Four Trends Women HATE!

So I figured that after Six Trends That Men HATE, is was only fair to do the opposite, the four  trends that women hate. We women can be VERY picky, when it comes to what our men wear. Assuming we’re straight. Jesus, imagine writing a fashion article aimed at lesbians? It would be shit, wouldn’t it? They don’t know ANYTHING about fashion.

1. Body hair. This new trend has struck up recently of men not shaving their body hair. I know, GROSS? They think it’s okay to just wonder around with it all on show, but it isn’t. I don’t want a flash of stinky pit hair every time you hail a taxi. Thanks.
2. Going topless. So guys at the beach (and even on the streets in summer), have been going topless. Everything on show. In front of CHILDREN. Come on lads, no one wants to be having a nice swim, then catch a glimpse of nip. There are children around, jeez! Save it for your wives.
3. Pants on show. Having the top of your pants peeking over your jeans isn’t classy. It just makes you look cheap.
4. Obey snapbacks. Really?

Check out the Six Trends That Men HATE

Six Trends That Men HATE!

I’ve seen quite a lot of articles on variations of ‘trends men hate’, or ‘looks that turn men off’. Now, I know quite a bit about fashion, and even more about men. You have to feed them at least three times a day and always make sure they have clean newspaper.  So naturally, I thought I would lend you my worldly wisdom and tell you the six trends that men REALLY don’t want to see you wearing. And if you do wear them, you will never get laid again EVER.

1. Wings. Got tiny wings sprouting from your shoulder blades? Slice ‘em off, ladies. Being able to hover three inches off the ground will not help your posture. And they just make you harder to catch.
2. Acknowledging you have a vagina in any way apart from taking your knickers off. Accidently drop a tampon on the way to the loo? Carrying your new born baby? Ew, ladies, please. Guys don’t need to see that, your vagina is for THEIR PLEASURE. Keep your private life at home. Have some self-respect.
3. Cutting off one boob, in the manner of an Amazonian queen. Ok, well It’s great that you can easily fire a bow and arrow now, but that won’t get you a husband. It’s just kinda intimidating.
4. Floor length capes. They’re baggy and unappealing. If you got it, you should flaunt it. No one cares if you’re the Ice Queen of Narnia, honey. Aslan may go for the ‘great and powerful’ look, but he’s a lion, not the guy from the office.
5. Ram horns. Some say they show inner power, strength, and experience as a skilled warrior. We say you have bone growing out of your head, and that’s just creepy. No.
6. Over-sized hoodies. Because lord forbid you should actually be comfortable. 

Check out the Four Trends That Women HATE

My Vagina Is Not Your Income

Disclaimer: If you formally employ me, or are a relative, it’s probably best if you don’t read this. It would just embarrass both of us.

People spend quite a lot of time talking about vaginas these days. Lord knows I do. I tried to think about something else to blog about for a change, realised I only know about feminism and lesbians, and gave up. So vaginas it is.

I find it quite alarming how they seem to have developed monetary value within the last twenty years or so. To have a vagina worthy of modern, media standards it has become necessary for women to effectively pay rent. At minimum women are now expected to at least ‘spruce up’ their downstairs, whatever the hell that actually means, and while the cost of razors totted up over a life time may not exactly purchase a house, it could probably buy you quite a few more fancy dinners and tickets to see Westside Story than you would have had otherwise. For the slightly more hardcore who fancy waxing, it becomes vital to fork out roughly once a month to employ someone to hot glue strips of fabric to the single most sensitive area of your body, and then violently rip them off again. Which is painful both physically and financially. For the ones who have signed a contract to the Fancy Genital overlord, vajazzling comes into play. The singular and ancient art of paying someone to stick rhinestones and bits of glitter to a place where there should be fluff thankfully seems to be losing the sudden burst of popularity it had, and personally I think we’re better off for it leaving. If I remember rightly, there were about two weeks in 2011 where everyone turned round and shouted ‘pejazzle’ (vajazzling's male equivalent) at each other, screamed and never, ever mentioned it again.

I still don’t really know what the point is in the ripping and the hot glue and the glitter. Some people seem to think it’s nice for someone you’re having sex with, but if your partner won’t sleep with you unless you have diamonds stuck to your foof, I think you might be sleeping with the wrong people. Frankly they should be grateful that they get to sleep with you at all, without kicking up a fuss about whether or not a grumpy beautician has tidied up for them first.

