There’s been a lot of public pussy talk over the last few weeks and I’m here to tell you that there’s only one Pussy I’m interested in, apart from my own, and his name is Pudding. (See also: Bertha Mason).
I’m not saying the cretin’s name because I’m trying not to invoke him. I wouldn’t put it past that dinosaur to be in possession of prehistorical (and supernatural) powers that allow him to manifest himself beside his haters, ripe for grabbing (us, not him obvi).
Can we make a deal here that grabbing of any sort, of the pussy, of an arm, of the brain is prohibited? I’m tired of fearing men, of having to look directly ahead and pretending to be deaf just to get home in one piece – and monsters like Flump, openly encouraging men to just kiss the women they like the look of, or grab them by the vulva is just setting everything back decades. It’s positively archaic.
Let’s also agree that, if you don’t have a vagina, you do not get to have an opinion? The (cis) men on Twitter who are so adamant a woman can’t physically be grabbed by their vagina in the first place need to stay in their lanes. Tell that to the women who know only too well that it is possible. It is sexual assault, nothing less.
Everything Flump says and does is disgusting, don’t get me wrong. His racist, homophobic and misogynistic comments are something else and I can’t quite get to grips with the concept of such an openly hateful person but he exists. He’s a joke but what he says is no longer “What’s the old fuck said now?” bemusing, it’s poison. I’m terrified for the future of the US and the world if he continues.
While we’re here, a little aside to the numb nut who can’t tell the difference between a womb and a bladder. Back to Basic Female Anatomy 101 with you, you dufus. Women can’t simply cross their legs to keep their periods from coming. Stop talking please.
I mean, everything’s good. Better than good in fact. I have my health, I have an income, and I’m young (ish) and in love. What more does a girl need really, besides her family and loved ones around?
Things to look forward to, is what!
I’ve been wracking my brains about what my next creative ‘thing’ could be, that one activity I’m so passionate about that it will jog me out of this malaise and into some sort of action. Something worth buying and starting a new notebook for, basically.
(You might be like, what? So is your blog not enough for you? It is. I love my blog, I love reviewing films and talking about loving oneself. I guess what I really want is more of what I love, you get me?).
So there I was thinking, how do I get the spark reignited? Do I bite the bullet and run away to New York where I’ll most likely meet a rag-tag bunch of street artists who will adopt me as a sort of den mother, keeping me around because I make awesome tea and stroke their heads when they’re feeling lost and anxious? (Rent basically, with hopefully less smack).
I say it’s because of the tea but one day my true talent will, of course, be revealed to my new ‘family’ and then I’ll truly be one of them, the beating heart some might say. What that talent is going to be is so far undecided, I’m thinking singing or acting but it more probable being very good at making Plasticine models, organising drawers or listening.
Anyway, as I sat there considering packing a bag and burning a hole in my credit card, something cool virtually dropped into my lap!
Radio Goo Goo
I’m currently in the pre-production stages of making a podcast with my friend James, who asked me to collaborate on a series with him. How cool is that? You might remember my brief foray into podcasting last year in which funnily enough I lamented not having a partner-in-crime and how much I wanted one and now, I’ve got a great one!
We’ve been peripheral friends for years, since we met at a company BBQ where he worked with my husband. James, it’s worth noting (and maybe why I like him so much) was the first of Glynn’s colleagues to remember my name (it seems unbelievably hard to most people) and I really appreciated that. We’ve a few mutual friends in common beyond that and usually bump into each other either in the street or at the newishly established Brighton Comic Con. So I’m also looking forward to getting to know my friend better, we have a lot of similar opinions and tastes which is always fun.
Our podcast hasn’t got a name yet but I think we both have complementary ideas of what we want. It will mostly be film, TV and popular culture based, basically we’ll talk to each other as we do naturally about the films we love which won’t really be blockbuster films, although I will cover the DC universe from a Wonder Woman/Justice League perspective (because WW is my JAM).
