by JAMILA RIZVI
I’d like to say it’s been a week of swings and roundabouts for me. But that wouldn’t be a remotely accurate description of how I’ve been feeling because I’m a Canberran – which means I bloody love a roundabout.
So, let’s just say that I’ve had a less than divine week: with illness in the family and romantic (or not-so-romantic to be precise) turmoil. I have come out the other side with one lesson well and truly learned and it is this: always surround yourself with fabulous women and then the crappy stuff will seem a whole lot less, well, crappy.
Speaking of fabulous women – I’m lucky enough to work with a whole lot of them, including our new group of Mamamia and iVillage Australia interns. After 3 weeks, they are well and truly settling in – knowing which kitchen cupboard the mugs are in, remembering the optimum image sizes for the website and learning that the love of the editorial team can be shamelessly bought with cupcakes.
We even took a couple of our interns, Megan and Sophia on a ‘school excursion’ on Friday, as we headed over to Darling Harbour to watch Mia host Ecco Shoes World’s Longest Catwalk event. Here’s a peek at what has been happening in the Mamamia offices, the amazing World’s Longest Catwalk and some of our highlights from the internet and social media:
You’ll be hearing a little more from our interns in the coming weeks, as they join our new team of Community Moderators. As the Mamamia community grows and the site receives more and more comments, we’ve asked some of our interns and a few of the regulars on the site to help us out in moderating comments and being around to answer your queries.
So keep an eye out for Phoodie, Amelia, OopsyBoopsy and Sarah in the comments and please make them feel welcome.
That’s enough from me. What’s been happening in your world?
Top Comments
Thanks so much for the opportunity to post here (Administrator approval). We are two Sydney mums who are going to climb the world's highest free-standing mountain, Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for Special Olympics Australia. We climb next February 2013 and are in training now and raising funds. If you would like to donate to help us on our way please email Eileen Stapleton on info@kidsizeliving.com.au. With every step, we will be helping Special Olympics Australia transform the lives of children and adults with an intellectual disability.
Every two hours an Australian child is diagnosed with an intellectual disability and Special Olympics Australia is there to support them by providing regular sports training and competition. Through sport they can get active, have fun and make friends, and with every step of the journey they develop the confidence and skills to overcome daily challenges and reach their personal best. You could say they climb mountains every day! Thanks for your time and hope you are inspired! Eileen X
https://specialolympics.mye...
I just wanted to say that I've been loving MM recently. I really love Jam Jam's contributions, and the stronger feminist stance MM seems to be taking on a lot of issues. I feel like the site went through a period a while ago where all the articles seemed to be aimed at a (seemingly, based on the articles) mindless group of women brainwashed by babies and exhaustion. Now the site is aimed at strong, intelligent women at various stages of their lives and with varying priorities (babies, work, health, relationship, etc) who can handle the opinions of others and can engage in interesting debates. It's been great!
For example, thank you for the article on provocation - and then your repeated defence to commentators of the gender slant of the article. Provocation is primarily used by male killers to justify killing women. That is not bias, that is a fact. It's not an evenly employed defence - so thank you for sticking to your guns on that. Violence against men is never okay either, but it really p***es me off when articles attempt to be neutral on very gendered issues, just because they are afraid of offending people. Sexual violence and domestic violence (of which the provocation defence is usually a result of) are issues that have primarily female victims. Acknowledging that doesn't mean you don't care when it happens to males, it is just giving the deserved attention and acknowledgement to the victims, rather than ignoring a huge part of the issue (that ingrained sexism causes a gendered bias of the victim/perpetrator ratio). So thank you for not fearfully reporting it in a gender neutral manner!
Ditto, thank you for taking a stance on the embarrassing TA interview, and not being afraid to look like you were favouring a particular party. Good interviewing is good interviewing, regardless of what politics leader is embarrassing themselves. Nice work guys.
Thanks Alice!