Everybody is supposed to be having a huge amount of fun right now because it's Christmas. It's all sparkly this and spiced that and eggnog-flavoured-what-now? Are you excited? About Christmas? We hope so. Although it's not healthy to build your expectations too high so we are going to go all Grinchy on you and share times when Christmas has been ruined for us. Tales of the Santa myth being crushed, falling foul of alcohol, yuletide stomach bugs and party present shortages start here, what ruined Christmas for you?  

So the nicest thing about a cold Christmassy winter is this nostalgic image: the foggy haze of out of focus multi-coloured fairy lights strewn over a synthetic evergreen. The only way to achieve this blissful and blurred scene is to indulge in some liquid Christmas cheer - mulled wine! I equate the long success of my Christmas spirit with the amount of warming wine I have consumed. Sadly I am only on my first mulled wine of the season but at £4.95 a glass who can blame me? It's time to get myself mulling (and my liver), please do join me!

This week we realised we must start pretending like we are prepared for Christmas and how better to prepare than to look at the true meaning of Christmas. No, not presents, office parties, eggnog, fancy decorations or turkey. The Nativity scene.  When our Lord gave us Christmas and kindly shared his birthday with all of us so we all get presents come the 25th December. Hurrah. Many a school Nativity play will be commencing at this time so we decided to cast our own Nativity play featuring the people we'd most like to hear drone the dirge of a carol Away in a Manger...

It's not really news that women and girls feel as though they are being constantly judged on their looks. Either from others or from highly critical self appraisals every time they pass a mirror or catch their reflection in a shop window. The majority of women who speak up for fripperies such as rights or equality have probably been informed their point is invalidated by their physical appearance. Curiously not an obstacle members of theThatcher cabinet came up against. Because a woman's status apparently rests on her looks, youth and size many people genuinely believe that to respond to any argument made by her on any subject can be dismissed, nay crushed, with the response that she is ugly. 

Our Sue might be a mature student at Warwick University but that doesn't mean she is surrounded by maturity at university. Still, she can still have a mature reaction to the shenanigans that is uni life even though this is not your average 'bare'..

I was pleased to see our lecturer not bat an eyelid when she was interrupted mid sentence by a crowd who burst (politely) into our lecture hall to enquire if we had an Andreas in our midst. 

You might have noticed we mentioned the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014 yesterday. You also might have noticed that Squeamish Louise is not totally down with them because (and we quote) "these regulations will mean pornography will focus even more on traditional gender roles and male fantasy." As a site with feminist leanings and enthusiasm towards consenting adults being able to safely express themselves (like Madonna told you to) we think these regulations might need a rethink. However we do understand that once you're on a regulating rampage that regulating itch must be scratched. So we have come up with some other things we'd like to see nixed in porn...

In case you've missed all of the coverage so far, I'd like to draw your attention to the fact that on Tuesday, the Audiovisual Media Services Regulations 2014 was brought in, censoring pornography by banning the depictions of a list of acts. It's not illegal to watch porn featuring these acts if it was made abroad, but none of them can be depicted on video on demand services made in the UK. The list includes spanking, caning, restraint, watersports and strangulation. So maybe you're thinking that if you're not into kinky sex this doesn't affect you. But that's not all: face sitting and female ejaculation are all also on the list.

Term is coming to an end. Which means literature reviews, rewrites and essay plans are due. All this on top of organising Christmas for the entire family. But don't worry, Sue has a plan...

My dissertation supervisor is keen. She said if I send her some draft ideas she will look at them, and I did in fact manage to get a draft literature review done in the end, which she has already looked at and returned comment. I sent it to her to meet the deadline and buy myself some time, not for a moment imagining she would leap on it as soon as she opened her inbox.