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September 29, 2004

Oz Bloggers' Conference

Bleeding Edge points out that Mark Stanic is running a survey on who would like to attend an Australian conference on Blogging.
I think it would be a great idea. Some of the topics I would like to discuss with others include:
And then, on the more technical side:
Good on you Mark for raising the idea.

Posted by chriscurnow at 12:03 AM | Comments (0)

September 26, 2004

Who is demeaned by flashes of flesh?

Andrew Bolt normally makes my blood boil. He's probably Melbourne's most right wing columnist. I'm never quite sure how much he believes what he writes or whether he just likes baiting those of us on the left.

So I was surprised to find myself agreeing with him, at least in part, when I read this piece on the frock Rebecca Twigley wore to the Brownlow presentation this week. The stunning bright red frock was cut to the waist in the front leaving her breasts to, as Bolt puts it, "play peakaboo from behind sashes or red jersey". At one stage in the telecast Twigley crossed her arms in front her chest in an attempt to get a reprieve from the focus of the cameras on her cleavage.

Bolt accuses Twigley off being a little too innocent when she claims it must have been the bright red that caused all the attention. By implication he suggests she knew very well what she was doing when she chose to wear the dress. I'm not sure on this one. Maybe she did, maybe she didn't.

It has puzzled me for years how women will wear something revealing or sexy and then return angry looks when they catch you glancing at their sexiness. Having four daughters of my own has helped me on the path of some sort of understanding.

At first, girls making the first steps into womanhood truly have no concept of the effect their young beautiful bodies have on men. But they want to be like other women so they try out different styles. Sometimes they want to be "sexy". They start to realise that men are obsessed with women's bits, particularl for most men, women's boobs. But just as hard it is for us men to understand the mind of a woman, so it is for them to understand ours.

This was encapsulated for me many years ago by an incident that occured when my wife of a few months, myself and a female friend went for a walk along the beach while we were all on holiday together with a group of people around our age. This day it was just the three of us. When we got to the beach, we took off our t-shirts and shorts to go for a walk just wearing our bathers.

Our friend surprised us with a one piece the top part of which consisted of two strategically placed straps about an inch and a half wide. I tried not to stare at her as we walked along, but certainly glanced quite often. At one stage the conversation turned to what constituted sexiness - there being quite a few young women in brief bikinis and one-pieces on the beach that day. Our friend being interested in what I thought, represnting the male view.

I can't remember the words I used but, trying to avoid discussing what she was wearing specifically, said something like any young woman in a brief swimsuit was sexy. (I guess I wanted to say "You are very sexy", but I'm a shy sort of guy and besides my wife was there.) Even though I can't remember the words I used, I can remember her reply and expression as clearly as if it were yestereday. She said, with a puzzled look "Even if you're fat." Now our friend was probably a size 10 with just about all the fat in her body in her nicely shaped breasts. It occured to me then that she had no concept that she was beautiful or attractive - although she was certainly both. She looked at herself, with a woman's self critical eye.

Returning to Twigley, I'm prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt and allow that she was more likely thinking like our friend than setting out knowing the extent to which her revealing frock would turn heads. I think there is a good chance that she was genuinely surprised by the reaction and may still find it difficult to understand why the sight of her nearly naked body would cause so much attention. I might be wrong, but I like to be generous.

So I don't agree with Bolt on this.

What I do agree with is that the reaction of men around Twigley is demeaning to men. The cameras followed her and focussed often on her chest. As Bolt points out, the other men's partners would have been annoyed by the attention their men were paying to the bright red frock. Bolt again

all it takes for a woman to get the attention of serious men at a serious ceremony is a wink of her bright reds. It works so well - far better than a display of witty conversation or great learning - that it's embarrassing. For men.

We really do need to be able to talk to women and not just their boobs.

Posted by chriscurnow at 2:44 PM | Comments (0)

September 23, 2004

Life changing books

Scribblingwoman started me on this train of thought. Several trains of thought actually.

Scribblingwoman points to a post on Magnificent Octopus which in turn discusses a Lisa Jardine's article in The Guardian in which Jardine asked hundreds of women to nominate a book that changed their lives:

The idea behind "watershed women's fiction" was to create a list of 30 books - by women and men - that had been in some way inspirational for women readers. We defined a "watershed" book as one that had made a crucial difference during some transitional period in life. It might have sustained someone in adversity, matched her joy at moving on in some significant way, or helped her make an emotional choice through emulation or analogy. It would be a book that made a memorable intervention - not a favourite book or one that got you reading in the first place.

