Inhaltsverzeichnis für August 2016 in Womankind

Womankind magazine is requesting input from readers for its upcoming Manual of Mental Attributes. We’re aiming for 250 submissions to match the current number of listings in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the ‘go to’ handbook for pinpointing the many and varied mental and behavioural disorders spotted in the general public. The DSM is utilised worldwide by doctors, drug companies, and insurance agencies for their own purposes. Undoubtedly, you will have had, or overheard, a conversation much like the following: “Little Mary has ADHD and also Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (AKA temper tantrums).” Person B: “Oh really, how sad. Well at least they know what they’re dealing with.” Person A: “Yes, it’s great to pin down the problem - it’s really common in kids these days,…

“IN THE CITIES IN WHICH WE LIVE, ALL OF US SEE HUNDREDS OF PUBLICITY IMAGES EVERY DAY OF OUR LIVES. NO OTHER KIND OF IMAGE CONFRONTS US SO FREQUENTLY. IN NO OTHER FORM OF SOCIETY IN HISTORY HAS THERE BEEN SUCH A CONCENTRATION OF IMAGES, SUCH A DENSITY OF VISUAL MESSAGES...PUBLICITY IMAGES ALSO BELONG TO THE MOMENT IN THE SENSE THAT THEY MUST BE CONTINUALLY RENEWED AND MADE UP-TO-DATE. YET THEY NEVER SPEAK OF THE PRESENT. OFTEN THEY REFER TO THE PAST AND ALWAYS THEY SPEAK OF THE FUTURE…THE FACT THAT THESE IMAGES BELONG TO THE MOMENT BUT SPEAK OF THE FUTURE PRODUCES A STRANGE EFFECT WHICH HAS BECOME SO FAMILIAR THAT WE SCARCELY NOTICE IT…ONE HAS THE IMPRESSION THAT PUBLICITY IMAGES ARE CONTINUALLY PASSING US, LIKE EXPRESS TRAINS…

On her first visit to the local morgue as a child, Leonor Fini was summoned by an old man eager to show her something. He “pushed us toward a door half-covered with ivy that we had not noticed before,” Fini tells her biographer, and flicked on the light. “In a room with black walls we saw a beautiful young man stretched out on a sequined table surrounded by fresh roses.” The reclining young man was a gypsy. His eyes were closed. Roaming the halls of the morgue a throng of grief-stricken gypsies howled. “I have shown him to you,” the old man said, motioning to Fini, “because he is beautiful, and children should see what is beautiful.” Standing over the naked boy, the young Fini viewed the passive male form.…

I never thought I’d be a dancer. My mum took me to dance classes when I was four years old because I was shy, and a psychologist recommended that she take me. My cousins were going, so she took me along with them. I was shy, but I liked dancing. I danced everything I could: ballet, Spanish dances, tap, classic, contemporary, folklore, Afro, contact. I’m restless, I always have been - I like to try new things. I was mad about dancing. I’d walk around the house with a book on my head so that I could walk well. My mum thought I was loopy. I’d put a chair against the wall to practice different techniques. My mum would say, “This girl’s crazy.” Dance was not my choice. My mum…

“CIRCULATE,” THEY WERE TOLD. INSTEAD OF LEAVING, AS THE POLICE INTENDED THEM TO, THE MOTHERS LINKED ARMS AND BEGAN WALKING SLOWLY AROUND THE PLAZA. Esther Aracela Lado de Sanchez and her twenty-one-year-old son were having lunch. All of a sudden, he stopped eating and said: “Mum, let’s dance.” Ever since he was a boy, Enrique loved to dance with his mother, whether there was music or not. That day, they danced The Emperor Waltz. It was the last time Esther saw her son. Enrique was abducted during Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’. It began in 1976 when the military staged a coup and annulled the constitution, introducing curfews and censorship. The regime, led by General Videla, declared a state of siege and sought to eliminate all who posed a threat to its…

A reason to be emotional There’s much advice proffered on how to keep emotions in check - such as how to control your anger; how to be calm and centred when in stressful situations; how to look pleased rather than raptured by good news. Emotions are viewed much like a galloping horse in constant need of reining in lest they get out of hand. But scientists who study the brain and emotions are starting to reconsider this stance. Our emotions are particularly linked to decision-making, scientists have found. In his book Descartes’ Error, neuroscientist Antonio Damasio writes about a post-operative patient who became incapable, due to brain surgery, of exhibiting emotions including sadness, impatience, and frustration. And consequently, Damasio explains, he lost his powers of decision-making, even on small matters…

