She’s a scream! My Halloween horror film heroines 

Happy Halloween everybody! I hope you’ve had the chance to dress up this Halloween, it’s always fun to wear a Freddy Kruger Jumper, a Scream mask or even a William Shatner mask painted white. Yes Michael Myers galore but not one person dressed up as the girl who outsmarts him. How many Laurie Strodes do you see? None. The Halloween (1978) character played by ‘Scream Queen’ Jamie Lee Curtis is known as the leading lady of this genre but I want to introduce you to some other horror heroines. Ok, they aren’t the greatest fancy dress options but you can watch them take on the forces of evil instead!

In the US they’ve been Halloweening it up for a while now, here in the UK we've been biding our time for Halloween weekend. How sober of us. Personally I have a rule that costumes must be homemade. However if you want to hire a costume here are some ideas that are TOTALLY Halloween themed.  You would think the rule would be ‘You can be anything you want, just make it dead’ but it appears the rule is actually ‘you can be anything you want, just make it sexy.’

Today guest writer Glen talks to us about privilege and political correctness:

NOTICE: This is about ‘privilege’; it is not a comprehensive discussion by any means and I apologise to readers who may think this presentation somewhat simplistic. It is, of necessity, something of a limited 101 in reference to a current news story.

Trigger Warning: discussions of racism and violence 

Having made their mark in New York, Sugar Daddy parties may now be crossing the Atlantic to the UK. With more and more school girls stating their ambition is to have a WAG lifestyle it’s arguable that the UK might already have a form of Sugar Daddy parties. It’s just the method involves going to posh bars on the off-chance rather than a party where everyone knows exactly what’s going on. You only have to watch BBC 3’s Cherry’s Cash Dilemmas to see the money young women are spending in a bid to bag a rich guy.

The way the parties in the US however is like this; rich men gather at a party where young women outnumber them. Organiser Alan Schneider opens the party with this line “Men, you know what to do. Women, receive their generosity. We will touch you with passion and fire all night long.” I will give you a moment to unclench before we try and work out what the heck that’s even supposed to mean… 

I have a shocking confession to make. I have never watched Downton Abbey. I have not even seen a clip, not an advert for it, nothing. I know (now) that it is set in the Edwardian age. The only reason the show has been brought to my attention (beyond my mother terminating a conversation because “Downton Abbey’s on”) now is a Radio Times interview with Downton actress Michelle Dockery.

Several newspapers have lifted quotes from this interview detailing Dockery’s mourning the loss of chivalry, when asked about how the role of women had changed since the First World War.

 “I can travel where I like, I can have a baby when I like, I can do any job I want – but I do think chivalry has been lost a little bit.”

How did you spend your weekend? Here at Squeamish we spent it with throngs of the undead. No, that’s not a description of hitting the shops on busy afternoon – the fifth annual Brighton zombie walk, Beach of the Dead, took place on Saturday. It’s grown from a 50-person shuffle to a daytime event where around 4,000 zombies stumbled and groaned their way through the town. It’s grown so big that the police asked the organisers to move it forward from the always-busy Halloween weekend. So if you don’t have a costume ready yet, maybe you’ll find some inspiration in these photos. Guard your brains, we’re going in…

In the wake of Gaddafi's death and Libya's libyaration (I know!) this Friday we ditched the scheduled one in favour of an even more topical one. And the one we were going to use was pretty topical. Due to the tasteless image gracing all the front pages today we've decided on this 5 which shows Gaddafi as his friends might like to remember him.

Trigger warning.
Yesterday Twitter was ablaze (or @squeamishbikini’s Twitter feed was, what with all those feminists we insist on following) with a new Welsh poster urging women not to be such drunken hussies, reminding them alcohol features in two thirds of all rapes. It follows the recent banning of short skirts in some schools around the UK. The schools said this was in a bid to protect school girls unaware that short skirts are involved in over a third of rape cases. I made that figure up.  A figure I didn’t make up was this: nearly a third of people say a woman was partially or totally responsible for being raped if she was drunk and a quarter believe a woman is partially or totally responsible for being raped if she is wearing sexy or revealing clothing.

Everyone knows that Sir Jack Brabham was the only F1 driver to win a championship in a car he designed. 

What you might not know is that Daphne Arnott is believed to be motorsport’s only female driver-constructor, team manager, and talent-spotter.

Daphne Arnott was born to a motorsport-obsessed family in 1926. As a child, she spent many family days out at Brooklands, where the smell of petrol and roar of engines got under her skin. 

Encouraged by her family to pursue a career in engineering, Arnott was a competent mechanic by her early teens, and began her working life at the Hawker Aircraft Company during the Second World War.

Today Nottinghamshire police are being criticised by the IPCC for their handling of a domestic abuse turned murder case in 2010. The body of 21 year old Casey Brittle was found last year in New Basford, Nottingham. Mother of one Brittle had suffered severe head injuries at the hands of former partner, 27 year old Sanchez Williams. Nottinghamshire police had responded to 11 calls from Brittle regarding domestic abuse, yet they had not passed on this information to the domestic abuse unit.

Sometimes I am asked what feminism is, or I’m informed it’s not needed now, it’s no longer relevant. It seems rather churlish to bring up the subject of domestic abuse with someone you’ve just met at a party; we all know feminists are hairy killjoys already. So I am always full of admiration for those who bring the subject of domestic abuse (I realise women are not the exclusive victim) to the forefront.