One of the most controversial installations at Hobart’s Museum of New and Old Art is Wim Delvoye’s Cloaca: the excrement machine. When I first stuck my head in during a morning visit, it smelled vaguely…
- Senior Lecturer, The University of Melbourne
It was never going to be Wag the Dog. Or Primary Colors. Or Ides of March. Or The Contender. It was never going to be great, hell, I was doubting it would even be good. My suspicions were sadly, confirmed…
The sexualisation of children issue – this week vomited up in the form of an attack on Target - encapsulates much of the hideousness of the contemporary political landscape. The debate neglects to acknowledge…
Last week in this space I posted a piece about Magic Mike titled Where are the Willies? Originally I’d dubbed it “Where’s the Wang?”: a title exploiting my love of alliteration and my recent work on sexual…
The National’s song About Today (2004), Sarah Polley’s film Take This Waltz (2011) and Mo Hayder’s novel The Devil of Nanking (2005). Three of my favourite examples of pop culture showcasing the rarely…
I was never going to enjoy Magic Mike. I’ve no history of being turned on by men I’ve never met. My heart doesn’t race for an oiled up six-pack and my genitals certainly don’t moisten for gyrating g-strings…
My leftie objections to the Olympics manifested this week in the mildest, least lifestyle-disrupting manner I could conjure: reading about a fictitious attack on them. From the productive - if not necessarily…
In the space of one week I’d been timetabled to teach in the uni’s psych building, I’d been a guest on a radio program hosted by not one but four psychiatrists (intervention much?) and I finally - and…
An Upper West Side shopping trip proves devastating when teenager Lisa (True Blood’s Anna Paquin) becomes embroiled in a fatal bus accident. The pedestrian victim, Monica (The West Wing’s Allison Janney…
Along with Caltex job losses and concerns over whether Our Leisel has thunder thighs, I woke this morning to news that Kristen cheated on R-Patz. Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson – for those not yet…
My first ever time on an aeroplane, the mid 1980s, and the in-flight film was Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Equally suitable fare for my younger brother seated to my left and my grandma to my right. Flash…
There’s an anecdote in Tina Fey’s memoir Bossypants where Mother Fey hands her daughter two booklets to prepare her for her first period. On the (not-so) auspicious occasion of Fey’s menarche, the limitations…
A friend involved in a half-hearted pregnancy quest recently asked me about ovulation. A technical question about how and when and the duration. I stared back blankly, offered her a shrug. “Didn’t you…
By 9AM yesterday I’d been called a Sophie Mirabella apologist. Of all the very many slurs I’ve ever been subjected to, that one came as one hell of a surprise. And I just thought I was defending every…
I’m a fan of the retention of pubic hair. I don’t much like the idea of breast implants. Thoughts of vaginoplasty coax me into an involuntary Kegel exercise. I’ve no idea why any woman would bleach her…
Biologists and psychologists like to tussle with human characteristics: what’s inherent? What’s learnt? What’s genetically coded? What’s malleable? Every so often an “expert” will reignite the nature vs…
Fat people having sex, ugly people having sex, old people having sex. All too readily our culture cringes, shudders, if not gags at the thought. After all, if film and television have taught us anything…
The poster for Secretary is up on my wall at work. I actually paid to see A Dangerous Method purely for Jung’s novel approach to therapy (and God do I hate period films.) While I probably won’t read all…
Trending on Twitter this week has been Gen Y shock and awe that Titanic isn’t just the name of a film. Apparently someone has accidentally stumbled onto the fact that the Titanic story was a tad more than…
My central problem with branded clothing is my reluctance to actually be branded. Why on earth would I pay to advertise someone? When a Kiwi can make a motza from auctioning her buttock flesh to a strip…
Alongside sketchy rationales like postponing the whole rat race thing, a pivotal reason that I got my PhD was to avoid the Miss/Ms conundrum. As first world a problem as is imaginable, but it plagued me…
Regulation of our intimate lives has always been a thorny issue. The anti-sodomy laws of the past and the same-sex marriage issue today illustrate times when policymakers can get it very, very wrong. Legislation…
The math involved is quite simple. Be it an Australian Open final, Melbourne’s race that stops a nation or the Superbowl, more people want to attend than can fit in the venue. Less simple, however, are…
I’ll be completely up front. I love celebrity cook Paula Deen. I love the drawl, I love the finger licking, I love her ever-so-slightly inappropriate relationship with her sons. That time she described…
American rock band Modest Mouse’s song Black Cadillacs (2004) has a particularly wonderful opening: And it’s true we named our children / After towns that we’ve never been to Inside a song filled with…
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