Speaking of Lady Ga-gardens, Lady Gaga apparently stripped off in London’s G-A-Y club last week. Some gay men witnessed her bottom. It was big news. Just like the time every female celebrity ever got into a car at a funny angle while wearing a skirt, or wore something chiffon based under bad lighting. Do you know when I last read an article about a bloke accidently showing a bit too much skin? Never, that’s when. No one gets paid for writing about men having a touch too much champagne before getting into a cab badly. No man has ever thought “Jesus, I possess pubic hair, something both men and women have had since the dawn of time. I should probably RIP IT OUT ON THE OFF CHANCE SOMEONE UNEXPECTEDLY TRIES TO HAVE SEX WITH ME IN A VERY BRIGHTLY LIT ROOM.” We have developed a culture where we pay people make sure our vaginas look good enough, on the off chance someone else is being paid to write about it. You might as well keep a small till in your knickers, just in case.

Unless you like doing all that, which is fine. If you want to, please be my guest. But just ask yourself first if you’re doing it because you like having genitalia that doubles up as a handy disco ball, or because you’ve just been told you should like it by someone else. If it’s the latter, I suggest you either ignore them or have a very lengthy chat. If it’s the former, please come to parties with me. At the end of the day, vaginas were meant to push out screaming humans, and give birth (ooh, satire). Do whatever you like with yours but make sure you do it for you and not to attract sexual partners with the brains of magpies.

Cheers. 

Replying To A Comment About Lady Fluff

I got this comment on my last post, and I thought I should address a couple of things in it. For one; how every time I get a comment on Anon, I sit there for about half an hour trying to figure out WHO YOU ARE.

So, a few things;

1. Thank you, you cutie. I'm glad at least one person finds me funny.
2. One criticism; my sexuality has nothing to do with whether I shave or not. If I was straight, I'd still have hairy legs. Sexuality and appearance have no correlation, outside of girls are probably a bit less likely to say "You have hair there?" There is, in fact, a spectacularly funny quote from my life which slightly applies to this situation and it is; "You have glitter there?" I'm still at a loss as to how this situation arose. 
3. This comment actually comes at a surprisingly useful time, as I've been wanting to make a blog post for a while about the whole not shaving thing. Which should please my demographic, as apparently nearly everyone who finds me via a Google search, is looking for something related to armpit hair. Th most recent one was "she had too much armpit stubble". I have to say, if that's what you're worried about, then you're probably not in the right place, baby. 

So I've just finished school, and that means that I finally feel comfortable enough so say: I don't shave my armpits. Same goes for my legs. I stopped shaving a couple of weeks before school finished, and I would have done sooner, but I genuinely didn't feel safe going all natural while I was still in that environment. Even though my uniform stopped anyone from seeing my pits/bare legs. I don't know if that reflects more about me, or those who I went to school with. I stopped shaving partly because I didn't like doing it, and partly because I just really wanted to say a big "screw you" to all those who think that women need to shave. Caitlin Moran has a theory that if men aren't worrying about it, then neither should women, so I don't see why I need to get rid of my body hair to please anyone who isn't me. We're told from the minute we're born that it's disgusting to go without shaving; when I left primary school aged eleven, two girls from the year bellow drew hairy pits on my shirt as a prank. They were ten; they didn't even have any body hair to remove, but the idea of letting it grow out was disgusting, and unnatural. 

Let me get one very important thing straight: if you decide to shave then I AM FINE WITH THAT. The thing I am not fine with, is that women feel the need to shave to please society. Not even an actual person; just society as a huge, pulsating, glowy whole. (In my head society looks a bit like the Living Plastic from the first episode of Doctor Who with Christopher Eccleston.) That's not cool. However, if you want to shave because you feel cleaner, or enjoy, go for it. Knock yourself out. Don't shave to please people, but at the same time, don't not shave to please crazy hippies on the internet. Make your own decisions, and be damn proud of them.

