Girls’ interests are too often trivialised or dismissed … but passionate, driven girls are making an impact – from Greta Thunberg to 14-year-old skateboarding gold medallist Arisa Trew.
- Associate Professor in Literary Studies, Monash University
L’éditeur anglais de Roald Dahl a retouché des textes du célèbre auteur pour en supprimer des termes jugés offensants. Une polémique à réinscrire dans l’histoire de la littérature de jeunesse.
Children’s books implicitly shape the minds of young readers - and are covertly censored in many ways. But revising occasional words will usually not shift the values regarded as outdated in the text.
La nouvelle adaptation Disney de l'œuvre d'Andersen sort mercredi 24 mai 2023 sur grand écran. Retour sur l'histoire d'un conte qui parle d’exclusion et de différence.
Disney’s new Black mermaid has been called ‘inauthentic’ – but fairy tales have always been repurposed across cultures. And Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid was different from Disney’s.
From mythical Moth people, who kidnapped children, to threatening desert fairies in loincloths, early Australian fairy tales helped sanitise white settlement, expressing colonial fears.
Today’s stories embrace the monster — and explain how she was created.
Many historic ideas about women’s beauty - from prizing firm breasts to emphasising the ‘natural’ - continue to resonate today.
School stories hold a special place in popular culture. Stories set in Australian schools have often celebrated outsiders and underdogs, in contrast with their North American counterparts.
Ford works toward dismantling the idea that feminism is harming men. Instead, she proposes that a patriarchal society can be as harmful and destructive for individual men as it can be for women.
Gothic fiction has become the ideal genre for exploring the grotesque, frightening aspects of coming of age. And disruptive girls with supernatural powers have replaced the passive heroines of old.
While the 2018 Oscars ceremony showed its support for women against sexual harassment, women remain underrepresented in some of the awards catagories.
Fairytales are increasingly being targeted for giving girls inappropriate messages. But these stories have always evolved with the times, and talk of banning them is misguided.
The twentieth anniversary celebrations of the highest-selling book series of all time are now coming to a close. 2017 has been a milestone year for Harry Potter fans in their twenties and thirties, who…
The history of dangerous cosmetics shows us the harms that women have suffered to meet expectations of what is beautiful.
The passing of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner prompted both positive and negative eulogising. From one perspective, he was a revolutionary who helped to dismantle the long-standing secrecy and shame surrounding…
As soon as next year, TV ads in the UK that perpetuate gender stereotypes or mock those who don’t conform to them will be banned. Should Australia follow suit?
Why is Cher, 71, celebrated when she wears a near-nude costume while Madonna, 58, receives revulsion? 19th century women’s magazines reveal how the double standards of beauty for older women came about.
Susan Bordo’s response to Hillary Clinton’s unimaginable defeat at the hands of Donald Trump reads like a bystander’s account of a train crash or bomb explosion. In the wake of the unexpected, and what…
Historically, pop culture has tended to depict transgender people as objects of comedy or monstrous freaks. But attitudes are changing, as a new novel featuring a transgender child shows.
Clementine Ford’s Fight Like a Girl is the latest in a new wave of feminist memoirs. These frank, fearless books reveal the hostility and deep discomfort women’s ever-strengthening public voice has provoked.
Since Hillary Clinton launched her first US Presidential campaign in 2007, the vitriol directed towards her has been heavily grounded in sexism. Former President Barack Obama recently commented on the…
Why is it that when a woman talks, she is more likely to be understood as excessively vocal, irritating, or a nag as compared with when a man speaks? Eddie McGuire recently joked about drowning journalist…
The day after the horrific Orlando massacre, the highest-trending topic on Facebook was the appearance of Meg Ryan’s face at the Tony Awards. Like Renee Zellweger before her, the perception that Ryan has…
Surgical makeovers might seem a modern phenomenon but they have a long and disturbing history: from 16th century skin grafts done without anaesthesia to reductions of “primitive” large breasts.
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