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Hey! I’m on the radio this weekend

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Photo credit: AleBonvini on Flickr.

Internet peeps! I’m being interviewed on a local radio program this Sunday afternoon (7th April 2013). I’ll be a guest on the Megaherzzz show on 4ZZZ (102.1fm). If you’re near a radio in Brisbane between 12.30 and 1pm this Sunday, tune in! Or, if you’re like me and haven’t owned a radio since that Ghetto Blaster you had in high school, you can stream it live online right herrrre: http://www.4zzzfm.org.au/listen-online

I’ll be talking about being a poet and being a female and anything else they ask me about. I may even do a couple of poems on air if they give me the slightest encouragement. It doesn’t take much!

Much thanks to 4ZZZ for inviting me on for a chat!

(c) Jonathon Hancock, 2013

All of the internet relationships I follow are breaking up

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So, I love the internet. I cannot lie. The internet brings me much of the joys. It helps me feel more connected to the people I love; helps me find new friends and interest groups; makes me a better informed and more thoughtful citizen; and empowers me to express my creative voice. Yeah, I think it’s pretty great.

However, my housemates (Luddites) snicker derisively every time I use the word “blogosphere” in conversation. I protest, “It’s a real thing!” And they say, “Yeah, as real as the internet, HA HA!” The more I splutter, the more they snicker. Huh, plebs. What are we, in 1992? I thought the internet was mainstream now. Geek chic, et cetera?! Someone please tell my housemates!

The thing that surprised me was their assertion that the blogosphere isn’t real. I could try to unpack what it means to be “real” and go read up on Baudrillard and simulacra and theories on mimesis, but it’s a Saturday afternoon and frankly I have other things to do. My main protest was that blogs are created by real people, sitting at their real computers. So there’s realness! Sure, they are presenting a particular image of themselves to the world, an image carefully controlled by themselves. But who isn’t? I don’t think there is much difference in authenticity between the way someone presents their self to me when I first meet them, and the way someone presents their self to me on the internet. We’re all pretending to some degree.

But anyway, I get a lot of joy from reading other people’s blogs. I love feeling a connection to other lives – in my community, and around the world – every day, wherever I am.

Lately, though, the internet has been a little bit heartbreaking.

Two of my favourite bloggers, people whose lives I have been following for months, have recently broken up with their long-term boyfriends. One of them, who vlogs weekly on YouTube, has openly said that she and her boyf split up. She even made a sad video about it that made me tear up a little, because I want to give her a big best-friend hug but I can’t because she lives in Los Angeles and also she does not know who I am. The other blogger has not said anything explicit about a break-up. But you know. You just know. When they go from blogging once or twice a week, from writing joyful expositions about their “meet-cute story” and the boyfriend’s adorable obsession with rugby – when they go from that to not posting for months, and then return with abstract, grand treatises about finding yourself and the importance of inner strength … You know what’s gone down.

And I kind of resent that I immediately knew it was a break-up. I kept telling myself that there are manifold reasons why a person might step away from their prolific blogging and go quiet for a few weeks. We’re complex creatures, right? Maybe they had family stuff going on. Maybe they got a new job. Maybe they just discovered Battlestar Galactica and needed to watch ALL of it in one sitting but couldn’t because their housemate also discovered it at the same time and works full-time so they had to wait to watch it with her because they’re terrible at keeping secrets and would definitely have committed plot spoilers if they’d watched ahead.

But, no. Nothing stops the heart quite like a break-up. At least, not for affluent, upwardly-mobile twenty-somethings. I have a friend who recently found out that her cervical cancer had advanced another stage, but does that bother her as much as her boyfriend staying out an hour later than he said he would? Nope. I think perhaps it is because she knows exactly how much control she doesn’t have over her medical condition. The doctor says “Here are the decisions you need to make”, and she makes them, and she deals with the rest.

I bet cylons don't have to deal with this shit.

I bet cylons don’t have to deal with this shit.

We invest so much in relationships, but we know so little about them. I mean, really, as a species, we barely understand relationships. Why else do we spend so much time talking about them? We don’t devote this much time and energy to the law of gravity, or why grass is green. Those conversations go mostly like this: “What happens if I let go of something? It falls. Ah. And why are all these things green? Chlorophyll. Okay, understood. Now I shall think of other things.” But conversations about interpersonal relationships go like this: “But WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY”. Repeated over and over, ad infinitum.