I still get freaked out when I go outside and I think people can actually see my body hair. I've got it into my head that at some point, somebody will beat me up for it. Which is pretty much how I felt when I came out; just waiting for someone to start being downright vicious to me, about something that doesn't involve them. I go swimming sometimes, which is scary as all hell. I wore a shirt the other day that I thought covered my armpits, but later found out that when I waved my arms around (which I do a lot) there was a flash of fluff. I deflated a lot. 

So to summarize; please don't beat me up, I like comments, and either shave or don't shave idk whatever suits you, dude. 

Rock that armpit stubble.

Now let's never talk of this again.

Sorry For My Personal Beliefs

As unlikely as this may seem, I’ve finally realized just how annoying I actually am. I’m a stereotype-y sort of way. I’ve always know I was vaguely annoying, but the other night, when I was lying awake in bed, it finally hit me. I’m a liberal, political, vegetarian, Guardian-reading, lesbian English student. That’s… wow. You do not want me at your dinner party. Plus, I don’t believe in the beauty standard, which means that I don’t shave my legs. The fact that I don’t wear tie dye is honestly beyond me. But that’s probably just because most of my innards are glitter and gin.

In my defense, I make an active effort not to try and convince meat eaters that they need to turn vegetarian.  I think that would be very hypocritical of my considering how shouty I get when anyone tries to make me believe in god.

I’m more or less a walking demographic for Radio 4. I imagine in twenty years or so, they will start using me in advertising campaigns. That’s if I carry on being a lefty stereotype. It might turn out to be just a ‘phase’ and when I’m old I’ll sit and make jokes about how I was always ‘that kid’. What am I saying, it’s happening now and I’m making those jokes. I’ve also started dressing in clothes that are worryingly close to the Dyke Uniform. I am a dyke, which means that I get to use words like that, and no one shouts at me. It’s like a gay bonus. Other gay bonuses include; not having to pay loads of money to get my nails done, being allowed to wear jeans in summer, not having to spend ages on my straight-girl hair, and it being socially acceptable for me to sit in the corner at parties with a lot of wine. Straight people bonuses include things like; not being socially and politically persecuted throughout global history.

I wrote that joke at 1am last week, and now it makes me sad. Someone go tell the House of Lords to hurry up and legalise gay marriage already.

Shouting At Cosmopolitan. Again.

It's that time of the month again; when I finally get around to reading the Cosmo magazine I bought three weeks ago. And yes, you're right. I am procrastinating from English revision. I usually don't really have an issue with any of the articles Cosmo prints - although there are always flaws depending on your opinion. How ever one page in this months issue really ticked me of, and it is called "Expert Toning Tips For...", sub-headed 'We've got the best exercises for your body shape." This then followed by a series of photos of slightly 'deformed' Barbies and notes on their body type, and how to change it. 
There's a rather large myriad of issues here. For one, the use of Barbies, a brand known for showing an even more unachievable female body image than Disney. Then there's the fact that they've been photoshopped to appear wrong, when they actually appear to just look like normal women (or as normal as a photoshopped Barbie can get). This seems to present the idea that none of these body types; apple, boyish, busty, pear or hourglass are acceptable and need to be changed. Fast, before any men look at you. It's almost like we need to have the body of a plastic doll to be allowed. The only one which seems to get away with existing is the hourglass, but even then the article suggests that you need to put more work in to stay "firm". I've still never worked out why 'firm' is desirable. It sounds like if you gave them a hug, they'd be hard as a board. (Get your mind out of the gutter, there's only room for one and I got here first.)
Oh Cosmo. You've been doing so well recently. Maybe not so much in this issue. I didn't take to the list of examples why females bosses are all bitches too well either, however excited you are for the Revenge Wears Prada film. 

I was wondering weather or not I should enter Cosmo's blog competition. Maybe not, after this. I don't think I'd win.

