Dishing it out.

Last night on the ‘reality show’ Masterchef, a contestant decided to forfeit her place in the competition in order to go home to be with her family. The contestant, Sarah, was a thirty year old mother – the youngest of her children was only six months old. I’m not sure what the show’s taping schedule is like or what provisions they have for family visits, but it’s clear that signing up meant that Sarah could be away from her family, the bulk of the time, for up to three months.

Inevitably, her choice to participate in the competition and then to leave it has sparked a lot of commentary. Most seem to be in the ‘what the hell was she doing there in the first place?’ camp. And, sure, it is tempting to judge: at six months, Bean hadn’t been apart from me for more than a few hours and was still frequently breastfeeding. There was no way I would have agreed to leave her for such a considerable length of time.

But that, actually, is completely irrelevant. What I would do, or what any other individual mother would do, does not justify such judgement.

Sarah didn’t leave her baby out on the street or even permanently with qualified, paid strangers: the show featured several shots of him smiling, at home with his father. He was being cared for by a parent. That parent didn’t happen to be his mother but I’m afraid any arguments that he was therefore automatically missing out won’t get far with me. A baby needs constant loving care from a responsible adult. Just because in our culture that adult is usually a mother doesn’t mean in any way that it has to be.*

Going on a reality TV show might seem selfish to some: and hey, perhaps it is. Perhaps pursuing a ‘dream’ when you have young children to care for is self-serving — but if it is, where is the criticism of self-serving men who do this? Reality shows are full of them. Some of them even seem to keep following their dream right up to, during, and after the birth of their offspring, and this is generally seen as cute, brave — even romantic. An Idol song performance dedicated to a brand new babe the father has hardly even held garners many votes, I’d wager.

Sarah attempted to combine motherhood with pursuing a major career goal in an intensive way, and like many women before her, she decided that level of sacrifice wasn’t for her. According to the show, she’s expecting another child and wants to put her business plans on hold until her children are older: a familiar, and reasonable, story. So why the vicious criticism?

In going on television, she has left herself open to attack. We like to put reality show contestants down: that’s part of the purpose of such programmes. And Sarah has committed the dual sins of being emotional and being female. Compounding those is her recent pregnancy – some commentary on twitter went so far as to joke that she needed to get control of her reproductive system before she could work on her career. It was a joke, yes.

But I didn’t laugh.

I don’t find it particularly funny to be reminded that mothers, working outside the home or not, cannot win. Sarah has been ridiculed for crying about missing her children at the same time as being attacked for abandoning them. Her emotional responses at a time of high stress have been taken as evidence that she can’t do her paid work properly, by the same people who have put her down for her fertility.

In (mostly) opting out of the paid workforce, I have avoided having my committment to motherhood questioned. But I have also left myself open to attack from those who think that mothers have little to offer. My work is not seen as valuable: and when I do return to paid work, there will be some who automatically assume that that work is also devalued because of my addled mummy-brain and the likely need to take sick leave at short notice to care for a child.

The predictable and threadbare double-standards trotted out after last night’s Masterchef episode certainly prove one thing: even on TV, a woman can’t escape the reality of patriarchy.

—

* I do wonder, if Sarah was breastfeeding, whether the producers would have found a way to accommodate that: my hunch is not, which is simply another example of how combining motherhood with work is never easy.

Did the earth move for you?

If you haven’t heard, yesterday Facebook/Twitter and probably other corners of the interwebs – were awash with boobs.

Um, yeah. And how is that different from any other day, you ask?

All the fuss was about a protest against misogyny and superstition: more specifically, against statements recently made by an Iranian cleric suggesting that women who flaunt their bodies and are promiscuous cause earthquakes. Because, you know, we women and our flesh are RUINING THE WORLD. Clearly, Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi’s comments were offensive and also stupid. And the response – a day dedicated to showing off cleavage to prove that a whole lotta boobs won’t cause a natural disaster – was at best a fun way to show a little solidarity and at worst, a little bit misguided. (A good summary of various opinions can be found here at Feministe and in the comments.)

A couple of my Facebook friends and tweeps got in on the action and I say, good for them. Breasts are great, Boobquake participants clearly like their breasts and feel it is their right to wear low-cut tops, and I applaud them for celebrating that.

But I can’t help but wonder whether what we really need is another kind of protest altogether. Boobquake isn’t really revolutionary here. Barely-covered breasts are everywhere in advertising and the completely naked kind are similarly prevalent in the media. Excepting certain circumstances, I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing in itself – I would certainly not want to be aligned with the slut-shamers and extremists.

