Sydney Sweeney’s sports advertisement has been widely criticised by women athletes as sexualising athletes’ bodies.

The advertisement, for sports prediction company Novig, features the US actor wearing little or no clothing while posing with sports equipment and pretending to play a range of sports.

Australian Olympic swimming champion Ariarne Titmus is among the athletes who have criticised the campaign, questioning why sexualising women is still being used to sell sport:

… how do we live in a world where monetising a woman’s body and sexualising women’s sport is still a thing? To take the mickey like this. I thought we were genuinely moving past this bullsh-t. What is this teaching the young men and women of today?

Other athletes have responded by posting images of themselves training and competing, highlighting the strength, skill and hard work involved in being an athlete.

But the controversy is about more than one advertisement. It raises a bigger issue about the attention we give to what women look like, rather than who they are and what they can do.

As a clinical psychologist specialising in body image and eating disorders, this is particularly important to me.

Body image isn’t simply about whether we like or dislike our appearance. It includes our thoughts, feelings and attitudes toward our bodies, and how much importance we place on appearance when valuing ourselves.

Sport provides a wonderful opportunity to shift that focus. Rather than asking “how does my body look?”, we can appreciate “what can my body do?”.

Strong, powerful, yet look a certain way

In sport, female athletes’ bodies need to perform. This might require strength, muscularity, speed, endurance or power. At the same time, women receive broader messages about what an attractive female body should look like.

This creates a difficult contradiction and tension: be strong, but not too muscular, be athletic, but still feminine, perform at an extraordinary level but also look good doing it.

For professional and elite athletes, this pressure can be magnified because their bodies are so visible. Coaches, spectators, traditional media and millions of people on social media can scrutinise them.

This type of scrutiny about their appearance, and thoughts about their own bodies, can distract elite athletes from their performance.

Sport itself isn’t the problem. Sport can protect women from body image concerns when they experience their bodies as capable and powerful.

The problem is when performance becomes tangled up with appearance and an athlete feels she needs to look like an athlete as well as be one.

You don’t have to be an Olympian

These pressures don’t disappear when you take away the medals, cameras and sponsorship deals. Body image concerns occur across different sports, ages and levels of competition. They can appear in community sport, running, gyms and recreational activities.

For many of us, exercise is enormously positive. It can improve our mood, provide a sense of achievement, connect us with others and simply be fun.

But this can change when movement becomes primarily about controlling how our body looks. Exercise can shift from “I want to do this” to “I have to do this”. Missing a training session might cause guilt or anxiety, or exercise can become a way of compensating for eating.

We also need to be careful we don’t replace the old “thin ideal” with a new “fit ideal”. Telling women they should be lean, toned and strong may sound healthier, but it can become another appearance standard to chase.

There is no single way an athletic, or healthy, body should look.

What are girls learning?

This message is particularly important for children and teenagers.

Adolescence is a time of enormous physical and psychological change. Bodies change rapidly during puberty at exactly the time young people become increasingly aware of their appearance, comparisons with others, and how others see them.

For girls in sport, this can be challenging if their changing body moves away from what they think an athlete is “supposed” to look like.

Body image concerns can contribute to girls dropping out of sport. Creating environments where girls feel comfortable in their bodies may therefore also help keep them participating.

What adults say matters. Coaches and parents can focus on effort, enjoyment, teamwork, skill and what a child’s body enables them to do, rather than weight or shape.

Sports uniforms matter, too. A girl worrying about how her body looks has less opportunity to concentrate on playing and enjoying her sport.

What girls see when they watch women’s sport matters. If female athletes continue to be valued for how they look as much as for what they achieve, girls may learn that appearance is an important part of their own value, too.

We are more than what we look like

This is where the discussion goes beyond Sweeney, elite athletes and even sport. It isn’t about criticising Sweeney’s body or telling women what they should wear. Creating another set of rules about how women should present themselves simply keeps the focus on women’s bodies.

The more useful question is why we give appearance so much importance in the first place.

Our bodies allow us to work, play sport, hug people we love, travel, create, rest, recover and experience the world. But we are much more than our bodies. We are our relationships, personalities, abilities, interests, experiences and values.

This doesn’t mean we have to stop caring about how we look. The aim is to stop allowing appearance to carry so much weight in how we judge ourselves and others.

Sport gives us a powerful opportunity to practise this. Instead of focusing on what a body looks like, we can notice what it allows a person to do.

If this article raises issues about body image or eating concerns for you or someone you know, contact the Butterfly Foundation on 1800 33 4673 for free and confidential support.

