Gender, drama and ‘The Fairer Sex’

Rambling around town the other day, I picked up a brochure for a new initiative by The Abbey Theatre. Next month, they’re running a series of six 20 minute plays by women. Ask most people to name an Irish female playwright and if you’re lucky, they’ll say Marina Carr, so this is a brilliant [...]

Read Full Post »

All in the Mind

You might be forgiven for thinking that we Anti-Room ladies are obsessed with childish crushes. We’ve talked about the shameful crush (nothing, absolutely nothing, will beat my friend J’s childhood love for Paul Daniels). We’ve talked about role-dependent crushes (hello, Don Draper!). And now, my friends, we’re going to talk about one of the most [...]

Read Full Post »

Dude, where’s my give-a-shit?

I’ve always been a bit of a dissatisfied one, prone to pessimism and glass-half-empty thinking. But recently I came across a self-help book that made me feel a little better about my whiney-ass complaining.
30 Something and Over it: What happens when you get up and don’t want to go to work … Ever Again by [...]

Read Full Post »

Radio Ga Ga… and not a Lady in sight

First Marian Finucane gets moved to the weekend on RTE Radio, where her listenership has continued to soar. On Newstalk, Orla Barry and Brenda Power are ousted to make way for Tom Dunne. Today FM have no female presenters in their daytime Monday-Friday schedule (Anne Marie Kelly is done by 7am, Alison Curtis isn’t on [...]

Read Full Post »

Women! Know Your Place!

Women, eh? Is there anything we can’t blame them for? And can we do so while being witless, smug, and wildly inaccurate so we can pretend it’s satirical if anyone gets annoyed? Good thing women don’t read this newspaper – what? They do?
Or rather, they did.

Read Full Post »

Gail Trimble and Google searches

Our post on Sunday about Gail Trimble being judged on her looks and criticised for being clever has chalked up huge traffic. Most of this is due to google searches, and the terms people used that brought them to this site. The results offer a pithier snapshot of opinion on Trimble and once again focus [...]

Read Full Post »

Gail Trimble: Cleverness, aesthetics and sexism

One of my guilty pleasures is that I love quizzes. From Trivial Pursuit to table quizzes, I seem to have huge spongey brain that holds on to useless info like old bathwater. As a kid, our whole family loved them and would huddle around Blockbusters, The Krypton Factor (now back on TV, all made over [...]

Read Full Post »

Jade Goody: Living and Dying in the public eye

The Anti-Roomers on the news that Jade Goody is dying of cancer and plans to live out her remaining time in the public eye. We’d love to hear your thoughts, feel free to jump in in the comments section.
LEIGH: Sweet Lord. Try as I might, I can’t stop rubbernecking the whole sorry saga that is [...]

Read Full Post »

It’s A Mad World

This is a spoiler-free post: Mad Men, the drama series about ad men on Madison Avenue in the early sixties, is probably the most written-about show on the planet right now. So here’s just what you need – another post on the subject. The second season has just kicked off on BBC4 but I finished [...]

Read Full Post »

Me me me me

Respect where it’s due – my fellow Anti-Roomers are delightfully adept at keeping abreast of pop culture this and zeitgeist that. TV, music, film, fem-trends, they’ve got it all licked…and fair play to them. So I thought I’d leave them to it and post about my own specialist subject – ME.
I know – egomaniacal bint.
Anyway, [...]

Read Full Post »