying physical or mental compulsions – and the stigma and misunderstanding around OCD means this kind of delay is all too common.

Weaving her personal experience with the stories of other OCD sufferers, as well as the expertise of some of the world’s leading OCD doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists, Penny explores OCD’s symptoms, stigmas and treatments with raw honesty and zero judgement. From childhood OCD, shame and medication to perinatal mental illness, relationship OCD and group therapy, this book provides an expansive and very personal insight into the complexities of the condition – and the life-changing impact that best-practice treatment can have.

Below is an extract from Moodie’s new book, The Joy Thief.

***

OCD seems to attack the things that you value the most. For me, when I was still in the pre-teen years, that was my family and my sense of security (and the Spice Girls, but luckily the OCD stayed well clear of that love affair). For so long, my obsessions revolved around my health and the thought of dying a horrible death. But now they were starting to shift again.

We were on a long holiday around Europe and Asia before heading back home to Melbourne for good. There was nothing that excited me more than travelling with my family; the airports, the plane food (I was an easily pleased child), the hotels, the family dinners at restaurants—​I found them all exhilarating. But only as long as I felt that everything was ‘perfect’. If things didn’t feel right, or an unusual or disturbing thought popped into my head, the excitement would be replaced with panic.

On a horse ride on a beach in Cha-am, Thailand, I was struck by another random thought: What if my dad is gay? It seems like a strange thought for a ten-year-old, but words such as ‘gay’ and ‘homo’ were being thrown around at school, and I was only just starting to learn what they meant. I knew from family conversations that being gay wasn’t a bad thing. My godfather was gay, after all. It was never a big deal. But from peers at school in the nineties, I was getting a different message: to be gay was to be ‘less than’. I started to wonder if gay people could remain married to someone of the opposite sex. I’d seen photos of my dad dressed up as a woman from his amateur theatre days and I’d also seen a photo of him pretending to kiss his male boss on the cheek. So, what if these things added up to him being gay? He would have to leave my mum, and our family would be broken.

What if my mum didn’t know? I’d have to break it to her.

Poor Mum. This conversation wasn’t on her 1997 bingo card. I spent the next week on the Gulf of Thailand’s pure white shores, divulging to her that I thought her husband was secretly gay. She gently rebuffed my claims, explaining that a fondness for theatre and a playful peck on the cheek weren’t evidence of a change in sexual preference. In the same way that I felt a weighty responsibility to keep my parents safe from having a car crash when I was six years old, I now felt responsible for keeping my family together.

I didn’t understand it at the time, but I was making invisible connections between things and slowly creating a destructive web of fear. None of these connections was real, but because I’d thought them, they felt real to me. I couldn’t bear any level of uncertainty, which I equated to feeling unsafe—​and when I felt unsafe, I was fearful.

Un/Certainty

People with OCD can experience so many different variations: contamination fears, suicidal obsessions, questions around their very existence. So what could possibly bind us all together? Uncertainty. Or rather, the quest to achieve absolute, 100 per cent, indubitable certainty.

I didn’t realise this until I started to see Dr Andrea Wallace (whom you’ll meet again later in the book as the clinical psychologist who diagnosed my OCD). It had never occurred to me that what I’d been doing since I was a little kid was seeking certainty whenever a thought scared me. What I definitely didn’t know at the time was that seeking certainty is like searching for the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow: it’s a noble but futile quest.

The feeling of certainty

In his book Freedom from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, psychologist Dr Jonathan Grayson talks at length about certainty, and more specifically about our illusion of certainty.¹² We all know what it’s like to feel certain, but—​whether we have OCD or not—​what most of us don’t realise is that we can never achieve absolute certainty about anything. Ever. We have events that are probable or improbable. That’s it.

For those of us with OCD, we experience the illusion of certainty in particular areas of our lives—​it could be that when we leave for work, we’re sure that our house will still be standing when we return. Or it might be that we’re certain the sun will rise in the morning. Because we feel certain about these things, we crave this same feeling when we’re anxious about something else—​for example, that our newborn baby might not be breathing when we go to bed.

‘What most people don’t realise is that what they experience as a certainty is not a fact, but a feeling,’ writes Dr Grayson.¹³ When we try to gain certainty to alleviate our anxiety, we use logic. But, as Dr Grayson points out that, logic won’t change our feelings.

A philosophical disorder

When I started writing this book, Dr Jonathan Grayson’s name was popping up everywhere: in books, in my therapy sessions and on numerous OCD-related websites. I hunted down his email address and sent a message asking if we could chat at some point. He kindly agreed to speak to me.

An expert in the area of OCD, Dr Grayson has worked with sufferers for over three decades and is Director of the Grayson LA Treatment Center for Anxiety and OCD. He is eminently qualified to discuss the subject of OCD. He also speaks with the confidence you would expect from a white, American, middle-aged professional. But, refreshingly, he sounds genuinely excited when talking about OCD.

‘I think OCD is, in some sense, a philosophical disorder,’ Dr Grayson begins, when I ask him why he is so fascinated by OCD. ‘Most of the concerns that people have are the great questions philosophers ask. “How can I be safe in a world where my family and I could die at any moment? What is the evil in me? What is the nature of God? Who am I?” And the only difference between somebody who has OCD and a great philosopher . . .?’ The way he poses the question, I can’t tell if it’s rhetorical or if he wants an answer.

‘There’s only one difference,’ he continues, before I can speak. ‘People with OCD actually want an answer.’

The post Penny Moodie unpacks OCD in new book, The Joy Thief appeared first on Women's Agenda.