It makes me sad that these seemingly adorable relationships I’ve been reading about on the internet are breaking up. You want to hope that maybe somewhere, somebody is not breaking up. Maybe somebody is staying together. But I am grateful to these bloggers for sharing their stories and letting me peek into their lives a little. They are making themselves vulnerable to a faceless mass of viewers, and that is incredible. It helps to remind me that we’re all kind of muddling through, even the ones who present a highly edited, storied version of themselves to the public. They’re real, too.

A good friend of mine recently said, “I just pretend to be a person.” She thinks she lacks some essential life-skill that other people innately have. I said, “Have you ever people-watched in the city at rush hour? Everyone is pretending to be a person. If you watch long enough, you’ll see that everyone is doing that thing where you watch everyone else to see if they’ve noticed that you’re a total freak.” We’re all real and confused and a bit messed-up, all of us, everyone.

We’re all just pretending we’re not.

Photo credit: Battlestar Galactica image from Flickr.

Motormouth goes to a Dinner Party.

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Last night I went to a dinner party where I knew hardly anybody, and had only made the acquaintance of a few. Although most of the people in the room where strangers when we walked in, it was one of those magical nights where everybody just clicks. People were constantly moving chairs, hopping around the table, keen to lock minds with everyone else in the room. The end of the night, to me, perfectly summed up what kind of dinner it had been: it took us a good thirty minutes to actually leave the restaurant, because everyone was lingering in the doorway, edging down the stairs, talking in the street. Nobody wanted to part company.

Since last night, I’ve been thinking: What made conversation with those people so engaging? It wasn’t that we all shared exactly the same interests, because I was talking with people from all kinds of occupations and backgrounds. We had introverts, extroverts, nerds, artists and number-jockeys. Young professionals, and young unprofessionals (that would be me). So what makes conversation with certain people so damn delicious?

Is it a keen appreciation for intelligence? Is it purposefully playing with awkward sentence structures? (“I want all of the things!”) Is it asking each other “What do you do?” and getting a real answer? Maybe it’s finding out someone has read the same books as you, or that they’ve read books you’ve never heard of. Maybe it’s four-hour debates about whether soft determinism is a real thing.

I think it’s talking to people who are also seeking. Those with curious minds.

“Walk with those seeking truth … Run from those who think they’ve found it. ” – Deepak Chopra

My favourite kind of conversation is the free exchange of ideas. This is the kind of conversation you get with someone who is seeking truth, who is bright and curious and looking around. If I can brashly dichotomize for a second, I think most conversations fall into one of two categories: the exchange of ideas, or the exchange of information. The latter is necessary to human survival, and the most basic use of language; the former involves higher-order thinking.

I find that conversations with people who think they’ve already found the truth involve only the exchange of information. This can be edifying, sure, but such conversations hit a wall pretty quickly. They fall into a kind of “you say something, then I say something” pattern, in which neither person is really listening. They’re like actors who only learn their own lines and their own cues, and don’t engage with any of the other actors’ performances. They’re just waiting to speak.

We all do that sometimes. I know I definitely do – someone will mention Holland or Michael Palin or something, and I’ll think “Ooh ooh! I have an anecdote about that! Quickly, quickly, mustn’t miss the opportunity to tell it!” Something I’ve gotten better at over the years has been to talk less (new friends – yes, I used to be WORSE). I have a motormouth and will freely run it if left unchecked. Now, when I catch myself doing my ol’ primary-school-student, arm-waving-in-the-air, “PICK ME, PICK ME” routine in my head, I ask myself why I want to tell this story. Will it benefit the people listening? Is it something I need to tell for my own personal growth? If the answers are no and no, then I bite down on my lip and sit on my hands. Because if I’m just telling an anecdote that I’ve told before and is as rote to me as the alphabet, then I’m not seeking truth. I’m just making noise.

I want to exchange ideas. I want process, not just destination. I want to really learn about other people, and to riff on ideas with them. Small talk is fine; I’m all for small talk. It’s the sprig of parsley on a fancy entree. But big talk is the main meal. It’s the best.

I think that’s the key to last night’s deeply satisfying dinner conversation. Big Talk. Talk with a capital T. Let’s have more of that, please. I may have compared it to a main meal, but with Big Talk I never get full. Bring on the next course.

Being comfortable is not the same as success

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So, I saw Bloc Party live last night, for the first time in all the years I’ve loved them. No big deal. Just a long-standing dream fulfilled. Whatevs. I didn’t cry or anything. I didn’t.

