Spite Your Face

PHOEBE MCINDOE Rachel Maclean’s animated installation Spite Your Face shows at the Zabludowicz Collection in Kentish Town. The 37 minute film takes us on a visceral, uncomfortable journey inside Pic’s world (Pic is a blue-skinned, post-Brexit response to Gepettos’ Pinocchio). We are plunged into a familiar yet bleakly dystopian world filled with grotesque, disturbing characters. In […]

Body Hair

HOLLY JOHNSON Every woman carries with her the memory of when her girlhood began to diminish and her body began to change. This change is marked by that soreness and sudden sensitivity of your chest, the start of your periods and the hair that manages to spring from parts of your body you were yet […]

An Ode to Dating Apps (Part 1)

THE TINDER PRINCESS Part I I was curious about Dating Apps and had heard from friends they were fun, eventually I decided it was time to give them (and by them, I mean, Tinder) a whirl. Usually when it comes to dating I’m someone who banks on my ‘good sense of humour’ to get me […]

Valley Of The Sex Dolls

ISOBEL CLARKE Will the introduction of sex dolls into mainstream culture help or hinder the process of creating and maintaining healthy relationships? To most, the concept of paying £3000 for a sex doll is completely foreign – reserved entirely for unattractive, lonely older men with atrocious social skills and bad haircuts, but a new wave […]

The Birds And The Bees

PHOEBE MCINDOE ISAAC LORENZO MARLEY Isaac Lorenzo Marley has agreed to speak to me about his experience growing up in Spain and learning about sex from his father. Born in Marbella, Málaga, Marley lived in Majorca for seven years, he now studies in Manchester. What do you remember about the sex education you were […]

Pornography’s Big Bang

Alice Marshall I am often left feeling mortified by the expectations that are bestowed upon us in this fascinating world of sex. Most of us know that sex in pornography is not the same as sex in reality – it gives an inaccurate representation of healthy human sexuality- yet the lines between porn and […]

Female Body Hair: What’s the big deal?

BEA KINGSLEY Women have been removing some (or all) of their body hair for as long as records show. Egyptian women were known for shaving their heads, 17th century sex workers would wear pubic wigs to hide disease and to avoid pubic lice, even stone-age women would use sharp stones and shells to shave their […]

Sexual Assault in Schools

ANJA ETTY In this age of #MeToo and the global fight to raise awareness of sexual assaults on women and girls, it seems absurd that this battle hasn’t infiltrated into our schools. The press has repeatedly reported on the fact that the number of peer on peer sexual assaults in schools has risen dramatically and yet the […]

It’s complicated…

PHOEBE MCINDOE Last week I visited The Ey Exhibition: Picasso 1932 – Love, Fame, Tragedy, which celebrates Picasso’s work from 1932-1933. My overall response to the exhibition was…complicated. The overriding feeling it left me with was, not wonder or awe, it was a difficult-to-pin-down, nagging kind of emotion. In the first room, a painting of […]

SCENE

YAS NECATI Scene is a new play moving around the UK, with its latest run at Camden People’s Theatre in London. It’s an exploration of a queer, interracial relationship – following the love of Ayo (Saskia Ross) and Flo (Laura Cameron) as they navigate how queerness, and particularly race affects their personal lives and understanding […]