Ban The Burqua? Part 1

Friendly faces

After laughing my way through a new documentary “Dumb, Drunk andRacist” on what Indians really think about Australians (a topic for another day), I had to think.

Who really cares about the burqua, besides that slightly confused middle aged gentleman driving his “Ban The Burqua” van?

In just one week I have seen several hours of Australian TV dedicated to the issue of the burqua, including Channel 7’s “Sunday Night” current affairs program. I don’t know how they found these women. Muslims make up four per cent of Australians, and anyone wearing the burqua is far less than half of all women - in other words, well under one per cent of Australians.

I personally do not give a toss if someone wants to wear nothing at all, or a tablecloth on their head. Certain times in your life you feel vulnerable. When I was a teenager I was covered in acne scars so I wore a tea towel over my head. Or before major facial recontruction surgery, you might want to cover up.

Who cares, does the face really matter so much? The answer no, not if you don’t want to show it.

The burqua is not a security issue. If you need to show your face like everyone else to police or border control, show your face. This means removing your glasses, hoodie, helmet, scarves or balaclavas. If you don’t want to, don’t leave your house.

The only instance I could see myself caring about a burqua would be if I sent my child to school and her teacher wore a full face cover - I would wonder at my daughter’s language development given that forward facing prams and the poor Mr McLaren are being blamed for a plunge in language skills internationally! 

I do think kids of women who cover their face would suffer language impediments, although to be fair they see their mum at home uncovered so they must actually think, what is wrong with my mum's face that she covers it in public? I wonder really what their kids think. They probably don’t give it a passing thought, as long as dinner's on the table, the Nintendo console is loaded up and someone’s tucking them into bed.

There are clearly workplace policies and certain occupations that require a definite clear stance on the burqua. This is what the law defines as a “genuine occupational requirement”. I would suggest burquas are impractical for occupations where the face needs to be seen and where a huge cloth and lack of peripheral vision might cause a safety issues, such as teachers and some medical positions and trades.

To Be continued...

Ban the Burqua Part II: You Are Not The Poster Girl for Liberation

How liberated - not!

To be honest, I am yet to meet a burqua-wearing Australian, let alone a burqua-wearing Australian who actually works. All the Muslim women on TV are busy raising five children and really only wear their cloth when in public, to go to Woollies or a prenatal check-up.

What does irritate me is the way Muslim women try to portray wearing the burqua as liberating. While I can totally understand this, and agree not being a slave to fashion or other people’s perceptions could be a fresh way to live your life, I cannot stomach their trying to position the burqua in PR terms somewhere between drinking Coke and skimpy underwear, or as something a young modern woman is happy to partake in. 

If you want to walk around partially or fully covered, go ahead, but you are not a poster girl for female liberation. Tampons, education and the internet have given women a hell of a lot more freedom than a huge unwieldy sheet worn over the head. Showing just your eyes. No face equals no identity in Australia. 
I don’t care if you drive and wear a burqua. You are not free.

I don’t even care about why you wear a burqua. Don’t espouse the virtues of the burqua. Your religious dedication is shown by your actions, your community service, volunteer and charitable works, and by how you care for others, not by your choice of dress. Every time our neighbour and the largest Muslim state in the world Indonesia suffers an earthquake, I do not see a whole lot of Muslim aid pouring in. The Red Cross is far more involved than the Red Crescent. So maybe Muslims should try to focus on charity work rather than obsessing over what they wear.

By wearing a burqua you are also by default suggesting men are attracted to you. They are not. If you take your burqua off and walk around Lakemba Woollies in your tracksuit with your muffin top and five kids I promise you, not one man will look lasciviously at you. You’ve had five kids. I’m sorry, you may be a good mother, but you are not sexy.

Last time I walked around with just a scarf on my head, which I do in winter or when visiting Muslim regions, I didn’t suddenly feel liberated. Just a bit itchy. And last time I waled around uncovered in Morocco, Indonesia and Lakemba I did not cop one single sultry glance which was rather disappointing as I fancied my long blonde hair and bare skin may prove irresistible. But sadly, no. 

Many of the burqua wearing Australians grew up uncovered, with uncovered mothers, and suddenly they decide after S11 that they simply had to rush to the nearest burqua shop and buy a head to toe covering? I mean, really? It reeks of insincerity. And while Australians may be many bad things, one thing we really hate is insincerity and pretention.

