The film by the name, ‘A River Runs through It’ (Redford 1992) is based on an autobiographical novella by Norman Maclean, similarly titled ‘A River Runs through It and Other Storie’s (Maclean 2017; Kindle edition). He was the older brother in the Maclean family, living in Western Montana – one of the most beautiful states […]
beauty
Posted inGeneral, Media
‘In Bruges’: Film-making at its best
Martin McDonagh’s dark crime-comedy In Bruges (Universal Studios 2008) represents film-making at its best. Without excessive reliance on the special effects with which Hollywood is infatuated (and infected), and simply by employing the basics of cinema – successive images and sounds – it manages to draw its audiences into the unlikely world of professional assassins, […]
Posted inEnvironment, General
Does humanity have enough redeeming features to deserve to survive?
The short answer is a resounding ‘NO!’ The long answer takes a bit longer to formulate, but here goes. Humanity does have redeeming features, or virtues, if you like – of course it does. The human species is a very creative bunch. Humans created the Parthenon, the Taj Mahal, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, […]
Posted inEquality, Lifestyle
Beauty is neither noble nor obligatory
It is generally understood that beauty is to be desired, it is desirable because it is inherently good. When asked to describe beauty, it is difficult to do so in terms that are divorced from concrete experience. Philosophers have argued about it for millennia. Feminists have tried to reclaim beauty by rebranding it, in this […]
Posted inEquality, Lifestyle
African women, we’re not exotic, just hot
Last month I had the pleasure of attending an African Women’s Development Fund and Femrite creative non-fiction writing workshop for African women writers in Entebbe, Uganda. The women I met there were amazing for two main reasons. Their passion, intelligence and drive made me question mine (apparently watching Come Dine With Me is not a […]
Posted inGeneral, Lifestyle
Digging through hair and dysfunction
Since crèche started, bath time has been a nightmare. Every evening while I struggle through my daughter’s coarse hair with feeble attempts to get the sand and tiny stones out and off of her scalp I imagine what being a sandstone miner might be like. It was a long time coming, but after three days […]
Posted inLifestyle
Thoughts of an outsider at a beauty magazine event
I tagged along with a fellow newspaper journalist to a magazine event the other night. A women’s beauty magazine no less, but obviously the word smart is somewhere in the tag line, you know? Just to balance it all out. In all honesty, I can’t even remember what the title of the affair was. Fragrance […]
Posted inEquality, Gender violence, Lifestyle
Crossdressing and our ruling class (women)
Feminism has little or nothing to say about crossdressing. I would like to explore why. Crossdressing can only be a masculine activity. But women can wear any men’s clothing. Male garb often makes them more sexy or striking. Men, when they wear women’s clothing, often look silly. Surely even to feminists. Women generally want […]
Posted inLifestyle
Size matters in Africa
By Afua Hirsch You didn’t have to have tickets to Ghana fashion and design week (GFDW) to get a sense that something was afoot at Accra’s most showy venue, the Mövenpick hotel. In the lobby on the morning the event was meant to start (Ghana being Ghana, the 11am launch happened closer to 3pm), I […]
Posted inGeneral
The innovativeness of (some) art and its social implications
Lately one has read a lot about how Apple became the world’s most valuable company because of its CEO, Steve Jobs’s emphasis on innovative product development, rather than his own business leadership style. (According to those who knew him, including his biographer, he was an uncompromising bully.) It may come as a surprise to some, […]
Posted inGeneral
Rome, city of layered history
Walking through this city with its ancient, medieval, Renaissance, baroque and modern history all telescoped together, I reflected on Freud comparing it to the human psyche, what with all the layers of history, of time past, surrounding one wherever you turn. And if the remnants, ecclesiastic, artistic and architectural, which address one on virtually every […]