Posts by Emma Hart
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Few of the landmark shops/businesses are left... Mr Smiles, Mr Munch Scoop 'N Save, the Comic Shop, 4 book shops, the electical repair shop, Silvios Records, the Market, the Recording Studios to name but a few.
It's not just the rents, either. I know one of those bookshops (and the delightful people living in the upstairs flat) moved because the building turned out to be a hideous earthquake hazard. It can't be the only one.
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I don't know if they were Engineering students, but those riotus folk down Dunedin at weekend were definitely doing the Haka.
Was after the Undie 500, which is run by ENSOC. That doesn't mean that all or even most of the people involved were engineering students, but there's a definite association. When I was at uni, back before the invention of fire, we used 'engineer' to refer to a particular behaviour, not a degree choice.
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What proportion of transactions involve male escorts sleeping with women though?
Okay, I'm now doing what I've been trying to avoid and theorising about an industry I have no experience of, but I would think 'more since Viagra'. Previously, biology would handicap men working as prostitutes for women (ie as penetrative partners, rather than rent boys as receptive partners) because they'd need to be aroused to have sex.
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As for modern music - it doesn't float my boat in any case, so I have no opinion about it. I'm more of a jazz, classical and opera woman. Each to their own.
A little Anna Netrebko always brightens my day.
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I hear you, Emma, but in my case it took no time at all for me to figure it out. I love the woman, but why would you tell a 14 yr old "If you were skinny, I'd buy you any clothes you liked." Luckily, I was far too in love with myself to let stuff like that sink in too far. It irks her greatly...
*weeps* Man, my mother was a great deal more subtle than that (are you sure you want to eat/buy/wear that?) but yeah, she still can't quite get over the fact that I'm comfortable how I am, and that I've been comfortable ten kilos heavier, and uncomfortable ten kilos lighter. (Extended illness, she thought I looked great.)
But if it's our mothers who screw us up, that makes it really easy to put right for our daughters. That's why, while I understand social conditioning as a reason, I'm reluctant to accept it as an excuse. There's only one other comment on my body that sticks in my mind from my teenage years, and that was my bio teacher pointing me out in class as someone well designed to survive an ice age. Thanks, dude.
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choice is one of those chimera western society loves to bang on about (no offence intended emma).
None taken, Che. I did actually write a really long paragraph about real choice and what it requires, but I figured I'd been banging on enough here and someone else was well capable of making that point.
To be really brief, it requires information ('you can freely choose between A and B, but I'm not telling you what they are'), and it requires freedom from non-logical non-inherent consequences. By which I mean that, say, if you choose to vote for a particular political party, there are natural consequences of that, like they'll cut taxes or increase spending. But there may be other consequences, such as if you vote for the oppositition the boys will be round in the morning to take you 'for a ride'.
From there I could push out into more debateable territory and say, real choice requires a certain degree of intelligence, in order to work out what the hidden consequences of an action might be. So if your party promises they'll cut taxes you should be able to deduce that this might mean cutting spending as well even though they don't want to talk about it.
And having information means not being lied to about what the consequences of your actions might be, which I think is particularly important for teenagers. Whether that means not being told that marrying money will make you happy, or not being told that having pre-marital sex will ruin your life.
I agree with anjum about social conditioning and the way it affects women getting down on women because they genuinely believe it's good for them. It took me a long, long time to realise that my mother nagged me about my weight because she really thought I would be happier thin, and because she had her own body image problems. It's still something I make a conscious effort not to pass on to my daughter, which includes things like not saying I look terrible in photos.
I'm interested that Michael knows women who've had breast reductions, because there's a flip side to 'big knockers make you sexy'. My high school biology teacher was insistent that I should get a breast reduction, because otherwise no-one would take me seriously. Women with large breasts are stupid. (Being interrupted while he was demonstrating where the scars would go led to one of those 'hilarious misunderstandings' that made high school so much fun.)
Once again, blurring the line between comment and blog...
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I was struck by Germaine Greer's description of women who were only just starting to realise that there was something rotten going on when they went out to work all day, spent their lunch break running errands, and then came home to cook and clean while their husbands, who had also been working all day, came home and put their feet up in front of the tellie.
This happened to me two days ago, when I found out one of my friends, a SAHM who'd recently gone back to work, was rushing home every lunchtime to clean the house. So I'll cop to occasionally looking at another woman and thinking 'WTF are you DOING?'
But I think we do all have a very human need to try to fill in the blanks in these puzzles, even if that means making assumptions about what's going through the heads of people we've never met. Which is a fruitless exercise if ever there was one. Personally, my high heels are really comfortable and I like the authoritarian clicky noise they make on the footpath. The same was true when I was sixteen, except I'm gutsier about my fabulous cleavage these days.
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they see it all around them, they want it, the significant adults in their lives buy it for them.
This close to using the phrase "I blame the parents". Next thing you know I'll be complaining about people being 'soft on crime'. Seriously, though, I have a daughter, I have several friends with daughters, and none of us would dream of buying into the 'padded bras for preschoolers' thing. My girl went a school disco last night, kids up to 12 yo, and not one girl there was dressed like a music video producer's wet dream.
My daughter's also perfectly fine getting changed in front of people she knows. She does get told she's pretty and she doesn't get told she should be ashamed of her body, at least not by us. (She also gets praised for being bright and clever and talented, she's not just valued for her looks.)
And y'know... I think maybe the most important thing I've seen said here was this:
think in some cases the way things can be less exploitative (but not perfect, I don't claim to have all the answers) is if there is more knowledge about choices available. That you don't have to dress in skanky clothes if you don't want to. Or that if you choose to take off your clothes for money, you don't have to sleep with the clientale even if they're offering to pay you for that as well.
Choice. It's choice.
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I'm going to take a timeout because I don't want to sidetrack the thread by getting male-defensive (as I've done). I think the Ladies are making better points ....
I'd sort of be done with a thread on sexual politics that men didn't feel comfortable contributing to. This:
So Emma's worry about telling other women what to do is a bit like worrying about criticising the working classes for their failure to throw off their shackles
had me humming Billy Bragg's version of The Internationale the whole time I was out in the garden.
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What I care about is that young women - as young as 4 - are buying into the same old shit.
Yeah, but are they? See, I've heard a lot of people complain about the My Little Hooker range appearing in shops, but I've never actually seen a kid wearing it.
I'm not over it. But then, I have three little girls.
And I have a ten year old daughter.
You know what peer pressure is like, how as teenagers and young adults most people just desperately want to fit in.
Yep, I do. I remember being a teenager, which is why I want my daughter to just be happy. If she's genuinely happy in a mini*, I'm fine with that. We have an official house ban on the phrase 'you're not going out dressed like that'.
But what I have noticed is that what kids want to wear (because this is a problem for boys too, conformity) is what their friends are wearing, not what Mutya Buena is wearing. Current acceptable wear for swimming is a four-piece: bikini, board shorts, and a rash vest. Man, I feel like I've said all this before, and I have.
*I'd be hugely less fine with her being happy in a Hummer. You know what we trendy liberals are like.