Raunchy gifts and Minxy misses

In the past few weeks, handwringing Australians have concerned themselves with little else besides the precarious State Of The Female and our terribly delicate sensibilities.

There has been speculation as to whether or not sportswomen (and the allure thereof) would be crippled without tantalizing outfits to draw the crowds in, or if they are merely pawns in a nefarious global plot to further objectify women. Particularly prevalent amongst this line of questioning was the considered and measured response of many that “people would watch chicks’ sport if it weren’t so boring, innit?”

Well, quite.

Tony Abbott, bless his rubbery face, was somewhat unceremoniously thrown into the muck last week when it was revealed he’d rather his daughters wait until marriage before bestowing the precious, precious gift of their virginity upon just any old village squire who happens to pitch up outside their door with a few winsome words and a packet of johnnies. The nerve of him!

Last Friday, Federal Member for Kingston Amanda Rishworth called for the toxic exposure to raunchy music videos to be wrestled from the sex crazed eyes of our vulnerable young. Punch editor David Penberthy echoed her sentiments in an article for The Advertiser, claiming “If the upshot of Ms Rishworth’s proposal is that Akon or whatever other unreconstructed hip-hop misogynist can only have his crass videos screened after 9pm, I don’t think it’s a body blow for our collective civil liberties.”

Double points to Mr Penberthy for exposing the quaint sensibilities of an Adelaide readership to the notion of an unreconstructed anything, let alone a misogynist. (Which, if all my efforts over past years are any indication of, is a concept almost as foreign to them as the idea of ignoring Robert Doyle every time he talks yet more predictable smack about our fair city. Note to Doyle: interstate rivalry is so last millennium.)

But I digress.

The latest shitstorm, if I may be so bold as to quote PM Rudd, concerns a certain online video game to have emerged from deep within the putrid cesspool of the internet’s underbelly.

My Minx has come under fire for creating an online world that invites its players to “become the most stylish Minx the whole world over!” The aim of the game is relatively simple, provided most of the neural pathways in your brain are functioning properly: create a ‘minxy’ avatar, dress her or him in as much or as little as you like and go forth and prosper. In the world of Style City, ‘prospering’ amounts to winning things like Style Offs, being Minx of the Week and earning Pink Pounds (which sound rather like the kind of thing creator Chris Evans would be encouraging his starry eyed poplets to be losing). Pink pounds can be earned by winning aforementioned ‘Style Offs’ (voted on by other Minxes), playing games and answering surveys, working in the online job center, signing your friends up and, my personal favourite, ‘finding a generous lover’.

And generosity is key in the Minxiverse. As Evans says in his mission statement, “We believe that you, the end-user, should enjoy top quality web entertainment that stimulates, educates and excites your sense.” The fact that Blighty Arts chose to abandon such lofty values and instead create the turgid brainfart that is My Minx is a bit of a mystery, but one we can gloss over for the time being.

Evans goes on: “It is you, our community, that is the most important aspect of our company and it is our mission and honour to serve and entertain you.” Did you hear that? Serve and entertain YOU! It’s an honour, you guys.

Online news forums and their inhabitants have predictably been up in arms – mainly because most news sources have chosen to present the game as being somehow aimed at small children rather than just accessible to them. ‘What is the world coming to?’ they’ve fretted, despairingly. WON’T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?!

Which is precisely what I’d like to know. When, in amongst all the fearmongering, interfering and moralizing claptrap, will somebody start thinking of the gosh darn children?

Because here’s the thing. My Minx is actually no different to the convoluted, aesthetic obsessed, drama filled games of Barbie I played as a child. There may have been some subtle nuances that changed from week to week, but invariably my storyline stayed the same – Barbie has a fight with Ugly Barbie over Ken, scene abstractly segues into a school dance or the workplace, Ken and Barbie make up, have sex. Occasionally there’s a threesome.

As a Barbie obsessed freak until the age of 12 (it was the early 90s, everybody was doing it), I was merely using my dolls to reflect and explore the world around me as I saw it. And pretty much the way I saw the world between the ages of 8 and 12 was through videotaped episodes of Beverley Hills 90210. You do the maths.