We are looking for photographs that describe ‘home’. And by ‘home’ we are referring to the place of residence where you, or people you know, live permanently. It may also refer to a place where one flourishes, or where one is most typically found. Modelling shots are not appropriate. We do not accept any sexual or violent images, or images depicting nudity or semi-nudity. Open to all readers. Details Closing date: 30 November 2016 Format: One photograph per entry. Applicants: Open to male and female amateur and professional photographers. Entries must also include a separate shot of an edition of Womankind. File size: Please send large file sizes (larger than 3000 pixels wide, 300dpi). Entries must be provided in file sizes suitable for publishing. Win $500 and get published in…

Has there ever been a time when people have not danced? Dancing figures appear in Chinese pottery of the Neolithic period (10,200 - 2,000 BCE), in 9,000-year-old rock shelter paintings at Bhimbetka in India, on Egyptian tomb walls of 3,300 BCE, and in the Bradshaw paintings (circa 40,000 - 3,000 BCE) of Australia’s remote Kimberley region. Historical texts are full of references to dance too: in Plato, Aristotle, and Plutarch, China’s Lüshi Chunqiu, as well as in the Bible and the Talmud. Dance is as important as ever today - as personal expression, entertainment, and in traditional rituals. Combined with the other universal traditions of storytelling and music, anthropologists believe that for millennia it has helped transmit culture from one generation to the next. In fact, it seems to be…

What would the people say, reduced and empty, If one fortuitous day, by some extreme fantasy, I were to dye my hair silvery and violet, were to wear an old Greek gown, exchanging the comb for a circlet of flowers: forget-me-nots or jasmines, were to sing through the streets to the rhythm of the violins, or were to read my verses aloud, travelling the plazas my gusto freed of common gags? Would they go to watch me, covering the sidewalks? Would they burn me like they burned enchantresses? Would they ring the bells, calling to mass? In truth, when I think of it, I laugh a little.…

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“THE BEST TIME TO PLANT A TREE WAS 20 YEARS AGO. THE SECOND BEST TIME IS NOW.” Chinese Proverb Motivational speakers make their fortune - buying islands in the Caribbean, private jets and fast cars - on the back of goal setting. Not their own goals, mind you, but by charging you to write out your goals. “Don’t be modest,” they shriek. “Think big. Think crazy. You want a convertible? Write it down. You want to make a million bucks a year, then write that down too.” Goal setting is like conversing with a magic Genie who can grant you every wish you’ve ever wanted: ‘the man/woman of my dreams’, ‘black belt in karate’, ‘chalet in the Swiss Alps’. The trouble with goal setting is that it forces us to…

I was sitting outside the Sydney Opera House one day when a group of young girls came into my view. Appearing odd to me at the time was the fact that none of the girls spoke to each other. Instead, one girl transferred her weight to her back foot; another inclined her body to the side. A third twisted her hip and spun. We assume that our bodies do not speak but these ballerinas before me were communicating with body movement. A twist and spin, I soon discovered, signalled that it was time to leave. And this they did, fleeing into the great hall. Many of us unconsciously see ourselves as a body person or a mind person - either one or the other. In the schoolyard, we have the…

I grew up surrounded by dogs. My mum and dad are veterinarians, and my uncle and grandfather were too. I wanted to study to be a veterinarian, but I became a mother before I could start. When I was a kid, my dad would take me to work, and so that I wouldn’t get bored he’d have me examine faeces under the microscope. I didn’t read storybooks - I read my dad’s veterinarian books. I helped him with a birth once. He told me to put on a glove and to reach inside the mare to feel for the hooves, and then he told me to grab them and pull out the foal. My uncle was also a vet, and he disappeared in the last military dictatorship, in 1977... I…

Boys will be boys. Are there any four words more harmful to society or more egregiously wrong? They’re words that circulate like homespun wisdom but that also have the certainty of scientific fact. They’re uttered in benign resignation yet they create the inequality of which they complain. These words convert behavioural choice into biological destiny and make excuses where there should be blame. Because as anyone who travels or reads history must know: boys are not born, they’re made. A quick glance around the world shows masculinity in all its kaleidoscopic joy. In India we see men rambling arm in arm down streets, while in Latin America or Southern Europe men’s lips brush their friends’ cheeks when they meet. In Brazil men sashay their way across dance floors and in…

What was your childhood like? I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and I lived there until I was 27 years old. The things I remember most about my childhood are the long summer holidays I spent in my family’s country house. It is still a fairly wild place, a river runs through the backyard and there were so many things to explore and be amazed by as a child. The house was always full of cousins and friends visiting, at night we would stay until late playing games or stargazing. The rest of the year must have been really boring - double-shift school - because I don’t remember a lot. What is your typical day? I wake up around 7am and have breakfast with my husband and 3-year-old son.…

