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Winter can also bring with it a wave of depression, which in an odd way can be quite similar to flu. It can be quite mild, just needing some chicken soup and a bit of TLC, or it can be serious, debilitating and, in some cases, life threatening.

This is a short history of the buttock, the bottom, the derriere, the butt, the caboose, the blurter or the stinkhole.

Interesting aside: there are far more euphemisms for genitals than there are for buttocks, and very few of the ones that exist for buttocks are considered particularly offensive, I wonder why that is, because if you think about it, bottoms are, or can be, far more offensive than genitals. Butt (ha ha) I digress, again, on with the article:

I can quite see why Tony Abbott would be delighted at the idea of more women staying home to look after babies, but it baffles me that so many women are marching in lockstep with him.

Paid maternity leave is not a step forward for women, it’s a step backwards. And its most dangerous problem is that it is presented as the solution to the complex problems of balancing working, raising children and ensuring that women are not disadvantaged in their career or financial circumstances after they have a baby.

Paid maternity leave doesn’t address any of these issues in any meaningful or effective way.

It’s a short-term fix for well-paid married women who have a full time job, want to have a baby and want to stay home for six months to look after it; but it doesn’t address any of the issues that affect everyone outside that small group.

Tony Abbott came out in favour of paid maternity leave!

I get that he’s chasing the vagina vote, and we should expect all kinds of ridiculousness from politicians in an election year, but could he seriously think that this ill-conceived (yuk yuk) plan is really going to work?

Even us poor women understand that a government needs to be able to sensibly manage an economy. Abbott apparantly can’t manage a sensible walk in the bush.

Thank God for Mia Freedman and her blog. If it wasn’t for her I would never have heard about My New Pink Button, which is a wonderful new product for women whose lady bits are just not quite that perfect shade of pink.

One of my favourite Tribunes this year was The Body Issue. Yes, there has been better writing, and more research, and more funny shit, but Body Image and all it means has become something of a hobby horse for me.

She wrote about excited she was when she was told that Matt Preston had named a cravat after her and the subsequent devastation she felt when she discovered that said cravat was called the Myf because it was “short and slightly wide”.

Those avid readers of the Daily Shout will have joined me in nodding their head (and maybe holding a fist aloft) while reading Jane's lament about the lack of credible journalism with which we are faced on today’s newswires.

During a recent conversation with Editor Jane that it was decided that I am virtually impossible to offend. This because she had been instructed by a friend to ask me whether she had inadvertently offended me the previous day.

This popped up at me when I was on some innocuous dictionary site this morning.

Is it….I…I’m in the highly unusual state of being almost lost for words…The “Before” picture… by implication, the terribly unsexy stomach…I…well… she’s PREGNANT!!!!

Crikey editors and writers have been tweeting and blogging about it all morning. Why don’t women get involved, subscribe, comment or blog about politics to the same level that men do?

From Ornamentation to Modification

It’s hard to think of an interesting angle about the body because lets face it, it has all been done to death.

Lovely co-editor and I are currently spending a fair bit of time at the gym, and it’s given me pause to reflect on the chasm that exists between how men and women see their bodies.

I spend several hours a week at the gym lifting weights and pulling on cables and all that hairy stuff, and in between sets I’ve got a minute or so to wander around and stretch, and observe.

You really DO!

The body issue came about mainly due to all the things I’ve been thinking about my body lately. Weird things, because I’ve never really had to think about it all that much before.

Why They’re Never Perfect and NEVER Made of Silicone.

Is there such a thing as perfection? Can an object be absolutely perfect in form and substance? If so, is the totality of that object, including the observer’s feelings toward it, actually perfect? Is something flawless able to be perfect, or is it the flaws in objects that make them more desirable, and therefore more perfect than the flawless?

Men and women are vastly different for many reasons and I for one am thankful for it. Yes, there are behavioural traits about both sexes that could severely irritate even the most patient of person.

After the making argument that women have won the war of the sexes, let me continue my good work by pointing out that men are no longer the enemy and it’s time we stopped vilifying everything male in order to make being female ok.

There was the time I helped the two old ladies and their shopping carts up into the tram, while a bunch of schoolkids and other assorted lazy fucks pushed past us. The old dears were so surprised by my assistance that I think they thought I was about to rob them.

When did risqué become objectification?

Here we go, once again the peace of a Saturday morning is shattered as I reach the opinion pages of the Saturday Age and start hissing and spitting like well fried bacon.