Vivienne Lewis, Clinical Psychologist and Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

September 19 marks International Talk Like a Pirate Day, an annual event that sees children and adults the world over play pretend, usually by donning a long coat and leather boots – perhaps a cutlass – and a wig of long, unruly hair spilling out from under a tricorne hat. And saying “arr” a lot, of course.

As a pirate historian, I’m sorry to report this vision is disappointingly limited. While popular culture has settled on a narrow stereotype, the oceans were once crowded with all manner of pirates – from Caribbean raiders, to Chinese fleet commanders and Southeast-Asian Muslim seafarers.

Blackbeard’s legacy

The term “pirates” refers to people who launch attacks from the sea to take what isn’t theirs. So labelling a group as such involves making a moral judgement about their activities, and characterising them as illegitimate.

In the early-modern era, from the 16th to 18th century, who was named a “pirate” came down to who was doing the naming.

Today’s popular depictions of pirates are influenced by real marauders, including Bristol-born Englishman Edward Teach (1680–1718), also known as Blackbeard, who featured in Captain Charles Johnson’s 1724 book A General History of the Pyrates.

Blackbeard and his ilk have played an outsized role in cementing our collective image of pirates, as has Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1883 novel Treasure Island.

Blackbeard rose to infamy during the “golden age of piracy”, which roughly spanned the 1650s to 1720. This era saw escalating pirate attacks on ships and settlements on Caribbean islands and the Atlantic coast of the Americas.

Pirates stole human captives, silver, gold, and whatever valuable objects they could grab. Atlantic pirate crews, including Blackbeard’s, were multi-ethnic, bringing together Europeans and people of African descent.

While some enslaved people found freedom on pirate ships, colonial archives tell us pirate gangs also captured slaves and kept them in bondage at sea.

Only some Caribbean pirates would have spoken English, and fewer still with the thick West Country English accent mimicked in pirate-speak today. According to Alexander Exquemelin, a French surgeon who joined a Caribbean crew in the late 1600s, “the greatest part of the pirates are skilful in the Spanish tongue”.

Large-scale pirate attacks were mostly suppressed in the Atlantic in the 1720s, when rival European imperial powers worked together to fight these “common enemies of mankind”. However, in other parts of the globe, including the Pacific, piracy was not so easily defeated.

Pirates from Imperial China

In the 17th century, massive Chinese pirate fleets grew powerful in maritime Asia. The largest of these was controlled by the Zheng family.

By mid-century, the Zheng group, led by Zheng Chenggong, who Europeans called Koxinga, was making more money than the Dutch East India Company. Zheng Chenggong was born in Hirado to a Japanese mother and Chinese merchant/pirate father. He was likely fluent in Japanese and Hokkien.

In 1662, Zheng Chenggong seized Taiwan and expelled the Dutch, celebrating the feat by commissioning the portrait below. The pirate chose to be portrayed as a virtuous emperor, seated on an armchair draped in tiger skin to underscore his strength.

He died before he could fulfil his plans to attack Manila.

By the end of the century, China’s Kangxi emperor, the 3rd emperor of the Qing dynasty, had largely suppressed Chinese piracy.

Unsung Southeast Asian anti-heroes

In the 18th century, “Moro pirates” posed the greatest threat to Spain’s Asian empire. Spaniards used this term to describe Muslim maritime forces from the Southern Philippines and islands across the Sulu Sea.

Moro pirate fleets could incorporate dozens of long boats such as caracoas and prahus, and carry thousands of sailor-warriors armed with kris, a distinctive Filipino asymmetrical dagger or sword, and a small cannon known as lantaka. Most of these pirates would have spoken Austronesian languages, including Tausug and Maranao.

Moro fleets approached enemies while flying brightly coloured silk banners, and banging cymbals and drums to keep rowers in rhythm.

When villagers spotted the pirates approaching, they sought refuge in fortified churches or fled to the hills. The pirates came ashore and laid siege to towns for days, before making off with captives and plunder.

Although they’re barely known outside the Philippines today, Moro pirates resisted Spanish conquest and Christianisation for centuries – a record that earns them a place alongside the Atlantic’s celebrated pirate anti-heroes.

Then came the redcoats

In 1762, a combined British Royal Navy and East India Company naval force attacked Spanish-controlled Manila. It was the height of the Seven Years’ War, a global conflict that embroiled major European powers and their overseas colonies.

The invaders laid siege to the colonial city for three weeks before artillery fire caused a breach in the city walls. They then looted Manila for two days and nights, stripping bare churches and homes, and even opening graves to steal jewellery.