The fact is, we can bleat on all we like about banning things left, right and centre. It won’t change the inescapable facts that a) children are like sponges (often smelly, but porous as all hell) and b) WE’VE created the culture they’re so readily absorbing and spouting back at us like obnoxious miniature fountains.
Of course female tennis players gain value for how they look. Every single female on the planet is rewarded for what she looks like. The whole tired concept of ‘this is what a real woman looks like’ (and excuse me while I vomit into my wastepaper basket) is ruined by the fact that actual real women don’t really look like anything other than a human body with lady bits.

Tony Abbott, for all that his words may have been the well intentioned ‘advice’ of a father, is only reflecting a widely held societal belief that sex is something that happens to women and therefore they need to take steps to protect themselves from the undesirable elements of it. Viginity as a gift? Loathsome. But how many people who quite rightly disagree with that would still consider a woman who’s had TOO MUCH sex with TOO MANY men a slovenly tramp? As Emily Maguire says in her excellent polemic Princesses & Pornstars, “The real definition of a slut is a woman who’s having more sex than the person calling her a slut thinks she should be having.”

And as for banning raunchy music videos in the daytime hours…well, it’s a nice idea, but the advent of You Tube has pretty much called all bets off on shielding our little darlings from the evils of the televised outside world.


Here’s the hard truth – if we want to protect children from a culture we see as being damaging to their psyches and development, we can’t just put a blindfold over their eyes and hope they don’t peek. We have to change the actual culture. If we want women in sport to be appreciated for their prowess on the field, we have to change the culture that says their greatest asset is how they look. If we want women to regard virginity as a gift (and I don’t, actually), then we have to stop telling them that they can use sex to get what they want, and showing them how to do it.

We have to stop telling men that sexing someone up is akin to conquering them and therefore they need to do it to as many foreign bodies as possible. We have to hope that the person aiming for the highest office in our country would treat men and women equally when it comes to valuing their bodies, and not continue to peddle the idea that women are porcelain objects whose fragility can be compromised with improper handling from calloused hands.

The intellectual horror that is the My Minx website is really only a reflection of what transpires in our culture every day. Are we really so naïve as to think we haven’t had a part in ensuring its popularity and marketability? As American writer Latoya Peterson wrote about Evans first outing, My Bimbo, “We can ban a game. What are we going to do to fix the culture?”

The Gift of Giving

As far as Christmas festivities go, beyond using them as an excuse to skive off work and drink before noon, I'm not really that interested. Ever since my mother died, it's lacked a certain je n'ai c'est quois, if you know what I mean. In fact, this year I'll be spending most of it on radio, speaking to other depressed and lonely family-less sad sacks, after which I plan to ride my bicycle to my very excellent house and drink cocktails with Lula over some highly competitive scrabble.

Christmas, that old grey mare, she ain't what she used to be.

But every old grey mare has a little bit of lustre left in her, even if it comes in the most unexpected places. And so I want to share this cute little glimpse into my relationship with my father, which has gone from strength to strength since my mother died (an ironic upside I suppose), and the Christmas gift he assembled for me.

Yesterday, I dropped the Old Man off at the airport so he could travel to the sunny climes of Queensland. He casually mentioned that there was a bag in the back of his car - which I shall be enjoying very much for the next two weeks, hello beach etc - with a few things in it that I might need or like. Being the gift fiend that I am, I loitered illegally in the parking bay to unpack it that instant while he hovered about in the exceptionally cute manner of someone manly and tough who hopes that their thoughtfulness has pleased someone.

Here, in an astoundingly astute demonstration of how well he knows me without even having to think about it, is what my father gave me for Christmas:

1.The Practical

I, like approximately 95% of the rest of the thinking world, love coffee. I also love guests on summer mornings. Ergo, a coffee plunger that services six is rather practical and perfect in every way.

It occurs to me also that my father might think it a nice thing to have in case I have 'company' over, because it is his desire that I become married post haste to a dashing man so that I may a) avoid spinsterdom and/or suffocating under the crushing weight of my fading looks i.e. Miss Havisham; and b) find someone else to deal with my irresponsible approach to finances i.e. "Don't look at me Tony Jones, she's your problem now."

But at least while Tony Jones fretted over the woeful state of my bank account, and the copious number of bills I 'handle' by 'not opening', he'd have delicious fresh coffee from a plunger for six. We'd need that when our friends Maxine, Denton, Safran, Myf and Hamish B came around. (The observant will note that's seven people, but Hamish B is a tea person. Darjeeling, if you must know.)