But quite apart from the euphoria of seeing one of my all-time favourite bands jumping around right in front of me, I was struck by how very, very beautiful is Mr. Kele Okereke. Not just the superficial kind of beautiful – although, let’s face it, he’s doin’ alright – but the kind that comes from someone who is completely in their element.

Photo from Wiki Commons.

Kele Okereke, lead singer of Bloc Party. If you don’t know who that is, don’t worry, this blog post won’t be ALL about them. Read on!

I don’t know what’s better than watching someone do the thing they love and absolutely nail it. He was, as the song goes, “on fire”. (Last fan-geek Bloc Party reference, I SWEAR.) The man swarmed around the stage, pulled the audience into his hand and held them there, strutted and kicked and spun, and utterly charmed the pants off the mosh pit. Right at the top of the second encore, if he had declared, “Alright Brisbane, let’s march on the city,” damn it, we would have.

It could have been the strobe lights, or the smoke machine, or the wild cheering of the crowd as Kele urged them to “dance, you fuckers”, but it seemed like light was shooting right out of him. This is the guy who music magazines tell me is “incredibly shy”. Well, maybe around music journalists, but not on stage. The stage was clearly his zone, and he was inhabiting every bit of it.

As always when watching people like that, I found myself hoping I could live in my “zone”. Ken Robinson (good old Sir Ken) talks about this in his book The Element (2009). Basically, his premise is that everyone has a particular talent, something that excites them and fires them and will bring them great success. Their element. But, unfortunately, with the education system set up the way it is, people are taught to ignore their passions and to waste their talents. Highly successful people are usually people who paid attention to their passions – instead of listening to the naysayers – and made full use of their special quirks and abilities.

It’s easy to say, “Yeah, right – chase your dreams, champ. Great advice. Oprah, etc.” But the more I think about it, the more I wonder, why wouldn’t we follow our passions? What if our passions are very specific signposts from our intuition (or subconscious, or a higher power, or anything you want to use to describe the ethereal cloak that hangs between us and all the things we can’t figure out)? When we meet someone we’re attracted to, we know it because we feel it. I think we feel a similar tug when we encounter our ideal occupation – something that makes us feel right. Like the first time I found out about poetry slams, or the first time Paul McCartney held a guitar, or the first time the internet saw Jennifer Lawrence.

If I have a special ability that I’m great at and makes my life more fun and can be developed without struggle because I love spending time on it, then WHY THE HECK wouldn’t I devote my energies towards that? The argument made by educational institutions (and a whole lot of parents) would be: because you need to make money. Otherwise, your life will be hard (and fair enough, money helps things along somewhat) and you will make other people’s lives hard, too. You’ll be a miserable drain on society, or something of that nature.

That argument is bullshit, frankly, because it is predicated on the assumption that particular occupations can guarantee you success; if you follow the path correctly and work hard, you will achieve a “good life”. This is rubbish. Not to quote motivational Facebook statuses here, but there are no guarantees in life. Your life will probably be hard whether you finish law school and get a clerkship, or quit and take up the piano. Life: hard. Sorry, kids. But I think that’s because we’re not here to bounce along and try to “get all the bananas” (Donkey Kong? Anyone?). Life’s not like the closed circuit of a video game universe, where you can win the highest score as long as you know all the correct combinations. I think we, as a society, have made a mistake, and gone along thinking that life is about getting the most comfort possible.

I think life is actually about learning. And learning new things – about ourselves, about others, about reality – is rarely comfortable. Fun, challenging, satisfying? Yep. But not comfortable.

Was Kele completely at ease when he was on stage performing last night? He’d be the only one who knows, but I would guess, probably not. Someone who is one hundred per cent comfortable doesn’t work that hard at excellence. They don’t push themselves further. But someone who’s living in their element? Well.

They make the sky run with starlight.

Dudes on whom I have a major brain-crush

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A lot of my posts lately have been kinda heavy, so I thought I’d lighten it up a little and tell you about some of the positive things on my mind. Like sunshine, and puppies, and organic peaches … But mostly dudes! Lots and lots of dudes!

Not just any dudes. Dudes with sexy brains. I have made a list of dudes on whom I have major brain-crushes. Now, before you read it, know that a brain-crush is not remotely sexual. So knock it off right now. It’s not that I have the hots for any of these guys (necessarily … Todd Sampson). It’s just that their brains are so interesting. I would like to take their brains out to dinner and ask them about their childhoods. I would walk their brains home and call them the next day.