What is important to note about all of these ready representations of breasts, though, is that they are overwhelmingly sexualised. In our culture, displaying your cleavage is generally acceptable and it is almost always seen as sexy, flirtatious, ‘flaunting it’. (Unless you don’t meet the age, size or other criteria for acceptability, but that is another discussion altogether.) What is not so generously embraced in our culture is revealing a breast for the purpose of feeding a child.

Get your boobs out to nourish your offspring, and suddenly, they’re not so palatable. Even those who explicitly support breastfeeding will commonly say things like ‘but you should be discreet’, or ‘it’s easy to cover up’. The plethora of breastfeeding shawls and modesty wraps now on the market is testament to the fact that breastfeeding in public is still a fraught activity for many. The irony of the promotion of Boobquake on Facebook is that were women to participate by showing a breast with an infant or child attached, they may find themselves accused of contravening Facebook’s obscenity rules.

Solidarity with those who experience appalling oppression in places like Iran is a noble aim. Showing that an unabashed celebration of the female form can be fun and empowering (and not world-destroying) is great, as superstitions about female bodies and sexuality are the source of much misogyny. But mocking the easy targets – religious extremists – does little to effect change. And celebrating the sexualisation of breasts can only take us so far – in fact, in this culture it can’t take us any further because we’re already there.

The kind of quake I want to experience is that which would be caused by the visibility and acceptability of all women’s bodies in all their guises: fat or not; disabled or currently not disabled; cis or trans; of any age and any colour; with large or small breasts or mastectomy scars or implants; running or belly-dancing or working or voting, and yes, also breastfeeding. Because for women’s bodies to always be our own to use and inhabit and enjoy, to make our own decisions about and to take pride in for what they can do and not only how they look — well, that’d be a real seismic shift.

Boobquake, milky style.

If you’re part of the problem you’re not part of the solution

You know something I don’t do anymore? I don’t pick on other women for their appearance, even their fashion sense (or non-sense), even to myself. This wasn’t a huge discipline to commit to, for me who-has-never-cared-much-about-looks, but it does still require some effort. Our culture insists on elevating appearance to the highest value at the same time as objectifying women and demonising fat (and otherwise transgressive) bodies. So, body hate, fat phobia, fashion policing and its close cousin slut shaming are all part of the day to day vernacular for most people.

And this really, really, is not okay.

A friend said to me recently that she felt one couldn’t currently be a serious fashionista and a serious feminist at the same time because the fashion industry is blatantly harmful to women.

Upon reflection, I agree. Sure, love and enjoy fashion (and fatshion!) design, aesthetics and pretty things! But don’t go believing that following and policing fashion rules (which include restrictions on body size, body hair, and gender presentation and come from sources who frequently erase, ignore, lampoon or fetishise people with disabilities, non-white people, homeless people and more) does anyone any favours. And that’s without even thinking about fashion as an industry: one which thrives on the exploitation of sweatshop workers, animals, and also models – for whom disordered eating is frequently a job requirement.

Now honestly, my issue isn’t with the casual enjoyment of fashion which is, after all, a real and influential thing in this world. I like to flick through the  magazines too, and I’m starting to think that paying more attention to fatshion might be fun. My issue is with articles like this one of many bazillions published daily, which use fashion as a cover for fat-hatred, slut-shaming and the policing of (usually women’s) bodies.

Daile Pepper of the WA Today calls jeggings “a crime against jeans. And leggings. And women.” Which is funny really, because whilst jeggings might be silly and they might even be seriously ugly, they’re no crime against women. They’re a clothing item. What is a crime against women? Writing a few hundred words of vitriol against women’s bodies and calling it a fashion piece. Apparently, there are “many women out there wearing leggings as pants who really, REALLY shouldn’t.” Shouldn’t, according to Pepper and the rest of the fashion police, because their bodies are not good enough. Too fat, in fact. Silly fat women, thinking that they have any kind of right to a fashion trend, not to mention the right to go out in public without being ridiculed for their appearance! Now, I’m only picking on this one article because it’s conveniently to hand. You know I wouldn’t have to look far to find another one.

Thankfully, I only have to look as far as definatalie.com to find a counter argument. Natalie urges against the recent trend of policing what counts as pants (since people like Lady GaGa and the advent of jeggings keep making us reconsider this question) because of its close links to fat hatred and slut-shaming. This need to control what is acceptable in fashion belies a deep-seated desire to control bodies and to viciously criticise those who don’t submit to being controlled.

