All in Affairs & Opinions
It’s difficult to actively protest anything of importance to me on Facebook or Twitter when the whole medium is plagued by false and misleading information. Each time I have posted anything of significance (a protest, if you will) I've felt my opinions instantly become cheap; a flicker; read and disregarded, `liked` and forgotten by a few with a singular experience... No, if we want a space to protest, it has to be somewhere other than just social media.
It’s that time of year again, when the chic elite stomp the pavements like a catwalk and, for the first time in months, the weather is not permitted to dictate one’s outfit: it’s London Fashion Week. Like any magazine writer worth their salt, I consider it an obligation to comment. But my fashion-conscious musings for the week don’t focus inside the hallowed halls of sequined glamour; I would rather give a shout-out to clothes that can make me feel my most fabulous...
A year to the date since the Women’s March of 21st February 2017 (the first day of Donald Trump’s presidency), the Time’s Up Rally was held to commemorate this anniversary. As a Leeds-based magazine, Harpy was unable to attend the London rally, but caught up with our friend Kirsten Peters-Roebuck (@KirstenP_R), who was there in full force.
In the first week of January, an open letter denouncing #MeToo as akin to a ‘good old witch-hunt’ was published in the French daily newspaper Le Monde.[1] The letter was signed by one hundred prominent French women, comprised of writers, academics and performers, including the reputable actress Catherine Deneuve.
In this darkly funny drama from Martin McDonagh, Mildred Hayes is a grieving mother who hires provocative billboards to pressure the local police department into solving the case of her murdered daughter. Three Billboards is about grief, but with the backstory of police brutality, it’s clear that this is also a film with a point to make about racism.
#notallmen might be one of the most vexatious, thoughtless social media campaigns since the dawn of Twitter. Assuming complete ignorance on society’s part, it is passive-aggressive, snide, and wrongfully accusatory. Much has been written, deliberated and disagreed on about this most divisive of hashtags.
We're all feeling a bit like this droopy dog right now. Our residual hangovers and food comas are lingering, friends and relatives head home and the return to work hits you like a ton of dicks. Most of us are pretty deflated- all we really want to do is curl up in bed to watch Friends (which is FINALLY on UK Netflix, FYI) but instead we’re expected to put on clothes that aren’t pyjamas and trudge through the drizzle to reality.
If you celebrate Christmas, or know that you’re going to be spending time with people who do, the festive season can seem like a daunting prospect. After weeks of awkward office parties, winter colds and the incessant buffeting of capitalism, you’re expected to leave the house in sub-arctic conditions to deal with family commitments. Whether you love the festive period or not, here are a few tips for staying sane this time of year
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.
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'.
