GWAS Soapbox: Let's talk about Mia bashing

GWAS Soapbox: Let's talk about Mia bashing

I was going to spend my afternoon bashing out the stats from the latest readership audit. But, you know what? Such things are insignificant when people are hurting. And it's plain for all to see that Mia Freedman is hurting. So let's talk about Mia bashing instead.

This is not a post about obesity or gainers or fat activism – if there's one thing anorexia has taught me, it's that everyone has their own struggles, so it's best not to judge. This is a post about the media – more particularly, the Australian media's – love of a whipping girl.

I pulled up NW this week for its maltreatment of Jessica Simpson, but this is so much worse – because the likelihood of Jessica Simpson reading NW is about on par with pigs flying. Mia, meanwhile, has to operate in the media space – because that is her job. The media feeds into her blog and her other work and it, in turn, feeds off her: her opinions, her fans, her ability to string a coherent sentence together and look photogenic. Usually it's a mutually beneficial gig. But this week it took a turn for the worse.

What has happened to Mia is sort of the equivalent of showing up to work and finding that your computer has been vandalised, your desk trashed and your co-workers are saying nasty things about you (and, to top things off, someone took your yoghurt from the fridge). So you go and hide out in the toilet cubicle and cry until everyone goes home. Not fun. Demoralising.

I have just watched both the Today Tonight and A Current Affair segments, titled "Heavyweight fury" and "Mia's Fat Fight" respectively (thank you, Today Tonight, for asking permission to use my clip of Mia; oh, that's right, you didn't). And I feel about as enraged as I did when I posted about Max Markson's abuse of his client relationship with Lara Bingle and the consequent Woman's Day story and ACA segment that arose as part of the bargain. We all know how that turned out.

You need a very thick skin to participate in the media game. Mia knows this. If ACP didn't teach her, then Channel Nine certainly did. In fact, she taught us all about this in her memoir Mama Mia: A Memoir of Mistakes, Magazines and Motherhood. Women adored that book because it was so honest and taught us all that even successful, beautiful women do it tough in their struggle to be all things to all people. It was a very generous thing, that book. And in all my dealings with Mia since we started doing this crazy blog thing in 2007 I have experienced nothing but generosity and compassion. The lady cares about women.

But this isn't a personal character reference, either. Anyone who's visited Mamamia.com.au would know that the community she's created has been, for the most part, a very positive thing for women. In fact, it has come to play a very important part in connecting women who might otherwise feel isolated at home with their new babies, or suffering depression or are just having a shit day and want to know that other people are, too. Her "best and worst bits of the week" segment is the backbone of the blog.

This, of course, comes with its own set of problems and responsibilities. I do not envy Mia the time it takes to filter through her many comments (mostly my posts are met with the sound of crickets!), particularly the more negative ones. It can't NOT affect you. Praise God that she has a supportive family and friends and also the common sense to walk away when it gets too much.

The media too often forgets that behind the public persona there is a real person with feelings. The way Mia was portrayed, particularly by Today Tonight, and taken completely out of context (i.e. most of the references were taken from Mia's comments section, not her own words - and, yes, she does have a responsibility where monitoring comments are concerned) reeks of unfairness. And aren't we a nation about the fair go? Not in the world of tabloid journalism, my dear.

Not only was she not given the opportunity to tell her side of the story (as she was on ACA – and, obvi. she is more PBL-friendly because of her past connections), but she has inadvertently become the poster girl for fat-bashing – the woman who brought "Body Love" to Cosmopolitan magazine in the '90s, and who put size-16 Sara-Marie Fidel on a cover, is a fatist! Oh, please.

As the chairperson of the National Body Image Advisory Board, I imagine Mia has done her research: she would be fully aware of the idea that obesity is about more than "fat women sitting on the couch eating chips" but there is no ignoring that it is also a national health epidemic. As a blogger with a special interest in body image, gainers are going to be on her radar. It's important we discuss things like this. And it's her job to start discussion about things like this. I fear she may be a little gun-shy the next time around.

Mia has written umpteen blog posts about the media's maltreatment of women based on their bodies. To portray her as anything but a positive conduit for such issues is a gross injustice and lazy journalism (the media has no problem digging up the dirt from your past, but contracts amnesia when it wants to make a point that might be contradicted by such positive evidence).

The tabloid media is always going to have a field day when a prominent figurehead attracts attention from special interest groups. But to make Mia the whipping girl for fat discrimination, and suggest she be removed from the Advisory Board, is extreme and unfair and doesn't further the public dialogue about women's health in a positive way. As Pauline Hanson, who is all too familiar with media manipulation, would say, I don't like it.

"I believe that when we get to heaven, we will learn the truth about our differences. We will learn that all of us were right about some things and wrong about others. But even the things we were right about won't matter. God wants us to get along, to stop fighting with everyone over petty things we disagree about, and to begin to find the things we can agree about so that we may get along with one another. Practise looking for ways to agree with others, and then watch what God does through the unity of faith." - Joyce Meyer, Starting Your Day Right, May 14

Pic credits: smh.com.au

Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel

Mags: State of the (mag)nation - March 2010 weeklies audit

The Famous magazine team must be tiring of popping the cork – the glossip has posted the biggest sales gain of any weekly title in the Aussie market, marking its sixth consecutive increase.

Famous' 14.39% circulation rise takes the title's average weekly sales to 88,151, closing the gap on ACP's NW, which suffered a -15.39% sales fall, by 34,000 copies.

Famous' Pacific Magazines stablemate New Idea posted the only other rise in the category, gaining 0.12% year-on-year (the title's first year-on-year circulation rise since 2006), while the other glossips floundered, including OK!, which posted a -14.62% sales drop.

ACP's Woman's Day remains the highest circulating weekly, despite a -0.18% circulation decrease, though Pacific's Who has cemented its position as the highest selling "celebrity weekly magazine" outselling NW by 12,437 copies. Fashion weekly Grazia lost a nominal 0.99% in sales, while the weekly "realities" – Take 5 and That's Life – also lost ground (attributable, perhaps, to too much GFC reality – celebrity always appeals more when real life sucks).

Clearly, consumers have been penny-pinching at the supermarket checkout making Famous' competitive price point and clever packaging an excellent value proposition for women who like their celebrity gossip with dollops of fashion, beauty and humour. The June audit should show more clearly how consumers have responded to Grazia's optimistically "aspirational" price increase to $6.


Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel

Mags: SHOP Til You Drop's "Fashion for all shapes & sizes"

Glossy Talk: Shiny, happy fashion for all shapes and sizes, declares SHOP Til You Drop; plus size-22 fashionista rocks!

Shape issues are popular but dangerous territory for glossies who are, for the most part, proponents of beauty ideals most women cannot live up to. In the glossy world, regular women are usually cast as the "other", and allocated special space to show off their otherness, usually under headlines like "Real Girls" or safely tucked away at the end of a feature, while skinny bean-poles and celebrities with extra-special looks are celebrated front and centre.

Even the bigger girls fashion is so excited about celebrating right now, like Crystal Renn, are irregular – beautiful women with bountiful breasts equally as unattainable for a naturally small lady as a size-0 figure is for someone more robust. The same goes for the supermodels – killer curves in places where most women bulge or sag or bloat. And would you like a side-serve of cellulite with that?

Fashion magazine SHOP Til You Drop has an advantage over its high-end fashion and general women's magazine counterparts: it doesn't do diet stories (amen to that, you say). If it's slimming you're into, it'll tell you what control underwear to buy. Feel like crap? Buy new shoes! And so to the magazine's 'Fashion for all shapes & sizes' issue, fronted by the lush-lipped Liv Tyler. Editor Justine Cullen has again penned an intro to give readers an insight into her job, and in one swoop of her dexterous hand anticipates every possible argument that could be levelled at SHOP for daring to go where so many other glossies have gone before:

"It's important for me to note that this isn't, and was never intended to be, a plus-size issue. There are a few reasons for this, not the least of which is that it's just about impossible to get clothing samples in larger sizes to photograph (the fashion industry has its own relatively valid explanations for that), but mostly because true 'plus-size' is just as alienating for the majority of us as size 0. The truth is that most women in Australia – most SHOP readers – aren't plus-sized at all. They're 12s and 14s. Average. Not particularly big, not particularly small – just a (mostly) happy medium. So, while in this issue you'll find some bigger and some smaller sizes, we've made sure that we've also shot a while heap of girls sized somewhere in the middle...

I admit that between runway shots and those teeny-tiny Hollywood celebrities, the pages of SHOP do tend to have more to offer our skinnier sisters in the way of visual inspiration, so in this issue we've countered that with a few stories about the other girls whose shapes we're admiring right now... We've avoided runway shots as much as we possible can because the catwalks are mostly skewed towards the very skinny and we couldn't balance them out with bodies at the other end of the spectrum... and we've included loads of tips on where and how best to shop for your body – be it curvy, petite, tall, short, booby, bootylicious or even pregnant."

So does she get it right? For the most part, SHOP's following the formula: the obligatory story on the curvy trend (cue Crystal Renn, Christina Hendricks and Beth Dittor), another on the designer dresses that defy body stereotyping(Roland Mouret's Galaxy, Victoria Beckham's Peplum, Herve Leger's Bandage, the Preen Power dress), models of various sizes (up to a 14, I imagine) in trendy fashion, a catwalk shot from Mark Fast's spring/summer '10 show for 'Runway Inspiration', features covering clothing sizes (handy charts, included), tips for feeling confident in your clothes and women telling us how they shop to suit their bodies...

But there are a few surprise editorial gems that stand out, because they either demonstrate women's passion for fashion without getting wrapped up in body politics or are just good fun. Getting a glimpse at the full SHOP team (they look like itty-bitty dolls. Mum, can I have one?) is a little treat for devoted readers – who doesn't like to see the girls behind their mag? Clearly, there are certain aesthetic requirements to be met if you plan on being a new hire. I'd like to see the girls featured more often – telling us what they're actually buying/wearing/doing – in their cute office outfits: why not share beyond the halls at ACP?

I really enjoyed 'Fashion Flashback', a personal sartorial time-line which runs across the bottom of the 'Inside My Wardrobe' spread (this month featuring Oroton creative director Ana Maria Escobar). Author/journalist Wendy Squires reveals what she wore when she edited Cleo ("mainly floral-print day dresses, sequinned cardigans and gorgeous '60s silk sheaths") and also while working on a serious glossy fashion mag (Squires also worked on Australian Style and Elle, but here she refers to Madison): "I discover designers like Marc Jacobs, Chloe, Prada, Marni and Miu Miu and buy, buy, buy. I also discover credit-card debt and rue the fact I spend a house deposit on uncomfy shoes. I also realise buying for a label's merit is ridiculous...".

The 'Lifestyle' section is a body safe-haven, except for deers, who have their heads affixed to a wall. Not to worry, animal lovers; they are all fake! Feet get cosy in slippers, cushions and hot-water-bottle covers get cute and slow-cookers are the must-have for winter. The beauty section ventures into the powder room, a woman's nether regions (Amy Starr suggests having a lady-garden is anti-ageing as you get older) and the world of cult products with waiting lists (watch your lady-garden grow as you wait on your It Cosmetics Bye Bye Under Eye Concealer).

But the best piece in the whole issue? Megan Moir Pardy writing about being a size-22 fashionista. Apparently this girl has been working for magazines like Harper's BAZAAR and Grazia for 10 years, though I can't find her name on either masthead. Anyway, she should be writing for them, regularly. Such is her exuberance. Girl ADORES fashion and it seeps from her pores and prose – I haven't read anything this entertaining in yonks. To wit:

- "I don't want to shop-assistant bash but I've had some baad experiences. Like walking into a store and getting eye-murdered by a 15-year-old sales assistant in a size 0."
- "So what is out there when it comes to true plus sizes? Ugh, well, there's a whole lot of jersey. Seriously, death to jersey! I hate, hate, hate jersey but it seems to be all that most plus-size designers can think of using. That, and leopard-print wrap-dresses. Just because I'm big doesn't mean I want to look like a 49-year-old cougar, okay?" (Coincidentally, one of the fashion spreads has a lot of leopard print action).
- "People are big for a bunch of different reasons and you should so not punish yourself by giving up and looking rubbish. If you don't dress well, you just end up feeling a lot worse."

I think there's some lessons in there for all girls (and I am definitely using the 'eye-murder' term in a sentence soon)! The story comes with a 'Megan's Little Black Book' panel and opposite an ad for DreamDiva.com.au. You can follow the evolution of Megan's own fashion line at damnyoualexis.blogspot.com.

