The Uncensored Household
Ooh fancy that, The Chatterjis Blog has been nominated Best Blog at this year’s Asian Media Awards! In its third year of recognising and rooting for Asian talent in the mainstream and online media, the awards are backed by some of the British media industry’s biggest players.
Other nominees for best blog include:
Earlier this week, Bunty and I had the pleasure of going along to a wonderful and lively discussion at Asia House about stereotypes in Asian literature.
The panel was formed of leading figures in the creative arts: Yasmeen Khan (writer and broadcaster and shoe-horned to unofficial BBC Representative for the evening!), Daniel York (actor, director and writer), Anna Chen (first British Chinese comic to take a show to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Niven Govinden (author) and Bidisha (author, journalist, broadcaster and Booker Prize Foundation trustee) who was the delightful chair for the evening’s enthralling discussion.
A capacity audience listened intently to the questions, answers and anecdotal experiences giving an insight into a world that many of us
Not just about makeup, British actor Thandie Newton and her friend Kay Montano, a makeup artist, have just launched a new website celebrating beauty in its diversity. ThandieKay covers makeup tutorials and interviews with amazingly talented women in the same friendly, chatty tone. Lilac eyes? Yes please!
It’s a timely launch of a beauty website that shows skin tones reflecting the diversity of society. Recently supermodels Naomi Campbell and Iman have been particularly vociferous in their objection to the increasing racism in the fashion industry. The racism isn’t aggressive or obvious
Top by new ethical fashion brand, sketch london.
Left-leaning newspapers have been running a series of articles ever since the Bangladesh garment factory collapsed. The death toll has now sadly passed 500, mostly women, but why are consumers and fashion brands being made to bear the majority of the guilty burden? That fingers have been pointed at some brands was inevitable and fashion is regularly targeted for being a poison of the world: the very sick and visible face of capitalism and greed. In Bangladesh and India the tragedy is being reported as a corrupt failure of building regulations not a story about Evil Fashion Brands.
The usual suspects of British ethical fashion have been carted out with the usual snippets of condemnation and hissing at the likes of Primark, GAP and so on. Will consumers care they ask? Can they afford to I ask? This could be a long article so please get a cuppa or a glass of wine. I promise you will learn a thing or two.
Beyonce began her world tour with a flurry of images being published of her stage costumes. Her press team have now declared a ban on media photography as they will be provided with official photography ensuring Beyonce looks her best. Apparently this is due to unflattering photos of her being published earlier in the year.
It does make me wonder where the power lies in a celebrity’s relationship with the media.
The new manager of Sunderland Football Club has caused more controversy and taken over more newspaper inches over his past political affiliations than his job and he’s not pleased about it.
In the past, Paulo Di Canio, a former Lazio player, was recorded as stating he was a facist but not a racist during a mix up of prejudices in a conversation.
Am I alone in feeling sorry for Vicky Pryce? She was sitting next to her husband whom she loved for almost 30 years and he turned to her and said it was over, he was with a younger woman, he wanted a divorce. And then he went to the gym.
Then the press find the whole thing hilarious because the younger woman had been in a relationship with another woman.
Perhaps Rupert Murdoch watched Godfather Part II (or his lawyers did) when preparing for his questioning as part of the Leveson enquiry into the British phone hacking scandal. As Michael Corleone was hauled before a Senate Committee investigation into his family affairs the same applied to Rupert Murdoch and his famiglia, News Corporation. Let’s play a game: Who Said What?
I’ve never asked a prime minister for anything in my life.
I read today that Grazia magazine admitted to digitally slimming the Duchess of Cambridge for the cover of their Royal Wedding edition. The article written in the Guardian touches on a number of celebrities who have fallen prey to the digital retouching as if it isn’t common practice.
The atrocities in Norway were I’m sure shocking for all of us as we listened in disbelief at the loss of life in and the sadistic manner in which the killer carried out his killing spree. However, even while the news broke as a non-practicing Muslim my stomach turned twice: once for the victims and their families but secondly for the wrath of the media
What a week, News International seems to be getting into more trouble by the day and the other papers can’t get enough of the action. A friend in Delhi who writes for a broadsheet is enjoying the scandalous spectacle and he writes the gossip column!
The police’s involvement with News International is sinister
Just in case you have not seen comments on Tabloid Twits. The News Of the World have just announced it is closing in the aftermath of the phone hacking scandal. Major advertisers have pulled out including Ford, Sainsbury, Specsavers, DFS.
The last ever edition of the paper will be on sale this Sunday with proceeds going to charity.
Bunty
Whatever will happen to libraries, to hand me down books and to our colourful bookshelves filled with years of fiction and non-fiction? Probably the same thing that happened to photos when digital cameras became accessible to the masses and to music when Apple launched the Ipod. We will end up with yet another digital library.
The Telegraph reported yesterday that ebook sales in the UK had overtaken hardback books since the launch of the UK Kindle stores last year in August.
Born in India, brought up in England and disowned by her family for her beliefs, Rachel Beer was the first female editor of a newspaper at a time when women didn’t even have the vote.
Her remarkable story as editor of two of the most celebrated newspapers (The Observer and The Times) and plight of being a successful woman in the late 19th century can be read in “The First Lady of Fleet Street” by Yehuda Koren and Eilat Negev.
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