paper dolls, paper heart

I love paper dolls. As a child, paper dolls represented to me an uncomplicated intersection between art and craft (of which I was always engaging, in some capacity or another) and the over-dramatic roll-playing of which I was also quite fond.

So, imagine! My joy when I discovered these paper dolls:



yes!!! you too can own this

The jokes, the paper-doll-possibilities are endless! Why limit yourself to "I did not have sexual relations with that paper-woman" when he can also deny sexual relations with paperclips, staplers, that piece of cardboard over there that you were going to make in to something cool, the felt that you rescued from the craft box that your mum was going to throw out... amazing!



PONIES?! BILL CLINTON KNOWS A THING OR TWO ABOUT PONIES!!

YES!! BILL CLINTON AND PONIES?! AMAZING!!!





And this, because as a feminist, I (somewhat predictably) embrace Frida Kahlo as an icon of aggressively independent, creative and outspoken feminism... so naturally to me, these paper dolls are  amazing and I love them:

from here

 Amazing!

kiss me kate

from this super blog about vintage fashion

So, fuck it. I know I'm mixing my metaphors, mashing my cultural references and such like, but I'm fairly sure I don't fucking care.

I just love Katharine Hepburn.

Such an aggressively individual woman; Hepburn grew up within a suffragist household where she was exposed to the kind of forthright frankness that she later became known for ... and that I admire her so greatly for. In a time when women were still expected to be demure, precious little petals, she was everything but that.

Hepburn was also outspoken regarding religion, which she believed was "a sop for the masses".

"I'm an atheist and that's it. I believe there's nothing we can know except that we should be kind to each other and do what we can for other people" (from here)

Yeah. 

Paper thin



from here via ffffound

 It's true. I am.

I seem to have an alarmingly good ability to think and act in a manner that is so utterly selfish...and then, as I suppose most people do, feign justification - if not to everyone else, at least to myself.

Societal rules and constructs regarding care responsibilities typically necessitate that women are self-sacrificing; one's role as a mother is not without marked compromise and indeed, subsequent judgement. 

We are expected to endure, suffer in silence and persevere irrespective of our feelings.

A large part of me agrees, in so much that I feel that surely the wellbeing of my children is to be given primacy over my own? However, what if the two are intrinsically connected, and the hollow ghost of a mother is no more beneficial than if she were to act as she felt ... and not as she thought she should feel...?

Feminism encourages us to challenge those rules that bind us. But this becomes part of the dilemma - while I feel that the societal rules that may limit us and our actions are rigid (but movable) it is difficult to encourage others to see that this may be the case. And while I know that our willingness to push these boundaries is shaped by our experiences, I recognise that this can be both a limiting, and expansive experience.

on being a feminist bride, and other awesome stuff I write on other people's blogs. yeah.

image from Juju mama

A post I wrote on Mia Freedman's site, Mamma Mia regarding feminist brides and virginal white, being given away and promising to 'love honour and obey'.

The question posed by Mia was something along the lines of, "were you a feminist bride"... and Mia cited an example of her own interpretation of traditional marriage rites, her bridesmaid carried Mia's son down the aisle, as a fair rejection of the 'well, I'm not a virgin' assumption from days past.

My response:

Yeah, I’d like to think I was a feminist bride, even if it wasn’t a conscientious choice to be ‘a feminist bride’ – I just wanted to do things our way.


So… we got married at home, in our backyard, without about 70 or so guests (and that was a massive number blow out). We stood around and had beers with our mates before the ceremony, and then the celebrant asked everyone to assemble outside and we came out together, me, N and my daughters. It was lovely. He wore black jeans, a shirt and volleys, I wore a dress my mother and I made from black fabric and some gorgeous white lace – not what I had originally intended to wear! (I wanted to wear jeans and a tshirt!) But what we created from some fabrics that we found and loved.

We catered ourselves, asked a few friends to make some desserts.

We didn’t have rings. Neither of us are that in to jewellery, so it was a pointless exercise, exchanging rings.

We asked each of our dads to read some hilarious excerpts from a couple of books a friend gave us, ‘dont’s for wives’ and ‘donts for husbands’.

In place of the traditional giving away, the celebrant asked our friends and family if they would support us in our lives together, to which there was a resounding, and heart warming ‘YES!’

There was not a hint of ‘honour and obey’, rather, heartfelt words, and “do you promise to be a fabulous husband”… I laughed and joked the whole way through… it was a beautiful, glorious interpretation of a traditional rite that I had all my life advocated doing away with.

OMG, and the flowers! So N had brought home stacks of fluffy white chrysanthemums from his work, and we had lots of vases of chrysanthemum spread around the house. It was beautiful… I ended up with a bouquet (!) because there was 3 gorgeous roses out the front of my parents house, from a bush called ‘Julia’s rose’ (my sister’s name, I think I gave it to them when she was born?) that the night before I asked my mum if she could cut and bring over for a bouquet.