Lovely looking models of varying shapes, pretty clothes (I want all the outfits in '8 style ideas that make every girl look amazing') and fashion insider tips are all well and good, but it's the pages with personality that pack a punch. While its high-fashion counterparts are busy wallowing in stories generally lamenting the state of the female condition, or fixating on whipping body parts into shape so their readers can fit into designer gear, SHOP gets to have all the fun. Shopping, fun? Well, I never...!

Glossy rating: 4/5
Blosses: Justine Cullen; ACP Magazines
Glossy stats: June 2010, 204 pages, $8.20
Glossy ads: Avon, Wish, Clinique, Almay, Ugg, Guess, Rimmel London, L'Oreal, Vera Wang Princess, Pandora, Vibe Hotels

Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel

Book Shelf: The Gal Behind the Book (Carolyn Donovan)

GWAS Book Shelf: The Gal Behind the Book – Carolyn Donovan, author of Chooks In Stilettos

We've already established that I adore Carolyn Donovan's Chooks In Stilettos. But she has an amazing life story to tell beyond the cute anecdotes about eating a "huge slab" of lasagne on the kitchen floor in the nude (with a TV crew outside).

So now a few questions for the lady behind the book. Make yourself a cuppa and enjoy our chat about modelling, marriage, glossy magazines and the meaning of life beyond fashion.

Penning a book on chooks in stilettos...

Where did the idea for the book come from? Too many girls and women undervalue themselves and put themselves down because they don’t think they measure up to the current interpretation of the ideal woman, whatever that really is! We have this strange idea that to be validated as a female is to be this incredibly sexy, supermodel type, with a wardrobe full of stunning clothes – regardless of whether you are 16 or 60!

I never really wanted to write a self-help book. I just started collecting all the hilarious moments that happen when you are TRYING hard to be all these things with a couple of kids hanging off your designer skinnies (okay, they were Target, but no one would know the difference from afar!)

I just wanted to yell “step away from the mirror!” Nobody scrutinises you quite as ruthlessly as you do to your precious self. We are so scathingly mean to ourselves. We get so depressed about how our butt cheeks look – when everyone else is thinking what gorgeous dimples we have on our face cheeks.

The way we think about ourselves affects everything else we do in life. I have managed to get that down from an immobilising paralysis rating, to a more workable annoying distraction – but it is still something I have to regularly address and deal with.

What did you want to get across with the book? The common concept that modelling is all about champagne and limousines, pimple-free bodies and perfect hairdos just got the better of me. I will often relate something hilarious that has just happened to me – on the quest to this illusive perfect image – and the response is usually, “Every girl needs to hear this… I can’t wait to tell my friends.” Having the word “model” worked into your job description title doesn’t exempt you from all the icky things in life; far from it!

How long did it take to write and how did you fit this into your schedule/family life? It took the best part of a year to put it all together. The hardest part was labouring over what to leave out so it didn’t end up the size of an Encyclopedia Britannica volume!

I now understand the “zone” writer’s talk about. Once I got started, I would begrudge any interruptions, which everyone found quite weird (see industrial ear muffs pic!), as I love having people around and am usually happy to be distracted. My family was relieved when I finally finished and their eyes widen in fear when I talk about my next book – so I must have been horrible!

What inspired you to write? My parents got bored easily and we moved house every couple of years, so I was the perpetual new girl at school. I became an avid people watcher from a young age. It was something that would keep me entertained later on when I found myself stuck in airports on long waits, and possibly even kept me safe when I was alone in foreign countries. Being a keen observer of everyday life has now bubbled over into my writing – I never even planned to write books, but now I look back, it was a natural progression.

Glossy serving suggestions – take with a healthy spoon full of wisdom

On glossy images...
Some of my favourite photographs of yours truly are so heavily photoshopped that I hardly resemble myself at all. But I know I could never look like that in real life. My son and daughter know I don’t look like that in real life. Their friends know that. So I am doing my bit for educating the kids around me, simply by informing them. So they can appreciate art, appreciate a beautifully presented shopping guide and appreciate reality.

I often relate it to looking at the picture on a cereal box, deciding you like the look of that cereal, purchasing it, and then when you get home saying, “Oh, no. I can’t possibly eat this cereal. I don’t have a bowl with two blue stripes like the one in the picture on the box. I don’t have a spoon with a handle shaped quite like the one in the picture. And I don’t have two sliced strawberries to serve on top, like it has in the picture. I can’t possibly eat this cereal!”

The picture is a serving suggestion, for goodness sake. And we have to tell it to our girls – these are digitally altered, manipulated images. They have been created to make the clothes look nice. Don’t worry about trying to actually look like that. Even the model in the picture doesn’t look like that!

How have you managed to keep a peace about your body in the industry? I think outward appearances can be something that encroaches on just about every arena of the workplace, not just the fashion and advertising industry. As someone who has a TV in my house, a computer, an ever-revolving collection of magazines, newspapers and catalogues, loves going to the movies, shopping, listening to the radio, looking at billboards on the side of the road, I can’t avoid some level of potential angst about being faced with all my inadequacies and shortcomings.

Instead, I find comfort in the fact that my imperfections are probably why I have friends in the first place. I write in the first few pages of Chooks In Stilettos that some of the most comforting words in the universe are “me too.” I love the C.S Lewis quote; “Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.’ “

I love working with the amazingly vibrant creative people that make up this industry. But you can’t take it all too seriously, because last season is already…well…”so last season!”. You’ve got to move on. “Curves are in” – now they’re not. “Skinny is back” – oops, too late, it’s already over! It makes me realise the best thing about it all is how different we all are – and how boring life would be if it were any other way!

On modelling, marriage, motorbikes and the meaning of life...

Some of the significant achievements in your modelling career? I only ever planned to do this for a short time after I left school, just until I worked out what I wanted to do and then I was going to study. So the most significant achievement is to still be working in the industry more than two decades later. Still being requested for jobs. Still having photographers wanting to work with me… even though everything you hear and believe about this industry is that you are practically over the hill in your 20s! Somehow I have mastered a couple of those hills, while remaining relatively low-profile and scandal free. Bonus!

When did marriage/kids come into the picture? For me, kids weren’t ever in that ‘life plan’ we often set out for ourselves. I guess I had worn enough princess-y bride gowns on photo shoots to last me a life time. And being the oldest of four siblings, I had seen enough nappies, baby vomit and toddler tantrums to ensure a large dose of reality on parenting. So I didn’t feel like I was either ready – or missing out – on either… for a long time to come.

