I’m a recent subscriber to Ms. magazine, so I’ll be interested to check out the accompanying article on cover star Beyonce’s “Fierce Feminism” when it lands in my letterbox in the near future.

Considering her latest world tour is entitled “Mrs. Carter”, Beyonce is a questionable choice for the feminist bastion’s cover. While her personal life seems to be one built of respect, equality and solid choices, her public persona is somewhat at odds with this: she sings about men only being good for “putting a ring on it” and “paying bills” and poses with underboob on the cover of a men’s magazine while espousing the detriments of the patriarchy controlling what’s “sexy” and “feminine”.

Fellow feminist stalwart Bitch magazine has a worthwhile article tackling these contradictions and it’ll be interesting to see how Ms. justifies their cover choice.

Related: Why is Feminism Still a Dirty Word?

Beyonce Named Sexiest Woman of the Century.

Elsewhere: [Bitch] All Hail the Queen?

Image via Ms.

Why does Mindy only date white guys on The Mindy Project? [Jezebel]

The onscreen virginity trend. [Daily Life]

Fuck the friend zone; what about when guys you have a purely platonic interested in put you in the “girlfriend zone”? [Insert Literary Reference]

On masturbation and shame:

“In The Ethical Slut, perhaps the best-known ‘catechism’ of progressive sexual morality, Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy make the case that ‘the fundamental sexual unit is one person; adding more people to that unit may be intimate, fun, and companionable, but it does not complete anybody.’ Masturbation matters, they argue, not merely because it helps you learn what you want sexually from a partner, but because it helps bring ‘your locus of control into yourself.’” [The Atlantic]

Racism isn’t about being impolite. [New Matilda]

James Franco defends Baz Lurhmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby. [Vice]

The “skank flank”: what happens when you get a tattoo and are automatically deemed a slut. [Bust]

An ode to Barbara Walters. [The Cut]

Image via Entertainment Weekly.

While it may be “An Issue About Television”, this week New York magazine is all about the made-for-TV movie, Behind the Candelabra, based on the autobiographical novel of the same name about Liberace’s relationship with a much younger man, played in the HBO film by Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, respectively. 

It’s interesting to note that the subject matter of the film was deemed too risque for movie theatre audiences, so it was shopped around the TV networks until boundary pushing HBO snapped it up. I’m loving Michael Douglas’ androgynous look on the cover, and I can’t wait to see the film.

Image via ExtraTV.

While Beyonce may be the female version of a hustler, Clem Bastow writes that men can certainly be divas, too. It’s just that they’re never called that… [Daily Life]

In praise of The Mindy Project. [Medium]

Rapper Kitty Pryde unpacks the onstage sexual assault by a female fan of her male tour partner, rapper Danny Brown. [Vice]

Check out the latest online edition of ZINm magazine, by my friend Marc Bonnici, and contributions from yours truly and the woman who designed the artwork for this here blog, Zoe Meagher.

What the tabloids were speculating Angelina Jolie was doing while she was actually getting a double mastectomy. Sickening. [The Cut]

Not as gross as the trolls who are “mourning the loss of Angelina’s curves”, though. [Slate]

“An Open Letter to White Male Comedians.” [Jezebel]

Does Australia hate intellectuals? I tend to lean towards the affirmative. [Daily Life]

What the spate of cancellations means for the representation of gay people on television. [Slate]

Test the gender balance (or imbalance) of your retweets. And while you’re at it, follow me! [Twee-Q] 

Searching for an alternative name for “stay-at-home dad”. [The Atlantic] 

In response to the body- and slut-shaming surrounding Teen Mom Farrah Abraham’s porno, Jezebel reiterates that vaginal and anal sex don’t make you “loose” [SFW].

