Dear Money, We need to talk. I’ve been meaning to write this letter to you for a while, but I got side-tracked and spent a whole lot of time doing other stuff, and then I was busy starting a new agency and so it didn’t happen. But it turns out that open letters are the […]
Lifestyle
Posted inLifestyle
Kim Kardashian shoots a bolt, names a kid
What can one say about Kim Kardashian that hasn’t already been said about piles? I mean if regard is had to the endless self-created spin, which appears to fascinate the media and irritate the punters, then perhaps irritable bowel syndrome might have made for the better comparison. Enter the baby. Granted Kanye West and Kim […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Lifestyle
Frogs and queens: Crossdressing, spirituality and Feminism (II)
“The moral failing most common to men is brutishness.” So says “Jill” the wife of a crossdresser. “Jill” writes this in the context of having learned – with limitations – to accept her husband’s crossdressing behaviour as outlined in an appendix to Bert & Lori: The autobiography of a crossdresser, written by Robert J Rowe […]
Posted inBusiness, Equality, Health, Lifestyle
Why we choose materialism – part 2
Because, it is far easier to want a nicer, more expensive outfit than it is to ask ourselves why we can never conceive that we are enough as we are. It is easier to want a better, higher paying job than to ask ourselves what happened to the idealism that had once dominated our youth […]
Posted inEquality, Lifestyle
The hair debate must end
While watching Gillian Schutte’s documentary “It’s my hair … I bought it”, I thought the hair debate must come to an end. It’s banal and redundant. Talking about black women’s hair needs to stop being a question of national importance. Our hair is not all of who we are. Why have I never seen a […]
Posted inEquality, General, Lifestyle
Frogs and queens: Crossdressing and déjà vu (I)
Most of us have split up with a member of the opposite sex. I love the unintended pun: splitting genes, separating the masculine from the feminine. My favourite was Frances. She betrayed me while we were still “an item” for a friend, Angus, who turned out to be a cross-dresser. To everyone’s surprise. Imagine being […]
Posted inBusiness, General, Lifestyle
Why we choose materialism – part 1
Some of us choose materialism. The decision to put all our hopes and dreams into a basket weaved out of the material of economic consumerism is one we make almost every day. We do so because it is more simple to write down a list of objects we want to own than it is to […]
Posted inLifestyle
South Africa’s ripe for Living Newspaper
Life imitating art taught me form does not always have to trump function. Running the Leader of the Opposition’s office in Parliament until shortly before the 2009 elections, an invitation from a Jewish community forum in Seapoint known as The Living Newspaper was one of the last engagements for which I had to see preparations […]
Posted inLifestyle
On art and honesty
“It doesn’t always have to mean something”, a friend barked back. We were watching The Favour, the Watch and the Very Big Fish. The circle was all a bit older, degreed drama folk. I, waitering by my gap year in an industrial backwater, just couldn’t get screwball comedy. But it was not to last long. […]
Posted inLifestyle
Our sexuality and the demise of the business tie
My mother was the first culprit, bending down to smooth out my collar and adjust my school tie. The electricity of that touch is what stays. Future women sent glitters down my spine, the pretty Mrs. Martens being foremost in school memory. Blond, full of English literature, Barbie doll clothes equally filled with secrets, she […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle
On asking the right questions
Recently the BBC published an article by Hugh Schofield entitled “Why does France insist school pupils master philosophy?” His answer, seen through paternal eyes, is that it has opened a “world of knowledge” to his daughter. Reading the article in/from South Africa one could ask, as is the liberal trend, whose knowledge is being reproduced, […]
Posted inEquality, Lifestyle, News/Politics
Inequality in the land of plenty
I see her every Saturday or any other day that I visit home in the townships. I know more than just her name as they have been our neighbours for more than 40 years that we have stayed in the townships. Honey, as she is popular known, has told me countless times that I am […]