On the (Rest of the) Net.

From the trailer, I never would have guessed Tyler Perry’s Temptation was a veritable hotbed of sex (and STIs), race and gender politics in the worst way. This article comes with a massive spoiler alert, but it made me want to see the movie so much more, if only to be completely horrified by it. [Jezebel]

Pro-cunnilingus lyrics in rap music. Fascinating! [The Pantograph Punch]

Beyonce finally admits she’s a feminist… she guesses. [Jezebel]

Fat-shaming on Australian TV. [TheVine]

Clementine Ford on “Reverse Damselling”, in which women seek to tame bad boys. [Daily Life] 

From one extreme to the other: a few weeks ago outrage erupted over a mother’s declaration that Victoria’s Secret was “a right of passage” for her young daughter. Now, the pendulum has swung in the other direction, and anti-child sexualisation activists have come out against VS’s Pink! line in what could be deemed as a bit of an overreaction. [Jezebel] 

Does Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson prove we’re living in a post-racial society, at least when it comes to his film roles? [Shadow & Act] 

The best way to get a shot of positive body image is to get yourself to the beach and take a look around at all the normal people. [MamaMia] 

The psychology of the original Carrie Bradshaw, Candace Bushnell, Sex & the City and The Carrie Diaries. [Daily Beast]

A substantive breakdown of exactly what feminism is and how it doesn’t mean man-hating. Well worth a read. [Jezebel] 

On the (Rest of the) Net.

Beyonce: the face of feminism girl power. [National Union of Students' Women's Department Blog]

Emphasising the “victim” in “victim-blaming”. [Daily Life]

If people wrote about Seinfeld the way they write about Girls… [College Humour]

Every day should be International Women’s Day. (FYI, it’s today.) [Daily Life]

Why do we hate Anne Hathaway? [Daily Beast]

Online dating as a feminist. [Role/Reboot]

Reconciling #FirstWorldProblems with Third World problems. [Daily Life]

“In defence of the personal essay.” Get ready, Early Birds, ’cause there’ll be a lot more personal essays coming your way about the crazy weekend I recently had… [Daily Life]

#DailyWife controversy, take two. [Daily Life]

The fakeness of female performers: feminist or faux? [The Cut]

The tyranny of the red carpet. [À L’Allure Garçonnière]

Image via The Fab Empire.

On the (Rest of the) Net.

Are Princess Diana and Rihanna one in the same? Camille Paglia misguidedly seems to think so. [The Sunday Times]

Clementine Ford interviews Anne Summers as part of Daily Life‘s first birthday celebrations. Brilliant!

The face of porn (SFW). [Jon Millward]

Speaking of porn, is James Deen harmful to his young female fans? [Daily Life]

Lena Dunham isn’t “brave”. [Vulture]

How many models of colour walked in New York Fashion Week? Not many. [Jezebel]

Why have so many “contestants” on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew died? [Jezebel]

Downton Abbey VS. Girls. [Daily Beast]

Why do we flinch when a woman says she’s beautiful? [Daily Life]

“Is There Such a Thing as ‘Asian Privilege’?” [Daily Life]

Stop the presses: Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus debunked. [The Age]

Reporting Reeva  Steenkamp’s murder at the hands of her Paralympian partner, Oscar Pistorius. [News with Nipples]

“In Defence of Diablo Cody.” [Female Gaze Review]

Kurt Cobain: feminist? [Daily Life]

In the vein of Nice Guys of OKCupid comes the racist guys of OKCupid: Creepy White Guys.

Image via Jezebel.

On the (Rest of the) Net.

Happy New Year, Early Birds! To kick off the new year here are some of the links I found interesting over the Christmas break.

The progression of The Addams Family films. [The Soapboxing Geek]

Bret Easton Ellis is “really sorry” about that Kathryn Bigelow tweet. [Daily Beast]

The similarities between My Little Pony and Plato. [Overthinking It]

2012, politics and feminism. [Women’s Agenda]

Another year in review piece: pop music in 2012. [Gawker]

On that note, what will 2013 (hopefully) bring in pop culture? [TheVine]

Sweden’s gender-neutral toy trend. [Deadspin]

Where are all the women in The Hobbit’s Middle-earth? [Jezebel]

Could you live on $35 a day? The government expects single parents to. [TheVine]

Is Wearing Makeup a Choice? [Jezebel]

On the (Rest of the) Net.