In the poem Juan López y John Ward Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges explores the Falkland Islands War. Two soldiers from each side of the conflict, he writes, meet their tragic end on “islands that were too famous”. That was not always the case. When the ten-week war between Argentina and the UK broke out in 1982 many in Britain were confused: where, exactly, was the Falklands? And why were they sending their boys to defend it? In The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 author Sue Townsend taps into this bafflement: “10am: Woke my father up to tell him Argentina had invaded the Falklands,” jots the fictional teenager Adrian Mole in his journal. “He shot out of bed because he thought the Falklands lay off the coast…

Womankind : You were travelling in Argentina when you first came across the land of the gauchos... Lucinda Paxton: I had been living in Buenos Aires when I left the buzz of city life to get some country air. I gave up my apartment in the city and moved here within the week. There is something quite magical about this place that satisfies my need for adventure and a slower pace of life. I feel like I have 48 hours in my day instead of 24. Being the heartland of gauchos was a huge draw. Everyone has time to talk. What are gauchos like in person? The famously reticent gauchos are surprisingly chatty. A friend once told me to start waving my arms and gesticulating in the typical Italian/Argentinian…

Born and raised in Buenos Aires, Surrealist painter Ruben Cukier mines the subconscious for fears, habits, and desires that we all may experience at one time or the other but may have difficulty expressing in words. Cukier feels that sometimes art is the best medium for telling this part of the story. What is ‘art’ for you? Art for me is my way to find an existential order within chaos. It is to put a definite line between the real world and the dream world. It is an area of freedom that liberates me from the dogma of thought. Many of your artworks touch on emotions such as fury, despair, and solitude. How do you transfer emotions into art? To me art - great art - is just that, bringing…

POWERHOUSE Brisbane, Australia Brisbane Writers Festival 7 – 11 SEPTEMBER Held every year in September, the Brisbane Writers Festival is one of the largest literary festivals in Australia. With a proud 53-year history, this convergence of readers, writers, and thinkers is a fixture on the Queensland cultural landscape. In 2016, guests will explore a program focused on our sense of belonging, identity and community. International authors Lionel Shriver, David Levithan, and Jeremy Gavron will appear alongside some unique voices from Australia, including Jen Rayner, Maxine Beneba Clarke, and Womankind’s editor Antonia Case. FESTIVAL Ubud, Bali Ubud Writers & Readers Festival 26 – 30 OCTOBER Held annually in Bali, the Ubud Writers & Readers Festival has become Southeast Asia’s largest and most renowned cultural and literary event. The festival brings Indonesian…

Perhaps it’s something you could document: how much of your life you ‘live directly’. If you were to put a percentage on it, would it be 50 per cent of the time, or less? For US teenagers, the figure is decidedly less. On average, Americans aged 13 to 18 years spend nine hours a day on screens, while those a little younger, age 8 to 12 years, spend on average about six hours immersed, according to a study by Common Sense Media. Taking into account time to sleep, most teenagers in the US, ‘live directly’ just 30 per cent of the time. To ‘live directly’ is to face the world in its raw form. Cooking, chatting to others in person, creating a sculpture, patting the cat, tending to the garden,…

“THUS OUR OWN AGE IS ESSENTIALLY ONE OF UNDERSTANDING, AND ON THE AVERAGE, PERHAPS, MORE KNOWLEDGEABLE THAN ANY FORMER GENERATION, BUT IT IS WITHOUT PASSION. EVERYONE KNOWS A GREAT DEAL, WE ALL KNOW WHICH WAY WE OUGHT TO GO AND ALL THE DIFFERENT WAYS WE CAN GO, BUT NOBODY IS WILLING TO MOVE.” - Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age Can you spend too much time reflecting? Philosopher Søren Kierkegaard thought so, calling the present age one of “reflection” but “devoid of passion”. He believed that too much deliberation can make us mad and depressed - or incite laziness. We’ve cultivated the habit of reflection, conjuring up some illusory project to think about, before deciding - after considerable deliberation - that it’s probably best to do nothing at all. “A revolutionary…

The series symbolises the children who ‘disappeared’ during Argentina’s military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, who we feature in this edition (page 56), estimate the number missing - including many children - as being close to 30,000. “The merciless military coup in the 1970s that has traumatised generations of parents and children has left its unmistakable traces,” note the artists. “Our project, in the end, deals with that - the troubled history, the wounds Argentina has suffered from the outside, but also those the country exerted on itself. From the near extinction of its first people to the military junta of the ‘70s, and how this still affects people today.” The artists, who live and work in Sweden and Berlin, and who have collaborated…

