Posts by daleaway
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When I stopped subscribing to the NZ Women's Weekly in the early 1990s, I wrote telling them why, saying that a magazine formerly of general interest and which had celebrated women's many pursuits and achievements had now put that aside to become obsessed by celebrities, diets, the supernatural, and outward appearance. It had dropped about 40 IQ points. Dear God, I said, is this what New Zealand women's lives have become reduced to?
The editor had the uncommon grace to write back to me to say that she agreed with me, but that her bosses and the Aussie money men had now made these the requirements of her job. She resigned not long after.
But magazines are only part of the influence. Music is huge with the younger generation - far more so than when I was their age - and it's become almost entirely a nasty soup of male hormones. Much of it is plain malevolent towards women. But if the music is irredeemable, there'ss the dick-flick influence of telly, as I outlined above, and we (almost) own that medium, and ought to be able to do something about it.
If we wanted to, that is, and have not all succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome...
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Well, we could start by examining matters close to home. How about looking for a wider range of images of women on our very own dear TV channels?
Competent and experienced female journalists are dumped because they lack the "shag factor" - don't take my word for it, Granny Herald reported it last week. And it's bloody offensive. So when you lose the ability to raise a male TV executive's wan willy, your job expertise counts for nothing and you're out on your ear or relegated to backroom duties.
Air stewardesses took court action to combat this blatant type of prejudice in their workplace, but it seems our journos and presenters lack the will or ability to press for change. So presenters and newsreaders are encouraged to come to it from a primary career as beauty queen/model/cheerleader etc. If you can remember as far back as such expert newsreaders as eg Marama Koea, you know that the loss is ours.
People internalise a lot of this type of pervasive discrimination and no longer register it happening... it just becomes the norm. But it's still prejudice at work. What ever is wrong with looking at older people anyway? Handsome is as handsome does. As long as someone with the right professional qualifications is well groomed and can muster a pleasant expression, that should be enough. Did someone say "dumbing down the news"?
Speaking of cheerleaders, a US exchange student tried to start it at my (girls') school in the 1960s. She had no takers. We fell about laughing at its silliness and could not believe American girls would be so ...needy.... and undignified. After all, we were active sports participants ourselves, and were not relegated to standing on the sidelines wiggling our backsides. Now of course a generation of Auckland girls has learned that this is the way to please men. Such progress.
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I was a teenager in the 60s, a feminist in the 70s, and I'm plain heartsick at the position of women in the 2000s. Seems to me, from first hand experience, that young women command less respect from society now than they did 40 years ago, and are under hugely increased pressure to be consumers and display objects. Taint feminism that did that.
The sexualised presentation of very young girls is a particularly new and distressing trend. Drat that Pink, writing "Stupid Girls" with the silly sweary bit in the middle so it couldn't be put on school curricula - girls need to hear its message. But then even calling them stupid is victim-blaming, they're just imitative and think this is the way to be successful, because that's what the TV and the mags and the music have told and shown them.
Seems like for every piece of legal and social discrimination against women that we succeeded in dismantling - with tremendous effort - commercial and media pressures and plain old fashioned male chauvinism worked double hard to keep females seeing themselves as purchasable entertainment objects whose value lay in their ability to please men. And to turn "feminism" into a word to be ashamed of rather than proud of. How did we let some very grubby blokes pull this stunt on us? (I'm not talking about the nice ones, and there are plenty of those.... but not enough where it counts.)
There's no such thing as post-feminism. Just backlash masculism, and underdogs buying in to the dominant culture.
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Now behave.
Harry looks exactly like all the Spencers did at his age, right down to the red hair - he's especially like Sarah McCorquodale, Diana's sister. If they AIDS test prospective royal brides before the wedding (and they do), the Windsors would certainly DNA test the offspring.
I know this is a bit of a Lad's Den here on Public Address, but please don't feel any obligation to be macho for the sake of it.
Why do journos who fed off Diana's carcase during her lifetime continue scavenging after her death by boasting how unmoved they were by the whole tragedy, and how she never fooled them for a minute? Not much....
Bad conscience, I think. They were the industry that killed her and have turned denial into an attack, as their coping mechanism. And they accuse HER of making use of the media!
The sadness felt by many at the time of her death was genuine, and if people now feel embarrassed by the fact that they were upset and showed emotion, they could at least have the grace to shut up about it and not recant or take it out on the dead who can't answer back.
Diana was a lonely woman who wanted a happy family life. The Prince, who had only one decision to make in his life, made a bugger's muddle of things. He decided he could have his cake and eat it too, and stuff the consequences for the teenager he duped into marriage. If she later tried to make use of her celebrity to put her side of the story, what of it? When an Establishment of that might gangs up on you to side with your more powerful husband, the court of the media is the only one left to you.
Try reading eg Sarah Bradford's new biography of the POW. It could tell you things the myth-making popular press is never going to.
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Now that's curious.
"Black" or "Yellow" would undoubtedly not be permitted as a description of nationality or race on any legal form-filling, so why is "White" (whether Other or not) considered acceptable?
My own race, incidentally, is Pinkish-Cream although none of my family speak Pinkish.
Bagpipes originated in Central Asia. They were economic migrants.
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Fancy coffee arrived with the post-war European migrants, I believe. Our Austrian neighbours showed us how to use a percolator in the early 1950s, and yes you could buy them then, and filters, in New Zealand cities. The first coffee bars arrived here about the mid to late 1950s. Some had espresso machines and some didn't. I did not like coffee so always drank the beautiful thick New Zealand apricot juice the coffee bars used to serve. Wherever did that stuff disappear to?