What it’s like to be an empowered sex worker. Yes, they exist. [MamaMia]

Stella Young prefers to be called a “disabled person” than a “person with a disability” despite the government’s Reporting It Right guidelines, thank you very much. [The Drum]

A recent altercation with a friend over something I wrote about them on this here blog has formed the basis for an “Ask Rachel” post. [Musings of an Inappropriate Woman]

The opinion piece in last Saturday’s Good Weekend by food critic AA Gill about how men think women should dress was one I skipped over—I don’t really need to read yet another article about what men think women should do. Lindy Alexander takes Gill to task for it, though, saving me from having to rummage through the newspaper stack in my pantry to retrieve said article and get all riled up about it. [Daily Life]

Leave Lindsay Lohan alone! [TheVine]

“The A to Z of Freelancing.” [The Loop]

On the older virgin. [Daily Beast]

Carla Bruni-Sarkozy is the latest woman of note to shun feminism. [Daily Life]

On the (Rest of the) Net.

Channing Tatum is People magazine’s Sexiest (White) Man Alive. [Daily Beast]

What Tony Abbott could learn from Mitt Romney. [TheVine]

Rachel Hills on Jessica Valenti’s new book, Why Have Kids? and the “motherhood mystique”:

“‘The relationship you have with your child is certainly impactful. It’s one of the most important relationships you’ll have in your life,’ Valenti says. ‘But a good relationship doesn’t necessitate you losing your identity. In fact, most people would call that a bad relationship. A good relationship is supposed to make you the best version of yourself, happier and more active. So that’s what I’m aiming for.’”

Makes sense. [Daily Life]

Unpacking what it means to be a woman with tattoos. [MamaMia]

On the gym clothes as regular clothes phenomenon and why women are the only ones who can pull it off. [TheVine]

The allure of hate-watching, -reading, -listening, and just plain -ing. [Daily Life]

A junior feminist takes Hasbro to task for gender inequality in Guess Who? [Jezebel]

Which US TV shows have the most and least racial diversity? [TV Equals]

Cameron Diaz wants to be objectified. [Daily Life]

Maybe you should try being a woman on the internet before you proclaim the web has a certain “new niceness” about it. [Jezebel]

My old suburb Richmond makes the news on Jezebel for all the wrong reasons: playing host to a “comedy debate” about whether or not rape is funny. Facepalm.

Rookie talks cultural appropriation:

“I’m uncomfortable saying ‘you can do this if you are ethnically Indian’ (even if you are culturally something else, like American), because then it gets into the very kind of essentialism that racism is made of. Like, is it OK for me to wear native Iraqi Arab garb, even though I have never set foot in Iraq, because my parents are from there? I don’t think so, but a lot of the arguments about this subject reduce it to a matter of ‘you can wear things from your personal heritage but no one else’s,’ which, again, is essentialist… [a]nd bordering on dangerous? Because then you get into people deciding if someone LOOKS ‘ethnic’ enough to wear ‘ethnic’ signifiers and you start trying to read skin colour…

“… As long as there’s black-people stuff and white-people stuff and Indian-people stuff, can we really talk about being seen as just PEOPLE?”

“The cult of the selfie.” [Daily Life]

Feminism VS. Fashion. [Bullet]

Image via People.

On the (Rest of the) Net.

“What It’s Really Like to Wear a Hijab.” [Daily Life]

While the mainstream media is not always the most tasteful industry, its coverage of Jill Meagher’s disappearance was invaluable in helping catch her killer. [MamaMia]

And here’s an amusing take on the sexist comments thrown women’s way after the Jill Meagher tragedy. I’ve been experiencing some of these “restrictions” myself since then, preached to me by well-intentioned but misguided friends, which I’ll be writing more about next week. [Feminaust]

Why fur is back in fashion. [Jezebel]

Instead of petitioning the fashion magazines, should we be making love instead of porn? [TheVine]

The perils of getting a hair cut as a black woman. [Jezebel]

Two of my favourite writers and unofficial mentors, I guess you could say, are in the midst of writing books. Rachel Hills and Sarah Ayoub-Christie detail their struggles with the process. Keep ya heads up, girls! [Musings of an Inappropriate Woman, Chasing Aphrodite]

“Reverse Photoshopping” a “too thin” Karlie Kloss isn’t any better than Photoshopping away cellulite or blemishes. [Daily Life]

Famous writers throughout history reimagine Cosmo’s sex tips. [McSweeney’s]

Why are all the feminists these days funny? Um, because we wised up to the fact that our ideals are better digested by the mainstream through less-threatening humour than shoving it down unwilling throats. Though we still do a lot of that!