2. The Feminine

Because I was raised in the exotic locales of the Middle East, I have grown accustomed to my father passing through international airports and more importantly the Duty Free shops found therein. Hence, I have been fortunate enough my entire life to be kept in a steady supply of perfume and various other accoutrements of womanhood.

Perhaps to expedite the aforementioned task of finding a husband, my father continues to bestow upon me the gift of Smelling Winsome. Regardless of motive, I like especially that this satisfies the more feminine element of gift giving to your daughter - having taken care of the practical aspect with the coffee plunger, I am now free to waft about my kitchen in a cloud of deliciousness while brewing legal drugs for my friends and future significant other.

3. The Absolutely Effing Necessary

When your father gives you a gigantic jar containing $218.65 in ten and twenty cent pieces, you realise instinctively that he a) knows you better than you thought; b) thinks you're slightly ridiculous; and c) yearns for the day when his 28 year old daughter will no longer consider a jar containing $218.65 of spare change the financial equivalent of "a lifeboat", or will at least have someone else for whom these problems can become Worrisome.

4. The Card


This I saved until I had safely left the airport, as the Security Guard began throwing his weight around to move me past the hordes of invisible cars attempting to drop off invisible passengers. I expected a heart squeezing declaration of love - something along the lines of 'My dear possum: I'm so proud of you and hope you have a lovely Christmas. Love from Dad x'. What I got was even better though; the icing on the cake of a perfectly insightful Christmas gift:


"Merry Christmas Clementine. Please pay all the bills outstanding particularly any with my name on them. Love Dad."

I'm thinking of framing it.

Happy holidays all xo

There's no 'St' in Eve

"Passing test of time


The Advertiser is to be commended for its coverage yesterday highlighting the benefits of marriage to wellbeing.


It is a timely reminder of why we must preserve marriage and resist attempts to radically alter its definition to satisfy political fads.


Jerome Appleby, Australian Family Association, Fullarton"

Dear Mr Appleby,

I write to commend you for the heartfelt letter published in today's Advertiser (17/12/2009). So overcome with emotion was I upon reading your stalwart defence of all that is sacred and holy that I simply had to write and extend my congratulations, and indeed my gratitude.

For too long now, the Homosexual Mafia have been peddling their indecent propaganda in an attempt to wrest from the Side Of Good one of our most sacred institutions. Referring to themselves as 'Gay' when you and I both know there is frankly nothing "keenly alive and exuberant : having or inducing high spirits" about them is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the HM's duplicitous agenda.

It's bad enough that we allow them to exist at all - Jerome (may I call you Jerome?), I simply died inside when I realised they were being permitted to teach in our schools. Teach! When everyone knows that the number one priority of the HM's plan to spread Satan's evil throughout the world is through the systematic and rigorous recruitment of impressionable children! It simply beggars belief that a group of people as sexually depraved and amoral as the Gays (and there, even I have been tricked into their co-opting of one of the English language's most glorious words) should be allowed ANYWHERE near children - or animals for that matter!

But now, not content with having been granted recognition as a 'people' (and Jerome, I can barely bring myself to grant them even that, but of course it's good folk like you and I now who must bow down before immorality lest we be ejected from our jobs for so-called 'hate speech' and 'discrimination' - talk about a wolf in sheep's clothing!) they continue to insist on trying to infiltrate the last vestige we God fearing Christians and anyone else normal enough to realise that God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve have against their Agenda Of Social Destruction.

Marriage, as I'm sure you'll agree Jerome, is a beautiful institution rooted in the great tradition of the transferral of property from one man to another. As everyone knows, man cannot be property of another man (unless he is a slave and unfortunately 'Affirmative Action' means that's no longer allowed..). Women, however, are the natural property of their husbands because a) that is how God has decreed it and b) being naturally subserviant and nurturing, we require the strong hand of a man to protect and govern us and open jars and call us cute when we're cross.