Why not just move to the religious lands where you can be surrounded by Islam, the Koran on stereo sound and true believers 24-7? If I was devout, I would not want to be in Australia where any turn of the head will bring a yelling bogan or topless sheila.

Ladies, just chill out, take up camping and chuck the makeup and heels. And the burqua! Take advantage of being free and Australian. I went on a camping trip with some friends born in Syria and Lebanon who congratulated themselves on getting their hands dirty and doing things for themselves because it is not part of what they are taught culturally.

So by all means, go ahead and enjoy your head cloths, but don’t misrepresent the reason you recently decided to cover your face. And please don’t tell me how liberated you are.

There are only 3 Sexual Positions

22 positions my arse

I really want everyone to stop thinking that Prince is the standard for normal sex. Not everyone has 22 positions in a one night stand.

In fact, if you're a boring married/monogamous person in a standard heterosexual or homosexual arrangement like me, you are probably looking at no more than three sexual positions.

And we all know what they are: person A on top, person B on top and person B from behind.

That's it folks.

OK, OK, there's side by side positions, but really, most middle aged people have issues such as small male appendages that do not bend around corners, tummy flab and no stomach muscles to speak of. So let's be realistic.

When I was a teenager and before I was sexually active, or shall I say before I had enjoyed intercourse, I imagined hundreds of fun positions. Positions were the core game. I read the kama sutra and flicked through books at adult stores showing many interesting looking positions.

After trying a few in my early days of sexual exploration I realised they mostly fit into the category of "yoga sex" positions. And if you are in the majority of people not on welfare, you get up at 6am, make breakfast for the kids, go to work, come home at around 7pm and have barely enough energy left to choose from

a) swim at the beach (summer)
b) watch telly (winter)
c) lie down (year round!)
d) play with the kids - before dinner and bed...at around 9pm.


You do the maths. There's about two hours somewhere in the evening where you can choose your own adventure but you also need to eat, shower and wind down. Yoga doesn't factor into it. Neither do yoga sex positions. Some monogamous people manage to fit sex somewhere in that schedule of activities, usually right before bed and often while half already asleep.


Yoga is for people who have time to raise their chakras, and brush their hair (not that I'm suggesting they do that in their spare time. I'm not sure what they do. Actually I know what they do. Yoga sex.)

So if any of you yoga devotees are slamming down your rice milk chais, I suggest you hit the organic rubber and take a reality check.Very very few people have sex upside down on their heads or balanced sideways off the edge of the bed.

I hope I have squashed the myth of sexual positions once and for all, and I really hope all those sexual position books stop peddling empty promises to hopeful teenagers. It would put Prince and his modern representative like Rhianna and Kanye out of business.

Why Intelligence is a Curse, or, You Can't Make Your Baby Smart

You don't have to be smart 

to succeed

I really don't understand our current preoccupation with intelligence.

Parents bend over backwards, plying their infants with breast milk, omega enhanced foods and anything else they think may make their kid grow up smart. They send them to lessons and enrichment activities like french and kindermusic, and fight to enrol them in $20,000 a year Montessori kindergartens.

I work in a top private high school and teachers struggle with the less gifted students who are usually so bored at being in class they disrupt everyone. Stupidity is the common evil, a shared enemy that galvanises the aspirational middle classes of any Western city from Sydney to San Diego.

But show me a learning disabled kid and I'll show you someone who will likely grow up happy, surrounded by friends, in a rewarded career such as sales, management, marketing or real estate. This child is more than likely to have a stable solid career, lasting relationships and affluence. Who cares that they never mastered addition, love watching footy, think Hitler is a fancy dish, and can't spell?

Show me a smart kid and I'll show you someone who may very well grow up a tortured academic, too intelligent to settle for a simple relationship or stable career, looking down the barrel of divorce, unsteady jobs, lower than average income and growing university debts from too much study and changing faculties too often.

The silliest girl in my school, let's call her Patty, was so dumb she never learnt to write a decent sentence and doesn't read. She grew up to work at McDonald's, became a manager by age 20 and is now at the upper management ranks of that corporation. Another very unintelligent girl worked in administration until she married a Spanish chef. Numerous other, mostly male, students who failed every subject at school are the wealthiest people I know working hard as plumbers, electricians and other generously remunerated tradespeople. They enjoy holidays snowboarding in Whistler and sun baking in Italy. They live in large houses with cleaners. And ironically, they send their kids to private schools.

