Of late, my entertainment and social channels have been somewhat bombarded by a bizarre media frenzy surrounding the phenomenon of the "armpit vagina": yet another indictment on a society that feels compulsively obliged to comment upon the female body.
The recent publication of Philip Pullman’s ‘The Book of Dust’ brought with it, for me, a wave of nostalgia. Although Lyra Belacqua, the fictional heroine of my youth, features only as a baby, the novel still centres on her. I bought the book and read it within three days, desperate to re-engage with the alluring world of witches, daemons and armoured bears that so captivated me as a child.
It’s officially mid-to-late December, by which I mean 'tis the season of consumer capitalist joy, by which I mean CHRISTMAS IS COMING. It’s especially catchy in caps, I must say.
Pritchard-Mclean is unafraid to take on subjects that are tricky to navigate, be it trashing serial killers on her podcast, or finding the humour in her experience of volunteering with vulnerable children for her stand-up show Appropriate Adult. What’s brilliant about her is that she is always careful to ensure that her jokes are hitting the right target.
In spring this year, HBO launched a seven-part miniseries called Big Little Lies, based on Liane Moriarty’s novel of the same title. The show was incredibly popular, earning high-ratings and winning several awards, but this is not just down to the cast. Refreshingly, Big Little Lies is based around the lives of three female protagonists.
This October, two First Nations women filed a lawsuit against the Saskatoon Health Region in Canada for coerced sterilisation. This legal action, which claims the women were subject to systemic racism, follows a report released on the 22nd July 2017 by Dr. Yvonne Boyer and Dr. Judith Bartlett (both indigenous, of Metis descent) titled ‘Tubal Ligation in the Saskatoon Health Region: The Lived Experience of Aboriginal Women’.
I recently found myself in the peculiar position of trying to explain the undefined, yet pretty unanimously agreed upon, ranking of English swear words. From 'bloody hell', through 'crap', 'bollocks', 'wanker', all the way up to the infamous trio: 'shit', 'fuck' and 'cunt'.