At first I was taken by Scribblingwoman's thought

I wonder, after reading her post, if it is not the books themselves that are so memorable but rather our state of mind when we read them.

This resonated for me. I can't think of too many books I would put in the life changing basket. But there have been lots of events. And for each, looking back, I can see how circumstances and experiences leading up to the event prepared me to be changed. I may have been changed even without the event.

Then I thought about the how men and women might respond differently to this question. Firstly, the books that changed men's lives are most likely different to those that changed women's. Not surprisingly, the majority of books that women identified in Jardine's research were written by women. Is this because women are more likely to write life changing books? It wouldn't surprise me if it were true.

Second, are men less likely to engage in a book to the point of it being life changing? I'm not sure.

At the moment, I can't think of one work of fiction that I would regard as life changing, but maybe if I thought about it there would be some.

On the other hand I have four daughters and I suspect if I asked them the five women in my house would each be able to nominate at least one book.

I would be interested for others thoughts on this topic...

Posted by chriscurnow at 6:12 PM | Comments (0)

September 22, 2004

Are Women 'accessories' to men's sport?

According to Melbourne ABC talkback host Jon Faine we're finishing the AFL season where we started with an emphasis on treating women as sex objects.

This is Grand Final week in Melbourne. The week of weeks for the season in the home of the AFL. The city goes mad. It's called Finals Fever.

The week traditionally kicks off with a gala event - the Brownlow Medal presentation. The core function of this night is to count the votes for each player for each round of the home and away matches until all the votes have been tallied and a winer chosen. In itself a fairly ho-hum affair for all but the most ardent footy supporter. I can remember eagerly listening to the round by round count on the wireless as a ten year old - hoping one of my favourite players from my team would win. I think I only did it once back in those days.

However, over the years, the night has turned into much more than that. For those that get to attend, it is the fashion night of the year with the red carpet rolled out for the guests, with most attention on the players and their partners. This year they even erected a grandstand alongside the red carpet for the crowds that just want to catch a glimpse of these "celebraties" arriving.

For the girlfriends, wives, mothers and daughters – for most of the year, the game's forgotten people – it is a chance to share in the glamour of it all. The fashion has become as important as the award. The fashion writers judged Rebecca Twigley's "backless and almost frontless dress" the "Brownlow of fashion".

Faine, by all accounts a serious and thoughtfull journalist, took up the issue as his opening piece the following morning declaring the event a "skin fest" and sending the wrong message about the how AFL players view women. It's a well used phrase, he said, that the players' partners are referred to as their "handbags" - serving no useful purpose than to look pretty. The player with the most glamorous partner wearing the most daring outfit gets the most attention. Faine's arrgument is that the women are there just to make their men look good. The wrong message he says when the year started off with several players being accused of sexual misconduct.

At first I agreed with him. I had watched the last part of the event on TV and how the cameras had lingered on Twigley. I wondered if she really felt comfortable in that dress or whether it was something she felt pressured to do. The first few callers responding to Faine didn't surprise me. A woman agreeing with most of his analysis but questioning whether he was suggesting that women who wore sexy outfits were responsible for unwanted sexual advances. A man suggesting we were all being a bit precious.

Then a caller who surprised me. Faine's colleague, Drive presenter Virginia Trioli (also author of Generation f: Sex, power, and the young feminist). Trioli disagreed with Faine. She noted that "no-one is dressing these women. They are dressing themselves. These are beautiful strong women. There is a big difference between 'sexy' and 'sexual'."

It made me think. In fact I thought about it all day. In the end, I think I agree more with Trioli that with Faine. These women are all free to dress as they like. The pressure to be daring is more likely to come from other women than from their male partners. If I was a woman, I would like to wear something stunning.

I'm sure many of the men who were there see this and think "woman = sex". Particularly the younger, macho male players. But in one sense that's their problem. That's for them to understand that women have the right to look sexy without that being a free invitation for them to sexually abuse them.

It is our (men's) problem. It's up to us to deal with it. And deal with it we must.

Posted by chriscurnow at 4:23 AM | Comments (0)

September 19, 2004

More on Breasts - what men really think

The Breast Book

Maura Spiegel & Lithe Sebesta

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I was walking along the beach one day during my January holiday earlier this year. I like to walk from one end of the beach to the other each day. The forty minutes it takes is good thinking and relaxing time.

This day just as I was nearing the end of the beach itself where I turn to head out over the rocks to the point, I noticed a group of about four teenage guys standing around in standard uniform of board shorts with either hands in pockets or arms crossed. I was a bit envious of thier tanned youthful bodies. As I got closer I realised that one of them was not a young man but a nonchalant young woman with not large but yet noticeable, and quite definitely bare, breasts.

