She's lost control again - How I got PMeSsed up

It was at a music festival when I realised something was seriously wrong. The sun was shining, I was drinking warm cider, the band was playing, I was surrounded by friends... And I started crying my bloody eyes out. In a bad way.

The one new year's resolution every feminist needs.

Ah January, that special time of year when the pressure of maintaining perfection is cranked up to eleven by the ubiquitous phrase, "so what's your new year's resolution?". By this weekend most people will have given up on whatever Spartan regime they've adopted. Women are no strangers to the excessive pressure of "must do" lists - at this time of year we create our own so we can be haunted by our own failure for the rest of the year.

Christmas gifts for her*

 *If by her you mean an independent-minded individual with her own unique interests and a passing interest in feminism.

Am I a bad feminist?

I should preface what I’m about to say with the fact that I do consider myself a feminist. Like total badass and all-round babe Caitlin Moran, I believe that all women simply have to be feminists. It’s a bit strange not to want equal rights for yourself and your gender.

Feminism in London Conference - The crafty fight against Patriarchy

What's the difference between craft and art? Is there one? It can hardly argued that they use different mediums - art can be crafted from anything, be it paint, fabric, elephant dung, or a thirteen-foot tiger shark. Yet there's something about the word 'craft' that leads many people to associate it with primary school projects or baby bonnets handmade by the WI. Most damaging to craft's reputation is that it's guilty of that most heinous crime: being  associated with women and children. Stitching and sewing are seen a form of sub-art that women do as part and parcel of their domestic chores. Surely something so innocuous, so much the epitome of female domesticity, can't be used in acts of protest, can it? 

Don't be a sad lonely feminist - meet some feminist friends at the Feminism in London conference!!

It can get lonely being a sad angry feminazi, sitting in your house full of cats and weeping into your keyboard. Three cheers then for rousing feminist get togethers!

My pants are political

Topshop are currently flogging these pants. The picture above is an arse-view. Now, I don't know about you, but personally I think my boyfriend would be a bit creeped out to find his amorous advances towards my nether-regions met with this whiny school-girl plea. And so he should. As a general rule I don't consult my boyfriend's feelings on my outfits (as evidenced by a life lived in my flatmate's cast off Primark tracky bottoms) - but then, I don't often feel that said outfits would justifiably make him recoil with horror. Why Topshop thinks one would want to bring one's father into one's pants I don't know. Even writing that sentence gives me the creeps.

Summer 2014 - How was it for you?

Cameron's Cabinet, July 2014. Source: BBC news 

Due to a brief sojourn in Croatia on my part, and a fairly large parliamentary recess, I’ve rolled July and August in to one great big mega Summer Westminster round-up. Contrary to popular wisdom, quite a lot actually does happen whilst the MPs and peers are on their ‘holidays’. So don’t expect a wash-out.

The ‘P’ Word (Perfection, not Pussy)

Glamour's list of 30 things by 30

 

I have an addiction to lists.  I have a daily work-tasks list, often two work lists (on super-busy days I have been known to have three), a daily non-work task list, a beauty/health to do list, food/diet planning lists, a life-plan list, lists of things to buy in terms of clothes, beauty products, furniture and other things to turn the new flat I’ve moved into from a shiny new shell to a ‘proper home’, daily lists, weekly lists, monthly lists, seasonal lists. I haven’t got to yearly to do lists yet, but give me time.

First Wave

Identifying yourself as a feminist isn’t as simple as you’d think. To some it’s worse than stating that you vote for the BNP. Often it’s followed by an exclamation regarding how ridiculous it is for a sensible girl to have such notions, or a diatribe against man-hating lesbians with hairy armpits. The media is full of articles that reduce women and girls to the roles of victim, whore or ball-breaker. The internet is a place that can demean, demoralise and brutalise a person for simply identifying as a women. Feminism is under attack, but it is also a resurgent movement that is gaining activists and supporters.