Come on Ireland!!

The Irish Women Under 17's soccer team is through to the UEFA Championship final after beating Germany 1-0.

It's some achievement and I'll definitely be tuning into Eurosport this Saturday , 26th June. at 12.30pm to support the girls in green!


http://www.fai.ie/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=101057&catid=11&Itemid=20

Sending Sexism to the Sin Bin.

So Hunky Dorys came out with a new advertising campaign last week which seriously pissed me off,and has put Hunky Dorys on my 'never to buy again' list.

As previous posts will indicate I am very passionate about the rampantsexism that exists in Ireland when it comes to women and sports,something I think that was exemplified by the Hunky Dorys ad camapign.
Women are valued more in our society as sex objects than athletes,something which Is so frustrating to the thousands of female rugby players in Ireland who get little to no funding,acknowledgment or respect for their sport and have to deal with constant offensive remarks about their sexuality and gender.

As usual the media debate centred around the concept that 'sex sell's' and so the people at Hunky Dorys are being rather clever actually......... What a load of Bullsh*t! This is NOT SEX,but women bodies being USED as sex objects. Advertising exec's must be having REALLY bad sex If they can compare the full sexual sensory experience to a two dimensional picture of some women holding a rugby ball.

I'm not a massive fan of making formal compaints to goverment bodies,as advertising companies feed off this sort of exposure. How sick must an industry be to push the boundaries to try and be offensive to as many people as the can to maximise their exposure to sell their shitty crisps?



I decided therefore to take matters into my own hands and, with the help of my feminist friend John, we tried to highlight the sexist nature of the ad's in city centre locations.

Two little gems

I first came across this tune on 'The Wonder Boys' soundtrack, which aside from 'The Blues Brothers' , is one of my favourite all time film soundtracks.

Theres just something about it that sends shivers down my spine. It's the perfect song to have a real slow,sensual dance with someone you want to be really,really close too.



The Second video I'm going to put up, especially for St.Patricks day, is one of my favourite Irish tunes of all time.
It has special resonance for me as I grew up watching first hand the massive effect emigration had on so many Irish men and women. The lyrics

And I'll never go home now beacuse of the shame, a misfits reflection in a shopwindow pane

make me remember all the lonely Irish men trying to find life at the bottom of a bottle that I saw while growing up in Cricklewood.

Ageing Beauty

I think this is one of the most beautiful prose written on ageing women. It really does make me look forward to my older face!

“You could see the signs of female ageing as diseased… Or you could see that if a woman is healthy she lives to grow old; as she thrives, she reacts and speaks and shows emotion, and grows into her face. Lines trace her thought and radiate from the corners of her eyes after decades of laughter, closing together like fans as she smiles. You could call the lines a network of ‘serious lesions,’ or you could see that in a precise calligraphy, thought has etched marks of concentration between her brows, and drawn across her forehead the horizontal creases of surprise, delight, compassion and good talk. A lifetime of kissing, of speaking and weeping, shows expressively around a mouth scored like a leaf in motion. The skin loosens on her face and throat, giving her features a setting of sensual dignity; her features grow stronger as she does. She has looked around in her life, and it shows. When grey and white reflect in her hair, you could call it a dirty secret or you could call it silver or moonlight. Her body fills into itself, taking on gravity like a bather breasting water, growing generous with the rest of her. The darkening under her eyes, the weight of her lids, their minute cross-hatching, reveal that what she has been part of has left in her its complexity and richness. She is darker, stronger, looser, tougher, sexier. The maturing of a woman who has continued to grow is a beautiful thing to behold. Or, if your ad revenue… depend[s] on it, it is an operable condition.”

Naomi Wolf - The Beauty Myth

Isn't armpit hair natural?

Theres been an advert running for the last few weeks both on TV screens and on billboards thats been really irking me.
Its for 'Sure NaturalMinerals' deodorant. The advertising camapign focuses heavily on just how natural the product is, with a model jumping over streams,rivers and waving her armpits around in the middle of fields trying to appear all back to nature and etheral.

Anyway, the whole camapign has struck me at just how UNNATURAL the model looked. Her armpits and legs are tanned and waxed to within an inch of their life? When did we start equating women waxed limbs as 'natural'?

If Sure really want to promote a 'natural' deodrant then maybe the should show a natural women as well, armpit hair and all!

Drop the Dumb Teddy

You can just imagine Western reporters doing this in Haiti as we speak......

What's a GAA to do?

Nothing beats a good GAA match.
The weeks before the match when the whole town is abuzz with excitment , colours, pagenatry, excitement and endless pre analysis before the big game. The trip down to Pairc ui Chaoimh or up to Croker with horns a beeping and flags a waving. The rush and adrenaline pumping as you walk passed Barrys and down past Jurys waving and stopping to meet neighbours,old adversaries and new friends. Eating squashed sanwhiches and lukewarm flasked tea out of the boot of a car, Laughing as the stewards mess up Plan A again;
Ok Il stop before this turns into a poormans Billy Keane monolouge but you get the idea. Whatever gender,race,creed or age nothing beats a GAA match day.

I think when it comes to women and their involvement in sport the GAA is an exemplary sporting organisation. There is just as many ladies on the terraces and in the stands all whom can tell their Gooch's from there Gouldings. Unlike football and rugby, female GAA fans are treated with a bit of respect. Its one of the things I like most about the sport.
And then last Friday this happened and made it into every major newspaper in the land......






As a GAA women I was more than slightly peeved of at this. It was incredibly patronising getting hired models to pose beside the Waterford players when there are thousands of accomplished Camogie and ladies football players:Yet they will never ever get a chance to appear in the Sports pages as they dont fit the Western mould of what is 'attractive'. Its a kick in the teeth to all female athletes, who despite their talent and dedication recieve little recognition from the media. It seems the only way Women's pictures can make it into the sports pages is If they are a WAG, a 'hot' spectator, or an attractive tennis player.

I decided to air my grievances in my usual way over on http://www.boards.ie/ (great for a general rant or laugh!) As usual when anyone raises a bit of critisism over the use of women's bodies in the media I got hit with a barage of well, 'sex sells'.

There seems to me two things wrong with this line of argument:

Firstly, that is not sex sellling but women bodies being used as sexual objects.

Secondly,Is that really what represents 'sex' in 21st centurey Ireland? Sex is probably the most interesting thing we humans have...and this is what we have reduced it to? Blonde hair extensions, full makeup, fake tan ,with no discernible talent except to pose? Sex with all its intricities,intimicys eroticisms, taste,touch, sensations, feelings, emotions,varied and multiple turn on's; yet those two blonde girls embody 'sex', Since many people appear to believe they are selling it?

Open any newspaper and you’ll find scant coverage of any women’s sport. The usual arguments which surface to defend this situation include: women aren’t interested in sport, only men read the sports pages, women’s sport is of a lower standard, women’s sport is boring, and so on. But these are all circular arguments. The sports pages are designed for a male audience and alienate women in various ways. Targeting an entire section of the newspaper at men while excluding women, and then claiming women aren’t interested, is illogical. And if sports coverage was more balanced between men and women, greater funding and resources would be invested in women’s sports and the standard would be raised.



So I decided to do a little experiment as I feel the blatant sexism in sport reporting has to be addressed now for future generations.
I have been buying the Irish Times, The Irish Independent and The Sun from Friday last (15th Jan) to this this Friday ( 22nd Feb) to try and get a picture of the medias reporting when it comes to womens sport. I will report back in due course but at the mo It aint lookin good for womankind..........