It made me wonder again what our world would be like if it were acceptable for women to go without a top everywhere it was acceptable for men to. A world where breasts were no more remarkable than say a nose. I wondered if, in fact, women would be more equal in such a world. If they would not be less objectified. I'm pretty sure I will never know. I will, however, continue to wonder.

I can remember trying to draw the shape of a womans breasts under a jumper when I was about 10. Even earlier, I remember seeing my Grade Prep teacher running for a train one day when I was five. (When I told my mother about this she joked "Cows and women should never run." )

So my fascination with breasts goes back a long way. This fascination has been a struggle. For a long time I felt guilty about it. I knew that women didn't like us staring at their boobs — and I could be as focussed on them as the next man. (I still sometimes drive around the block just to get a second glimpse of a woman whose breasts attract my attention). But as I've approached my first half century. I've started to learn that all of us, men and women alike, like to be seen as attractive and that women are beautiful and your breasts are part of that beauty.

During this year I've set about trying to understand what makes me so attracted to breasts and how I can express that attraction to women in a way that respects their ownership of their own bodies yet acknowledges their beauty.

Part of that journey for me has been to read. I looked up books about breasts on Amazon. There seem to be two types of books about breasts. In the first category are books about breast health, breast cancer and breast feeding.

In the second category is a new breed of books all written by women. These books are examples of women looking this men's obsession in the face and trying to understand it. Maybe only women can do this objectively because they don't have the obsession. A trio of writers opened the subject in the late 90s.

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The first and still the classic example of this genre is Marion Yalom's A History of the Breast.

What's in a breast? That depends on who's asking, says Marilyn Yalom, author of this scholarly, illustrated treatise on the breast in Western society. "Babies see food. Men see sex. Doctors see disease. Businesspeople see dollar signs." Breasts have been denounced as wanton, or idealized as givers of power or life in images of Egyptian goddess Isis nursing pharoahs; sturdy, maternal Mother Russia; or the more eroticized, bare-breasted symbol of republican ideals in France. Psychologists, religious leaders, advertisers, and pornographers have rhapsodized over, vilified, and used breasts to sell everything from war to Cadillacs. And, finally, women have seen in them pleasure, power, sustenance, fear, or failure to measure up. (From Amazon.com)
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Around the same time, Meema Spadola went a long way to demystifying breasts with her documentary and book Breasts - our most public private parts.

"I believe that every woman has a breast story," says Meema Spadola, who has spun that assertion into a much-praised documentary on the subject and, subsequently, a book called Breasts. Between its colorful covers is an epic saga of pleasure, power, affection, woe, consternation, fear, anticipation, and ready-or-not metamorphosis shared by females age 2 to 90. Because breasts are a hard-to-conceal badge of womanhood, 9-year-old Ali finds that her new curves "shoved her out of the world of childhood and into puberty." How those around a girl treat this change makes a huge difference to self-esteem. "Tie those things down, you might poke somebody's eye out," a mother kids her 13-year-old daughter. Others recall being teased much less kindly within their families for developing too fast or not fast enough, and dodging catcalls and far worse from strangers who suddenly felt free to comment on their bodies.

Leaping beyond the angst of puberty and adolescence, Spadola thoughtfully probes into how women feel about their breasts--whether natural, enhanced, or downsized by surgery--in relation to work, love, baby nurturing, aging, cancer, sex, and friendship. "Breasts are aggressive," says one woman. "Men feel compelled to look at them, so sometimes I feel like it's rude to other women to show too much breast." Whether indulgent or insightful, Breasts delivers on its promise to reveal what women really feel and how their self-images help shape the course of their lives. --Francesca Coltrera (from Amazon.com)

coverI have already written about the third book in this series — Carolyn Latteier's The Women's Perspective on and American Obsession.

For a growing girl, the advent of body consciousness often comes with the first appearance of breasts. ... The body is no longer the me of childhood - that bundle of amorphous pleasures and pains, the me that loves to run and jump and eat ice cream. The body becomes my equipment, my display, and something I own, something for which I am responsible. My body is a quantity to be judged by others who draw conclusions about me based on what they see.

The great American breast fetish is alive and well, but more people are aware of it, and that means that things are changing. I would like to see us face up to this obsession. By that I don't mean that breasts should be desexualised or that breast men should all go in for attitude adjustments. I would, however, like to see the majority of women feeling OK about their breasts. I would like to see breast-feeding become a natural and easy choice. I would like to stop seeing women being judged by the size and shape of their breasts.