We’ll talk about shows like Stranger Things (2016) and films like The Invitation (2015), The Wolfpack (2015) (which I’m forever mentioning on here). Even (arguably) the worst film of all time The Room (2003) will get a shout out I’m sure (it was my recent homework assignment and needless to say, there’s a lot to love).
All in all our first episode is shaping up to be a good one and I promise it will not only sound better than my solo attempts (James has the technical kit and the know-how to record it properly), I will also be less dithery because I now have someone to bounce off. I’m really excited about this and honestly, you never know where it might lead. Radio show anyone?
I will share a lot here, so if you’re interested please do keep up with us. In the future when we’re more established and confident, I think we’ll be having guests on, could that be you?
I’m also secretly (not anymore) holding out for Ben Wheatley to stumble across us and want to be interviewed, as he lives in Brighton and we’ll probably cover his films. (ILY Ben!).
I’m still going to New York though. One day.
What are you most looking forward to in the last half of 2016?
And also, any podcast name suggestions will be gratefully received as I’m kind of stumped! Pop your thoughts on a postcard ❤
Please note: This project will compliment Jillian & Christa’s Great Blog Collab, never hinder it. If you were wondering.
Now for something incredibly lazy to mirror the kind of Sunday I’m having.
A simple sharing of Kenzie’s post, outlining some of the blogs she’s been digging recently. I’m chuffed to be included with my bae, and stoked to have a whole new pool of like-minded blogs and writers to explore. This is what I’ve been doing in bed since 9am in a nutshell…
I’ll be back tomorrow with a review of a well worn classic to start the week right. More guest posts are also on the horizon, so I hope you’ve been enjoying those as much as I have.
Until then, my pretties… ❤
I’d a bit of inspiration generated by the Daily Post prompt “admire”. In all of my browsing of the pop culture blogs I read regularly, I thought, why not generate an entry to all of them so that others may enjoy them, too… So here they are, in no particular order… The Telethon Runner: She […]
I have a morning ritual and it goes a little something like this: roll out of bed at least 20 minutes after Glynn, have a wee, head to the front room with my hula hoop (on a good day) and flick on the TV.
I know this is a horrible habit but like I say, this is my ritual and it’s won’t be changing any time soon. I also like to hula hoop in front of the TV in the colder months and on miserable days. Hey, at least it’s still a workout.
At the moment my morning programmes of choice are: Will & Grace until Happy Endings starts at 7.25, then the end of Made in Chelsea (repeat) once that is done. Again, not something to be proud of, but I like to wake up slowly and other people’s drama while I put my face on isn’t the worst way to do it.
One thing I have noticed of a morning, and maybe throughout day time TV in general, not that I have the opportunity or inclination to indulge, is the steady flow of infomercial goodness. It’s not quite your tin cans being sliced up by kitchen knives as slim as a feather, but we’re heading that way. The biggest difference I can see is that all these adverts have the same thing in common: they’re designed to make us feel bad.
Shocker, innit? I mean, what, advertising geared towards women, making women feel AGAIN like they aren’t good enough? Big shock.
It’s a tale as old as time and it’s knackering me out. I mean, I haven’t got time to worry constantly about blotchy skin, acne, facial hair, fuzzy legs, saggy neck, ageing jaw line, stretch marks and all the flab, all over my body. Do you? Why is all such a big deal and why, oh why can’t we just get on with things, in our own imperfect way? I think I might be done with it.
Which, of course is easy for me to say today, as I’m wearing a pretty dress and the sun is shining. Catch me on an overcast Wednesday when my skin is breaking out, and I’ll be nodding my head in total agreement.
“You’re so right, over-enthusiastic American TV presenter and star of Dancing with the Stars, I can’t take any more awful days because my skin looks so shit. Here’s my credit card number, do what you will as long as you make me desirable and therefore worthy of love!”
Here’s a thought: maybe I should just try to get on with life. Do only the things I love or focus my attention on something useful like, I don’t know, getting a new job? Rather than continuing to sit, worrying about my horrible face. Which I do, I worry about it every single day without fail, even on the pretty dress days.
