I feel like we’re more aware now of body shaming, eating disorders and the pressure to be perfect than we ever have been. And some things have...
I know, I know. Christmas is a capitalist scam that creates tonnes and tonnes of landfill every year. Everything about it highlights the gaping...
At the start of 2020, I set myself one resolution: to read one book a week for the entire year. 52 books. The idea was that if I read more books,...
One of the most significant disappointments of the 2016 US Presidential Election, aside from the fact that Donald Trump won, was just how many...
It feels like bad stuff is happening all the time at the moment. Part of that is because it is, I mean, 2020, right? The global pandemic, hellish...
When I first started Lovecraft Country , the latest must-see TV show plastered...
Honestly, I get kind of sick of watching TV shows that don’t look or sound anything like real...
Reminders of the dire state of our climate are seemingly everywhere.
“We’re all gonna die” my friends often say to me, casually, over a...
Everything I know about Scientology, I learnt from Leah Remini, an actress who was raised in Scientology from the age of nine, but ended up...
You know those tampon ads that tell you girls can do anything? The make-up ads that talk about the importance of realising your self-worth? The...
Every election cycle, we hear the same tired lamentation from politicians, media pundits and various aunts and uncles: “young people don’t show up...
As a long-time fan of Taylor Swift, seeing her new album “folklore” receive such amazing reviews has been equal parts gratifying and frustrating...
In 2007, when Britney Spears suffered a “mental breakdown,” tabloids...
British singer-songwriter Lianne La Havas has just released her third...
When it was announced that former Glee star Naya Rivera...
One of the great myths of the palatable modern feminism that we’ve all become accustomed to is this: women should never criticise other women,...
In 2018, inspired by the #MeToo movement and an onslaught of...
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
How many times were you asked that as a child? How many times, as an adult, have you asked a...
I’m 23 years old, and for at least a month this year, I was an avid user of Tik Tok. Don’t judge me, okay? We all got bored in lockdown.
...
In 2020, celebrity culture seems to be crumbling before our very eyes. What with the tone deaf videos of millionaires singing “Imagine” from their...
I’m white. My family is white. A lot of my friends are white. A lot of my parents’ friends are white. As a result, I’ve spent a lot of time...
What if I told you that Survivor is the only thing getting me through these “unprecedented times”? Yes,...
If this pandemic has made one thing clear, it’s that there are certain people and professions that society simply cannot survive without, aptly...
As the number of new cases drops each day, the consensus is pretty much clear: New Zealand has done a pretty good job so far with this whole Covid...
Obviously, there’s never a good time to have body image issues or a history with eating disorders, but this feels like a particularly shitty time...
We’re all stuck in our houses, which leaves plenty of time for... not much,...
We’re living in scary times, have you heard?
For the last few weeks I’ve been pretty much addicted to the news. I’ve become entirely...
Adéle Haenel, star of critical hit Portrait of a Lady on Fire, was one of the first...
When Donald Trump won the 2016 US election, my reaction was visceral. I cried. I stayed in...
This week, I watched in fascinated horror as the online world decided, by comparing a few interview clips...
In my short lifetime, the way we think of gender and the way we rely on gender roles in everyday life has changed tremendously.
When I was...
I was nineteen years old when I first noticed a vertical line starting to appear between my...
First published on Sunday the 9 th of June, 2019, this piece comes in at number 12 in the top 30 most read Villainesse stories of 2019.
A...
First published on Tuesday the 9 th of July, 2019, this piece comes...
First published on Saturday the 20 th of April, 2019, this piece comes in at number 19 in the top 30 most read Villainesse stories of 2019....
2019 was, quite notably, the year that the climate crisis leapt to the forefront of almost all conversations, both public and private. And it was...
As a society, we are (slowly) becoming more and more sustainably aware. Most people I know bring a reusable cup along when they want a takeaway...
It’s feminism 101, right? Disney princesses are terrible role models that teach young girls to yearn for romantic approval from men over all else...
I recently talked to a living, breathing human person in the year 2019, who told me “women...
We’ve all done it. We’ve all heard our female friends do it. The urge to qualify the fact that you’re a feminist with “But I don’t hate men! I’m...
There’s nothing more popular than hating things that are popular, and there’s nothing more mainstream than to look at the mainstream with general...
Ellen DeGeneres has walked herself into a bit of controversy lately, after being caught on...
In my 23 years on this planet, I have consumed a lot of pop culture. Particularly pop culture that focuses on love and romance. I’ve watched every...
The way I see it, we’re living in a time that will be remembered as history’s tipping point. We either do something or we don’t. The planet, and...
If you’re not living under a rock, you’ve...
Since about the age of 15, when I started to learn the basic principles of feminism from extensive amounts of time spent on Tumblr, I have been...
I’ve only been working full time for four months, so I give everyone who’s been working their whole life full permission to roll their eyes and...
For nerdy girls of the 90s who spent most of their time in the corner with their head in a book (that’s me, hi, nice to meet you), there were a...
It’s undeniable - we’re living in truly terrifying times when it comes to the wellbeing of our environment. I feel like I’m barraged with...
Are you craving some bingeable TV shows with good LGBT+ representation? Are you...
This month, Instagram are testing out a significant change to their app in certain countries, including New Zealand. You can no longer see the...
To go a day without hearing about Stranger Things this month is to go a day without leaving the...
The one thought running through my mind every second of every day at the moment is, “I’m cold. I’m cold. I’m cold.” That’s it, on repeat, all day...
In 2016, Taylor Swift suffered from a particularly niggly run of bad press. She had a messy split from...
Dear parents everywhere: no matter what you think, your child has probably secretly taken drugs. Maybe it’s not all the time, maybe it was just...
We all remember it, the all-encompassing dread and deep-seated boredom of a school assembly with a guest speaker. Pretending to pay attention to...
Like just about everyone else on planet Earth, I went along to see Avengers: Endgame recently...
Flying across the world and finding yourself (or just drinking a lot of alcohol and eating your weight in croque monsieurs) is seen by many as a...
No matter how comfortable we are with it, it’s undeniable that true crime is one of the most popular and lucrative sectors of pop culture ....