And yet, some high-ranking officers  in the Fashion Police call themselves champions of positive body image. Take Mia Freedman, for example, whose extremely popular blog Mama Mia frequently features pieces on body image. Freedman gets quite cross at photo-shopping in magazines and advertising, and as a former magazine editor she has an insight into an industry which thrives on the objectification of bodies and the promotion of unattainable ideals. To her credit, she’s spoken out against this publicly and loudly. But what value do her words have, when her site also carries regular features like ‘Best/Worst Dressed‘, where commenters are encouraged to heap shame on celebrities for their fashion choices? Has she really moved on from the days of working for the type of magazines that would run a  ‘self esteem’ piece right next to a piece on cellulite creams?

Picking on the clothes instead of the bodies wearing them is not much more helpful to women. It’s still privileging appearance over action, it’s still implying that worth is in looks and that there is a right way to look. It’s still marginalising those whose bodies almost never make it onto red carpets. It’s definitely not feminist.

If we’re to really help stem the tide of low self-esteem and body hate which is fuelling the growth of eating disorders, depression and self-harm amongst the young people in our community, we need to change tack. Spreading the ‘positive body image’ message in the way that Mia Freedman, Jennifer Hawkins and now sports minister Kate Ellis have attempted to do is is worse than lip-service. We don’t need yet more noise about standards of beauty: we actually need to change the conversation.

There is nothing radical about telling girls and women to buy ‘flattering’ clothes and make-up to help them present their best side to the world no matter what their body type (implication being that the world is doing us a favour by accepting certain types of bodies). Obsessing over fashion teaches us that even though a variety of types of bodies may be okay, there’s a right and wrong way to adorn those bodies. And all this does is keep the talk conveniently adherent to a different kind of conformity: conformity to the notions that girls and women are simply ornamental, that their sexuality should be expressed only in certain ways, that their bodies can and should be controlled, that their beauty is a commodity.

I reject those notions, and I reject body-shaming dressed up as liberation.

Facebook, bastion of misogyny

Facebook likes to claim that it exists to

Give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.

In many ways it does this: I’m a regular user. I like sharing pictures of my kid with faraway friends, for one thing. But there are many ways in which Facebook does not make me feel open, or connected. And as for sharing? Well, I’d better not share a photo of me breastfeeding Bean because that would be obscene!

The furore over Facebook’s removal of breastfeeding photos such as these may have abated slightly but there has been no satisfactory resolution. Members of Facebook groups promoting the right to breastfeed publicly and the acceptance of breastfeeding as physiologically normal are still periodically either banned or threatened with banning. Images of breastfeeding posted either on individual’s profiles or group sites are subject to removal.

When I posted about the Facebook breastfeeding ban here and here, the hypocrisy of Facebook’s founders concerned me: here was a site which happily rakes in revenue from targeted ads (dating services seem to be a favourite) which very frequently include sexualised images of women. Logging into my page on any given day, I know I’m likely to be bombarded with a nice bit of boobage spilling out of a tight dress inticing me to click, click, click. Moreover, like Myspace, Facebook hosts many images uploaded by users of themselves or others in sexualised poses. Where these images don’t contain the requisite amount of nudity to be called ‘obscene’ by Facebook, they are left alone.

Now I’m not saying that all pouty-face shots must first pass the censors! But clearly there is a disconnect here: rational adults know that an image can be highly sexualised without including outright nudity and we also should know that breastfeeding is not sexual, even though it very often includes some form of nudity.

April at Eclectic Effervescence wrote this Open Letter to Facebook about the breastfeeding ban

Last week, I posted a picture of myself breastfeeding my newborn twins using my Facebook account. I posted this picture to a pro-breastfeeding fan page, to help encourage other mothers. My picture was one of thousands uploaded to the page. What a beautiful site. All of these experienced breastfeeding women, supporting each other. Helping to say, “breastfeeding is normal!” “Breastfeeding is beautiful!” It really is an amazing page.

But you took that picture down.

And this follow-up piece, complete with images that Facebook apparently don’t think are inappropriately sexual, is well worth your time.

Lately, my ire has increased. It’s not just in the advertising or the typical user-uploaded images that fundamental hypocrisy is laid bare. Facebook is home to innumerable ‘groups’ and ’cause’ pages which violate every element of basic decency, taste, and fairness. In short: they are obscene.

For Exhibit A, I present:

The recent Facebook page set up by male university students attending St Paul’s College in Sydney and dedicated to the benefits of raping women and vitiating both the moral and legal concept of ‘consent’ is an example, albeit extreme, of maintained attitudes regarding women, sex and sexual violence.

