societal standards

New Gender Rules: Girls Can Be Anything They Want but Still Must Look Good

Girls have been told they can be anything they want to be, and it shows. They are seizing opportunities closed to previous generations — in science, math, sports and leadership. But they're also getting another message: what they look like still matters more than any of that. Boys seem to have been largely left out [...]

The Damage Done When People Insist ‘Boys Will Be Boys’

Society should absolutely demand more of boys - but we should also expect more for them, writes Clementine Ford. Photo: Stocksy Another small American town has been rocked by revelations of sexual abuse at the hands of some of their most protected football stars this week, and local response is sadly much as we've [...]

The reason why we have ridiculous beauty standards

Another day, another Photoshop horror story. In a matter of weeks, Kate Winslet and Naomi Campbell have been featured on magazine covers looking nothing like the real-life versions of themselves. We've seen that men aren't immune to a heavy handed edit either, and, almost a century after her death, news has surfaced that Jane Austen was airbrushed within an inch of her [...]

Miley Cyrus: does the music business exploit women?

The pornification of everything is a huge problem across our culture, and one that has only grown muckier and more entrenched with the spread of the internet on teenagers' mobile phones. It's a problem not confined to pop music – hello, fashion photography – but pop is where the tectonic plates of sex and commerce [...]

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