The truth is, I don’t have the beauty regime to match my morning routine. If I remove my eye makeup at the end of a day, it’s a good day. I wash my face in the shower and sometimes, if I can be arsed, I moisturise with something I bought for the witty name.
I have hairy legs and I rarely shave my pits because ingrown hairs are the thorn in my side. They are painful and unsightly. Far more unsightly that a little bit of cute fluff which is soft and strokeable. Put that in your pipes, infomercials, this girl has fuzzy pits!
I’ve got a bumpy, lined neck too, stretch marks from getting boobs quickly as an adolescent. I’ve got flab for days and hands that are stumpy and starting to look old (GREAT NAILS THOUGH). Sometimes I sport a slightly red chin, have a greasy nose, cellulite a-go-go and my pièce de résistance: a scowl line beneath my fringe that my mother warned me would stick around if I didn’t start smiling more. Despite this massive list of defects, I’m loved (and have a fit husband who has sex with me, willingly). What’s more, I’m happy.
Sometimes I wish for a skinnier tush, who doesn’t? But the fact of the matter is, I worry. We probably all do at some point. I’m trying to love myself more each day and to remember that the perfect ideals foisted upon me (us) by society aren’t the only way. They never were.
So, to all those ads peddling hair removal gadgets/creams and lotions/potions and spells for a younger/smoother/thinner me, I say: not today thank you.
I’ve done something I haven’t for a very long time this January and I’m not proud of it.
I mean we all know I’m a great advocate of the Proud Pleasure but I think this might fall into a whole category of its own. I’m talking Celebrity Big Brother.
Reality TV and I have been friends for some time. I was obsessed with the first few series of Big Brother (the regular one) when it first appeared on our screens. Back in 1997, when it was still looked upon as a social experiment and the biggest scandal involved Nasty Nick sliding a piece of paper across a table to try to influence his housemates’ votes.
(I forget the exact details but I recall vaguely that he either constructed his own writing tool out of household objects, like a prison shank or had sneaked a pencil in inside his luggage).
Whatever the story, the world went ballistic as he was ejected from the Big Brother house and I doubt he has been referred to as just ‘Nick’ since.
My First Lady of Realiteee
Those were the days. Reality TV, or its younger sister, Scripted Reality, has come on in leaps and bounds ever since (depending on how you look at it, I suppose).
I believe the first example of the latter came in with the American show Laguna Beach (which I never watched). This evolved into the infinitely more appealing The Hills (which I have devoured in its entirety more times than I care to remember, thankyouverymuch MTV). God bless you, LC.
This side of the Pond TOWIE trumpeted the next generation of orchestrated Reality Television, with the slightly posher (but only in upbringing and attire, if we’re honest) Made In Chelsea bringing up the rear. In between but since fallen by the wayside we’ve had everything from Desperate Scousewives to The Valleys. There was even talk of a Brighton based show of the same ilk.
It’s all pretty terrible. These people aren’t actors and they aren’t civilians either so all conversations conducted onscreen are awkward, no matter how heated. Since it’s all manipulated for our viewing pleasure.
The appeal of this type of entertainment for me has always been the fact that I can check in my brain at the cloakroom – and just enjoy the drama. Sometimes a girl just needs to look at pretty people arguing woodenly while looking out of shot. Them, not me.
Big B isn’t scripted though and I suppose that’s what brings me back to my point.
(I’m typing this draft to the sound of Perez Hilton simulating sexual intercourse, by himself, in the garden to wind up a bevy of ‘famous’ women including Patsy Kensit and some models).
It’s all just so grimy.
Attention seeking? Not this guy
Perez, who you might know, is what we like to call here in England a bit of a penis. I say this purely because that’s all you can really say. His ‘personality’ is so large it dominates everything, only equaled in size by his gargantuan ego. Yet, there’s nothing going on indoors, I’m fairly sure. The people who shout the loudest always have the least to say.
I don’t know why I’m watching this time around. I’ve skipped out on the last handful of years, even the celebrity version because it all seems so tired. Scandalous celebrities keen to shed their ‘bad seed’ images, tabloid favourites keen to hold on to a little more fame time.
