Complaints from the Chinese Boudoir
“At daybreak, I pace idly in the courtyard with a silk fan. Cold autumn is at hand, and I know the fan will soon be discarded. A crow flits by and secures its position on the palace roof. The croaking bird is no match for my complexion, smooth as jade. Yet why is it able […]
Medusa
CW: Discussion of Sexual Assault I look at you, but this trick only works if you look back. * In first year, we read the work of Hélène Cixous and Luce Irigaray. Both believed (or so we were given to understand) that text had a sex; every work written was shot through with man. […]
Voices from the Entr’acte
“You’re not performing femininity in a way that we can read onstage, so you’re failing at performing this,” says Aiden K. Feltkamp, recalling the rehearsal process for a scene from Rossini’s Barber of Seville. Feltkamp – a transgender non-binary writer based in New York City – trained
Bedtime Stories
“Sometimes I think I deserve bad things because I’m a bad person,” a girl murmurs to an ex-boyfriend. She is digitised and sports beautiful bangs, a puzzle of pixels dancing across the nation’s laptop screens three weeks into lockdown. But the tragedy of it rings true: falling in love with
Manchester, the Met, and #MeToo
Just as #MeToo was gaining mainstream attention in late 2017, a petition was launched to remove one of Balthus’ most iconic portraits. The painting, Thérèse Dreaming (1938), depicts a young girl sitting with her underwear and groin area deliberately exposed. Her white underwear contrasts with th
Reconciling URL and IRL Feminism
I first became acquainted with Miranda July through her fiction. My friend, Scarlet, recommended her critically acclaimed novel, The First Bad Man, which I have since lent to my mother, boyfriend, and best friend. July’s novel is a story of humorous eroticism, habitual patterns, and the search for
Photo Essay
This project started with a two-hour conversation about waistlines. I started thinking about how an accentuated waist makes me feel more feminine, but also makes me sharper in conversation. I know I’m much better at delivering a punchline in a pencil skirt than pyjamas. Each morning I plan my outf
Fashion
Writhing, smiling, touching her teeth and her chest: those are the first images that greet you in the video for Bjork’s Big Time Sensuality (1993), the fourth single from her fittingly titled debut, Debut. She blinks and grins down the lens – spinning back and forth on the back of a moving truc
Dirty Dishes
NIGELLA TALKS DIRTY—a YouTube video I found the other day, which manipulates scenes from Nigella Lawson’s various cooking shows to make it sound as if she’s having sex. “If you want to squeeze”—and here the video cuts—“my plumptious beauties”—and again— “then be my guest”.
