Does it matter if Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirke look beautiful or not?

Source: Instagram/lonelylngerie

Source: Instagram/lonelylingerie

The newly released images of Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirke are absolutely awesome – in fact they make up what is probably the best underwear campaign I can remember seeing – but let’s be real I don’t spend a lot of time remembering underwear ads.

Lonely, the underwear brand says the campaign “features candid portraits of inspiring women in their natural environments wearing Lonely in their own way” which is lovely marketing talk. But naturally, everybody else is talking about how the two girls look in their undies.

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Motherhood guilt is a sickness

It’s a long time since I’ve been consumed with guilt by my own parenting. In fact many a month has passed since I have been tied up in knots of self-reproach and it’s been quite liberating. Admittedly it’s much easier to escape guilt when your child is a teenager and you aren’t invested in the squabbles and competitiveness of playgroups and online parenting forums, but still.

The thing is I was blissfully unaware of how guilt-free I was until this latest bout hit.

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Is Facebook causing us to disconnect from people?

You have to have a tough skin to write for a big online audience. The feedback is often as brutal as it is swift. But I don’t have a tough skin, in fact my skin is practically transparent it’s so flimsy.

But, along with my delicate (and wrinkled) skin, I have strong opinions and so I have had to learn to deal with a bit of feedback, criticism even. For the most part I am happy to learn from other people, to broaden my view or consolidate it.

But there is a big difference between a disagreement in opinion and the attack of a troll. When trolls attack I take safety in the fact they don’t know me and they surely have their own issues if they think it’s okay to attack me rather than debate with me.

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I’m taking my parenting advice from the police

Just when I thought my days as a helicopter mother were over the police have informed me that I should continue. And I am nothing if not law abiding.

As far as labels go I never had a problem with “helicopter parent”. I know it’s got a bad rap in the press and I’m sure that there are studies that have shown kids whose parents hover are less resilient or don’t manage on their own as adults or some version of that. Just as I am certain there are studies that show that kids whose parents are present and involved feel loved and secured and are better at relationships when they enter adulthood. I guess it depends on how you interpret hover…

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Is this really what we want to teach our kids?

Yesterday I saw an absolutely terrible contract that was supposedly written by an 8th grader to her boyfriend. It was a contract that I have seen described as “cute” “hilarious” and “the best thing ever” in various media outlets.

I describe it as frightening, harrowing and indicative of some real problems. Hopefully soon I will see it being described as fake. [Read more…]

Why do men think women want pictures of their bits?

There are some things I don’t think I’ll ever get, like maths, coriander and dick pics. And while I am happy enough to live a life with maths and coriander, I don’t believe anyone should have to put up with unsolicited pictures of someone’s manhood.

The whole thing came to a head (yes, I know) when I read about an exchange between a woman in the UK who wrote a review for a restaurant on Facebook. Shortly after her very innocuous appraisal “amazing food and the staff is so friendly! Definitely recommend” she received a message from one James O’Leary in response to the review. James asked her to check her private messages saying “Hi Samantha, check my Facebook dm please I would like to know your opinion”. It was in that private message that he said “hey” and sent a picture of his penis and then the message “you have pretty eyes”.

All the class. [Read more…]

It’s a down down? No, it’s just a downer

I am not a big TV watcher, my attention span doesn’t allow it and nor does my husband. Not that he doesn’t physically allow it but lord, he really likes to watch stuff that has no appeal to me and I couldn’t be bothered arguing with him or taking the remote control off him.

The other issue I have is that TV makes me grumpy, not so much the actual programming but the ads. Clearly a lot of them are aimed at the witless, uninformed chump who is not immune to be spoken down to.

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10 things you must do in order to get a good night’s sleep

For as long as I can remember I’ve had horrible bouts of insomnia. These bouts are nicely interspersed with times of sleeplessness. As you can imagine, I have (exhaustedly) gone through hundreds of tips meant to help get me to sleep and what’s more to sleep through the night.

So far I haven’t had a lot of luck – but I do think I know how to help other people get the sleep they need,  and so I have created this handy list for you to follow

1. Get yourself really tired

2. Make sure you are comfortable

3. Let go of any childhood issues  you have been hanging on to

4. Pretend you have no worries at all

5. Forget every embarrassing encounter you’ve ever had


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6. Don’t think about your poor business decisions or bad career choices

7. Try very hard not to replay old fights in your head

 

8. Don’t think about things like who would attend your funeral

9. Don’t even think back on your day

10. Take a sleeping pill

Easy huh?

So many accidents involving kids. Who is to blame?

Of all the things my son has ruined, my ability to sleep for a whole night is the one I miss the most. And I don’t even think that was an accident on his behalf – it’s just one of those things that babies do. Then they grow up and have real accidents.

Kids climb into zoo enclosures when they shouldn’t, they steal Chupa Chups from the supermarket checkout when we aren’t looking, they put toast in the DVD player (in the good old days when we had such things), they break toys (sometimes willfully), they cut their siblings hair and make them look like they need special attention and they eat the dog food. They are kids, they do stuff like that. And more. If you have a kid you know that they’ve done some spectacular shit that you try to laugh about after some simmering down time has passed. [Read more…]

Why teenagers are better than toddlers: the baking edition

I always thought I would be the mother in the Disney movie remake of real life. Not the evil witch mother but the caring, nurturing, play on the floor and bake cookies kind of mother. I loved children long before I had my own and after enduring a childhood fairy tales most definitely aren’t based on, I had it firmly in my mind that I would make my child’s life magical and wonderful. Wistful and dreamy even.

But, as every mother of young children knows, that’s not always how life goes. My attempts at doing craft quickly became sessions that will no doubt be relived in his therapy sessions when he’s older. I would not be surprised if the sight of craft paper or a glue stick instils fear in him even now. Let’s just say patience is not one of my virtues, in fact I embarrassingly remember screaming at him once for ruining my vision of his year K project. (Why on earth do they give Year K students projects?).

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