Sex in hot tubs, bed hopping; homophobic and racist slights. Borderline violence and a lot of shouting. OH THE SHOUTING.
Hand Mama two Neurofen, there’s a love.
This year has been turbo charged to say the least. In the week or so it’s been on air I’ve witnessed terrible misogyny and sexual assault.
I didn’t actually watch this episode when in aired, but on viewing the clip back (which is an audio clip, actually, no footage was shown of the actual act, in which a drunken housemate pulled open the front of another’s robe to reveal her bare breasts).
Michelle Visage: Diva
This was followed in quick succession by an older housemate being removed from the house for a series of disgustingly sexist comments toward the younger females in residence and a racist rant in which he used the ‘N’ word. No, not ‘Ninja’.
Last night Michelle Visage cried in the Diary Room about the behaviour of Perez, who in her eyes has set the LGBT community back 50 years. Rumour has it that he has quickly become the Most Hated Man in the country, although how do they qualify this? I’d love to know.
Personally I have an easier time hating people who are actually relevant, you know? As far as I can see he contributes nothing to the world, beyond gossip. Publicly, anyway.
As for the Wicked Witch of the show, the infamous Katie Hopkins, well she’s not really done much yet. I mean, of course she’s been blunt, that’s her whole spiel isn’t it? She has labelled Alicia stupid because she doesn’t read and there has been whispering around the breakfast table about bullying but I don’t know if she can be blamed solely for that.
Katie Vs. Katie?
And now they’ve sent in the Cavalry (to rescue the ratings?) in the shapely form of one Miss Katie Price. Which is perhaps the answer to the question of why I haven’t switched over yet.
Good old Jordan sent in to take on Katie Hopkins in a battle of the bolshy. The Beautiful and the damned. Or something.
I should be sorry. I should be changing the channel. Better still I should be switching off the gogglebox and reaching for a book.
But we all know I’m not going to do that. Maybe I’ll mute it though.
This week Kim Kardashian West attempted to #breaktheinternet with the release of some rather grand photographs of her butt.
Shot by Jean-Paul Goude for Paper magazine, the cover (right) pays homage to her famous derriere. Dig a little deeper (as if you’re not interested) and you will witness Kiki ‘re-imagining’ Goude’s best known image “Caroline Beaumont, New York, 1976“.
The Internet seems to still be in tact, just about, but what of all the minds blown by the photographs themselves? People are amused, shocked, disgusted, outraged, curious, excited and royally pissed off by the images.
Kimmy has been the butt (pun intended) of many jokey tributes (including some frankly creepy/unflattering ones) and criticised all over the shop for being a bad feminist, a bad mother and yet again a talent-less, plastic nobody. So far I believe she has turned the other cheek (!!) and I hope that she continues to do so.
NB: Kim did tweet this following release of the pictures:
Who says she isn’t self-aware?
What has all those knickers in a twist really, though? Is it the nudity, or the apparent Photoshopping? Is it the ‘pointlessness’ of it all? Or is it just that it’s Kim having the audacity to celebrate how bloody hot she is?
I know it’s a broad topic and one that has so many arguments but this post is really about butt appreciation from my point of view, so I shall take it from here, guys.
(And a bit of KK appreciation, if I’m honest. Another Proud Pleasure).
Click on image to enlarge
Kimmy, in general, to me is something special. I know where she began, what she has done (who doesn’t? She’s kindly documented almost every aspect of her life for us). I know that technically she doesn’t have a ‘talent’ (singer/baker/candlestick maker), but what if her talent is having a work ethic that would make a mere mortal weep?
What if her super power is having the ability to continually pick herself up, dust herself off and turn all her mistakes into gold? Those are talents I can get behind.
I like Kim, love Keeping Up with The Kardashians and I like Kim’s body too. She looks sensational almost all the time and she’s banging, dammit.
I’m not into body shaming, all bodies types are fine with me and I appreciate the female form as much as the next person. I love seeing curvy women celebrating their curvaceousness as much as I like seeing svelte women representing my favourite designers on the catwalk.