All I Want Is A Female Brian Cox

I love Brian Cox. I think he’s great. Properly, honestly great. He sort of vaguely wondered into our lives with the force of a Sherman tank, and then refused to leave. He sat down on the living room sofa of England and said “You need some science. Here, here is some science, delivered from the top of a gorgeous mountain which you too will want to stand on, but only after I’ve finished with it. And trust me; you’ll be able to, because after I’ve finished with it, this mountain won’t be able to walk for three weeks. Stand on my mountain, and love science.” And all of England immediately made him a cup of tea and cried “Of course we shall stand on this lovely mountain, you insanely beautiful man! What fools we have been, to believe in homeopathy and the apocalypse before we gazed upon your lovely face.” And then Brian Cox nodded, and wondered off to drink his tea, and play a bit of dodgy piano. 
I’m really glad we have Brian Cox. He’s bought science to the normal people, made physics cool, and worn an All Saints polo shirt while doing it. Really, very cool. 
But I’m greedy, and now I want a female version. As a raging feminist, I think women need a female Brian Cox. The closest thing we have is Mary Beard, lovely, quirky and interesting, but still not science, and still not shaggable. I don’t mean that in a way that want Scarlett Johnson running around in a lab coat, pointing at the sky and screaming “Wow! Gravity!”, but more in the way that I want a woman who you can fancy, and is still really, profoundly clever. 
Watching any program at the moment that has a bit of a science-y segment, and that has a female presenter, it is guaranteed that she will end up in a lab, looking a little bit lost, asking an actual scientist what the hell is going on, before turning to look doe-eyed into the camera, and announcing it’s time to go back to the studio. 
Nope. Defo not what’s needed. No seems to have yet managed to bridge the divide between ‘female scientist’, and ‘female presenter’. I want someone who a ten year old girl will look at and go “Wow! I bet loads of boys fancy her, and she knows the theory of relativity inside out. I wish I could be like her when I grow up.” I want a bird who throws on a McQueen sports bra to go inside an anti-gravity chamber – which she helped build. If she climbs up a mountain to observe the Northern Hemisphere in winter, I want her to snow board back down, without first having to get a bloke to strap her into her ski boots, and give her a push. 
Is that too much to ask? I like to think it isn’t. If a bloke can do it, why can’t we? Maybe, out there somewhere, there are thousands of women with PhDs and big hair, jostling to host their own physics show, on prime time BBC. Maybe the media think that no one would watch it, it would be a novelty for all of five seconds, before burning out like an asteroid entering the atmosphere. And of course it wouldn’t. Loads of people would watch it, and it would be wonderful. A wonderful new role model to sit our daughters down and say “You can be feminine, and love science, and you should, because you’ll be able to actually work out which face creams will work just by reading the ingredients.”  A lovely, big haired chick in walking boots and kaftan climbing up hills, and knowing stuff, and wanting to tell everyone about it, because science is just so incredibly wonderful that the only rational thing to do is to scream it from the top of a mountain. 
And if she just so happened to play keyboard in a series of truly alarming bands in the 80s, well, that would just be a bonus. 

If You Wear Jeans, You Are Probably A Feminist

I got into a really ridiculous argument on twitter last night. 
It all kicked off when my friend LE questioned a guy on him making an extremely sexist joke - "What does a woman have in common with a bowling ball? They both get picked up, fingered, and thrown down an alley." Yeah, I know, it makes me wince as well. So he promptly came back with something along the lines of "Nooo, I don't hate women, I just hate feminists." 
OH
MY
GOD.
Or gosh, if you're particularly religious. How could I not chip in?
I like to think, in our life and times, that all women are feminists. Even if you say "I am not a feminist", you are using rights GIVEN TO YOU BY FEMINISM to express that opinion. In fact, if you identify as a woman, and have ever voted, voiced a personal opinion, worn jeans, rocked out to Kylie, or taken control of your own vagina, YOU ARE A FEMINIST. I have a sinking feeling that the word 'feminism' has become rather unfashionable. Feminism has become a grammatical mine field for 'man hating', and 'big pant wearing'. Let me tell you something; you can wear big pants and be a feminist. You can wear small pants and be a feminist. Your choice of pant does not reflect your political views*. Let me tell you something else; every time I see a teenage girl, in denim hot pants, and one side of her head shaved, saying "Nah, I'm not a feminist, I don't see the point, y'know?" a kitten dies.** Without feminism, you COULD NOT WEAR DENIM HOTPANTS, OR SHAVE YOUR HEAD. 
So, back to Twitter. Around this point some other dude started chipping in, claiming that there was no reason for feminism to carry on existing, and started to wonder if I could stab someone in the eyes, via the internet. Of course there's a reason for feminism to still exist. There are many reasons, in fact. The main reason I gave as an example, being that the majority of reported cases of women being raped are either not taken seriously, or ignored. HOW IS THAT OK!?*** If we're living in a world where rapists are still being permitted to roam free, we're living in a world where we still need feminism. I fully admit that there are many cases of men being raped - it's a horrible crime which affects all aspects of gender, race, religion and social class - which are not fully followed up as well, but contrary to what my twitter friends think, I'm pretty sure there are more cases of women being raped than men. Scrap that, according to the Stern Review, 8% of reported rape victims are male. It also claimed that 99% of convicted rapists are male. Point proven. 
Well, to cut a (very) long story short, the guy who managed to kick the whole debate off later apologized. However, both of them later deleted all of their tweets from the debate. I have no idea what this means, feel free to jump to your own conclusions. I learned to say 'I am a strident feminist' without feeling ashamed, and that if someone resorts to correcting your spelling, they have probably lost the argument.
In the last year, I have developed one test for whether or not feminism is still needed. In recent years, it has become semi socially acceptable for men to talk about their genitals in public, yet it still remains fairly taboo for women to do the same. Thus, we shall need feminism until the day I can stand in the middle of an office, and say the words "yeast infection", without a single person flinching, hiding under their desk, or pelting me with biros. 