Rachel Hills’ TEDx Talk on the sex myth, the topic of her upcoming book of the same name. [YouTube]

Defending The Onion‘s Chris-Brown-”I-Always-Thought-Rihanna-Was-the-Woman-I’d-Beat-to-Death” joke. [The Frisky]

Stop calling Amanda Bynes crazy. [TheVine]

What did Tony Abbott mean when he said “women of calibre” should be encouraged to have children and should feminists be speaking out in favour of the Coalition’s superior paid parental leave scheme? [Daily Life]

“Panels Full of Women”: on fetishising female news voices. [News Junkee]

Debunking the prevalence of sex-selective abortions in Australia. [Daily Life]

“See a Woman Reading? Leave Her Alone.” The perils of reading and subsequent street harassment. [Gender Focus]

The Great Gatsby doesn’t do the “newly liberated” flapper justice. [Collectors Weekly]

Manic pixie dream guy? [Nerve]

The sexism of Star‘s Most Annoying Celebrities list. [The Times Magazine]

Denmark’s latest televisual offering: women stripping naked in front of a panel of two men who critique their bodies. Obviously, this is a crazy and sexist idea for a TV show, but is it any crazier or more sexist than, say, Snog Marry Avoid? Both have an underlying message that women aren’t good enough, with one referring to the naked body whilst the other takes aim at how and with what a woman cloaks herself. Your thoughts? [Bust]

A lot of this is thanks to my mum, who is a ’70s bra-burning hippie feminist through and through.

Though recently, as I increasingly immerse myself in current readings of feminism, I see just how far we’ve come, baby, and how the second-wave feminism of my mother’s era is worlds apart from today’s discourse on gender equality.

There have been many debates between second-, third- and fourth-wavers about who did, and is doing, more for the movement.

At a 2011 Melbourne Writers Festival presentation on why we still need feminism, Sophie Cunningham asserted that feminists under 25 can’t really grasp the concept because they’re still young and beautiful and have men falling at their feet. She also observed “a sort of ‘bottleneck’ in modern feminism”, where white, Western feminists aren’t able to incorporate intersectionality into the fold, which was a criticism of SlutWalk, one of latter-day feminism’s most high-profile conquests. Pardon me, but wasn’t it foremother Betty Friedan who was accused of being racist and homophobic with The Feminine Mystique?

Perhaps the most contentious issue is the constant bickering amongst young feminists as to what, exactly, feminism is. You’ve got women undertaking such obviously feminist tasks as Marissa Mayer overseeing Yahoo! and Beyonce nearing total world domination, yet they’re reluctant to call a spade a spade. And the non-feminist media would have you believe there’s infighting going on about who is allowed to be a feminist (definitely not Taylor Swift!).

But, I think, the feminist movement of today would like to believe it’s accessible to all kinds of women (and men): straight, gay, bi, male, female, trans, black, white, mixed-race, rich, poor, able-bodied and non-able-bodied, sex workers, etc. Can second-wave feminism of yesteryear say that?

This divide is illustrated by Germaine Greer’s infamous comments about Julia Gillard’s clothing choices and how they accentuated her apparently undesirable body shape last year on Q&A and feminists everywhere taking to their respective platforms to mostly disagree with her. One such vocal detractor was Mia Freedman, who said Greer “broke my heart a little bit” when she took herself “down in a hail of self-inflicted friendly fire while the world watche[d] in embarrassment.” When the two women appeared together on a recent episode of Q&A, Freedman was asked to clarify her response: did it mean she wasn’t a fan of the “ground-breaking, arse-kicking lightening rod for social change who ignited a feminist movement from which every woman in the western world has benefited” anymore? Was this an example of the abovementioned feminist in-fighting?

Freedman responded that while she has nothing but respect for the woman in whose water she grew up and who influenced her mother’s feminist awakening, “feminism needs to have a lot of different voices… It should be really, really broad and inclusive.” Essentially, feminism should accommodate both the foremothers and their daughters.

