3 October, 2007 | 11 Comments

I’ve always been irked by Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, which in my view just co-opts the language and ideals of feminism to sell beauty products. But their latest commercial is really just brilliant. It’s heartbreaking and it’s true. See below or here.

[gv data="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei6JvK0W60I" width="425" height="350"][/gv]

Also check out this older commercial. Working in the magazine industry, I saw this happen with my own eyes.

What kind of world are we creating for young girls — and for young boys? It’s too painful to even think about.

2 October, 2007 | 7 Comments

As of last week, I am in full-time PhD mode again. I don’t think I ever shared the good news about my PhD, did I? As most of you know, after the first year of my studies, I took time off and went to Paris. I wasn’t feeling passionate about the topic I had chosen for my dissertation. More than that, when I started this PhD lark, I didn’t fully understand what I was getting myself into. In hindsight, I hadn’t considered carefully enough whether I was well-suited for this kind of academic work. At heart, I am a very creative and intuitive person. I’m a smart gal, but I’m not necessarily an academic in the traditional sense. Make no mistake, I don’t aspire to be that. That’s kind of odd for a PhD student, but there you go.

I was aware of the fact that the English department at my school offered a PhD in creative writing, but it’s a new thing and wasn’t an option when I applied. I was quite disappointed when I found out about this, because it seemed like the perfect avenue for me. Still, I didn’t inquire about changing when I found out, I just kept plodding along on the traditional English PhD that I was doing. My thought process: Changing is hard, I’ll feel like a quitter, I like my supervisor, blah blah blah. Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. Sometimes we undermine our own chances for success. Yes, that was me. But this past February in Paris when I was trying to figure out the mess that was my life, I suddenly got a lot of clarity about what I wanted to do. It became clear to me that I needed to do everything in my power to change to the creative writing PhD. It was the right path for me, that much was blindingly obvious.

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1 October, 2007 | 9 Comments

Another week, another West End musical about a nanny. On Friday night I saw the Sound of Music. I’ve never seen it as a stage play but I love the film and like so many other hideous freaks out there, I can sing along with all the songs. I don’t know why I like this story and these songs so much. Maybe it’s because I grew up with it and it’s always been a part of my life. My mom loves it and I remember when we got our first VCR back in the 1970s, she actually bought the Sound of Music (on two tapes) and it was really expensive. I think it was the only film we owned and we watched it all the time.

In my early twenties I visited Salzburg and I went on the all-day “Sound of Music” bus tour which is the best! The only tourists who take this tour are from America, Britain, Australia and Japan. On the tour, you learn that virtually the entire population of Austria has a pathological hatred of The Sound of Music. Well, that’s not surprising given that the story is about a bunch of Hitler-lovin’ Austrian loonies who run an innocent singing family right out of town.

Though I am a major SoM fan, I’ve yet to attend the sing-along at the Prince Charles Cinema. Shameful! I must book my tickets. I did, however, attend an anniversary screening of the film here in London once and the woman who played Leisl was there.

So you see, I’m hardcore SoM, baby.

Given my SoM credentials, you can imagine how excited I was to see this play. I had really built it up in my mind and, well, you can probably guess where this is heading. The play turned out to be only good, not great. It didn’t make me go “wow” like other musicals I’ve seen. There are a few reasons for my devastating judgment, but there were a lot of things to like too.

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