And we didn’t have a wedding cake – instead a dessert table. Cos I love dessert. So it was amazing, beautiful. A great day had by all. The whole thing was very mutually planned and organised too – I think that’s significant. Because I’m a terrible decision maker and not prepared to shoulder all/the bulk of the responsibility for what is supposed to be *our* day. Plus, obv N wanted a say in it, to us that seemed completely normal but I understand that often, brides don’t want their groom involved at all.

AND WE DIDN’T HAVE BUCK’S/HEN’S NIGHTS. Again, a mutual decision, but this whole ‘last night of freedom’ thing is bullshit, insulting and demeaning to the commitment we were making (and had already made) to each other.



And… I read offbeat bride and East side bride - both fairly religiously, as great blogs that were incredibly reassuring for knowing that it was ok to do things our way, because the important part of the day was not how the photos looked, or whether my shoes or hair or *everything* was perfect, but rather, the vows. The presence of friends and family and the commitment that we were fortunate enough to be able to make to each other.

Incidentally, I have read in a lot of places (particularly offbeat bride, because that's where I frequently read stuff) comments women made about their justification for changing their name being that they 'were not particularly attached to their surname' and that they 'wanted to have the same surname as their children'.
I didn't change my name, never had any intention of doing so, and nor was it expected of me by either my husband or my family. Why? Because I like my surname, I'm quite attached to it because I've lived with it for 31 years, and wasn't about to sacrifice this for another (albeit nice) name in honour of a cultural tradition I don't endorse.
And... I *do* have the same name as my children, because they have my name. If we had more, they would also have my name, it's not really a question for either of us, and as such I wonder if the comments that women make with regard to 'not being particularly attached to their surnames' come from the assumption that they will change their name as they get older?
I don't care if people know or not know that N and I are married; that wasn't the purpose of the exercise. So in this sense, name changing seems like a superfluous exercise.

on Germaine Greer, feminism, and Bingle's well, bingle

image from Wack! Art and the Feminist Revolution exhibition, from 2007

An opinion piece published in the Herald Sun the other day suggested that not only was feminism a great big fat failure, but it was also responsible for "appalling rates of teenage pregnancies, damning numbers of divorces, and more unhappy and exploited women than ever". Further, Germaine Greer's "numbingly dreary, poorly written guide" (The Female Eunuch)  was completely unsuccessful, as evidenced by factors such as the size of female Olympic volleyball player's bikini bottoms, and the Bingle/Fevola issue. Bingle is generally criticised as being some kind of sexual predator, preying on an innocent (!) then-married Fevola and the whole scenario was used as an example of how "feminism hasn't really worked, so could Germaine Greer please shoosh" (I'm paraphrasing) and as a woman who, as Alan Howe suggests "are tugging hardest at the reins that hold back their gender".
Ergh.


He also lambastes Greer for changing her opinion, and expressing said new opinion publicly, accusing her of being as media hungry as the 'big-breasted b-grade celebrities' she has previously criticised (more paraphrasing, but you get the general idea).
And this, then, is the bit that I don't understand - surely we, as intelligent, thinking people, are allowed to change our ideas and opinions? Just as society changes and evolves, surely so are our interpretations of different issues affecting society?

Furthermore, how is it that Greer is solely and wholly responsible for the failure of feminism? Surely the undoing of the works of the sisterhood are more the efforts of a patriarchal society (one that it is all too easy to succumb to) than the failures of either Greer personally, or the feminist movement as a whole?

While accept that Greer is generally conveyed as an abrasive old bat, and I'm not about to defend her for her public commentary (she's more than capable of doing this herself) what she does do, and does very well, is challenge popular discourse on an issue, regardless of whether or not she anticipates this will be well received within popular media. That is, she opens the possibility to new ideas, different modes of thinking, and a general challenge to society-at-large to question whatever the current 'group think' on an issue may be, and in doing so, effectively moves undiscussed issues (such as the female body) in to public discourse (as she did with The Female Eunuch).
Finally, I don't think she's completely responsible for the 'Greer' image we receive in the media, as a crotchety old cranky ex-pat with too much to say and not enough media to say it in. I do, however, think that the media generally take great pleasure in portraying her as such, not the least of which (as we see in Howe's article, and echoed within reader comments) is used as a validation for the media-as-a-whole's rejection of feminism and for fixating on the body and women-as-sex-objects/inferior to men and therefore the root of all evil within society... etc.

As though oppression is the fault of the oppressed, for letting themselves be exploited.



Get real.

Frida Kahlo image from here (and originally sourced from Britannica)