Additionally, women like knowing that there's a man around to make tough decisions for them and to lay down the household law, so to speak. As a nautical type myself, I like to use this analogy: a household is a ship, and everyone must play a part to ensure smooth sailing. But you can't have two captains on a ship because that would be anarchy. And given that women are incapable of reading maps, we are naturally not going to be given the helm of a powerful metaphor like seafaring-as-marriage. Now, that doesn't mean we can't make the ship look pretty and clean and have a steaming hot plate of food on the table for when the Captains Of Our Hearts come home at night - far from it! A good wife knows that the way to her husband's heart is through his stomach, and for all those who would claim that a Christian marriage lacks 'spiciness', I tell them this - you wouldn't be saying that if you saw how my husband reacts everytime I serve him dinner in a silk penoir with my crucifix nestled between my you-know-whats! God doesn't hate sex, He loves it! As long as it's between a man and his wife and the Australian Family Association approves. 

Love making brings a man closer to his wife and strengthens their bond and mutual happiness. Why, just the other day I made the daring move of leaving the lamp on (I know, Jerome, I'm FRIGHTFULLY NAUGHTY but sometimes I do like to spice things up a bit) and my husband loved it so much that he not only increased my household allowance for that week but he gave me a little bit on the side and told me to 'buy myself something nice'. So I bought a new Laura Ashley dress with some divine lacework on the collar and a copy of Susan Boyle's new CD, which just made for an absolutely lovely day because I listened to it all the way through - twice! - while dusting the china and making a steak and kidney pudding for dinner, which I served in the Laura Ashley dress. We even had some champagne as a special treat! Well, in actual fact it was Maison because Satan doesn't take 'special occasions' into account when it comes to imbibing his devil juice, but it felt a bit cheeky all the same!

So my point is that marriage is an institution that needs to be protected from the likes of the Homosexual Mafia. I can well see why Science would discover that marriage leads to healthier and happier people, because after all that kind of lifelong commitment between a man and a woman is part of God's plan, and the legal superiority we enjoy is His clever way of enticing more of us into it (although, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure I approve of non-Christians or childbearers having those rights because as Believers it should be Our Kind who reap the rewards of our faith and moral judgment, both here and in God's Everlasting Eternal Kingdom but I suppose at least it prevents the kind of wilful promiscuity that seems to be the modus operandi of both the Homosexual Mafia and the young women I see wearing all sorts of frightful getups that, if you ask me, lead to one thing and one thing only and they have nobody to blame BUT THEMSELVES and that's about all I have to say about that, except I will say one more thing and that's that women need to remember their place and their great gifts of subserviance and devotion - Jerome, don't even get me STARTED on the 'feminists'!)

Anyway, I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the crux of all this hinges on marriage creating happier and healthier people - and basically, the thought of creating 'happier' and 'healthier' Homosexuals sends a shiver up my spine! Two men loving each other is an ABOMINATION and as such they deserve to wallow in SELF HATRED and LOATHING and be prevented from enjoying and sense of SELF WORTH. And before anyone mentions 'lesbians', let me just say that I cannot even UNDERSTAND what that means because it is impossible for two women to have sexual relations with one another. I don't think I need to draw you a picture of female anatomy Jerome for you to agree that two women making love is about as effective as rubbing two chalk dusters together, so the idea of them being able to get MARRIED is just ridiculous! You may as well allow a woman to marry her pillow because the only thing she would get lying next to another woman is a Good Night's Sleep!

So bravo Jerome for once again standing up to the political fads that are seeking to take over our world. I for one am so grateful that I have you and the entirety of the Australian Family Association watching out for my interests and directing policy makers on what makes a Good and Just society - and indeed a healthy one! We none of us can rest easy while living under the constant threat of a Homosexual Tidal Wave. Health and Happiness is a Privilege and not a Right, and as such should only be enjoyed by those whom conservative religious lobbyists deem respectable members of society. Brava, Jerome! Brava! VIVA LA RESISTENCE!

Yours in Christ,

Mrs. T Abbott, Canberra

Dear Burger King

Dear Burger King,

While I appreciate that it may be getting more and more difficult to sell your products, given that the discerning food consumer appears to have developed tastebuds in the last decade, I'm not sure that resorting to low grade sexual objectification is really the answer.

I'm just a-singing in the shower in my burgakini, as all hot sexy up-for-it chicks do.

Granted, I'm not from the UK. Perhaps a country almost completely ignored by the sun will take any opportunity to leap into both a bikini and the ensuing straitjackets of gender stereotyping for the most tenuous of reasons.  Who can say?