Falling pregnant with my son came as a shock. I kept thinking “I'll work out what to do soon.” Needless to say, I never quite worked out what I was going to do. It was the quickest nine and a half months of my life! And although I was panicking about how I was going to ‘bond’ with this little person, it was love at first sight and I was irrevocably changed from that moment on.

Harrison’s dad was a racing car driver. A fatal crash left me a single mum when Harrison was just eight months old. When he was four, we met Andrew, the plumber who came to fix our kitchen tap. I often say Andrew and Harrison fell in love and got married – I just held the flowers. Zoe came along a couple of years later and has always loved the fact she has three brothers: Harrison and his two brothers from his dad’s first marriage. They spend a lot of time with us, riding motorbikes, etc. Harrison’s oldest brother has recently starting racing cars professionally, so Andrew supports him and we are always the loudest cheer squad there!

How has your faith/spirituality affected your life and life's choices? How to shorten that into a paragraph? I think I am a cynic by nature. If I couldn’t see/touch/taste it, I didn’t believe it. I always felt life just happened to you and you had no other choice but to drift along in its current. The concept of life having meaning or purpose had never taken up much of my thinking beyond the fact that fate had dealt Australia as my place of birth. Lucky me!

But when I became a mother, a whole new reality opened up to me. Suddenly I was dealing with overwhelming love and care and protectiveness far, far beyond anything I ever thought possible, and they weren’t just random emotions. They were very real. The more I searched, the more I discovered that life wasn’t just random. Life had purpose beyond simply what I saw when I looked in the mirror. What I do – or don’t do; everything I say – or don’t say, has an effect on me and those around me.

Who are some of the women you look up to/admire? In fashion field, I want to see what Kate Moss or Sarah Jessica Parker are wearing, but in the same breath I want to read about women who are battling to hold their family together through a child’s illness, or women who pioneer successful companies. I admire women who look beyond their own incapability – whether that be a disability, or financially, emotionally or culturally imposed – to see what they can do.

Chooks in Stilettos, $22.95, Ark House, out now.

Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel

Book Shelf: Chooks in Stilettos. GWAS Book of the Year

It's a big call, guys, but I'm going to make it: Carolyn Donovan's Chooks in Stilettos is the GWAS Book of the Year. Not a Pulitzer contender, but my favourite book for 2010. Granted, it's only May. But I read a lot of books. To what can I attribute this accolade? Its author, of course.

Donovan is to the Australian modelling industry what Mia Freedman is to magazines: and Chooks in Stilettos is her answer to Mama Mia: A Memoir of Mistakes, Magazines and Motherhood. She is so utterly likable, so refreshingly real and fun and honest, that you will not want her book to end. Ever. In fact, I will be keeping it in my little pile of Books I Read When I Feel Crap, along with India Knight's The Shops and, erm, The Bible, for a reassuring pick-me-up.

This is the sort of book you might get Tim Tam smears and coffee stains all over because it's such great company – in fact, it practically invites you to. Mother, model, writer, animal lover, impulse shopper, intrepid traveller, eater of Doritos and evader of exercise, Donovan is the kind of girl you want to befriend, because she gets so much joy out of life – even amidst its messiness. Even when you know she is beautiful and clever and successful and married to a muscly plumber who can put together Ikea furniture: you CANNOT HATE HER. Because she is endearingly humble. In fact, she's the epitome of HUMILITY. If euphemisms could cause spontaneous combustion, I would be exploding all over the floor.

The Sunday Mail recently called Chooks In Stilettos “the best kept secret since Sandra Bullock’s baby adoption”, so I'm not alone in my conviction. Not that I needed the reassurance. The book speaks for itself. Donovan, who published her first book, Journey of a Princess, in 2007, seamlessly melds hilarious vignettes from her life with embarrassing anecdotes from her friends, quirky quotes and random lists. Chapters include 'It's Not My Fault They Book Me', 'If Love Is Blind... Marriage Is a Real Eye Opener' and 'Why Didn't I Think of That?'.

Picking out favourite parts to share with you is nigh on impossible, so just trust me on this one. Turn a forgiving blind eye to the few misplaced apostrophes (which only add to the character of the book, published by the small Ark House imprint – along with your Tim Tam smears), and go buy it for your mum, sister, aunt and best friend.

Coming soon... a chat with Carolyn.

Chooks in Stilettos, $22.95, Ark House.

Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel

Glossy Talk: Did Glamour get it wrong?

Glossy Talk: Did Glamour get it wrong with this cover?

Given that Glamour is one of the few women's glossies on the stands that regularly puts a smile on my face, I'm a bit dispirited with the June swimsuit cover featuring models Crystal Renn, Alessandra Ambrosio and Brooklyn Decker resplendent in ultra-bright bikinis.

I don't mean to sound ungrateful, as Glamour does so many things RIGHT (and gets the kudos for it), but, to be frank, this cover makes me feel about as fab as seeing Helena in the buff for Reebok. Super-curvy or super-skinny; the focus here is the body beautiful – ergo, let's waste more brain cells on body-bashing ourselves because we don't fit the impossible mould!

I don't like to be one to judge a book by its cover (the heart of a mag is what counts, and I'm yet to flip through the content), but don't we see enough women in swimsuits on the covers of Sports Illustrated and the various other lad-mags assaulting us from the newsstands? Why – in the era of Tina Fey, Michelle Obama and other women generally kicking it, as evidenced by the magazine's annual 'women of the year' issue – must a mainstream women's magazine feel the need to produce a cover that's as likely to be fawned over by men as picked up by women?

Granted, it's the SWIMSUIT issue, which would make swimwear befitting. But we were making progress here, guys (gals, girls, ladies, gents...). Is there a major difference between choosing to put busty airbrushed models on the cover and waif-like models – they are both still ideals few real women can achieve.

The point being: magazine covers may be about aesthetics, but since when are aesthetic norms set in stone (or, indeed, in the stone age)? When did it become okay for women's mags to start objectifying women again? Is this just representative of how far we've NOT come since feminism, or just how lazy we've become about asserting its values?