This piece by Caroline Taylor on last year’s controversy over a page set up to promote rape rightly suggests that the culture in which a page like this was allowed to flourish for months unchallenged – that is, the culture of Facebook and also of Australia – is not respectful of girls and women. It is a rape culture.

It’s also a violent culture. Facebook provided the perfect outlet for those bored with playing Grand Theft Auto: Killing Your Hooker So You Don’t Have To Pay Her.

More recently, Melinda Tankard Reist has written about a group dedicated to slut-shaming.The site has since been removed, but only after numerous reports were made about its title, content, images and commentary – including around twenty from me on separate counts of extreme hate speech. Some of the images were of girls as young as ten.  One of them was a woman with a battered face: comments included ‘her husband had to tell her twice LOL’ and other statements that do not bear repeating. Melinda Tankard Reist writes:

Some images are clearly posted for revenge. Often full names are used. What means do these women and girls have to defend themselves? How do they deal with it? What does it mean for them in their daily lives at school or work or at home or anywhere, to be identified to the whole world as a slut?

By allowing this site, Facebook is a conduit for bullying, harassment and abuse.

After a campaign of reporting, the group was removed: but not hastily. And at what cost to the girls and women shamed, was that delay? Anecdotally, I’ve heard a breastfeeding photo can last less than a few hours on Facebook if it is prominently posted. The apologists who keep telling me that Facebook can’t possibly moderate its content any faster may need to try again with a better argument. As Danielle Miller writes, this type of cyber bullying can be devastating for those directly targeted, but it can also be triggering and disturbing for the rest of us. These shrines to hate speech and denigration only serve as constant reminders that women (or any other targeted group) are less than. And open to vicious attack.

Arguments that Facebook’s user-generated content is simply reflective of the broader community and should therefore be left alone don’t sit well with me. Facebook and other social media is not real life: it can feel consequence-free, and it can channel outpourings of goodwill — or hate — in ways which seem to gather their own momentum. It is also becoming an ‘essential’ part of the lives of most teenagers and adults – even young children — so its reach is huge. It markets itself as safe — certainly, the reputation it has with parents seems to be more favourable than that of MySpace, and the rhetoric used to justify the banning of breastfeeding photos suggests that the company cares about young users and ‘keeping things clean’. And yet, because they rely on user moderation and clearly don’t pay enough staff to deal promptly with user reports, they can unwittingly host extremely offensive and also illegal content.

Australian online newspaper The Punch took them to task over this, prompted by the hijacking of two pages dedicated to memorialising young children:

Tribute pages to two children who died in tragic circumstances this month – Elliott Fletcher and 8-year-old Trinity Bates – were used to post obscene messages and pornographic content. The incident has sparked a heated debate over the extent to which Facebook monitors the content people distribute on the network.

Apparently the depravity of some people knows no bounds, and far be it from the moderators to stifle their ‘fun’ too swiftly.

After reading about this, I had a little look around some group pages set up to raise awareness and/or funds to fight the proliferation of images of child sexual abuse. I won’t link to what I found. But suffice to say there are two kinds of people who frequent those pages who are most certainly not welcome: those who think that it’s entertaining to make jokes about raping children in order to get a rise out of people, and those who post links (or hints of where to find links) to objectionable material. I even stumbled across some Facebook profiles of people using aliases which double as euphemisms for paedophilia, one of whom listed as his employer ‘child porn’. And included a link to a website in Asia. The only place I clicked was the Report button but I still felt like I needed a shower afterwards.

So is the answer just to log off? (Unfair to lose this platform to share photos and updates with friends!)  Shout loudly until somebody starts to listen and content is more sensitively moderated and reports more acted upon more quickly? (Perhaps – although this is difficult, demoralising work to do without significant support.) Set up counter groups about diversity and respect, consent and empowerment and then police them vigilantly for trolls? (This is already being done – are enough people paying attention?) Accept that douchebaggery is inevitable? (Isn’t that depressing and defeatist?) Just look at some pictures of kittens and think happy thoughts? (Maybe.)

What’s your best answer? Because I honestly don’t know mine.

Also guest-posted at www.melindatankardreist.com.au

I write letters

In the spirit of speaking up properly instead of just grumbling to anyone who’ll listen, I’ve written this letter. What do you think?