While I wouldn't be so close minded as to suggest that you assume ALL of your intended audience are neanderthalic, sexist and slightly stalkerish - I'm sure there are some absolute GEMS for whom the pursuit of enjoyment in stimulating conversation, fine wine, the arts and an agreeably equal relationship with women is not mutually exclusive from perving on near naked women behind the veil of anonymity as a treat over breakfast - I'd hazard a guess that your little ad campaign falls in that little category I like to call 'problematic'.

Sexy AND violent! Win!

Don't get me wrong. I'm willing to admit that there are some women who consider it an honour to have anonymous men gawping at them through the good graces of an unimaginative advertising team for whom the lowest common denominator is all the heights they'll ever aspire to. They consider it 'fun' and 'flattering' or, as one lady on your website gushed, 'really original' (which frankly suggests to me that she's spent her 23 years on this earth being raised by dolphins and has therefore had zero access to any form of electronic or print communication, in which case it's awfully irresponsible of you to use her because such stellar ignorance of the basic tenets of pop cultural construction effectively renders her a) retarded and thus b) unable to grant consent to film porny images of her in order to sell greasy, lank breakfast burgers.)

No, I would certainly never suggest that you or the vacuous society we live in FORCE these women to strip down for strangers. And if you're not forcing them, what's the harm? I mean, let them CHOOSE their CHOICE right? It's EMPOWERING? I'm probably just jealous, after all. Perhaps if men wanted to watch me shower in my bikini while they ate their breakfast then I wouldn't have such a giant stick up my big ole fat feminist butt about it, and then we could all just GET ALONG.

 Somehow, the lack of an exclamation mark on this turns it from 'Nova FM' to just plain 'creepy'.

No. It's not really the blatant sexism that bothers me so much. As a human being with a brain that functions beyond a 'ANGRY', 'HAPPY', 'HUNGRY', 'DROOL' switch system, I'm used to it. It's the technical failure that bothers me more than anything.

I mean, come now. If you're going to resort to the predictably boring objectification of women, could you at least provide a little context to your ad strategy? Because the only connection I can make between 'Burger King's new breakfast menu' and 'hot babe in a shower' is that when I think of all the money, jobs, bandwidth and braincells destroyed by this pathetic, patronising and retrograde ad campaign, all I want to do is puke up my breakfast violently and then scrub away the tainted scent of corporate failure.

Yours sincerely,

Clementine 

 ****

Write your own letter here and then republish on your blogs and facebooks like the crazy, fun ruining paleo-feminist killjoys we love to be.

Nick Cave: The man, the myth and the misogynist

I was prompted to write this in response to Anwyn Crawford’s excellent article on Overland regarding the trajectory of Nick Cave’s own brand of misogyny, and his elevation to the Australian Royal Court of Artistic Genius.

For those who don’t know, Cave personally selected the cover photograph for the Australian release of his new novel The Death of Bunny Munro (which he has claimed was written in two months and on his iPhone). Whereas other releases feature this or this on the cover, the delightful image Australian consumers are treated to is this:

A debate is raging at Overland over the subject matter of Crawford’s article; however, very few opponents are actually responding to any of her arguments. Instead, she has been branded with the same pedestrian insults used whenever anyone (especially a woman) finds offence in something pounced upon by a section of the community insistent upon loving it. The difference in this case is that Overland’s audience are generally intelligent, articulate folk with, I would argue, liberal values. That some would reduce themselves to the same kind of sexist, tired arguments employed by the slavering masses who regularly misspell things in the news.com forums is depressing beyond belief. As commentor Kalinda says:

When will people learn to respond to polemical, engaged intelligent women without reducing them to sexless stereotypes?... It’s unacceptable for people who consider themselves radicals or left-wingers to conduct themselves in such a sexist way, completely reinforcing all the dominant modes the right uses to silence and dismiss women.

Indeed, Crawford’s original article was not the offended spoutings of an hysterical wowser unfamiliar with her subject matter. She demonstrates a very intimate familiarity with Cave’s career, and even confesses to a conflicted love for his earlier work. I can’t help but suspect that what Cave’s proponents are really taking offence to is not Crawford’s accusations of Cave’s misogyny but of his laziness and ultimately a neogothic pomp and circumstance whose ostentatiousness disguises his desire for admiration and artistic plaudits.