Journalist Fenella Souter's rather scathing appraisal of women's progress for Good Weekend (The Sydney Morning Herald, May 1, 2010), is one of many recent articles to take stock of 60 years of feminist literature, including Naomi Wolf's The Beauty Myth (which "declared that the new bondage for women would be the feverish pursuit of an impossible ideal of beauty, endlessly promoted by television, women's magazines, ads and pornography"), and its affect on society. Unfortunately, the diagnosis is not good. She writes (this merely an excerpt in a pleasing 10-page feature validated by statistics, anecdotal evidence and first-person opinion):

"The larger culture, from gyrating g-strings on MTV to the proportion of women at a CHOGM conference, shapes the way women are viewed and view themselves. Right now, the vision seems to be as 'empowered' eye candy. Feminism has had many attempts on her life, but the latest is to shove the hoary old dame into retirement by telling her she's no longer required. Apparently, women have achieved such completely equal status, it's safe to go back to celebrating our 'femininity' and our sexiness, source of the new empowerment. Phew! At last! Back to the traditional role of sex object, even if it does come with some confusing added duties: working twice as hard at the office; striving to be a domestic goddess at home; attempting to 'man-up'... all the while hobbled in 12-centimetre heels or clad in lingerie." (Or "Beyonce Bootie Shorts"?)

I fear that "enlightened sexism" – described by author Susan J. Douglas as the phenomenon by which "true power has nothing to do with economic independence or professional achievement" but everything to do with "getting men to lust after you and other women to envy you" – or some variation of the concept, is exactly what most women's magazines are peddling. Poo to that. I love clothes, I like to feel "pretty" (not necessarily in a visual sense; I feel prettiest when I've performed some act of kindness or love), but I would like not to be assessed on the shape of my butt in a bikini – by myself or by others.

CLEO writer Nicole Elphik recently penned a story titled 'Is body love missing the point?', which ran amongst fashion pages with hot skinny models (the online version runs with an image of a model in a bikini). As these stories do. Still, props to CLEO for canvassing this editorial territory. Author Emily Maguire (Your Skirt's Too Short: Sex, Power, Choice) is quoted:

"As a society, we have yet to break free of the ancient, patriarchal view of women as decorative objects and status symbols for their male counterparts... It's now widely accepted that women can think and work and achieve as much as men, but we're supposed to do these things in addition to being decorative – not instead of... I think we need to ask ourselves why beauty is valued more than any other trait. Why is it considered important for me to love my body? Of course, hating the way you look feels terrible, but the remedy isn't necessarily learning to love your appearance...

Un-retouched photos of models or professionally shot images of 'ordinary' women are exercises in objectification. They invite us to judge the women in the pictures – even if we're encouraged to celebrate or admire the women, it's still a judgment based on how they look. [The images] ask us to compare ourselves to the bodies in the pictures, and again, even if the stated intention is to make us feel better about our bodies, the fact remains that they perpetuate the idea that how women look really, really matters...

The problem is not with idealising thinness, but with presenting any particular body 'look' as a must-attain ideal. Telling women to be curvaceous because men love it is no better than telling women to be skinny because fashion designers make their clothes really small. It's just replacing one idealised image with another. Instead of more examples of what 'beautiful' looks like, I think we need to hear and see more women who cheerfully – and successfully – live their lives without a second's thought about whether or not the majority of surveyed men, or some editorial random writer, thinks they're beautiful."

Perhaps this is where glossy websites and iPhone/iPad applications will help balance out the often one-dimensional version of 'being female' we're presented in the Land of Gloss: through video there's the potential to see more three-dimensional visions of women, on the streets, in the office and in their homes (and home offices), all cheerfully – and successfully – going about their lives unencumbered by itsy-bitsy bikinis.

See also:
Vogue running backwards in high heels
A feminist call to fashion arms (without sleeves)

Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel

Glossy Talk: Elle editor's glossy world view

Glossy Talk: The glossy looking-glass is not coloured rose (so wake up and smell the Starbucks)

US ELLE editor Roberta Myers recently appeared on the Today show, generally telling it like it is in the world of fashion, pop culture and gloss, proving that those glossy goggles are still firmly in place (and that women's magazine editors are absolutely – powerlessly? – beholden to the fashion industry):

"It’s fashion’s job to sort of reject what’s going on every six months or so. Which is to say, we’ve had the glamazons — the tall skinny models — for a really long time. What was so great about this season – and so interesting this season – was that the Louis Vuitton show closed the show with a 47-year-old Elle Macpherson. She is not a skinny girl. And at Prada we saw Victoria's Secret models on the runway. This is really a new trend. And, importantly, the clothes are actually built for these kinds of curvy women. This is what's going on in fashion – this is what's stylish right now... When Marc Jacobs sends a Victoria's Secret model down the runway, it's worth noting, and it's important, because he is one of the most influential designers...

"An interesting thing we write about in our body issue is that average women – we did a study, there was a big study – are not actually inspired to look at women who look like them. In fact, they respond more to women who are a little bit above average... Seeing someone who looks like her doesn't actually send her out and make her go shopping. There is something always aspirational; when you look at television, when you look at movies. I think the fact that the culture is shifting a little bit to women who look a little more realistic... Look, the average woman is 5'3" and weighs 160 pounds [72kgs]; you're not going to see a lot of that on the runways or in the movies or in general in the creation of popular culture."

Scary thing is, as Myer notes, as soon as fashion gets tired of 'curvier' girls, like Laetitia Casta, it will return to the skinnier girls – because fashion has the attention span of a two-year-old, and is largely still dictated by men, who have no such curves.

Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel

God Talk: Be yourself!

"The Bible says, 'We have different gifts, according to the grace [divine enablement] given us.' (Romans 12:6 NIV) So recognise and develop your gift. That can be intimidating, especially if you've spent your life looking for approval from people who've none to give you. Stop making your life an ongoing struggle to be something you weren't meant to be. God made you who you are; when you try to be somebody else the best you can ever be is number two. So be yourself; after all, who's more qualified?" (The Word for Today)

Girl Talk: Happy anniversary!

Girl Talk: We made it to three! Triple whee!

Loyal GWAS followers might recall my post 'Marriage is like Magda', in which I described the "Les Misérables" skit Husband and I were in the habit of performing for all and sundry in order to deflect the fact that we were well and truly, well, miserable.

Following that post, I was commissioned to write a story for CLEO titled 'What No One Tells You About Marriage', which painted a pretty bleak picture of life after "till death do us part". I broke that down into six pointers: he will treat you like his mother; you marry his family and his ex-baggage; men want sex ALL the time; it's all about the "in-betweens"; and you must invest. Of course, I concluded on an upbeat note: "you may even find it within yourself to laugh at his fart jokes". Some people were aghast, but it was absolutely a projection of our growing pains.