Terrorising locals, the invaders executed three men who tried to protect their property – hanging their rotting corpses on the cathedral’s metal gates.

Spaniards labelled these British enemies “pirates”, too. They followed the established playbook: coming from the sea and taking what wasn’t theirs.

Among them were some 1,000 South Asian soldiers recruited from British colonial outposts in India, as well as Englishmen in red coats. The latter are easily spotted in the below painting, commissioned to celebrate the Spaniards’ eventual victory in the Philippines war.

So the next time Talk Like A Pirate Day rolls around – or Halloween, or Book Week, or any excuse for a costume party – it might be worth ditching the black beard for a faux tiger skin, silk banner, or British-style red coat.

Kristie Patricia Flannery, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In the final moments of Steven Spielberg’s 1981 film Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, the mystical Ark of the Covenant is stored in an enormous, box-filled warehouse.

How did the filmmakers create such a huge set? The truth is, there is no set: it’s a painting.

The technique of matte painting has been used in some of cinema’s most incredible moments – and it can leave you doubting what’s in front of your eyes.

What is matte painting?

Matte painting involves combining live-action footage with still painted images to create a single, seamless image.

The technique is popular because it is able to create huge, convincing scene environments at a low cost.

The secret sauce, though, is the talent of the individual painters, whose mastery of texture and shading produces convincingly photo-realistic images.

Matte painting does have limitations, though, such as restricting how much the camera can move. Going too far out means transcending the painting’s boundaries and breaking the illusion.

This is why German director Fritz Lang used complex combinations of scale models and mirrors to create his science fiction world of Metropolis (1927).

Filmmakers over the decades have developed technical and creative techniques to use matte painting within more complex, moving shots.

Early matte painting

One of the pioneers of matte painting in cinema was the silent film director Norman Dawn. Dawn’s 1907 film Missions of California depicts various dilapidated mission buildings. To “repair” these building, he painted their missing parts on a sheet of glass, and lined it up between the scene and the camera while filming.

But there was a practical problem with this technique. It required giant sheets of painted glass to be placed on set. It was also very difficult to create paintings in advance that lined up perfectly with the scene.

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Dawn solved this problem by replacing the painting with a frame that had sections blacked out. This blocked parts of the scene from being exposed on film, making them appear as blank spaces. The combination of exposed footage and unexposed sections within the frame is called the “matte”.

The matte was then projected onto a glass panel in a studio, and an artist painted over the gaps. The glass panel and the original matte print were both exposed onto a new film reel to produce the combined image.

New technologies refined this process. The invention of colour film enabled “travelling mattes”, which used detailed, full-motion cut outs of individual actors. These were created using techniques similar to green screen today.

Mary Poppins (1964) provides a great example, optically combining Julie Andrews with matte paintings of London to create the illusion of her flying.

Industrial light and magic

Many of the most famous matte paintings were created by visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). They combined multiple layers of matte painting and included elements such as physical 3D models and photographs.

These techniques enabled more complex movement, making the result more convincing. It was ILM’s matte painters who defined the look and feel of the original Star Wars trilogy (1977–83), thanks to their depiction of the planets Hoth, Endor and Bespin.

In 1985, ILM pioneered the first use of digital matte painting in the film Young Sherlock Holmes. Instead of painting on glass, the image was virtually painted using computer software. This was the start of a complete overhaul of how matte painting would be used in filmmaking.

The impact of digital technology

Today, actual paint is rarely involved. Matte paintings are created digitally from different elements – including scanned drawings, photographs, virtual 3D models and digital drawings. These assets can be used in multiple shots, resulting in greater efficiency.

Digital video also allows for matte painting to be done directly on top of footage, removing the need to combine frames afterwards. And because digital techniques are non-destructive, changes can always be made, while maintaining the original visual quality.

With new virtual production technologies, such as the StageCraft LED screen used on The Mandalorian, (2019–23) matte painting can now even be incorporated into a scene while it is being shot.

Is digital matte painting better?

There’s no competition between traditional and digital matte painting in terms of speed. The famous Raiders of the Lost Ark warehouse painting took three months to complete – far longer than a digital workflow.

However, some feel there is a trade-off. Visual effects work now involves collaboration between several highly technical roles. Some artists think this can dilute the creative vision, compared to having a single painter.

While it is possible for a single artist to hand-draw a matte painting digitally, contemporary workflows typically prioritise efficiency.

Digital matte paintings are now often combined with other techniques such as CGI to create entirely virtual sets, rather than augmenting or building on real environments.

This can impact performers, too. For instance, actor Ian McKellen reportedly found the shift from The Lord of the Rings’ physical sets to The Hobbits’ green screen studios distressing.

