The Australian National University's intersectional feminist magazine.
At the end of another re-watch, having by now contributed significantly to the video’s 50 million views, I still feel somewhat blindsided. I argue that Styles’ breadcrumbing of bisexual symbolism has culminated in a brand that serves him well.
She’s been cast aside for a Daniel, a Darren, or a David and she listens silently as the panel tells her how close she was before eventually deciding she was ‘too good’ where they had her. They will be looking again in 6 months, but she can’t give six more months. All she can think about is her fifteen minutes, the only reason she works so hard. She imagines what could give her life meaning without it, if she wasn’t measured in accolades and transient successes.
“They stopped, scrunched up their noses, and my brother quickly said: ‘Girls can’t take their shirts off – only boys!’”
“At the young age of six, I learnt that boys wanting to wear dresses was not normal.”
“It is only human to crave acceptance – and perhaps those who crave it most are young people facing often uncertain, changeable and seemingly inaccessible futures. It is this desire that the concept of being ‘one of the boys’ taps into.”
“Since receiving his offer to paralegal for Clayton-Utz, Dustin Dobbs has acknowledged his inherent privilege may have played into the hiring decision. Dustin is a heterosexual cis-male whose dad plays squash with Alfred, the managing partner, on a Tuesday.”
“God created men in his image, so they say, and while attempts are sometimes made to convince us that this somehow includes women, in reality, it does not.”
“The most insidious thing about having privilege is how ingrained it is and how normal it can feel when you are not the one affected by its absence.”
“Crowding round the bar, bands of *bois’ bois* chug their $2.50 basics and periodically erupt in their mating call – ‘Yeah the boys!!’ – seeking solace in their established masculinity.”
“… the main problem in her not-so-fair kingdom: chivalry had become synonymous with chauvinism. Really, the two concepts had about as much in common as a poison apple and a spinning wheel!”