I’ve had this debate with my Muslim boyfriend. Pigs are categorically not any dirtier than any other animal. In the wild they do not sleep in their own shit. It’s a bizarre misconception. He has himself admitted this and that he only abstains from pork because it’s the only observant thing he does do these days (we…

This is superb - I think you’ve cracked it! I’m going to spend from now until Christmas scouring London for a hamper-full of gifts and food from majority Muslim countries, supporting as many family businesses as I can along the way. The spirit of giving!

He’s one for lengthy facebook rants about Islam and refugees (he’s a real peach) so I got him a selection of books on Islam, all written by women, with an accompanying facebook message informing him that I’d be delighted to engage with him once he’s educated himself.

Well, given that I got my mum’s new husband a VERY passive aggressive book for Christmas last year, this list isn’t going to work for me....

This is true. He kind of strikes me as a guy who has also said “make love” in the past. And while “nut” makes me scrunch my nose up, “make love” makes me want to crawl in a hole and never come out. She’s probably doing it deliberately to wind him up

A friend once said “no one is going to write a book about you” and it was the most succinct truth I was ever handed.

Actually pretty solid advice.

I actually don’t really take issue with what she said - her actual words are pretty clear and not that terrible. I just don’t see the difference between what Cardi B said and every other woman who has ever said “I’m not a feminist, I just believe men and women should be equal”. It’s neither awful, nor insightful. I…

I don’t know. I’m seeing a lot of “but this is what she meant”. If she did mean “feminism is about equality, and we need to do better than white middle class feminism to achieve that” then that’s great...but she didn’t.

I see the argument for the graphic layout but the truth is, if a white woman had been on the cover with a big blow out or voluminous ponytail, they wouldn’t have photoshopped all her hair off to get the copy in place. For some reason they decided it was a better option to cut off her hair than try harder with their…

This is exactly what I was (badly) trying to get at above. Thank you for articulating that - I think that’s what feels off - that they’re highlighting her race, not to empower or celebrate, but to pigeon hole and exoticise her

I think so. I think it’s that I’m so used to magazines trying to hide or erase WOC that I assume there must be some kind of disingenuous intent behind this.

I totally agree. I think that plays into it massively. There’s something very visceral about nonconsensual hair cutting. It’s a violation and traditionally used as a tactic to shame women. The fact that it is also an obvious marker of her race adds another layer of horribleness

But that is what’s giving me pause here. They haven’t taken fashions or style from POC and put it on a white woman here. It almost strikes me that they are playing up her ethnicity, which is particularly unsettling given (as you rightly point out) the usual track record these magazines have of erasing POC. It makes me…

Pretty shocked when I saw this (if not surprised). I was expecting them to have made her hair look smaller or smoother, but to have completely erased her hair strikes me as so much worse for a reason I’m struggling to put my finger on.

Hey Myers Briggs twin! This was such a revelation for me. I’d identified for years as an introvert, so realising I was actually an extrovert with social anxiety was a game changer. I haven’t fully shaken off the anxiety, but reminding myself that this isn’t an unchangeable part of my personality, and that parties are…

That actually happened right on London Bridge. They swerved onto the pavement, but it’s a major road. We how have huge metal barriers at the side of the road to prevent it in future. They’re not attractive, but they serve a good purpose

I was 16 when this song came out and even then, years before I had the language for why I hated it, it just sat completely wrong with me. It seemed so wrong to be swiping at girls for behaviours they’d picked up from toxic societal pressures. Like how about we call out unrealistic beauty standards instead of girls…

I would be very interested to hear Chloe Grace Moretz’ response to any push back on this. She has always been very vocal about her feminism (not always in a way that jibes with me personally) so this seems a pretty out of left field choice for her.

I have heard this before (although wouldn’t exactly recomnend it as a tactic!) I think it may actually have been on a Jez thread where someone told a story that she had been mugged at a cash point but had had such a bad day, she just wheeled around and yelled “are you fucking kidding me?!” and he ran off. Something to…