I was born in Chaco. I lived there until I was five years old, and then my mum took me to Buenos Aires. My father died when my mum was 25, and she couldn’t make a living as a single mother in Chaco. At first we lived with family friends in Quilmes, outside Buenos Aires. There were a lot of empty lots, and we’d walk through them to get to school. There wasn’t any heating in the school, but we didn’t protest. Later, my mum rented an apartment nearby in Banfield, and for two years I went to a primary school run by nuns. The nuns were fine. I was a good student. I had fun playing games with the other girls, but what I really wanted was to be…

Perlman wiped the sweat from his brow and said, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.” If I had a choice when it comes to vice, I’d pick any of the seven classics save the vice of envy. At least the other six have a connection to goodness, at least some of the time. Just think of the delicious indulgence of a lazy weekend or surrender to a decadent dessert; the juicy satisfaction of a lustful fantasy or the thrill of pride. Even a passionate fight has something good to recommend it. But to my mind, envy is the deadliest of the seven deadlies, and in a category all its own. Envy turns us…

If I were to ask you to outline your narrative for living, how would you respond? Social critic Neil Postman puts it another way in his book The End of Education. Which ‘god’ do you serve? In Western culture, Postman argues that we serve a number of gods, and not just spiritual ones. Powerful narratives are apparent in our education system, explained through books, repeated on television sets and movie screens. These narratives give meaning to your world and your labours, and in the process they form your personal identity. THE GOD OF TECHNOLOGY “Mary is creating her own app at school,” says the proud mother to her friend. “And little Charlie is playing maths games on his computer. He plays them all night,” boasts her friend. They both smile…

Jessie Kinivan Day 1: My first full day off in too long. I’ve been looking forward to ticking things off my ‘to do’ list (at least for half an hour before ditching it to read in the sun) and I realise that this list largely consists of responding to messages. So I take the time to mentally inventory the friends and family I’ve been neglecting and with a cup of coffee, sit down to respond to each with as much thoughtfulness as I can. Day 2: I have dinner with some friends I’ve known forever. We have a familial relationship; the kind filled with love but also the tension and difference of opinion that comes with forming bonds young, then watching them stretch and bend when we grow into ourselves.…

Lighters and teacups and T-shirts. Music and movies, too: in 2003, Madonna posed as him on the cover of her album American Life, while a year later the actor Gael Garcia Bernal portrayed him in the film The Motorcycle Diaries. Even a faux-Mexican fast food chain referenced him in a series of strange hypnotic commercials, starting in 1999 and starring a talking chihuahua. Yes, the face of the early 2000s was the face of Che Guevara. The pose is familiar, the expression hard to read: Che Guevara, age thirty-one and in a rebel’s slouched beret, his face stiff, stern, and yet peculiarly animated. An instant hieroglyphic: “I deliberately designed it to breed like rabbits,” Jim FitzPatrick , the Irish designer responsible for the graphic’s propagation, explained to the BBC in…

Womankind is pleased to showcase the winning entries for our Award VII: ‘vocation’, which is defined as a strong desire to spend one’s life doing a certain kind of work. Vocation may refer to an occupation, profession, or calling. Winner: Monsieur Oulie and his truffle pig by UK-based photographer Abigail Lees. “Monsieur Oulie has been a truffle farmer in the Lot region of France for his whole life,” Lees says. “We recently filmed him for a documentary - training his newest pig, Kiki, to sniff out black truffles. The problem is, she is always trying to eat them, so he must get to the truffle before she gobbles it up! Almost all truffle hunters now use dogs for this practice, but Mr Oulie stays true to the tradition, trusting…

“You shall create beauty not to excite the senses but to give sustenance to the soul.” Gabriela Mistral The Surrender of Culture to Technology Delivered by Neil Postman in 1997, this lecture critiques our dependence on technological advances and how we’ve come to expect technological innovations to solve the larger problems of humankind. Technology itself has become a ‘religion’ which people take on faith as the solution to their problems. Argentina’s Economic Collapse Since achieving independence some 200 years ago, Argentina’s foreign debt has been a source of impoverishment and corruption. From the first loan negotiated by Rivadavia in 1824 with the British bank Baring Brothers, the debt was used to enrich Argentinian bankers, control the finances, and empty the country of its wealth. La Confiteria Ideal: The Tango Salon…