“[Sexism’s] existence at the moment requires a tougher, wilier, more knowing, and sophisticated stance.” [Slate]

Clementine Ford’s full Wheeler Centre Lunchbox/Soapbox address on the equality myth.

Incorporating part of her speech, Ford elaborates on Alan Jones’ misogynistic comments about the Prime Minister and women in general. [Daily Life]

On the male-male-female threesome. [XOJane]

Why isn’t Mitt Romney being questioned about the way Mormonism treats women? [Daily Beast]

On the (Rest of the) Net.

I’m not sure if it is an image of Rihanna’s post-domestic violence face, but here’s what Chris Brown’s neck tattoo says about intimate partner violence and sexual assault. [Pandagon]

The latest in a long line of unfavourable reviews of Naomi Wolf’s new “biography” – Vagina – Germaine Greer had her take on it published in The Age last weekend. I’m going to read Vagina: A New Biography regardless, but the high hopes I had for it have been dashed. [SMH]

In the lead up to the Presidential election, it’d do all Americans good to realise that reproductive health is an economic issue. [Jezebel]

The visceral fear this writer manages to evoke when she reveals her experience of being harassed on public transport is palpable. Hands up who’s ever experienced something similar whilst deigning to be female in public. [unWinona, via Jezebel]

The politics of Anna Wintour. [Daily Beast]

The gender imbalance in the opinion pages. [Daily Life]

Five police-sanctioned reasons why women “deserve” to be raped. Well, I’m guilty of all these things so apparently I “deserve” to be sexually assaulted, too! [Daily Life]

How to talk to kids about gay parents. [The Good Men Project]

This is why religious people shouldn’t work in medicine: one woman’s experience of being refused the morning after pill. [MamaMia]

Why is atheism so excluding of women? [Slate]

Image via Always A-List.

On the (Rest of the) Net.

WTF?! James Holmes—aka the Batman killer—is hot?! [Jezebel]

How to avoid jail as a pregnant woman. Or really, a woman who could potentially be pregnant at some stage in the future. [HuffPo]

Paul Murray is glad Nick D’Arcy didn’t qualify for the Olympic finals, and I am too. After getting a slap on the wrist for those gun photos—not to mention the infamous assault—he shouldn’t have even been in London. [MamaMia]

Charlie Sheen’s corporate appeal. [Daily Beast]

Was Katie Holmes the innocent bystander in Tom Cruise’s Scientological quest for world domination, as the media makes her out to be, or is there more to her and the divorce?

“I’m convinced that she’s the most fame-hungry person the world has ever seen.” [Vulture]

The psychology of rapists. [Jezebel] 

“Millennial expert” and “voice of a generation” Chelsea Krost isn’t a feminist because she “doesn’t think boys suck” but she can relate to the people whose “feet are in their own feces in Africa”. Nice. [NY Observer]

In the wake of the Herald Sun calling Leisel Jones fat, it seems as a female Olympian you also have to have perfect hair and not be too muscly so as you begin to resemble a man. [MamaMia, Jezebel, ThinkProgress]

Image via Jezebel.

On the (Rest of the) Net.

Tyra Banks writes an open letter to girls in the modeling industry—and girls in general—about Vogue’s new eating disorder mandate. [Daily Beast]

Hot off the heels of his first Sydney and Melbourne shows, the beauty that is Prince’s “Kiss”. [One a Day]

Scarlett Johansson sets the “toilet paper rags” straight on her body image. [HuffPo]

I’m not a big Delta Goodrem fan, but since she’s been the victim of vitriol on The Voice, I’m starting to warm to her. I may not be a fan of Delta’s, but I do love me an underdog. [MamaMia]

Terry Richardson and “hipster sexism”. [Daily Life]

A Jezebel reporter infiltrates America’s “rape capital”, Missoula, Montana.

Are All Men Pedophiles?, asks a new documentary. [Buzzfeed]

Comedian Hasan Minhaj rips Ashton Kutcher and PopChips a new one for their brown-faced Indian impersonation. Not cool. [Best Week Ever]