The gender pay gap (currently - in today's money if you will - women earn 14 percent less on average than men doing the same job) is still hounding us and using examples that can best be described as exceptions to the rule; Margaret Thatcher, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Sheryl Sandberg they remain that. Exceptions to the rule. Women who didn't just rise to the top, but weren't afraid to do so.

The trick is, it seems, is to simply ask. Have you tried asking? See how well that went for little Oliver Twist. Please sir, can I have some more? No, that's not the way we are told. You don't ask, you see it, want it, take it. Smash and grab. Rude.

Even if it seems a majority of women have issues with simply asking or taking, maybe even talking, it doesn't explain a pay gap of 14 percent. Surely. Speaking on Woman' s Hour to promote her new book Be Awesome Hadley Freeman commented that Britain's women were the worst (or the best? Not sure) for self deprecation. We don't just fail to put ourselves forward we put ourselves down.

Our resident mature student Squeamish Sue has been busy, though not with uni work. Busy causing family rifts, ingratiating herself into tourist groups and searching for a safe place where the sun don't shine. But she's still found time to come up with handy hints for optimum dipping stick use...

Easter was celebrated this year with a potential family rift, brought about by misunderstanding and a lack of communication; that seamless combo for the perfect night's sleep. This year my sister in law, with whom my mother in law always spends Easter, and my other sister in law, with whom she doesn't, were unavailable together in some remote corner of paradise on the other side of the world. Meanwhile those of us at the coal face have been otherwise engaged with uni work, didn't connect Easter and paradise in the same nightmare, and made independent arrangements imagining mother in law to be catered for.                            

Teen magazines. Once a young adult book couldn't be finished without a bored teen 'flipping through magazines', now today's teenager would raise their eyes from their iPad and exclaim sarcastically yet innocently 'they flipped through what now?' The very notion of turning pages increasingly alien to them.

As More! Magazine closes its doors/pages for the last time the papers are a-buzz with the head-shaking told you so lesson that people simply go online nowadays. Celebrity gossip, bitchery and opinion can all be got online. But that, as we recall, is not what the noble teen magazine was about. In the days of dial up it was still princess of guidance and affordable fashion. Today we share what we learned from teen magazines...

Trawling the web to see what's what in the world I noticed that now it is April and the sun has shone for enough consecutive days for everyone to stop tweeting about there being a large alien yellow ball in the sky (seriously, if you tweeted something along those lines I am surprised at you) it's time for women to be told to ditch the opaques.

Opaques is fancy newspaper fashion talk for black tights. You will rarely see black tights in a fashion shoot, in fashion pages land tanned Caucasian women waft about their open plan offices pairing their smart/casual skirt suits with bare legs, their feet never chafing against the unforgiving p/leather of their high heels in pinky beige (also known, off-puttingly and bafflingly, as flesh tone). Nobody wants to see their designs and stylings paired with black tights, which is a shame for they are glorious and everybody knows it.

You might have noticed we at Squeamish Bikini have a certain fondness for sea creatures. We have a squid and whale representing us now but we will let you into a little secret...the original Squeamish mascot was a mermaid, unfortunately we couldn't come up with a bosom we were happy with and so the noble Squeamish Squid came to our rescue.


But the mermaid has the best stories, myths and documentaries, so the mermaid remains close to our hearts.  Which is why Kirsten Tambling and Laura Seymour's new collaborative project Poems Underwater - an exploration of mermaids appeals so much to us. The pair would like others to contribute their own ideas and art to the project and there's certainly no shortage of material: "The mermaid, ancient and imaginary, has real life contemporary resonance with the figure of the bisexual and of the migrant, borderless individual."

I'd like to say we met over a bottle of Kraken rum to discuss the project on the beach as the salty sea air whistled and the waves crashed on the shore... But we didn't, we emailed. Here Kirsten and Laura talk dugongs, sailors and whether mermaids are real or not...

Were we the types to do word clouds (which we totally know how to do but simply choose not to) it occurred to us that the stand out word this month might be 'bra'. Now hush, we aren't proud or nothing...OK maybe a little but we realised that there aren't many good pieces of slang for bras. Which is peculiar, seeing as their content has all kinds of slang that Squeamish Kate throws about semi-offensively. Baps, tits, boobies, puppies. So why no bra slang? Think about it, it is always bra, bra, bra. Unless we're feeling fancy and then it's brassiere. Ooh, so continental. Or if you're reading Germaine Greer on the subject of horse riding where she acknowledges a need for “boulder holders.” Because we hate repetition over here, or like to give the impression we do, we endeavoured to come up with some slang for bra. Use it, abuse it, suggest some more... 

Oh dear. Someone got me started on the ol' Real Women thing again. Well, I say someone, I mean multinational consumer goods company Unilever, owners of Dove skincare. Who have launched a new campaign in the usual vein of Real Women, Tryin' Their Gosh-Darnedest With Dove Products over in America.

Oh, is it more people of different sizes and ethnicity dancing around having the time of their lives in white underwear? No, reader, no it is not. The party in white pants is over, it is time to get serious. Because guys, some women don't feel so good about themselves. Some women feel so...not good about themselves that they exaggerate the features they don't like about themselves and forget they actually look perfectly ordinary. I know I know, it's the self-esteem, stupid.  

You know, a little while back BBC show Woman's Hour, (32.20 minutes in) which is sadly not airing today, had a feature on wearing red. We weren't aware but apparently it's a notoriously tough colour to wear. According to the British Heart Foundation (which you can donate to here) a third of women "secretly wish they had the confidence to wear red." They worry it draws too much attention to them.

This, dear reader, is silly. Red is a wonderful colour that doesn't even say 'look at me' - here's lesson 1 about wearing colours, colours say nothing. Only the wearer gets to make utterances or statements, if people let their clothes speak for them nothing would get done. Or said.

Anyway, as it's midweek and Wednesday is always a wash out, we thought a How-to was in order. If you are still standing in front of your wardrobe (and probably incredibly late for work) wondering what to wear we are here to help zhoosh up your outfit with red...

I read, I think in a Greer book, probably The Female Eunuch or The Whole Woman (recommended to our year 12 English Literature and Language class by our teacher Barry who was a big fan of Greer's handbag = outer womb theory) that because so many women have been on the pill for so long before proper investigation in to female body chemistry (plus it's all in the water, allegedly, so next time you're feeling cheap at a restaurant order up a tall glass of tap oestrogen - it'll make you feel classier) we have no idea about how a cis woman's hormones might roll if left to their own devices. Naturally this implies that eating hormone infested meat and swallowing contraception is maybe not a good idea (especially if it's a prophylactic) but also - it's too late now!

Waxing brand Nads have been busy, it's not all mixing up huge sticky vats of wax for people to painfully style their hair down there as they wish. No, Nads employees have been out and about surveying people! Specifically heterosexual men, who they have been quizzing about women's pubic hair.

Just 12% 'admitted' to liking what is called The Hollywood (all off) and 43% said they preferred a natural triangle (apparently you have to request the Bermuda Triangle if you go to a professional). 17% care for the Brazilian or Landing Strip style and a creative 15% like the 'heart-breaker' where the pubic hair is shaped into a heart.

An Essex dwelling Mr Daniel Smith (27) told Nads: "I like it interesting - like unwrapping a present and finding a surprise, I do prefer some hair so a design like the landing strip or heart shape is good for me..." To keep things interesting for all the Daniel Smiths out there we have come up with some new pubic hair styles to surprise...