Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
JE

Creator

Jessie Cohen

Original inspiration: The Naked Girls Reading brand was founded in Chicago in the image of burlesque performer Michelle L’Amour.

Reading Naked Girls Reading: Are we dismantling or reinforcing gendered expression?

Adhering to normative aesthetics should be avoided when attempting to empower the natural.

Sex exhibition is fair on representation but short on alternative heterosexual sex

The Sex exhibition, at Stevenson Gallery in Braamfontein, doesn’t go far enough to explain the problems specific to our generation.

European Film Festival: The gender catch-22

Can the mostly male-directed films in the ‘A Woman’s World’ film festival truly capture the female voice?

The film “Vincent van Gogh – A New Way of ­Seeing” is an opportunity to experience Van Gogh’s masterpieces such “Self-portrait with Grey Felt Hat”
Video

Do not pass Van Gogh

A new film shows the artist’s work in incredible detail, but fails to explore new paths into his turbulent mind.

Tools of the trade: Evidence of Sam Maseko’s addiction. His mother Audrey at least knows where Sam is now; he used to wander around and steal.

Stories that push the boundaries of the female experience

A no-holds-barred insight into what it is like to be a woman in present-day South Africa, fraught as it is with taboos and dangers.

The bokkie stops here: Let’s make feminism fashionable again

The fight for women’s rights has too often been stigmatised and ignored in favour of race politics.

Shades of Stepford: At House of Hair

Face the fro and say hello, gorgeous

Frizz is fine for men, but women must iron out or wig up? That sheitel ain’t funny, girl.

A grey area: Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan in Fifty Shades of Grey.

Fifty shades of sexual ambiguity

Fifty Shades of Grey takes a nuanced approach to sex and power, but it is far too pedestrian to be called truly provocative feminist cinema.

To wax lyrical for a lad – or not

In the best possible scenario he’d pay attention to the process I’d undergo for him and he’d get a shiver down his spine at how unnatural it all is.

Sexual healing: An African sex safari

The African Sexual Healing Tour is empowering, but bruised by its bland approach to heterosexual cliché.

This is where the bodice is buried

A headmaster’s memoir dips into risqué territory, but what principles lie behind the lurid prose?

Samthing Soweto album cover Eb’suku.

When cinema casts gay desire as deviant behaviour

A former wrestler’s furious response to his portrayal in the Oscar-nominated film underscores society’s resistance to sexual difference.

Reeva Steenkamp and Oscar Pistorius.

Queering the image of male icons

The two faces of Oscar reveal our unacknowledged gender civil war.