You may notice that Margaret Atwood has made my dude list. “But she be not a man!” you may cry. Forsooth, it be my list and my rules. “Dude” is a pretty all-inclusive term in my books.

1. Sir Ken Robinson

Ah, Sir Ken. The wise-cracking, education-reforming, deadpan actual-knight of my dreams. I discovered his work properly last year and went on a Sir Ken binge, reading his books and watching his TED and RSA talks practically in one go.

 

2. Kevin McCloud

Another grouchy old Englishman, yes. But another one bouncing around with passion for his work. Irresistible! Grand Designs always delighted me, but his sustainable housing project catapulted him into brain-crush territory. Basically, he wants to make houses that make people happy. What’s not to love?

 

3. Todd Sampson

CEO of Leo Burnett, climber of Mount Everest, wearer of very tight T-shirts. My favourite co-founder of Earth Hour, and salt-and-peppered panellist on The Gruen Transfer. I had the pleasure of interviewing Mr Sampson a couple of years ago for a student magazine, and I somehow got through the whole thing without swooning. Evidently I’m not the only one he affects this way, as a play is showing in Sydney next month simply entitled I Love Todd Sampson. I love whoever created that show.

 

4. Margaret Atwood

Acclaimed author, literary heavyweight, and one-time retweeter of one of my tweets. (Greatest. Moment. Of my life.) My friend Carina Tan-Van Baren has written a gorgeous account of Margaret’s recent appearance at the Perth Writers Festival. Other than that, all I can say is this: if you like speculative fiction, read Oryx and Crake. Go. Read it now.

 

5. Ben Hammersley

I discovered this gentleman’s work recently when I was listening to his keynote on the RSA Events podcast: ‘Tomorrow’s Work: Why Yesterday’s Expectations Are Ruining Today’s Future’. He raised some very interesting points about technology and how we use it at work. Since corresponding with him about his ideas, I’ve changed some of my email habits and become a much happier worker! I look forward to reading more of his stuff.

Women. Am I right?

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“This is a real phenomenon: When women feel like outsiders, they lose interest.”

I read the above quote in an article today, and it struck me dead. In the article, a science student writes about gender bias in the scientific professions, and even though I don’t know my boron from my bunsen burner, I found myself strongly relating to it.

See, the thing is, on Wednesday night I had my first go at stand-up comedy. I entered myself in RAW Comedy, where beginner comedians can compete for a spot in the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. I had never set foot onstage at a stand-up gig before, and I don’t mind telling you I was petrified. I had a lively group of friends around me, chattering and laughing and telling me I was going to be fabulous, but every now and then I would just go blank with hot white terror.

Part of my terror came, I think, from the fact that I was one of only four women competing on the night. The other 11 were, as you might imagine, men. That in itself wouldn’t have been that intimidating. After all, I’ve been performing at poetry slams and readings for years now, which are still heavily male-dominated. That wasn’t the issue. It was what the men were saying. Joke after joke about violence against women. Seriously. One guy’s punch line was actually – and I quote – “Wouldn’t it be great to know you fucked a woman to death?” Then he talked about going to her funeral and gloating, saying, “Let that be a lesson to all you other ladies”.

Yes. Let that be a lesson to us. In case we ever forget, we aren’t safe here. Comedy is not a safe space – for anyone, I suppose, but especially for women. One male comedian spent his five minutes extolling his disgust at Julia Gillard, saying she had a penis and she couldn’t arouse the most desperate of men and so on and so on. Textbook misogyny: “a-woman-can’t-be-in-power-without-losing-her-femaleness” with a dash of “if-she-can’t-get-me-off-what’s-the-point-of-her”. Not a word, of course, about her actions as Prime Minister. Another man raged against his ex-wife, calling her a “crazy bitch” at least six times before I tuned out. One young, harmless looking guy, who looked like someone your brother might play Call of Duty with, thanked all the women in the audience for setting their Facebook profiles to ‘public’ so that he could masturbate to them.

I am truly baffled when I see male comedians make demeaning jokes about women, and then chuckle: “Ha ha, all the women in the room hate me right now”. All the women in the room – that’s fifty per cent of your audience, buddy! Too many amateur comedians seem to forget that alienating women means alienating half your potential ticket-paying customers. That comedy isn’t just for the benefit of other men.