***

Dear Fernwood Women’s Health Clubs,

I have been a Fernwood member for the better part of seven years. I was first at member at your [former suburb] gym from 2003-5. I joined the [local suburb] gym in 2006 and have not allowed my membership to lapse since. Particularly at the [local suburb] gym, I have found the staff to be exemplary. They are competent and friendly, and the trainers and instructors I have worked with have been motivating and helpful. I also appreciate the atmosphere at Fernwood: I choose a women-only gym because I like to feel free and relaxed. I like how at your gym women are able to laugh out loud. I like the way that women of all shapes of sizes attend, and that there is no undue pressure to look a particular way or wear particular clothing.

Over the years I have given a lot of positive reviews of your company to friends and colleagues. Unfortunately, I no longer feel as positively towards your company.

At my local Fernwood, there used to be large banners decorating the walls with beautiful women of diverse ages doing active things with smiles on their faces. I found these to be inspiring and welcoming images because they were about promoting health and wellbeing. I used to find that most of your advertising was about encouraging women to have vitality, or time out for themselves. These are important goals and those types of ads sent a positive message. Even the ‘Bootcamp’ and similar campaigns were about pushing oneself to achieve, and about working as a team.

Your latest campaign, ‘Get Foxy’, has changed all this. Gone are the inspiring banners and instead we have slogans about weight, beauty, and appearing ‘hot’ to please men. I don’t appreciate being told that weight training is a ‘facelift for my body’! I am not at the gym to look a certain way – I am there because I like to feel strong and fit. To be reminded of botox and the beauty industry instead of the joy of movement is something I just find disheartening. Similarly, I don’t like using the treadmill while it’s displaying the slogan ‘Run, Fox, Run!’ because I find it demeaning. I’m actually attending the gym less often because I don’t feel as comfortable there anymore.

Another element to your campaign has more than disappointed me. It has disgusted me. The ‘Get Foxy’ slogans on female staff and members’ t-shirts are annoying and infantilising but what’s worse is the slogan I saw on a male manager’s t-shirt at my gym – ‘Fox Hunter.’ Hunters chase down foxes in packs, and then they kill them. It is impossible to separate out the image of ruthless hunting from this slogan. Seeing the manager wear that shirt made me feel quite sick: it is triggering for victims of sexual assault. It is implying that women are ‘bait’ and men are meant to chase them and use violent force. It buys into the idea that a man treating a woman like prey is flattering, and that as women we should desire to be treated that way.

Is this the message you really want to be sending to the young girls and women who go to your gym? That their job is to be ‘foxy’ so that men will desire them and chase them?

Billboard slogans such as ‘Be a Fox Without Botox’ may at first appear to be clever and empowering because they argue against cosmetic surgery, but really they are placing your company on the same footing as the cosmetic surgery industry. You are now in the business of making women feel that the only thing that matters is their appearance.

I believe in exercise for the sake of health and vitality. I believe that for those who enjoy gym classes or weights, joining a women-only gym is a great way to find a safe and friendly place to exercise. But I no longer feel as though my gym is a place that particularly welcomes me: a fat woman who is interested in being healthy but not necessarily in losing weight or fitting into a swimsuit in order to please others.

I am very much hoping that this is just an aberration, and that soon your company will pay more than lip-service to empowering women and promoting health at every size – or at least be inclusive of members who do.

Yours faithfully,

[Spilt Milk]

Not such a happy customer

Okay, so my gym isn’t perfect.

Right now they’re running a ‘get fit and foxy’ promotion. They’re selling shirts with slogans like seriously foxy and runs like a fox and for kids, my mum’s a fox. The staff are doing their marketing bit by wearing these hot pink shirts. It’s a bit naff, but I can deal.

That is, until I saw the (male) manager today. His shirt? Green, with the slogan fox hunter.

Ugh. Just… ugh.

Butter + respect = what’s not to love?

A friend and I stole a few kid-free hours today and went to see Julie and Julia. I enjoyed it for the butter-worship and the humour and Meryl Streep. It made me hungry and giggly and not even a teensy bit angry. Result!

On reflection, I think I liked this film so much because it let me relax (not just because I was sans Bean, although that helps). It was because it didn’t demand of me that I put aside kneejerk principled reaction in order to enjoy the experience. There was nothing for this humourless feminist to get shirty about.

For once, it was a mainstream film for women and about women where the bulk of the dialogue had nothing to do with men, romance or weddings. Both Julie and Julia were characters who did things and were interested in more than their apparent desirablity to others. Sure they both spend most of their time in the kitchen – but they want to be there. Nice.

