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 […]

On The Cusp Of

PHOEBE MCINDOE Above the Amersham Arms, New Cross, is the Take Courage Gallery, an affordable exhibiting space for emerging artists. The current exhibition, “On the Cusp of”, is curated by Ella Devi Dabysing and Rayvenn Shaleigha D’Clark. The art works themselves are not in-flux, but act as a kind of homage to uncertainty, movement and […]

Breaking The Silence

Three years after RAP visited The Kings School , Worcester, Lauren delivered a speech about her experience of sexual assault. Her courage and determination to break the silence surrounding sexual assault will empower and inspire students worldwide.

The Future of Dating

Behaviour when it comes to romance, dating and intimacy is being re-examined. What is a bad date? The phrase itself seems like an oxymoron. Why should a romantic encounter with someone go “badly”, surely a date should leave you feeling good about yourself and your partner? If it’s true that “bad dates” are becoming a […]

Invitation to Mr. Humphrys

PHOEBE MCINDOE On Radio 4’s Today programme Humphrys discussed the increasing levels of knife crime in England attributing the increased levels to Theresa May’s stop and search reforms. May’s reforms were carried out in 2014 in an attempt to reduce the number of illegal and indiscriminate searches that were taking place. At that time May […]

There are no vaginas in Myanmar?

PHOEBE MCINDOE In Burma there isn’t a medically precise word for vagina, they use another word meaning “woman’s organ”. The good news is that as part of The Vagina Monologues 20th anniversary, vaginas are finally coming to Burma. Women’s hour discusses. Audiences in Myanmar talked of their surprise upon watching the show (which has recently been […]

Witch Hunt or Awakening? Thoughts on the Globes.

At this year’s Golden Globes, both women and men in attendance dressed in black to signify what actress Amber Tamblyn called “an awakening”. And perhaps in some ways it was. As the New York Times explains, “[the Hollywood establishment] used the Globes to insist that it would reform itself– that the harassment of women would […]