Freedman went on in that same episode of Q&A to—what some would describe as—shame sex workers, or “prostitutes” as she archaically called them, which ignited a backlash of her own. So much for that broad inclusion she waxed lyrical about…

While liberating housewives of Germaine and Freedman’s mother’s era from “the problem with no name” and ushering in the birth control pill are milestones women of today must be thankful for, they’re very much narrow-minded accomplishments: The Feminine Mystique appealed to white middle-class women and many women can’t afford the birth control pill, a predicament that still exists today. And second-wave feminism was very much responsible for the sexual liberation of a generation of people, but I’m not so sure that transfers to the hook up, raunch and porn culture/s of today (as Freedman’s comments about sex workers above would indicate).

For example, when I was living at home and Girls of the Playboy Mansion came on the TV, my mum would make me turn it off (keep in mind I was 22 by the time I moved out and this was not long before that). When I brought this up recently as an example of her generation’s reluctance to embrace sex positivity, she launched into a tirade that ended with her calling into question the women who pose for Playboy’s sexual promiscuity.

We must acknowledge that media like Playboy is an inherently patriarchal construct, but I think making the assumption that any woman who uses her sexuality as a commodity is a slave to said patriarchy is buying into the notion that feminism works against: women have no autonomy. Much like the debate over women in Islam (and don’t even get me started on the fight I had with my mum about asylum seekers that, similar to the Playboy exchange, ended with her defensively inquiring about the legality of people seeking asylum via boat), certain kinds of feminism need to broaden their scope to take into account the lives of all women, whether we agree with their choices or not.

This close-mindedness comes from a lack of access to new information and technologies and willingness to learn from and hand the reigns over to the feminists of today, I think. While many feminists of all ages count the works of Greer, Friedan and Naomi Wolf amongst their collection of feminist tomes, how many second-wavers can say the same about the musings of Jessica Valenti, Clementine Ford, Rachel Hills and the myriad feminist bloggers? That face of feminism has certainly changed to make it much more accessible. What once was narrowly accessible at rallies, underground meetings and in academic journals is now available wherever you look: Gillard speaking up against sexism in parliament, movements like SlutWalk and Destroy the Joint and all across the interwebs.

So on this Mother’s Day eve, it’s important to acknowledge the gender equality path paved for me by my feminist foremothers, including my actual mother, but also to recognise that we have, indeed, come a long way, baby. Maybe that’s something that second-wavers need to consider, too.

Related: Why Young Feminists Still Have “A Long, Long Way to Go” In the Eyes of Second-Wave Feminists.

Taylor Swift: The Perfect Victim.

Elsewhere: [The Atlantic] 4 Big Problems with The Feminine Mystique. 

[The Guardian] The Tragic Irony of Feminists Trashing Each Other.

[MamaMia] Germaine Greer: You’ve Lost Me.

[MamaMia] No, I Won’t Apologise for My Sex Worker Comments.

[Daily Life] Stoned for Having Short Hair.

Apparently the episode in which Ryder and Kitty reveal that they were molested as children was made in partnership with RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest Nation Network, although you wouldn’t think it from Sam and Artie’s reaction to Ryder’s confession.

“Some hot 18-year-old played with your junk? I’d kill for that!”

“Why are you ashamed of this?”

While their responses are typical of many of the attitudes surrounding female-on-male sexual assault, the fact that these were really the only strong reactions—apart from Marley, Tina and Mr. Schue’s meek protestations about it being “not cool”—before the show moved on doesn’t really scream sexual assault awareness.

Artie, Sam et al.’s feedback simply buys into the notion that girls who are sexually assaulted are sluts who wanted it (Kitty’s depiction on the show as a bitchy, sexually promiscuous cheerleader proves this, though in their defence I doubt the writers had this storyline in mind when they created her character) and boys are sexually awakened studs. Had the episode aired a follow-up scene in which Mr. Schue led the class in an after school special-esque speech about the detrimental effects of sexual assault and the accompanying attitudes surrounding it, it would have been schmaltzy and patronising as only Glee can be, but at least it would have taken a crack at dismantling such bias.

Elsewhere: [RAINN] Glee & RAINN Team Up for Episode.

Image via Wikia.