See my piece on Breasts here.

And now there is Spiegel and Sebesta's The Breast Book. In their own words (from the introduction):

This book is an answer to breasts being fettered to sex in the cultural imagination, for the reality of breasts impact is far less limited. In fact, the world according to breasts is almost overwhelmingly varied, inconceivably rich and far from wedded solely to the male fantasy...

...We have in fact had a very good time: if we began as friends, we're now bosom buddies. (Not to mention finding out that our breasts are neither as strange nor unique as we thought they were.) To be able to be playful and celebratory about breasts is a new, even uplifting, luxury. As beneficiaries of three decades of feminism, we now have what is in many ways the pleasure of looking at our breasts without breastplates — without the defensiveness of misogyny and misunderstanding...

...This new freedom to admire breasts—sexually or otherwise—allows us to enjoy their versatility and their allure: the beautiful harmony of form and function that makes the breast a force of nature.

I've quoted extensively from the introduction ot this book because I fear most readers will skip the intro and go straight to the beautiful and thought provoking collection of images the authors have assembled. The images almost speak for themselves but the 10 minutes it takes to read the introduction is well worth it.

I am on a journey to find a world where we all, both men and women, have a "freedom to admire breasts". Maybe not quite as freely as to be equally able to say "You have lovely breasts" as to say "You have beautiful eyes", but almost.

Speiel and Sebesta make a quite lovely contribution to that journey.

Posted by chriscurnow at 2:15 PM | Comments (2)

September 18, 2004

Google - the Oakland As of IPOs

By all accounts, Google's recent IPO was hugely successful (eg see Surowiecki on the Google IPO).

But Google made one big mistake, at least in the eyes of the big investment banks - it didn't bring in one of the big investments banks to manage the deal.

So guess what, the investment banks all missed out on the biggest deal of the last few years. And guess what, they, and the major financial commentatorst are scrambling to find new arguments to support their theory that Google's IPO was a failure.

Here is the latest from Forbes.com.

Since reading Moneyball earlier in the year, I keep seeing examples of Lewis's analysis everywhere.

The analysis of Google's IPO is another one. Google found an inefficiency in the market and exploited it. The people who benefit from the inefficiencey (in this case the major investment banks and the financial commentators) either try to write off the success as a fluke or perversely argue that the success was in fact a failure.

It is an exact parallel to Moneyball's Oakland A's (the second poorest team in the [baseball] major league who came within a few outs of knocking the New York Yankees out of the playoffs). The other teams argued that the Oakland A's were a fluke and that in fact, despite coming so close, their failure to win the title proved that they were no good after all.

You either have to laugh or cry.

Posted by chriscurnow at 2:22 PM | Comments (0)

September 15, 2004

Carpets the way of the Corporation

The September issue of AFR BOSS magazine takes up as one of its themes - The Corporation. Specifically following on from the Australian release of the film of the same name.

If the corporation were a real person it would be considered a psychopath, according to a new documentary, The Corporation.

I found BOSS's second article in the theme the more interesting of the two.

Ray Anderson, chairman of Interface, one of the world's largest carpet makers (and participant in the documentary) describes his Damascus road experience where he turns his company around from being a plunderer to trying as hard as it can to be environmentally sustainable.

He shows that being good is good business.

It's not all optimism though. Joel Bakan, University of British Columbia law professor and author of the book on which The Corporation is based sounds a cautionary note

Posted by chriscurnow at 11:29 PM | Comments (0)

September 13, 2004

Breasts - What men really think.

Moved to Soul Stories...

Posted by chriscurnow at 11:22 PM | Comments (0)

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

Well good friends of chriscurnow.com, you've most probably noticed the paucity of posts lately.

Life just does that to you sometimes doesn't it? What can I say? I've been busy. I've taken on a new project and the old one is not quite finished do the candle is burning brightly at both ends as they say.

I'm sad about that beacuse I just love writing here and there has been lots that I want to write about. I am going to try carving out some time and making it precious.

Let's see how we go?

Posted by chriscurnow at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)

September 1, 2004

Birnbaum snags Hendrik Hertzberg

We try to keep up with Birnaum's interviews in The Morning News.
Here he snags an interview with New Yorker political commentator Hendrik Hertzberg.

To quote from the introduction:

As New Yorker editor David Remnick points out in his introduction to Politics: Observations & Arguments 1966-2004, Hertzberg has

Posted by chriscurnow at 9:26 PM | Comments (0)