By the time it was my turn to perform next, I was feeling sick to the stomach. I waited by the sinks in the ladies’ room, staring up at the posters of upcoming comedy tours. Rows and rows of male faces grinned down at me. I smoothed down my hair, eyeing my outfit. Before I left the house that night, I had pulled a ribbon out of my hair, not wanting the audience to be distracted by my gender. Already, I was “gender priming”, having been told for years that female comedians “just aren’t as funny”.

“Even in areas where actual performance is equal, when a certain group is reminded that they are supposed to be bad at something, their performance weakens.” (S. Wofford, Feminspire)

But I did it. I told some jokes. At the end of my set, I sat down with my friends, shaking like a flippin’ leaf. I had survived. I had even gotten some laughs. I put my head down on the sticky table and tried not to gasp for air. I know public speaking is meant to be scary, but it had never really scared me up until this point. Comedy is such a different beast. You can lose the crowd so quickly. And then you’re dead.

Later that night, after seeing off my friends and dragging myself home, I felt empty. Like all the humour had been sucked out of me. My five minutes up there hadn’t been too bad, I thought, but the other comedians’ various attacks on women had shaken me. I comforted myself that the crowd had liked those jokes as little as I did, with most people shifting uncomfortably in their seats or sitting in stony silence. At least the misogyny wasn’t being openly encouraged. But I wondered. After years of going to comedy nights, I can say that jokes at the expense of women are incredibly common. They’re often aggressive and sometimes violent. Why do these comedians still think these jokes would be an awesome idea?

I found myself thinking, are these the people I want to work alongside? Is this an industry I want to join? If I’m going to have to spend years feeling like a second-class citizen, why would I bother? And then today, I found clarity, staring at me out of that science student’s article. I felt like an outsider, therefore I was losing interest. I was already thinking of opting out of my lifelong dream (my mother says that as an eight-year-old I solemnly informed her, “I want to be a stand-up comedian”) because of some dickheads with microphones. Seems to me that comedy is so male-dominated not because women aren’t as interested in comedy. Rather, I think a lot of women listen to the sexist jokes and see the other female comedians putting themselves down to get laughs, and think, “Fuck this noise”.

Well, I won’t be so easily discouraged. If I cancelled my dreams every time some idiot made me feel inferior for being a girl, I’d never have gone anywhere or done anything. I’m gonna have crack at this comedy thing. And whether I keep working at it or decide it’s not for me, I hope my decision will be based on factors other than my gender.

A poem for Kanye

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A couple of weeks ago, I was passing through Perth on some interstate travels, and a friend invited me to perform at a poetry night in Freo. I said yes! Thanks! Woo hoo! But then I began to worry: I hadn’t written too many new performance pieces since last time I was in Perth, and this crowd was likely to have heard my stuff before. The last thing you want is an audience rolling their eyes and going, “Not this one again. NEXT.”

So, I scrabbled around for some new stuff I’d written in Brisbane. One was something I wrote for my Dad for his sixtieth birthday, mainly filled with insider references that only my family would get. But I put it in my back pocket. Another was a sort of cutesy, plaintive poem about my posterior, because why not. And I decided to do The Editor’s Rap, even though it’s an oldie, because hell, it’s fun to do. But I still needed another piece, so I decided to write one.

I wrote a poem to Kanye West. Kind of a rap. More like an open letter to Yeezy. I love his music – big fan – but he gets away with saying some pretty messed-up shit about women. It was time for right of reply.

Kanye West, probably yelling about a woman.

I was particularly replying to the track ‘Devil In A New Dress‘ (from My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, 2010), and this idea of a woman being dangerous and devil-like because she “has” the “power” to arouse a man. (MEN! Quit getting mad at girls because they gave you “the feelings”. You are the masters of your destiny, the captains of your junk! I believe in you!)

So, this one’s for you, Yeezy.

So you say I’m the devil in a new dress?

Aw, you bet.

All the cash I spent just to make your pants tent.

All the cash I spent, could’ve used on my rent.

All the dress I bought so you’d know what I meant.

What I meant.

Dancin’ in my “root suit”. Riot

coz my dress says yes but I say no

and you don’t buy it.

You won’t listen

unless it’s said with fabric and stitchin’.

Couldn’t attract you by accident,

must’ve been my intention.

Little did I know, tonight, when I was getting all dressed up,

the same hand that sewed this dress was sewing

my mouth shut.

