Gillette has been marketed for donkey’s years as ‘the best a man can get’. It’s a pretty simple slogan - our product is better than the others, you should buy it, end of. But the slogan has been repurposed for the post #MeToo era in a way that is causing absolute outrage among a certain cohort [...]
Waste is big news at the moment. With the introduction of pay-by-weight, minds have been concentrated on keeping rubbish to a minimum in a way that environmental concerns have not to date achieved. (There was a documentary on RTE last night about this too - I didn't get to watch it but it revealed some shocking [...]
I grew up looking at images of ‘heroin chic’ supermodels, for whom nothing tasted better than how thin felt. 1990s beauty standards were defined by Kate Moss’s protruding ribs, while teen girls’ magazines warned of an epidemic of anorexia and bulimia. https://www.flickr.com/photos/9355127@N07/35710732331/in/photostream/ The term body-shaming hadn’t been coined yet, but the rise of magazines outlining [...]
In the wake of #MeToo, Netflix has released a new set of rules governing how its workers interact during filming. For the most part, they seem fairly obvious to anyone who isn’t a creep. The problem is that if you are a creep, you probably won’t even realise they are aimed at you. They include rules [...]
When Gay Byrne spoke to Ray D’Arcy this week about the TV show, ‘Once More With Feeling: The Meaning of Life’, which aired last night, we all perked up a little bit, and listened. Perhaps because of his reticence in expressing his opinions over the years, Gaybo has been conferred, as he ages, with an almost [...]
When Micheál Martin introduced the smoking ban in 2004, it made Ireland the world leader in zero tolerance for smokers. People claimed it wouldn’t work, that pubs would die on their feet and all sorts of dire consequences would ensue. For the very committed smoker, it meant a lot more time spent outside. For pub and [...]
https://twitter.com/SVCCork/status/980159456045600768 When we glance back at years past there is always a moment that defines them in the public consciousness. A moment that ‘convulsed’ the country, and that was often a catalyst for an epic change of direction. In Ireland, over the past century, many of those moments have been focussed - almost to the [...]
Gluten free, dairy free, lactose free, sugar free. Free-from ranges in shops are booming as more and more of us hop on dietary bandwagons, attaching ourselves to intolerances as though each one we can list makes us a bit more special. Gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan... mmmm But in the past week it’s become clear that [...]
It was Madeleine Albright who said that there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other, but she forgot to mention the gigantic reservation in the underworld specially set aside for women who constantly criticise each other. Not a week goes by without a woman in the public eye being pilloried [...]
Sometimes I wonder if I’m living in a parallel universe and everyone else has it completely sorted except me. Because, you see, I must be one of the only people in the world who did not know you should wash and disinfect your toothbrush holder every three days. Apparently, all of you are washing your towels [...]
