Since reading about this online I have been toying with whether or not I want to write about it. I have never watched The Only Way is Essex, it took me a while to work out what The Guardian was going on about when they mentioned TOWIE (pronounced, I believe, ‘Towheee!’). But the recent images of a 30th birthday party brought home something I’ve been ruminating on for a while now.

Why the heck would anyone not only go so far as to reveal their desperation to get married but hold a wedding themed party in which they dress as a bride?  Somehow that is even more of a pity party than marrying yourself. Which I’m sure is very EMPOWERING but you don’t get a tax break announcing your commitment to you for the foreseeable. 

Dammit Janet. You know the world is on intimate terms with a handbasket when The Daily Mail and Janet Street-Porter manage to crank out articles you kind of agree with. Somehow in a fortnight the Daily Mail has chastised Kelly Osbourne for her use of the word ‘tranny’ (“but some of my best friends are trannies!”*), wondered what happened to the sisterhood and been cynical about chivalry. And yet…

Janet Street-Porter used her Monday Daily Mail column to consider what women in the public eye are doing to draw attention to how women are losing out.

“More than a million women are unemployed and 700,000 are stuck in part-time jobs, when many desperately want (and need) to work longer hours and earn more… you’d expect the sisterhood to stick together and rise up in protest.

So, congratulations are in order for Miss Venezuela who yesterday won Miss World 2011. Outside women held up placards with ‘Miss Ogynist’ and ‘Sexism is pretty ugly’ in protest against the Miss World contest. Curiously reported numbers of protesters vary, The Guardian say 50, The Telegraph says 200. But the point is Feminism is not dead, just not as au fait with social networking as it could be to organise such things. 

Had she lived to be the oldest person in the world (some people are just greedy for recognition) today would have been Marie Curie’s 144th birthday. Born in Warsaw, Poland on the 7th of November 1867, Curie was the first person to be awarded 2 Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry.

Celebrated for her pioneering research in radioactivity, Curie was given the Hollywood treatment in 1943 with a film called Madame Curie. The actress Greer Garson portrayed Madame Curie and Aldous Huxley worked (uncredited) on the screenplay. Brought on to the project by Anita Loos, Huxley’s original screenplay was deemed too literary, hence the lack of credit. Like all biopics the resulting film was inaccurate and left things (such as Curie’s family) out of the plot to further the storyline. For instance the film makers scrapped any mention of Curie’s sister Bronislawa, an obstetrician. Because Hollywood films have a strict scienceywomen limit. Bronislawa came to Paris first, the sisters had a pact that Marie would provide financial assistance for Bronislawa’s medical studies, on the condition Bronislawa would return the favour. No Bronislawa, no pioneering scientific research.

As the nights draw in and the rain starts to dash against the windows almost as hard as it is in your heart, we thought now was the time to list the 5 tv shows that understood what it was like to be a teenager. Or how you reckoned it should be like to be a teenager were you allowed out/clear skinned/had friends. I imagine all these can be located on You Tube with a little creative spelling (or not). But as I would never steal a car, nick a handbag or kill a man I shan’t be linking them here.

Recently Squeamish Bikini went to see a screening of the Le Tigre documentary Who took the Bomp? After the film we discussed how much we love Kathleen Hanna, JD Samson (lovely eyes) and Johanna Fateman but what we’d all noticed (besides JD Samson’s really lovely eyes) was their armpit hair. It wasn’t like it was taking over their entire upper bodies or anything. It just jarred with what I expect to see when a woman raises her arms on screen.

Cameron, Cameron, Cameron. In some kind of bid to be both liked by the ladies and seen as just an ordinary bloke, he’s taken to using phrases such as “screwing up” and “goofs”. This makes me wince more than any “calm down dear” gaffe. David Cameron’s voicing of his concerns that he came across as a “sort of 'all right luv, I'm down the pub tonight’ man”, which he totes isn’t guys, was met with ridicule. So he is having another go to show he hearts women, which is why he (and let’s go into list mode here):

A woman in Rome claims she was turned away from giving blood because she’s a lesbian, while in the UK we’ve only just started letting gay men give blood... so long as they haven’t been sexually active in the last 12 months, condom or no.

I’m against the ban on gay men giving blood, but I am very pro giving blood – if you’ve ever known someone who’s needed it, it’s likely you are too. I can’t tell you it might be morally right to lie about your sexual history if you know you’re healthy. But I CAN tell you all about what it’s like to give blood.

I have now given 10 pints of my blood away. I know this because they give you a badge when you reach 10. And a certificate.  That’s enough to fill up a whole other one and a half people.

I recall in the late nineties and early 2000s as the Spice girls began to spawn, plop, plop, plop the phrase ‘Too posh to push’ doing the rounds. Suspicions of Posh Spice (as she was then) et al electing to give birth by the blade in order to sneak in an immediate post natal tummy tuck were rife. Mothers who had given birth naturally wrote about the experience and some healthcare professionals (I have a feeling this is a new phrase, perhaps in the 90s we were still allowed to say nurses?) anonymously touted the advantages of giving birth naturally.