The Anti Room

Beyoncé by Alexi Lubomirski for Harper’s Bazaar In an interview in Harper’s Bazaar Beyoncé says feminism is natural to her and that it’s what she lives for and yet she doesn’t feel it’s necessary to define it. She thinks feminism needs a new name. “I need to find a catchy new word for feminism, right? [...]

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Imagine a scenario where a man chases you with declarations of love and passion, offers a bright future mapped out with parties, impromptu music gigs, red carpet movie premieres, lavish gifts, chartered flights and yachts.  The sex is hot. He can’t seem to get enough of you until *blammo* he doesn’t call for a week or [...]

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A friend of mine was recently looking through some old photos and commented, “I noticed you never smile with your teeth showing!” To be honest, I barely know how to smile with my teeth showing because it’s something as a teenager I decided I would never do. While I have a perfectly straight set of [...]

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The inevitable furore over Posh and Becks’s baby naming has me scratching my head. Firstly their  names are  Victoria and David, secondly it’s really got nothing to do with the kind of lives that most of us will ever come close to living, so therefore our opinion is nullified. If they wanted to call their [...]

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Perhaps you took notice of The Daily Mail’s report on a poll conducted among 2,000 women over 40, which found that ladies felt invisible once they turned 46. Their opinions no longer mattered once men stopped paying attention. Nevermind the idea that visibility and holding opinions remain hinged upon such a fickle conditional as one’s [...]

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Try to imagine a media feature about a woman choosing to gain 50 pounds without an alarmist frame ,one unaccompanied by quotes from health care practitioners, pie charts, pearl clutching, all of which fail to conclude that the lady in question has lost the plot altogether.  Also imagine that said married lady’s husband is not [...]

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Ava Gardner adopts the confident poise of a non conformist A lo-fi internet connection coupled with inventory lapses in both Laser and HMV has left me with a hard-nosed jones to watch Mogambo, the 1953 flick starring Ava Gardner, Grace Kelly and Clark Gable.  After reading Ava Gardner’s memoir Ava: My Story, where she isolated [...]

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Every Republican under the sun, it seems, wants the Queen to apologise for the whole enchilada from Strongbow’s invasion of Ireland and the manky spud famine to Bloody Sunday (Part I & Part II). But won’t Elizabeth Windsor suffer enough faced with a barrage of Irish c’lebs from Amanda Brunker to Lorraine Keane − whose contribution to Irish culture has been to tell motorists to avoid the Kimmage crossroads [...]

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There’s a delightful video doing the rounds this last couple of weeks – a cover version of Chris Brown’s Look At Me Now by a band called Karmin, notable because Karmin singer Amy Heidemann does an amazing interpretation of bullet-rapping Busta Rhyme’s verses. I watched it, loved it, shared it with my friends. And as [...]

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Quick: where were you when the Pope came to Ireland? Me, I’ve got no idea. Before I’m excommunicated, I should point out that’s because I’m not Irish, and wasn’t living in Ireland at the time of the papal visit. Ask me, though, where I was for the Queen’s Silver Jublilee (two years before all Irish [...]

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