Posts by B Jones
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Someone hasn't been paying attention in Feminism 101. Feminists blame the patriarchy, not men themselves. The patriarchy as I understand it is a system that tends to hand power to men but isn't fussy about who it uses to do it. Women are rewarded in a patriarchal society for supporting patriarchal values, and plenty sign up to it - there's money to be made to look like a decoration and not rock the boat too much. There's power to be gained in sidling up to those in charge. It's harder to change the rules than use them to your advantage.
Conversely, men can be anti-patriarchal - see Idiot/Savant's piece on Choice under Threat today, for which I applaud him.
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With no information on how old the letter writer is, or whether the couple in question is actually trying to get pregnant, it's hard to form a judgement on that.
They may well want kids, or be not too worried if they show up. Not what I'd do, but I'm not their mum. And if you take the R16 at face value, it starts veering into "nobody's business but their own" territory. You can still legally marry at 16, can't you? A doctor would be better placed to advice on the specific circumstances of the letter writer. The WTF version would sound a little odd directed at a 25 year old.
Kids game those advice columns, too. Perhaps smart editors can sort the "lets see where they snap" questions from the genuine queries, but I recall a bravely unflappable health education person coming to my school, declaring nothing would embarrass her, and having to field questions about positions from 13 year old boys for the next half an hour. Who can make the PE teacher cry was a big sport. It was all talk, no action.
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There's two kinds of messages magazines put out - here's what you should look like, and here's how to do various things you might be considering. I don't have a problem with the second. We can read about road rules, after all, before we sit our learner licences.
I thought Sarah Henry was eminently sensible. It's been a while since I dived into teenage magazines (I moved on to Cosmo at 17 or so before I took the sunscreen song's advice and realised that beauty magazines only make you feel ugly), but nothing I heard quoted on Media 7 seemed any different to what I'd read back in the late 80s/early 90s. It's no new thing for girls to freak out and write to advice columns about whether their experiences are normal - I remember one poor girl whose boyfriend's explorations led her to worry she had cancer - the advice person calmly explained what part of her anatomy he'd found, and suggested that perhaps they needed a bit more maturity before they go there.
Whether or not kids need to know certain bits of information at certain times of their lives, I think there's more harm in providing it too late than providing it too early. Magazines are only a slice of teenagers' socialisation. It's the ones that boys get into that worry me - that heavy dose of wishful thinking in advance of experience seems to me more damaging than straightforward how-to guides and advice. At least the latter canvasses the risks you're taking.
And wow, it's amazing how a few years in the fashion industry can apparently obliterate the philosophies one learns in women's studies.
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get a copy of Girlfriend
Again with the girls! Lots of under 16 year old boys are accessing significantly worse "educational" magazine material. Not always legally, but even the general lads mags are pretty awful.
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It would be nice if the panel discussion paid some notice to the gendered aspect of the whole magazine shoot thing. It seems as if every moral panic over what teenagers get up to ends up being on what teenage girls get up to.
I think there's a lot more freedom for teenage boys to legitimately express themselves in this arena - when girls do it, they have to deal with moralists judging them on one hand, and a crowd of slavering guys defending their right to ogle hot young things on the other. Not much attention paid to their own right to privacy.
That Australian teacher who got sacked for the Cleo photo shoot - her partner was also a teacher, and did not.
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Hmm, perhaps this is where the outrageous $20-$30 annual airpoints membership fee they're trying to charge me is going. It does not cost $20 to send me a couple of emails a year telling me what my balance is and how much will be expiring at the end of the year. And perhaps the difference between mail and email would be $10 if they printed it in gold leaf.
I thought loyalty schemes were designed to keep customers loyal. Promising to waive the fee if I fly in the next two months or sign up to their credit card is only temptation to empty my account and fly the cheaper skies from now on.
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Is it just me, or does anyone else get the sense that referring to someone by their first name when you don't need to ("Thanks, Bob" as opposed to just "Thanks") has a bit of a superior to inferior tone?
I noticed it when a 4 year old I know politely thanked the guy who brought him his fluffy (we're on first name basis with our baristas). I can't work out whether my reaction was from hearing a kid call an adult by his first name, or just the way a name is used in a sentence.
Nobody other than telemarketers calls me Mrs Jones - either she's not there, or she gives them a lecture on her preferred title.
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It would make a lot of sense for the elves from Rivendell (and Legolas in Mirkwood) to do a bit of a cameo reappearance even though the story doesn't call for anything more than Elrond and Thranduil plus Elf 1, Elf 2 etc. Providing they all haven't aged too much it would be a nice touch.
I don't know how you could turn the events between Hobbit and LOTR into a good film. Sure, plenty happened what with Aragorn hanging out undercover in Rohan and Minas Tirith and chasing after Gollum etc, but where's the mystery? If they want to create something in which everyone doesn't already know what happened (one of the many failings of the Star Wars prequels) they'll have to create a lot of new material.
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Not sure about marines as they're used on BSG (as cookie cutter soldiers called to arrest various of the principals when they've annoyed President Roslin), but among the regular characters there are female fighter pilots, transport pilots, technicians, politicians, aides, spiritual leaders, a President and previously, an Admiral.
When the re-imagined series first aired, there was a great deal of wigging out among fans of the old over the fact that Starbuck and Boomer were now female characters.
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I's confused. Maillard reaction does not equal caramelisation. They just look and taste very similar. They both need higher temperatures than 100C though.