Saying “I’m not like other girls” just buys into the myth that all women have a defined set of attributes and that those who aren’t “feminine”, “girly”, “bitchy” and don’t have many female friends (just to list some of the tropes associated with “other girls”) are somehow better than other women. I’ve been guilty of uttering those words before, but that was before I came to the above understanding. I believe I’m different from other girls, just as I’m different from other humans. We all have different character traits, values and interests; it’s just that some we can relate to more and are closer to the surface than others. [RH Reality Check]

In defence of sex work. [Daily Life]

Further to that, Mia Freedman clarifies her position on sex workers voiced on Q&A last month. [MamaMia]

“Why Would Anyone Have a Late-Term Abortion?” [New Matilda] 

Ahead of its publication in new (and, might I add, awesome!) zine, Filmme Fatales, editor Brodie Lancaster writes in opposition to the Gwyneth Paltrow haters. [TheVine] 

More Gwyneth: she was my thinspo. Beauty and putting women on pedestals. [Mirror, Mirror OFF the Wall]

On the merits and drawbacks of “Hashtag Feminism”, “destroying the joint”, the news sources “to whom [we] choose to listen” and the “personalised newspaper” that is social media, through which we “see only views [we] agree with”. [The Monthly]

Jennifer Aniston, ourselves. [Thought Catalog]

Is Amanda Bynes that different from us? [Clam Bistro]

Are we too old to “get” Girls?  [One Good Thing] 

Why talking about sexism in pop culture is important. [The Age]

How can disabled women “Destroy the Joint” when they can’t even access it? Stella Young on feminism and disability. [ABC Ramp Up] 

Image via RH Reality Check.

Something changed about Gwyneth Paltrow in the week between being named Star magazine’s most annoying celebrity and People‘s Most Beautiful… At least, the public perception of her has.

Transforming from uptight, cookbook evangelist and Goop editor to knickerless, boundary-pushing *Iron Man 3 spoiler alert* superheroine.

While I’ve never been one for Gwynnie, her media appearances of late have been rather personable and, dare I say it…?, likeable.

Elsewhere: [Daily Life] Gwyneth Paltrow Tops Irritating Celebs List.

[Daily Life] Look of the Day.

[Daily Life] Is Gwyneth’s Goop Sexualising Girls?

[TheVine] In Defence of Gwyneth Paltrow.

[Musings of an Inappropriate Woman] The Gwyneth in My Head.

Image via HuffPo.

Older men telling breastfeeding mothers to “be a bit classy about it” seems to be the order of the day, and art is imitating life on Modern Family.

First David Koch made that massive gaffe about breastfeeding mothers on Sunrise, insinuating that there’s a time and place for it and it isn’t in public, and now Modern Family’s resident baby boomer, Jay Pritchett, is shaming Gloria for giving their newborn, Fulgencio Joseph, sustenance via her breast milk. Similarly to Kochie’s sentiments, Jay tells Gloria not to “do that in front of strangers” when he catches the mailman staring at her bare breast—albeit with a baby suckling it—and that perhaps a “dark closet” might be more appropriate. Yeah, because breastfeeding mothers just love expressing milk in public toilets or fitting in a breastfeed whilst changing their baby’s nappy in a baby change room.

We’ve all heard the outcry surrounding the sexualisation and shaming of breastfeeding: it’s the most natural act; it’s what breasts were intended for; breastfeeding shouldn’t be seen as sexy, etc. But when you’ve got popular personalities like Kochie and TV shows like Modern Family pushing the opposite agenda, can we really expect the public perception of breastfeeding as sexual and/or shameful to change?

Further to this, when Manny expresses (pardon the pun) a fixation with the female form in art class, everyone jumps to the conclusion that Gloria’s voluptuousness and her clingy maternalistic treatment of her son is at the crux of Manny’s newfound sexual awakening. Breastfeeding and motherhood are, again, completely natural and all but essential for the evolution of the human species, not exhibitionist performances at the detriment of male children.

Once again, Modern Family fails to emphasise the “modern” part of its title…

Related: Modern Family is Anything But.

Image via Double Think.