Now, I'm happy to report that three years into this crazy thing they call marriage, we are going great-guns (less guns blazing, more peace fire). In a sort of ironic turn of events, life literally conspired to tear us down (career burnout, financial issues, health issues, people issues), but rather than run away or turn on each other, we rolled with the punches together. Playing different roles but on the same team, we talked long and deep and prayed hard (and occasionally bit our tongues). Like Princess Buttercup and Wesley facing the fire swamp and defeating Prince Humperdinck (see The Princess Bride), adversity, it would seem, turned our marriage around. That, the grace of God, and a little thing called The Marriage Course.

A few months ago, we agreed to join two other couples (one with three children; the other with a baby on the way) in a marriage course called, yes, The Marriage Course! We met each Wednesday night for seven weeks to watch a DVD, complemented by a workbook (which Husband doodled all over – symbolically defacing our marriage!), and discuss our "issues" together. While Husband still declares the whole process was a patronising exercise in Wasting Time (he being the marriage expert and all), I know we gained a lot of insight into our inherent differences, needs, desires and hopes, and how we can adopt practical measures to keep the love alive. The top three things I learned?

1. That looking after myself is one of the best investments into our marriage I can make. My happiness = husband happiness. Obviously, my eating disorder had a drastic impact on the health of our marriage – like an addiction or infidelity, it crept in between us and created a vast chasm. Closing that gap has been tough. Really tough. But, as Husband said to me: "You don't have the choice of going through this alone." For him, it's meant trying to understand, learning to be empathetic and being patient; for me, it's been a willingness to let him in to help me heal. I've also had to turn my mentality from victim to victor: taking that dance class, eating well, sleeping well, pursuing friendships, getting career satisfaction, buying that new dress... it's all part of becoming whole again.

2. That we need to spend quality time together OFTEN, which does not include being in the same room attached to our Apple Macs. Husband and I are both workaholics. Not for financial gain or status, but because we're passionate about our work and living out our life purposes. No matter the motive, if work takes over, there's another wedge in your marriage. Sometimes the wedge is deliberate: rather than deal with our problems, we'd burrow further into our respective jobs. While we have more boundaries about our home office now, we're working towards moving our office space off campus. And, shock horror, having no internet connection at home! We're also aiming to pursue joint interests, do new things and take more mini-breaks to keep from burning out (again).

3. That love is about putting yourself in your partner's shoes... even if they're big and clumpy and uncomfortable. Going camping is something Husband loves, so agreeing to do such activities is a way for me to ensure I'm doing my part for his happiness and to make him feel loved. Alternately, he loathes stinky old bookshops and going to the ballet, but knows they make me happy. Selflessness is a really hard thing to achieve, especially in a society that deems you're only as good as your last great career achievement, your wardrobe, your body weight and even how much time/money you gave to charity. The onus is on "being our best selves" but often we forget that the best way to be our best is to perform selfless acts for other people. Even our spouses. Part of this is learning to speak your partner's "love language" (I'm a mad gift-giver but gifts barely register on Husband's joy radar).

Oh, and then there's sex. That came up a lot. It's closely related to points #1, 2 and 3! Who'd have thought marriage would be SUCH HARD WORK?

Husband and I celebrated our third anniversary today with coffee, macaroons and friands at Hart's Cafe on Mount Tamborine (owned by Pro Hart's son, Kym, and his wife Debbie, if you're curious – thank you for the special treatment, guys!).

Tomorrow he goes on tour with the JC Epidemic crew before departing for China for a week of show riding (he be a freestyling motocross madman). For the first time, I'm not afraid to say out loud that I will miss him and that I prefer having him around. No kidding.

Artwork by Olivia, our 3-year-old niece.

Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel

GWAS: The Clippings Post

Favourite clippings lovingly gleaned from newspapers, supplements, local press and magazines...

Garance Doré is the fashion world's answer to the book publishing scene's Elizabeth Gilbert. Her blog, Une Fille Comme Moi (“A girl like me”) has the same cult status as Eat, Pray Love (for dedicated fashionistas, it's a daily spiritual experience), her work is revered by the likes of Anna Wintour (the glossy world's reigning Oprah) and, like Gilbert, she met her true love while pursuing her art (her partner is The Sartorialist, Scott Schuman... as if you didn't know).

A gifted illustrator, photographer and impeccable dresser, Dore elicits the same girl crush vibes as Gilbert, and almost as much press coverage. Just this week her misconstrued comments about plus-size models were picked up by The Huffington Post, while British ELLE commissioned her to produce a subscriber-only illustrated cover of Demi Moore for its May issue.

Dore also garnered press coverage this week for her collaboration with Australia's Westfield chain of shopping centres, for which she has produced a series of illustrations inspired by eight Australian designers to be shown in an exhibition titled Garance Dore: Winter with Westfield Installation (open for a month from April 28). Writing in The Sydney Morning Herald's Essential Style supplement, Natasha Silva-Jelly relays the blogger's thoughts on Australian style ("easy and relaxed") and working with Westfield ("total artistic freedom"). Grazia's Tamara Davis also covered the story in "Vive la Garance": "The very funny, very French Garance is bringing her camera, her boyfriends... and her unique art here as part of an exciting exhibition for Westfield."

It would seem Dore leads a sort of fairytale existence where fashion, passion and personality co-exist harmoniously, but not without dashes of reality and humour, a quality which also endeared women to Gilbert. A recent diary update of hers reads:

"I just spent a week locked up working in my house. I’m totally washed out and I kinda look like a B.O.B., the blob from Monsters vs. Aliens, but I don’t care, I put on a touch of red lipstick and get myself up to go celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the TV show Habillées Pour… I’m going because I love that show, and because I want to give a kiss to Mademoiselle Agnès, Loïc Prigent, Mélinda Triana, and everyone else who have brought style to my living room for the past 10 years."

How to contribute to The Clippings Post:
1. Scan in your clipping (single page is preferable – no 6000-word essays from The Monthly: we don't want to fall asleep).
2. Email clipping in JPG or PDF format to satchelgirl@gmail.com.
3. Provide credits (publication, date, author/photographer/illustrator/stylist).
4. Explain why you enjoyed the column/story/page layout/illustration/image/styling.
5. Supply mailing address so you can be duly rewarded with a plump new book for your bedside table.
6. Stay tuned to see if your clipping made the cut.

Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel

Glossy Talk: O The Oprah Magazine's 10th Anniversary Issue

Glossy Talk: O The Oprah Magazine's 10th Anniversary Issue, the unauthorised biography and populist, positive spirituality

Oprah Winfrey is so revered amongst her media peers that Kitty Kelley, the notorious celebrity biographer, was reportedly met with the resounding sound of slamming doors as she went about researching her latest unauthorised tell-all, Oprah - A Biography, which was published in the US on Monday (coming soon to Oprah's Book Club reading list... not).

This is in stark contrast to the impressive names surrounding Oprah's picture in support of the 10th anniversary issue of her eponymous magazine: Elizabeth Gilbert, Eckhart Tolle, Dr. Phil, Diane Sawyer... these are just some of the issue's contributors, who together with other powerful supporters (she backed Barack Obama; Michelle appeared on a cover with her), stand in testament to the persuasive pull of the Queen of Media.

O The Oprah Magazine sells around 2.5 million copies a month. To what can we attribute its success? Well, there's the TV show, syndicated in 145 countries and watched by 50 million Americans each week alone, which winds up production in September next year (she'll host a new show, Oprah's Next Chapter, on her OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network).

Taking the daytime talk-show genre out of the gutter, The Oprah Winfrey Show has catapulted Tom Cruise off a couch, put women's and social justice issues on the agenda (and free things under the chairs of audience members) and laid books like Eat, Pray, Love on the bedside tables of women the world over (coming to a cinema screen starring Julia Roberts soon!). That sort of reach doesn't go astray.

But behind the show, there's the lady, who appeals just as much to high-powered women working in corner offices as her daytime TV audience. Her philosophy of "living your best life" and "living authentically" has an almost universal appeal (albeit indulgently bourgeoisie). "We've just capitalized on what she stands for," Hearst Magazines' Cathie Black told Brandweek after the successful launch in 2000.

O The Oprah Magazine took spirituality mainstream by creating "mainstream spirituality". Her detractors, like the authors of O God: A Dialogue on Truth and Oprah’s Spirituality, have accused her of taking Christian traditions and mixing them with other ideas about spirituality to create "a hodgepodge of personalised faith", as apposed to subscribing to the Bible's teachings. Writing for Brandweek after Oprah gave The Secret airtime, Matthew Grimm said she "never met a hackneyed, feel-good gimmick she could not pimp."

Oprah's focus on personal growth puts women in control of their own lives, and their "inner lives", wrestling away the notion of abiding by didactic religious rules. Instead, her magazine offers a blueprint for living: "I've sometimes thought that our purpose here at O is to offer recipes for living – and this month we've gone all out, gathering advice from ten of our favoruite experts to help you make the years ahead healthy, wealthy and wonderful," she writes in her editor's letter. Health, wealth and joy are all within your reach – you just have to reach harder.

A large part of Oprah's appeal is her willingness to share her battles. The magazine has charted her weight struggles, with the January 2009 issue feature "I'm mad at myself..." garnering the most reader letters and inspiring stories in more than 900 media outlets, including The New York Times, People and Jimmy Kimmel Live. On May 9, she'll be mobilising the masses for a 'Live Your Best Life' walk to raise money for charity, "because giving back should feel good".

Her generous spirit and commitment to altruism underwrites the commercial nature of her media empire. Which is not to say world domination and money making are her motives: far from it. "When we started this magazine, I had no expectations," she writes. "I was clueless about the business of magazine publishing. Sometime during the first few months, I actually said to our then editor in chief, 'Maybe we should lose some of the ads. There are just too many of them.' I was immediately set straight on that point. We exist because of the ads. 'Oooookay.'"

Despite a string of editors, each one navigating their way between Oprah and Hearst, the magazine has perfected its editorial offering of expert columnists (Martha Beck is the columnist 35% of readers would most like to have a coffee with, followed by Dr. Phil), health and lifestyle features, makeover stories, no-fuss fashion and beauty pages, celebrity interviews (often conducted by Oprah herself), tales of heroism and triumph over adversity, uplifting affirmations and product placements. "Oprah's Midas touch turns every product that she recommends into an overnight sensation, every book a bestseller and every product a must-have," wrote Mark Riddix for Forbes earlier this year.

But will her soothing brand of populist, feel-good spirituality, permissive morality, good deeds and self-empowerment through control of one's relationships, weight, career, style, face and bank account continue to resonate with women? In the absence of a more influential alternative, it's likely. But is it enough? Will we ever be enough?

"She rekindles hope and renews the spirit of those who have given up on their dreams, but some women whose attempts at self-reform have fallen short time and time again recognize the limitations of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps," writes Janice Shaw Crouse for Concerned Women for America. "Some women recognize the necessity for a theological framework to ground faith. Those women doubt that "feeling good" is a sufficient roadmap for spirituality."

Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel

GWAS Girl In Media - Louise Bell

In March this year, former magazine creative director and self-described "decor junkie" Louise Bell parlayed her passion for spotting trends into a store selling the coveted pieces she felt were mostly inaccessible to middle income earners.

So TableTonic.com.au, and a burgeoning blog of the same name, was born. Here Louise chats about Doc Martens, airbrushing with abandon and managing the mother-load...

Where did you grow up and what were your childhood interests? I grew up in Durban, South Africa, and we immigrated to Sydney, Australia when I was 12. I was interested in the usual stuff, but was very obsessive about the appearance of my dolls – I kept their little knitted bonnets firmly in place to avoid messed up hair, and my Cindy doll slept in a lucite/perspex tissue box. Music also featured heavily. "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was the first song I ever obsessed over, followed closely by "Walking on Sunshine" and "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". I would have been about seven or eight years old.

Who/what were some of the key influences and inspirations in your formative years? I feel fortunate to have been a teen at a time when the world was discovering both "The Supermodel" and "Grunge". And I embraced both, wholeheartedly. I had both a subscription to (US) Harper's Bazaar and pair of 10-hole "Cherry Docs" in Year 10. Fashion magazines and music videos were my life. Actually, not much has changed since then.

High-school: did you love it or loathe it? Loved, loved, loved. I had a hugely positive high school experience, and regularly catch up with at least 10 close friends. I particularly enjoyed Biology, and also Art – Pam and Daphne, my art teachers, were absolute gurus; they were passionate beyond speech. My Year 12 Art Major Work was selected for Art Express and exhibited in the Art Gallery of NSW, which is testament their dedication as teachers.