It’s his transformation into an antipodean Elvis Costello – growing old, mild and respectably bourgeois along with his audience – that really makes me mad. Not because I believe that Cave has sold out or betrayed his musical talent – he had precious little to begin with – but because the deference paid to him and to his work grows in inverse proportion to its increasing mediocrity, to its juvenile silliness and self-parody.

Crawford highlights what so often goes unmentioned within cultural circles (who at times seem as incapable of rational debate as the fiercely anti-art philistines they presume are incapable of recognizing genius) – that very frequently, cultural cringe leads us to not only ignore the Emporer’s New Clothes, but declare them avante-garde, pre-emptive and ultimately a fine reflection of our own cutting edge artistic values.

Ultimately, even if you disagree with Crawford’s analysis it is undoubtedly a well thought out and articulate one. It exemplifies the kind of interesting writing featured on Overland (which, incidentally, is holding its Subscriberthon this week - $39 concession for the year, go on I dare you..) and doesn’t deserve to be sneeringly dismissed, as reader Fotis Kapetorpoulos did today, as “pure undergraduate feminist critique from the 80s – worse, it smacks of Anglo puritanical, sexless debasement of the art.”

Kapetorpoulos goes on to say:

Ms Crawford writes, 'like many women, I have troubled relationship with the sexism and, yes, misogyny that continues to shape pop music'- she must mean like the very few sexless Anglo middle class women I represent - as most of the Greek, Spanish, African and Italian women I know love Cave’s sexually dark malaise, his overture to death and lust.

Sexless. Anglo. Puritanical. Pearl clutching. Sensationalist. Hysterical. Frigid.

In addition to these (expected) accusations is another one: that of inferiority. For all his embrace of Spanish culture (which he documents in detail), Kapetorpoulos is exhibiting cultural bigotry that oppresses not only Anglo women but also the Latin women he’s seeking to define as hot-blooded, up for it, feisty, dark sex machines. The orientalism of Asian women is very well documented in Australia, but less so is that of Latinas and the ‘Jungle Goddesses’. Greek, Spanish, African and Italian women are not inherently more accepting of (read: able to appreciate because they don’t let their frigid white Anglo chastity belts get in the way) radically confronting sexuality in art. To make such a blanket statement is about as stupid as saying that most of the white men I know ride bicycles, vote Green and hate sexism and therefore all white men must be like that. I mean, if only, right?

But perhaps most infuriating is the refusal to engage with any of Crawford’s arguments. What she is essentially doing is questioning whether or not those with a feminist philosophy or a concern for equality can ignore blatant misogyny when it comes to art – and if they can, is that even a bad thing?

Instead of labeling her prudish and puritanical (YOU INSULTED THE KING! YOU DON’T GET IT, HE’S DARK AND SHIT AND YOU CAN’T HANDLE SEX, PRUDEY PRUDE, WHY DON’T YOU GO AND CLUTCH SOME PEARLS!) why not respond rationally to her arguments? If Nick Cave (or any artist under criticism for capitalizing on oppression to sell their work) is indeed so good and so subversive and so clever, it should be extremely easy to mount an argument based on why that is the case. 

I suspect, however, that the majority of people criticizing Crawford (and note, I’m not suggesting a defence of misogyny in art is impossible) are either actually incapable of articulating convincingly what it is they find so exceptional about Cave’s work and WHY it isn’t misogynistic in nature – or they're incapable of articulating convincingly why it’s exceptional IN SPITE OF its misogyny and indeed why it’s possible for the twain to coexist.

It’s frustrating that what could be the basis for a fascinating conversation on the how far should be the limits of morality when it comes to art has descended instead into something so superficially defensive. As Karen points out, it wasn’t until Roman Polanski’s arrest that she sincerely started questioning the morality of loving his films. Crawford’s article should have been the starting point for a conversation about the truly confrontational nature of art – loving it in spite of what it draws upon and refuses to apologise for.

I, for one, am not particularly familiar with Nick Cave’s ouevre. I read the first chapter of The Death of Bunny Munro and found it to be as predictably cock-focused as lots of other inane texts dressed up as deeply confronting explorations of masculinity (more on that in a follow up post).

But the image chosen for the Australian edition of TDOBM (which is vaguely where all this started from) is offensive to me. I think it’s just another example of a disembodied female body part being used to sell something while pretending to be ‘high art’. It offends me as a writer, as a woman and as human who thinks we can all be a little bit better than that, a little bit more imaginative.