Couldn’t’ve dressed like this because it felt good, NO.

Couldn’t’ve dressed like this because it’s comfy, NO.

Couldn’t’ve dress like this for no reason, NO.

Or coz the shops all have the same damn styles every season … (Am I right, girls?)

Couldn’t attract you by accident –

this is what my dress meant –

must’ve been a plan to torture you by Satan.

Satan, Satan, Satan.

Yeah, must’ve been Satan.

Uh, go and tell it on the mountain, son,

or go and tell Kim Kardashian.

Don’t need to guess what my dress says –

this’ll help you stress less –

focus on my lips and wait ’til I say “yes”.

Don’t need to guess what my dress says –

this’ll help you stress less –

come and make a deal with the “devil in a new dress”.

Big thanks to Perth’s poetry paparazzi, Jamie MacQueen, for recording and posting the video of that performance, embedded at the top there.

Photo of Kanye West from Flickr.

Non, non, je ne regrette rien

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The theme of this week’s blog post is “regret”. Cheerful, huh? Don’t worry, I’m not going to spiral into some depressive, introspective ramble that ends with me hunched over a whiskey and sobbing the names of ex-boyfriends. “Why, Brian? Whaaay?!” (Just kidding. I’ve never dated a Brian.)

While reading the blog A Writer’s Journey (which I highly recommend for fellow writers, by the way), I came across this passage:

They say you should live without regrets, but I disagree. That mindset would drive me crazy. Opportunities pass us by, we make mistakes, and sometimes we’re just too tired to keep up. Instead of living with no regrets, I want to always be able to say to myself, “At least I did everything I could do.”

I know that I, too, have been driven crazy by the idea that I mustn’t miss any opportunities. I must seize the day! Say yes to life! Not let a chance go by! We’re all food for worms, boys! (And other exhortations from Dead Poets Society.)

It’s exhausting, isn’t it? If you always say ‘yes’ to everything, eventually you end up looking like Gollum’s partied-out cousin. Life will ravage your face. You’ll be worn out and anxious and finding glitter in your hair that you can’t explain.

Some people, it’s true, are not born participators. They could stand to move outside their comfort zone a little more often, to try new things. But that is not true for me. The biggest lesson that I keep learning and forgetting and relearning is how to say NO. As in, NO, I can’t do everything. No, I can’t be everything. I have limitations, whether I like it or not.

I suffer from a medical condition that keeps me from doing a lot of things. I know for sure that I have limitations: flippin’ doctors have told me so. Specialised medical practitioners have prescribed me a large dose of “take it easy”. Easier said than done. But I’m getting better.

Even though I still have this hysterical internal drive to DO, DO, DO all the time – to jump on every single opportunity – I am starting to get the lesson. I will do everything I can do. (I don’t know why I ignored that important little word for so long.) I am learning to step back.

So, I spent New Year’s Eve at home, by myself, trying out a new recipe for dinner. I went to bed before midnight. I AM GRANDMA.

And I regrette rien.

Five movies that are bad for girls

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For most of last year, I worked at a private boarding house for girls. I was a “housey”.

My boarders were very bright, active, educated young women who could keep any housey on her toes. When lining up for dinner, they were fierce analytical negotiators. At bedtime they were tireless prosecutors. (“But miss, you let the Year 8s stay up for Glee!”) They navigated the politics of teenage girldom with strength and canniness and a freakish understanding of their complex social web.

But when it came to Movie Night, they only wanted one thing. Stupidity. Frequent, continuous stupidity. Preferably delivered to them in a cute dress.

They wanted the stupid, vapid, often offensive films grouped under the umbrella of “rom-com”. They wanted them without exception, and they would accept no other genre.

I despaired of the boarding house’s DVD library, which contained almost exclusively films about romance (with the exception of Milo & Otis … which is really more of a bromance). In school, these girls were privy to the best academic education our state had to offer. But their education in love and relationships was informed by How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days.

So, for months, I had to watch Amanda Bynes finish every story arc with “See! It’s OK that I’m a strong woman, because look, boyfriend!”, while my brain screamed to itself.

I tried to counteract this pro-stupid bias by delivering mini-seminars at the end of each movie. “Alright girls, who could see what was wrong with that ending? Should she have risked her career so that he wouldn’t feel ’emasculated’?” My lectures were met with replies such as “Shut up” and “Miss, don’t ruin this for us”.