But I think, more than this, what I liked about the film was the abscence of misogyny. Sounds kind of silly to say it so plainly but the fact is that even in the chick flick genre, overt misogyny is rife right now. An obvious example would be the execrable The Ugly Truth, where the leading man is meant to be appealing because he’s not quite as bad as a guy who laughs at his own rape jokes on live television. Perhaps that film is an extreme example – but even when the lead actor plays a basically nice guy, he usually has at least one douchebag friend with a porn addiction or a tendency to ask inappropriate questions about the female lead’s anatomy. In other words, they find some way to insert a good dose of objectification into the script. For laughs. Because that stuff is so funny.

Somehow, Nora Ephron and her Julie and Julia team have managed to make a chick flick without any arseholes. The male leads in Julie and Julia are genuinely nice guys who love and support their wives, enjoy having consensual and mutually pleasurable sex with them, show affection and concern when appropriate, and delight in their partners’ successes.

Feminists are so often accused of being man-haters but the simple truth is that many of us adore men. Certain men. And the irony is that it is misogyny and bigotry which paints men in a bad light: The Ugly Truth (and countless films and TV shows just like it) suggests that all men are nothing but two-dimensional neanderthals incapable of real connection and love because of the incapacitating effect of their sex-driven decision making.  They put forward a view of masculinity that is not only limited to hetero-and-macho, but is also deeply flawed and frankly, unlikable.

On the other hand, as a feminist, I expect more from men than the cookie-cutter mold of sexist gender stereotyping generally allows. I know that men can be caring. Intelligent. Diverse. Multi-dimensional. Capable of restraint and also passion.

And respectful.

It took me a while to realise that one of the things I liked most about Julie and Julia was actually the husbands (particularly Stanley Tucci’s beguiling portrayal of Paul Child). My friend and I certainly didn’t chat much about them in our post-film debrief. But perhaps, after all, that was as it should be. To us there was nothing remarkable about those characters -  we were going home to men who love and value us and treat us with respect.

I wish it were the same for all straight, partnered women.

And I wish it weren’t such a novelty to go to the cinema to watch a bit of froth without coming out frothing at the mouth.

Bumper Bogans

You know those lessons you had at the start of the school term, when your teacher had clearly not taken enough time out from succumbing to drink and sloth to prepare a proper lesson and instead gave you a bunch of topics to write ‘getting to know you’ essays about? No? Well… I guess you never had me as a teacher.

Anyway, I was thinking today about that great hypothetical ‘if I were Queen of the World for a day, I would…’ It’s actually quite fun to do with a class, once you get past the inevitable smart-arse who pipes up with ‘be married to Leonardo diCaprio in Titanic, Miss!’ It’s also quite fun to do in your own head when you’re trying to drown out the sounds of almost-dinner-time misery from the backseat when you’re stuck in traffic.

Which is why, today, I decided that I am just going to have to land that Queen of the World job in order to enact the very first and most important law I thought of today.

I’m going to ban bogan bumper stickers.

Not only are they misogynistic, aesthetically unlovely and grammatically suspect but they’re downright embarrassing. Imagine what tourists must think of utes with emblazoned with SHOOT FERALS or worse: OZTRAYA – LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT!

If I hadn’t actually seen so many IF SHE’S A ROCKIN’ DON’T COME A KNOCKIN’ or SHAGGIN’ WAGON stickers it might be possible to see the humour in them. And what’s with the I FISH AND I VOTE or the I SHOOT AND I VOTE? Australia has compulsory voting people! You might as well write I’M INTO KILLING THINGS AND I’M REALLY STUPID on your petrol guzzling 4WD. Other beautiful contributions to the genre spotted by me recently include KEEP AUSTRALIA BEAUTIFUL: SHOOT A TREE-HUGGER, DON’T LAUGH YOUR DAUGHTER IS IN HERE, and SAVE THE WHALES: SHAG A FAT CHICK.

Which brings me to my personal favourite (and apparently a favourite of about a thousand guys who share my postcode)

 

 See one of those and you just know that driver is Clooney-handsome. Oh yeah.

These bumper stickers really are a scourge and I swear they are multiplying. Wearing chauvinism and xenophobia like a badge of honour is depressingly popular and I hate it. And I don’t want my daughter to see it. I know I’m not the only one.

So you see, it really is important that I take on this Queen of the World spot in order to save us all from stress-induced driver’s apoplexy (which, let’s face it, can’t be good for road safety.) So go on, vote for me. I won’t even mind if you shoot and fish while you’re doing it.