I find the defence of blatant sexism in art to be more infuriating than the defence of it in marketing and pop culture. It’s a calculated attempt to excuse laziness and titillation as irony. It is no different to the educated men I attended university with – men who were well versed in gender studies, media, liberalism and social justice – talking about going out to ‘find some sluts’ and claiming that their innate left wing goodness meant that their sentiment couldn’t possibly be aggressive or violent.

But ultimately, I’m offended that should I, or Crawford, or any other woman from any other part of the world, express the opinion that we are offended by imagery used specifically to disembody women and turn them into nothing more than a passive sexual object to project frustrations onto, that we are by turns ‘sexless’, ‘frigid’, ‘too ugly to fuck anyway’, ‘jealous’, ‘angry’, ‘humourless’, ‘uncultured’, ‘not getting it’ or, my favourite, ‘missing the point’. 

What, pray, is the point of a crotch shot of a girl of undetermined aged lying spread eagled on a bed? Explain that to me - I'll listen, I really will, but not if you call me a frigid bitch who just doesn't get it. Because I'll be forced to believe what is probably the truth - that you like looking at disembodied female parts because you find them sexy, and you don't want to have to defend that to anyone so you'll pretend its culturally advanced in some way to sidestep the fact that what you're actually doing is getting off on misogyny. Frankly, I'd have a lot more respect for people if they just put it like that rather than trying to pretend that what they're doing is challenging the masses.

As Crawford writes:

Cave is both a rampant misogynist and an arch-snob but it’s actually his snobbery that bothers me more – or rather, the way that his snobbery, amplified and encouraged by others, lends to his misogyny an air of respectability, as if it were something to be admired.

Well, call me a frigid, sexless, Anglo, jealous bitch – but I’m more inclined to find it dull, predictable and tiresome rather than admirable.

I guess I’m just not as cultured as a lot of other people. Or sexual. 

What do you think? Can we separate art from misogyny or racism or oppression in general? Can something be specifically glorifying these things and still be good? Would we not accept it from racist art but excuse it when it comes to sexism?


Next post: A consideration of the misogyny and subsequent celebration of 'high art' literature.

Competition winner!

After some deliberation, I have decided to award the $60 buysterlighting.com voucher to......

Meva of Bills and Moon!

There were some cracker entries - I admit, honourable mention must go to Daniel R, who appealed to both my sense of righteousness and my intellectual vanity - but in the end I had to give it to Meva for being both of-the-moment and critical of pop cultural bandwagons that behave as if an untalented, slightly deranged upstart has not only reinvented the wheel but decoupaged it in sparkly glue.

Thank you all for entering and joining in the great tradition of accepting free promotional gifts from companies looking to expand their market.

Competition time!

Some time ago, I received a very nice email from a lady who works at www.buysterlighting.com. Through said nice lady, I was asked if I might be interested in reviewing one of their products. Given as I am to jumping aboard anything remotely resembling a Freedom train, I of course replied that yes, I would be very interested in reviewing anything she wanted to send my way.

Having a little peruse on the site, I found many lovely lighting things including this ode to retro living. Sadly, the budget allocated to my humble little blog did not extend to retro excellence. Not for the first time do I curse my inability to turn a hobby into a millionaire's playground, and while I'm at it I also curse my inability to resist eating large slabs of cake at inopportune moments i.e any time that I hope to continue fitting into my jeans.

Thanks to buysterlighting.com, I have a $60 gift voucher to give away to one very lucky reader of ye olde Bad Apples. I myself will be reviewing this functional-for-the-office product in the next week or so, which is most fortuitous as a) I like to read late at night but am scared of the dark and hate jumping out of bed to turn the light off and b) I tend to enjoy things that are free with approximately 50% more enthusiasm than things that are not.

So to win the voucher, all you need to do is email me on audreyandthebadapples AT gmail DOT com and tell me in 25 words or less why I shouldn't be embarrassed about being afraid of the dark or sometimes sleeping all night with the lamp on when I've ill-advisedly begun thinking of the girl from The Ring and more recently the trailer for Paranormal Activities, which I'm still going to see even though it is a Bad Idea and will mean that I have to start sleeping in the daytime and living at night, and possibly have to move to northern Alaska or one of those other weird regions where the sun never sets.

UPDATE: Competition closes at 4pm on Wednesday 18 November.