Personally, I don’t have anything against the use of thin women to promote anything as long as there is a visible alternative. How heavenly it would be to see those alternatives in the mainstream, and not just as an afterthought. But that’s a whole other topic for another time.
I’m voluptuous and trying to be proud of that. I’m unlikely to ever be quite as banging as Mrs West (shocker), but as a short woman with a small waist and a big old booty, she is closer to my body type any day than the Keira Knightleys of this world (love her). So why not be happy to see that in all its glory? I sure as shit am!
In another shot within Kim’s issue of Paper, we get to see her full frontal. No, I don’t really see the big deal. It’s just a pair of (great) boobs and very smooth private parts (a fitting tribute to the work of her waxer). She is young and looks amazing. Her pose is playful and proud, not even particularly sexual.
Cheeky ;p
But she’s a mother, say some? Heaven forbid that she teach North to be proud of her body as she grows up. That would be awful. North will see these images one day and you know what? By then Kim will have had the talk with her that explains some of the decisions that she made, that have made her who she is today.
Trust me, North is going to have a more complex time wrapping her head around the cult of celebrity, reality television, Daddy Kanye and the Kardashian Family en masse. Nakedness and an infamous bum are going to be the least of it.
Yes, this is a simplistic view. Yes, the photographs look heavily Photoshopped, thus giving us mere mortals yet another unrealistic ideal to aim toward. We’ve long known that pretty much every cover, every photograph we see in fashion magazines has had the same work. It’s part and parcel of the fashion industry and will hopefully change one day.
Had Kim stood up there in all her natural, oiled goodness with her butt at an angle to emphasise its ripeness would she still have got it in the neck?
But, of course.
Thoughts? Can you add to this conversation?
None of the photographs within this post belong to me.
Best Supporting Actress for Cold Mountain at the 2004 Oscars
This week the world went loco about Renée Zellweger’s face.
It wasn’t really new news, as I’d seen images of her before she attended the Elle Women in Hollywood Awards and set the world spinning off it’s axis; but it seems that now infamous trundle up the red carpet has stuck in the consciousness of everyone from your BFF to the (male) Janitor who talks to you in the ladies while you’re having a wee (true story).
It gets me down.
I’m not going to deny that I find the transformation quite shocking. I have loved her unusual face for years and whatever anybody else says about the casting of Renée as Bridget Jones, she was fucking great in the role. Like totes believable and charming. Furthermore, I felt like she made Bridget feel like my friend, something I hadn’t gotten from the books, even though I adore them.
But the face. Yes, it’s a shame she looks different to that girl but it’s not up to me what another woman does to her own face and body. Plus people age and change over the years. She still looks good, just like a woman in her forties. The horror!
As Bridge
That’s the thing about society and it’s attitude to beauty. You can’t grow old naturally in a highly glamorous industry like that without being battered for it, but you sure as hell can’t fight it the way you see fit either. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Of course, Hollywood and your local high street are worlds apart but the above only reinforces the fact that the only person you can really please is yourself, wherever you are.
Love yourself, be happy with your looks and fuck everyone else, truly because there is always going to be someone who doesn’t agree with what you’ve got going on.
2014 Edition
Look at me: too ginger, arse too big, too fat, too short, too pale, too tattooed; the list goes on. I’ve been called up on every single one of those things in the past by people with an opinion. It hurts, it gets to you and in the end you have two choices; believe the negative and ultimately, let those fuckers keep you down, or realise it’s all bullshit and live your life happily, enormous booty in tow.
Which should be simple, I realise but is easier said than done. As for Renée, well her response to the uproar was perfect and raises a great point.
“I’m glad folks think I look different! I’m living a different, happy, more fulfilling life, and I’m thrilled that perhaps it shows. …
People don’t know me in my 40s. People don’t know me [as] healthy for a while. Perhaps I look different. Who doesn’t as they get older?! Ha. But I am different. I’m happy.” ~ Renée Zellweger
A Voluptuous Mind 