Our Friday 5 today caused a Fox News article to be brought to our attention today (You won’t be surprised to learn I shan’t be linking it) with the title New Crop of Comediennes Combine Funny Bones with Bangin’ Bodies. Well, where do I even begin?

I know you’re not prepared to read an article produced by whichever keys are hit hardest every time my head hits the keyboard. So let’s begin instead note the observation Fox News makes that Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill and Ricky Gervais have recently “lost the jiggles but not the giggles.” It’s a truth Fox notes we’re comfortable with; funny men can be fat, thin, ugly or handsome. We can handle it all because they’re so funny. Rogen, Hill and Gervais lost weight but they’re still the same people inside and can still make (some) of us laugh.

It’s not been the most triumphant of weeks. In fact it’s been somewhat bogus, we need cheering up at Squeamish Bikini. So here’s a list of 5 comediennes/female comedians/comedians that happen to be women.  And not one of them has an act that involves parking a car. 

Today the Daily Mail is kindly informing Carla Bruni she has been pregnant for too long; The Saturdays’ Una Healy is not showing enough for her pregnancy to be plausible and Beyoncé is so big she must be padding her stomach.

To be a female celebrity is to be closely scrutinised, to be a pregnant celebrity is to hand your body over to the press and blogosphere for intimate inspection and monitoring. Surely it’s enough to make pregnant famous women return to the days of confinement.

Considering women have been getting pregnant and giving birth for thousands of years you would think we’d be more familiar with the passage of pregnancy. But it’s still a bit of a mystery. Celebrity bloggers such as Perez Hilton graffiti ‘ready to pop!’ the moment a star’s pregnancy reaches the football smuggling stage.

With the government hastily putting together new public orders , the Fawcett Society organising a protest on November 19th and changes to the NHS afoot, we’ve got a feeling you might be needing this handy guide to peaceful protesting.



As I headed off to ‘Block the Bridge’ last weekend concerned friends worried about what I’d do when I was arrested. There’s a perception among lots of people I know that if you attend any protest or demo, it will end in violence, destruction and/or arrest, and I’ve seen it put people off taking part.

But I’ve been on plenty of demos and marches over the last few years, and that’s not the case. Yes, things often kick off, but it’s more unusual to get caught up in that unwittingly than it is to spend a day marching, chanting, chatting and then heading home. Either way, if you have reached the stage where you want to get out there and show your dissatisfaction but you have no idea how to begin then this is for you.

5 tips from the sideline. A protesting 101...

If you are anything like me, you do not enjoy being touched by strangers. Or people you know for that matter, at least not without prior warning. Worry not my fellow totally reasonable people; for I have here a new addition for your Christmas list (people ARE welcome to give me presents). Designer Meejin Yoon has created just the clothing for us. The Defensible Dress has an in-built sensor on the back, causing spikes (both metaphorical and real) to stand on end should someone enter the ‘too close’ zone set by the wearer. 

Yoon was inspired by the blowfish and the porcupine, “the defensible dress is a respionse to the increasing breakdown and encroachment in everyday life.” Though as Vice Style points out, the term dress is rather loosely used, “doesn't the fact that your boobs and ass are completely exposed kind of invite people to come up to you?” I believe this is supposed to be looked upon more as the kind of accessory you might find in Cyberdog. 

Squeamish Kate

A few thousand people spent most of Sunday on a bridge in London, blocking traffic and symbolically blocking the Health and Social Care Bill from reaching the House of Lords, where it will be debated on Tuesday and Wednesday. But why – what’s wrong with it?

Well, on a broad level, it looks like a way of introducing market forces into the NHS, when  there remain serious questions as to the effectiveness of ‘market forces’ in regulating and developing health care provision  patients. Beresford : 2005  

I think pretty much everyone can agree that we want to see our healthcare system be as efficient as possible, but opinions differ over how to achieve this. I would say the devil is in the detail – but Cameron and Lansley have set out little in the way of supporting detail for their bill.

Despite Hollywood seemingly on a quest
to turn every single superhero into a movie franchise, this Friday we present five heroes who probably shouldn’t bother waiting by the phone...



Bouncing Boy               
Bouncing Boy is, unsurprisingly, a boy who bounces. After accidentally drinking an experimental ‘super plastic formula’ after confusing it with a can of pop he developed the power to inflate himself and bounce off walls. His weakness is pins. And childhood obesity.

Dogwelder
 Admittedly this one was created as a joke by Garth Ennis (better known for creating ‘Preacher’ and ‘The Boys’), but this list wouldn’t be complete without a superhero whose power is to weld dead puppies to criminals’ faces. Personally I think he’d be perfect for a Macdonalds Happy Meal tie-in.

Arm Fall Off Boy
Without a doubt the greatest superhero ever to exist. Arm Fall Off Boy has the ability to remove his limbs and use them as a crude makeshift club. Despite clearly being a grown adult he refers to himself as Boy and tries to join a superhero gang made up of prepubescent teens while wearing a leotard and a pink phallic helmet, probably hampering his chances of getting a multi-million film deal...

The Red Bee 
The Red Bee is a district attorney who decided the best way to advance his career would be to dress up in a stripy yellow and red suit (presumably the black stripes weren’t slimming enough) and fight Nazis. He didn’t have any powers other than specially trained bees, including his favourite one, Michael, who lived in his belt buckle. Perhaps unsurprisingly his comic ended with the Nazis killing him. Maybe because he insisted on using male bees, which any good apiarist will tell you don’t have stingers.

Dazzler 
Originally created by Marvel as a marketing shill for Casablanca Records, Dazzler has the ability to turn music into lasers. Wondering why she’s on this list? Well perhaps I should clarify – I don’t mean Superman style eye lasers; she turns sound into glowing laser beams like the ones you see at a school disco. The only time I can see this being a useful power for a superhero is if the world was attacked by alien invaders with epilepsy. However, I think she’d be my first choice to go to a rave with...

Gareth 

Recent Vogue covers on both sides of the Atlantic feature celebrities dressed up as Marilyn Monroe. Granted Michelle Williams (forever Jen Lindley in my heart) is promoting her new Monroe biopic on the October 2011 cover of American Vogue. The trailer for which you can see below, it’s worth it if only to see Emma Watson spit out the glaring anachronism “fancying.” Nobody ‘fancied’ anything other than pigeons in the 1950s. But I don’t know what is going on with Rihanna’s Marilyn Monroe wig on British Vogue.