*Just as feminism has nothing to do with pants, it also has nothing to do with man-hating. "Feminism is a demand for equal respect between genders, not for superiority of sex" - Me
**I may have made this up.
***I apologize for the amount of capslock I'm using in this post.****
****How many foot notes do you think I can shoehorn into this post?*****
*****Five. The answer is five.

A Real Grown Up Conversation About Armpit Hair

OK, come on then, sit down. It's time we had a Grown Up Conversation. I try and not talk about gender politics too much, but tough, my blog, I'll write what I damn well like. So. Grown Up Conversation.
OK, one quick funny first. NT and I were looking at the website of a Berlin sex club which Lady Gaga once took Caitlin Moran to. It has an event called 'Filthy Farm'. The description for this event was simply 'FARMER'. This is simultaneously the most and least worrying description on the website. 
So, Conversation. I want to talk about hair. No, not head hair, or vagina hair, before you start going on. You're just putting your own filth in now. No, I want to talk about armpit hair. 
You just flinched, didn't you? Don't deny it, I can tell. 
So, long story short, if you are a woman/girl/lady/drag queen, I do not care if you have pit hair. I do not think it makes you any more or less of a woman. I don't think that it makes you 'masculine', or dirty. I think if someone really cares that much about whether or not you shave your armpits, they really need to reconsider their life choices. 
A lot of people recently have been talking about vagina hair, and the two different parties on the topic seem to be either 'you should shave it, it makes you prettier to men', or 'you don't need to shave, it's a waste of time and makes you look like a twelve year old'. Personally, I'm with the second group. I don't really care if you shave your lady bits or not, and I don't think it's my place to tell you what to do, I just don't see why everyone seems so fussed about it. 
The whole lady shaving thing kicked off with legs, somewhere in the twenties. A company thought  "Hey, the birds are starting to get their pegs out, how can we make a bit of cash off the back of this?" and hence, the leg razor was born. Armpits were the next to fall, and vaginas (vaginae) came quickly after, succumbing to the wishes of the lady razor. It literally is nothing more than a marketing ploy, that somehow managed to crate a social taboo. I remember a while ago, Cosmo ran an article where they dared a journalist to go a month without shaving her pits. She reported that if she raised her arm in a club to summon the bartender, he would flinch. All I have to say to him is grow up. Men do not shave their pits, and no one cares. Why should it be such a social boundary for a woman to occasionally say, "No, not now, I'd rather watch Eastenders than scrape a very sharp piece of metal over my skin at the moment".  
I admit, I do shave my armpits. Of course I do. I go to secondary school. Not shaving my armpits would be like wandering around school with a huge 'kick me' sign on my back. But instead of being stuck to my back, it would be nailed to my forehead, and instead of saying 'kick me', it would say 'please bash my face in with a hammer'.
Two of my biggest role models are Amanda Palmer, and Louise Brealey. Both very talented women, and both massive feminists, and both very, well... feminine. Amanda does not shave her armpits. She appears in nearly all of her music videos half naked, makeup on, and armpits hairy. And she doesn't look disgusting. She just looks strong, and a little bit sexy. Louise Brealey is currently appearing as Helen of Troy, in a play called The Trojan Women. In one scene, she has to appear naked. She wrote an article for The Times, talking about how much it terrified her, to go on stage in front of a hundred people, night after night and drop her towel to the floor. She also wrote that to help herself, she grew out her armpit hair. The feeling that she didn't have to follow the beauty ideals of society made her more confident. 
And this is what I'd like to impart to you, whomever may be reading this. You do not have to have a perfectly round arse to be sexy, and neither do you need to have naked armpits, or stick glitter to your vag. Strength is sexy. Promise. 