Conversely, the intelligent kids are not faring quite so well, especially when you take into account the effort, time, lost income and money required to study at university. While their less able counterparts like Patty were working and training, earning money on the job and paying little or nothing for vocational qualifications, the smart kids were studying, racking up debts at universities around the world and unable to afford even basic food and accommodation. Scholarships barely covered fees and are few and far between.

A few years later, smart Katharine and silly Patty sit next to each other at a 25th birthday party. Patty works hard, but is richly compensated. She owns her beachside flat, drives a nice car and has a pretty good life filled with social engagements, friends, holidays and shopping trips.

Katharine completed uni several years ago and is still trying to find a job she finds satisfying. She worked in corporations but found it stultifying and went backpacking in Europe instead. She has been in the low or no income bracket most her life and is considering returning to university to do a PhD as there is nothing else she can find that suits her ability or desire for stimulation.

Just a quick illustration on why you shouldn't really care about intelligence.

IQ doesn't matter. You should probably just admit that even though being smart is desirable it is not even caused by ingesting omega. Intelligence is actually genetic! So relax and get back to that reality TV show and stop worrying about things you can't control in a society that celebrates stupidity.

Formula Feeding Does Not Kill Your Baby, or make them Fat or Dumb

Nuthin wrong with a little formula

Before I had a baby I knew everything. I knew I would get pregnant easily, try for a natural birth, scream for an epidural after about five minutes, and breastfeed.

 When a friend had a C-section and bottle fed, I remember thinking Gosh, she has really taken the easy road, hasn't she? I mean, why bother if you don't give birth naturally and breastfeed?? Why bother indeed because about 12 months later I found myself with a baby in one hand, bottle in the other and searing pain along the abdominal incision where said baby was pulled out. Eating my words.

I mostly bottle fed after five months of combining breast and bottle with mixed results. I even took 20 Motillum a day, fenugreek and milk thistle imported from the USA on express shipping in a desperate attempt to increase my milk supply. Baby ended up in emergency due to starvation. But who really cares HOW I fed my baby - what kid is going to remember whether they were bottle or breastfed, or even fed at all? I really appreciate one comment made on facebook by my friend "Bottle or breast, fed is best."

Where did I get my terrible attitude from in the first place, and why does everyone think it's just so easy to breastfeed, that it really is a choice for women? For so many the choice is not breast VS bottle.
The choice is a Catch 22: A or B -

A. Breast feed, and please everyone, and do "what's best for baby", even though I

• am in extreme pain when I breastfeed due to infected ducts, blisters and lacerations,
• do not have enough milk so my baby screams constantly in hunger;
• have too much milk so my baby drowns and chokes
• feel awful breastfeeding and can't stop crying
• have a psychological block to breastfeeding
• have any number of other problems common to mothers attempting breastfeeding.

B. Bottle feed even in the face of criticism and midwives claiming it's poison.The baby health nurse at my local Sydney baby clinic actually said formula is poison.

Where did she get the idea that a life saving powder made up of fats, sugars and vitamins is bad? And what gave her licence to misinform an entire generation of new mothers? When did we get so nuts as a society?

Looking at those born in the 60s and 70s, or in France and China, where about 90 per cent of babies were/are bottle fed I really don't see any major plunge in their intelligence, spark in their obesity rates or any other major problems apparently caused by the dreaded formula. Mothers today are told that they should only formula feed if they want a fat dumb baby.

Last I checked an awful lot of Australians were fat and dumb and it had little to do with their food intake in those first six months.

I like how Tina Fey said in her Bossypants book "every woman has a magical number when it comes to breastfeeding, from 3 months to eight years. For me and my baby, that perfect number was about 72 hours." She was one of those mothers who pumped breast milk to bottle feed her baby, again illuminating how fraught and complex the issue of feeding a tiny newborn really is: some women cannot or don't want to do the latch nipple thing, but have enough milk and facilities to pump so do not have to buy formula.

I really like how Mia Freedman questioned midwives' stranglehold on the whole issue. Why is being BFHI friendly hospital so important in Australia? Why is what the WHO recommends even relevant here when we have clean water, expert medical advice in every suburb and good quality formula?

I just wish my prenatal classes had prepared me for the problem of low milk supply, and advised me to at least consider the possibility I would need to recover from major surgery, housebound AND have some bottles and formula at home in preparation for the hungry screaming newborn I was about to bring into the world.