I watched nearly all of those movies with the girls (and quite a few in my spare time). I’m not saying I don’t enjoy watching them. I do. I really, really do. But I also watch other genres of film, and, I might point out, I have enough life experience to realise that Matthew McConaughey is not going to sweep me away on his motorcycle. Those rom-com stories are all about exceptions to the norm: weird – and therefore funny – situations. But the girls watch them uncritically, accepting them as their ideal romance. When they collectively cooed in awe as Edward decided he did, after all, want to be with Bella, after breaking her heart and abandoning her without explanation, I wanted to bash my own head in.

So, rather than bash myself (because then the rom-coms win!), I choose to word-bash these films in this blog. I choose to NAME and SHAME.

I wanted to title this list “Top Five Movies That Young Girls Shouldn’t Watch Without An Accompanying Lecture And Discussion Workshop Analysing The Oppressive Discourses At Work On Them”. But it wasn’t snappy enough. Here, instead, is my list of Five Movies That Are Bad For Girls.

5. Friends With Benefits / No Strings Attached / any film in which casual sex leads to the guy falling deeply in love with the girl

These movies are just setting girls up for a fall … and possibly herpes.

4. Pretty Woman

Prostitution leads to the guy falling deeply in love with the girl … See above.

3. 10 Things I Hate About You

Yeah, I know, BUT HEATH LEDGER! I agree. He is dreamy. And while I adore this film, the ending makes me go “But whaaaaat?” Let’s remember that Heath spends most of the film conspiring with a motley group of teenage boys to trick Julia Stiles into dating him so the other guys can swarm on her sister. Somewhere along the line, Heath actually begins to notice that Julia’s a rockin’ babe. However, he continues to accept bribes to date her, and lies to her about things like quitting smoking. Julia finds out and, hurt by his betrayal, gets mad. Really mad. (Not surprisingly.) Still the bravest person in the film, she expresses her bewilderment in a poem that rhymes really badly. Heath listens with a pained expression. With so much trust lost between them, and such a betrayal on Heath’s part, you’d think it would take something huge to– oh wait, he bought her a guitar. He bought her a guitar! Rather than do something trite and mediocre like APOLOGISE, he bought her a guitar. And when she expresses her need to rebuild trust with him, he stifles her by forcing his face onto hers. All is better! Cue grunge music!

2. The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Pointing out chauvinism in the Twilight series is like shooting fish in a barrel, so I’ll keep this brief. Bella loves Edward! Edward loves Bella! But wait, Bella’s blood makes Edward’s family want to kill her. Bella wants to work through this problem, because their relationship is important to her, but Edward knows what is good for Bella BETTER THAN SHE DOES. He dumps her, without explanation. Bella is sad! Bella sits on a sofa without moving for several months! Then she jumps off a cliff! Only solution when your boyfriend leaves you! Wait, Edward needs her! Then, ignoring safety for herself, Bella needs to help him! Edward’s back, yay! He’s chastising her for not understanding that he did it for her own good, but he’s back! All better!

1. How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days

This blog post begins and ends with Kate Hudson. I’ve probably seen this movie upwards of a dozen times. It’s like a bag of stale popcorn: if it’s in front of me, I’ll probably finish it. Yet, the ending never fails to make me mad. The set-up of this film is that Kate Hudson is bored with her job writing fluff pieces for a women’s magazine. She wants to write about politics, world events, substance! Matthew McConaughey is a jock with an overwrought torso who boasts that he could make “any woman” fall in love with him within 10 days. (What a catch!) Something something they fall in love something then they find out they’re both being played and things fall apart. Clearly, their relationship (which only began less than two weeks ago, I’ll point out) was built on shaky foundations. There is a lot of trust lost. Out of this fiasco, Kate finds the strength to quit her boring column, and leaves New York pursue her dream job. Yay Kate Hudson! But wait, who’s this driving his motorcycle recklessly through peak hour traffic? It’s your dream guy! The one who sees women as interchangeable and dated you on a bet with his boss! He’s telling you not to leave him, because he JUST REALISED he loves you, and he thinks it’s stupid for you to move to Washington for your job, because HE is in New York! “You can write anywhere!” Duh, Kate Hudson! Now he’s ordering your cab driver around and singlehandedly deciding that you’re not moving, after all. Aren’t you lucky that you have such a handsome, strangely-tanned man to make decisions for you? BLERGH.