I Prefer Victorian Semantics

OK guys, lets gets our maturity hats on (maturity pants will also be permitted).
I think we need to sit down, and have a bit of a chat about semantics. I know that normally we don't talk about 'serious things' here, BUT TOUGH, IT'S MY BLOG, I'LL TALK SERIOUS IF I WANT TO.
Phew.
So, what I think we need to talk about, is the word 'slut'. Or 'slag', or 'tart', if you're a mustachioed gent from the eighteen hundreds.
I don't often use the word 'slut', and it's not a particularly common term among my social circle. This may or may not be because I hang out with a lot of very left-wing, shy, English language students. So, I looked it up (I Googled it) and was presented with this:


Slut  
Noun
Slut is a term applied to an individual who is considered to have loose sexual morals or who is sexually promiscuous.
Synonyms
trollop - strumpet - harlot

Bless you Google for your synonyms, you sweetheart. 
Let me give you a quick background check on this post: one of our friends recently got  new girlfriend, and as soon as we found out, one of the phrases that I heard being thrown around a  lot was "Ew, her? But she's such a slut!"
And to this I say:
Big deal.
Is it honestly any of our business how many people this girl has slept with? I'm in an age group where people have finally realized that the word 'dyke' is unacceptable, and I think the word 'slut' really needs to go the same way. It's still judging people on their sexuality, whether it be who they sleep with, or how often. I don't know if it's still a word only applied to women; I know I've heard plenty of men being called sluts as well, but I don't think it's a title that any gender deserves to carry.
I'm not about to turn into a massive hippy who thinks that they identify as 'otherkin' (I Googled that as well), but I'd rather not go around needlessly offending anyone based on a random judgment of their personal behavior. In the words of Stephen Fry, be adorable to each other.
That will be all.
Thankyou, and goodnight.

Why I Would Make A Terrible Bond Girl

So I act, right? I love it. Which means that quite often, after I've seen a film, I imagine what it would be like if it was real, and I put myself in different character roles, and different scenes, and it's great. So, of course, I tried doing this with some of the Bond Girls, and, um, it came out a little differently...

Bond walks into a bathroom, dropping his shirt on the way. Sévérine is already in the shower, running her hands through her hair. Bond steps in behind her, moving his hands around her waist. 
Sévérine: Hold up, bitch. The hell do you think you're doing? You can't just wander in here and get all touchy feely. When did we ever agree to that? What if I was on my period, huh? Then we'd both be screwed. Plus, I haven't shaved my legs in like, three months. I mean, I dunno, maybe you're a feminist and you're cool with that, or whatever, but I'm just saying it's something to be aware of. 

Bond and Sévérine are sat at a bar together, the latter drinking champagne  the former, a martini (shaken, not stirred).
Sévérine: What do you know? 
Bond: Well, it takes a certain type of woman to wear a backless dress with a Beretta 70 strapped to her thigh. 
Sévérine: Yes. A boring one. I prefer a shotgun stuck down the cleavage. 
Bond: Wha- 
Sévérine: Also I have throwing knives tied to my elbows.
Bond: I- 
Sévérine: And a machete on my shin.
Bond: But- 
Sévérine: Also I'm not 100% sure what the structure of my dress has to do with my weaponry. 

Bond and Moneypenny stand together in an office of MI6. Bond turns to walk away, as Moneypenny watches him go. 
Bond: In your defense, a moving target is much harder to hit.
Moneypenny: Who says I missed, motherfucker?


Or, you know, just maybe...
Bond walks into a bathroom, dropping his shirt on the way. Sévérine is already in the shower, running her hands through her hair. Bond steps in behind her, moving his hands around her waist. 
Sévérine: The hell did you get on my boat?