Travel, university... how did your post-school life pan out? I studied a Bachelor of Design for four years straight after high-school, which meant long hours and stacks of hard work. I wanted to chuck it in on day two! On a brighter note, I won a trip to London to see Lenny Kravitz live at Wembley Stadium whilst studying one weekend. I had Triple M on and called up for one of their "Rock-tober" promotions. I took a friend, and we travelled to San Francisco, Rome, Florence, Paris and London, of course. It was incredible.

How did you get your start in the creative field? One requirement of my degree was that we undertake industry experience for four days a week in our final year. I was fortunate (after many unsuccessful applications) to land an internship at Dolly magazine. It was unpaid initially, but after a couple of months, they started paying me, which was a complete and unexpected bonus.

What direction did you take from there? As my Dolly internship was coming to an end, I landed a job as a graphic designer at Australian Good Taste magazine. But the editor of Dolly at the time, the very lovely Susie Pitts, was determined to keep me at ACP, so she did a quick ring around, and I was subsequently offered the job of junior designer at Cosmopolitan magazine. From there, I worked very closely with Mia Freedman, and moved up the ranks to become Deputy Art Director, Art Director, Creative Director, and later Creative Director of Cosmopolitan as well as Cleo and (once again!) Dolly.

Which roles have you enjoyed the most? I have enjoyed it all, but for a passionate graphic designer, the role of a Deputy Art Director is usually ideal in the sense that you are free to literally design pages all day. The Junior Designer is often doing a good share of menial tasks (saving images from disks, filing, etc.) and the Art Director is often consumed with deadlines, attending numerous meetings and designing the cover each month (an often painfully lengthy process).

Tell us about your role overseeing the creative direction of Dolly, Cleo and Cosmo. What did that involve and how did you differentiate each magazine's aesthetic direction? Having worked alongside Mia Freedman for so many years, I was fortunate that when she was announced as Editor in Chief of the three titles, I was offered the (newly created) role of Creative Director of all three. Maintaining the separate aesthetics wasn't as difficult as you might imagine. They all had their own unique identities and philosophies and this, coupled with three different "font packs" (the typefaces used by each mag) made for a relatively smooth running machine. Being highly organised was key, but managing three different deadlines, approving every single page layout, plus designing three covers a month certainly kept things... "colourful"!

The recent trend towards going sans Photoshop: faddish tokenism or welcome trend? Without question, faddish tokenism. But that's just my opinion. And have you noticed how 'sans photoshop' on a cover simply means "no lipstick or mascara"?

But do you think things have gotten out of hand? Absolutely, I do, and I think 90% of the time we aren't even aware of retouching. It's only when it's done poorly that people start talking. But, that said, it's the same argument as "Models should be fatter". People are asking for something I don't believe they truly want to see.

What limits did you attempt to stick to? I was an art director at a time where retouching or "airbrushing", as it was called on the olden days(!), was a very new technology. And Mia and I just went for it! We literally did as much as we could get away with – different heads on bodies; you name it.

Are Australian art directors' hands more tied than their overseas counterparts with regards to access to images? Of course – we simply don't shoot as much, and you have every women's lifestyle mag bidding on the one shoot of, say, Cameron Diaz. Cosmo was fortunate to have access to all the US Cosmo covers, which was great. We used them at least 50% of the time. Cleo was harder, as they were competing for cover shoots with the Marie Claires and Madisons. Dolly was even harder still – you could only get PR approval for the super young celebs, and if you wanted someone even slightly older, like Rachel Bilson, say, the cover usually went to an "older" mag like CLEO.

Why did you choose to leave? I didn't. I was made redundant in November 2009 and, at risk of sounding like a cliche, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. If I wasn't made redundant, I simply wouldn't have had the opportunity to make such a drastic career change. So I feel very fortunate. Life has only just begun.

You now manage your store and your blog (tabletonic.blogspot.com) and family life... how do you do it all? I honestly don't know! My son is in first grade, and my daughter is looked after four days a week, so that's a bunch of time I have to keep things chugging along nicely. My blog traffic has more than quadrupled in the past couple of months, so that also tends to fuel the fire! The hardest part is making dinners, washing, picking up toys, tidying rooms...

What does an average day involve for you?
7am: Wake up. 7.30am: Get up and check emails, check site traffic, moderate comments. Cup of tea and toast. Shower. 8am: Get Anoushka up (Jasper is already up drawing/building Lego), make kids breakfast and dress them. 9am: Take kids to school/daycare, grab a takeaway coffee on the way home. 9.30am: Settle in to emails, blogging, packing orders, etc. What ever requires my attention. 5-7.30pm: Kids, kids, kids. Any mother will tell you the dinner/bath/bed bit is the busiest time of day by a country mile! 7.30pm: Cup of tea and a magazine or back on the net for more blog inspiration/education. I have so much to learn, and use the evenings for "homework".

Where do you get your inspiration? Everywhere. The colour of a pear at the fruit shop, the fabric of the dress worn by the little Italian lady that shuffles up our street every day, a page in a magazine, a comment left on my blog, a story in the newspaper. What my eyes can see, inspires me. Constantly.

What are some of your favourite magazines and blogs?
Fave decor blog: Absolutely Beautiful Things. Brisbane-based Anna Spiro has been an enormous influence since the minute I discovered her blog about three years back. She has such a great eye for style. Sometimes I think she just cheats and reads my mind!
Fave food blog: 101 cookbooks. Gorgeous food with a (mostly) healthy slant. Heaven.
Fave fash blog: Apart from the usuals (The Sartorialist etc), Definitely Golden (definitelygolden.com) is positively dreamy.
Fave mag: Right now, I'm totally hot for Vogue Living. And Inside Out. And Real Living!
Fave online mag: Lonny (lonnymag.com). Co-founded by one of the Editors of the now defunct, Domino magazine, it picks up pretty much where Domino left off, and has every single interiors blogger squealing with delight on a regular basis.

Who have been some of your mentors? Pat Ingram and Mia Freedman were not only my mentors, but also my Fairy Godmothers, and my confidants. To have worked under just one of them would have been enough, but I had the good fortune of learning the ropes from, and having the support of both of them.

What is the common, philosophical theme that underpins your work? You will always find me attempting to improve the appearance of something, one way or another. It's as simple as that. Without my eyes, I would be nothing.

If you could create your own magazine, what would it feature and look like? It would feature decor (colourful, practical, stylish), fashion (chic, affordable, flattering) and food (nutritious, easy, interesting). And it would look like a party you wish you'd been invited to!

Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel