Posts by Isabel Hitchings
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I can't help but think that most of the problems of prostitution are really problems of an unequal society. It's not exactly the only industry where the less privileged are exploited by the more privileged even if the intimate and stigmatised nature of the work seem to mark prostitution as a 'special case'.
In my utopia I'm pretty sure there would be a sex industry but it would probably look very different to the one we have today.
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When I was at uni I talked my Mum into buying me this shirt. It was long and black and striped in inch-wide bands of satin and sheer. It wafted beautifully around the body and looked like it was showing off even more than it actually was. Not only did it garner me many compliments but barely a weekend went by when one of my female friends didn't ring up asking to borrow the Shirt. Sometimes I was kind enough to lend it out and I'm pretty sure it got more than a few people laid.
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I can definitely think of a couple of occasions where (had I had the opportunity and the dosh) paying someone who had a degree of skill and wouldn't be in the common room next morning would have been a far better choice than the one I made.
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I suspect that work and best attire is far less of a social marker than what one wears to dig the garden.
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My mother's family straddled the class barrier for a couple of generations. My nicely middle class grandmother caused some scandal (in pre WWII, rural England) by marrying an illegitimate farm boy and so my mother grew up in a series of houses slightly posher than her parents could really maintain and going to Grammar school on a scholarship. Mum went on to marry a young entomologist and emigrated to the colonies where, after a couple of years working for DSIR and doing rather nicely, Dad packed it all in to become an artist.
By the time I was born Mum was working part time as a children's librarian and Dad was struggling to make a living as a craft-jeweller so we were cash poor but time rich and I grew up surrounded by books and interesting people. Sometimes we didn't have a car but I never really noticed that we were poor until after we weren't anymore.
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I got 18. I am plagued by self-doubt but have heard others describe me as "sunny", "bubbly" and "confident" so maybe put on a better front than I think I do.
I'm pretty good with public speaking and facilitating meetings and am largely OK with people I don't know. The social situations I struggle most with are with people I know a little bit - especially friend-or-a-friend types - where the level of "input" required is undefined.
I am definitely an energy-introvert but am blessed to have a partner who, whether through his quiet and undemanding manner or just long acquaintance, doesn't really count as "people" in those terms.
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Does that mean the Divinyls I Touch Myself is really about dancing then?
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David - I've never noticed you being particularly socially awkward but then I've only met you in the kind of circumstances where my internal monologue is veering between "shut up, shut up shut UP" and "for god's sake say something before they think you're sulking". I worry about putting people off with puppy-like over-eagarness so much that I suspect I come across as rather aloof instead.
I have rarely had a problem having male friends although I have to admit that the sex thing happened a time or two. My partner was my best friend for five years before we got together (he still is) and several of my dearest friends are also people-I-used-to-shag so I don't think it ruined anything.
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Simon is a name that confuses me. Fully half my female friends are married to (or shacked up with) Simons yet there was only one Simon at my, fairly large, primary school. Where did all the Simons come from, I ask you?
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@ jack I empathise. I've only met one other person my age with my name (and we don't share a spelling) but these days it seems like every other girl under around five is an Isabel(le) or Isabella. I have a lot of horrible moments where I'm sure it's me being growled at in the mall.
Also, if we're on the subject of parental awesomeness, could everyone please pause to praise my father who, on Tuesday, drove down from Nelson to babysit so we could go to the Pixies gig after our babysitting arrangements fell through and who kept the children happy for the evening by playing them Tom Baker era Doctor Who