While the materials and techniques have changed, matte painting remains a valuable storytelling device and a powerful filmmaking tool that can transport us into worlds beyond our reality.

Andrew James Couzens, Lecturer in Digital Media, CQUniversity Australia and Jim Picton, Head of Course Digital Media, CQUniversity Australia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Last week, the peak body for Australian universities called on the federal government to introduce concession cards and further discounts to all domestic uni students.

Universities Australia says the measures would ease cost-of-living pressures for students. Under the proposal, international uni students would also receive public transport concessions.

It comes after the peak body released data in June showing, since 2021, students’ basic living expenses jumped by 29%. Universities Australia said this figure was “well above economy-wide inflation” of 24%.

How do concession cards work again?

Concession card holders in Australia need to meet certain eligibility requirements in order to receive them. These requirements might be based on low-income status, disability and age (for pensioners). There are also various concessions for veterans offering different benefits.

Concession card holders receive discounts, subsidised by government, for everyday necessities such as medicines, public transport and utility bills and, in some cases, for car registration.

Some domestic uni students qualify for concession benefits through Health Care cards, Austudy, ABSTUDY or Youth Allowance. However, enrolling in university alone does not mean a student qualifies for these discounts. For uni students, eligibility for public transport discounts also differs between states.

The reality for students

Many uni students have to juggle the costs of tuition, housing, transport and groceries usually while working casually or in a part-time role.

Research published in May found one in three surveyed Australian uni students experience serious financial hardship.

My research with colleagues published last month mirrors these findings.

We surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2,731 people aged 18–24 about their education, wellbeing and finances between 2021 to 2025. About 48% of participants were studying full time and 22% were part time in vocational education, university or another tertiary institution at the time.

Struggling to afford basics

In our survey, food insecurity surfaced as a major problem for young people. This is when someone cannot access affordable, nutritious and culturally appropriate food. The most common cause for food insecurity was a lack of money.

We found, on average, about one in five young Australians experienced food insecurity between 2021 and 2025 – most of whom were students.

Over the five years, respondents who said they couldn’t afford or access healthy or nutritious food fluctuated between 58% and 69%. More than 50% reported they had to skip meals and were worried they would not have enough food to eat. The proportion of young people who went without eating for a whole day ranged from 49% in 2021 to 42% in 2025.

About 82–90% of participants reported experiencing financial difficulty every year. Of course, these pressures are not confined to this age group, and can affect students of all ages.

Another 2026 Australian study surveying university staff showed they observed 51.5% of students going without medical treatment due to financial difficulties.

What is the government currently doing to help?

The government has taken some steps to help with uni costs already. It wiped $3 billion in student HECS-HELP debts and increased rent assistance in 2023 and again in 2024.

At the same time the Job-ready Graduates scheme, which came into effect in 2021, has increased the cost of law and business degrees and doubled the cost of arts degrees.

Easing debt is only one piece of the mosaic of financial distress experienced by many students. These measures don’t necessarily make university financially viable while students are studying.

Financial stress can make it too hard for students to attempt or finish their studies. The government recognises university course completions are associated with lower financial stress for students.

Should more domestic students receive support?

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare estimated about 172,000 students aged between 16–64 received Youth Allowance, Austudy or ABSTUDY payments as of March 2025. The most recently published government data shows 1,086,789 domestic students were enrolled in higher education in 2024. This equates to just under 16% of domestic students receiving Youth Allowance, Austudy or ABSTUDY around this period.

While these initiatives offer students financial relief, it’s worth noting that payments are below the poverty line.

Youth Allowance and ABSTUDY are also subject to parental means-testing. This means if a student is classified as a dependent (typically under the age of 22), their parent or guardian needs to provide their income details in a claim.

This income becomes a factor in determining how much financial support the student can receive, or whether they’re eligible to receive anything. Students are exempted from parental means-testing if their guardians receive particular government allowances.

Usually, students need to be studying full time to receive Austudy and Youth Allowance benefits.

System not up to scratch

Some student unions argue parental means‑testing incorrectly assumes parents or carers have arrangements with their children to support them financially. While some experts say students whose parents earn just above the income threshold may lock them out of payments.

All of this suggests the overall system is inconsistently targeted and not addressing broader cost‑of‑living challenges.

What next?

Expanding concessions to university students will cost money – so far, Universities Australia has not put a price tag on this. So the challenge will be funding concessions in a fiscally-tight environment.

But the federal government’s 2024 Australian Universities Accord also outlines its goal to increase Australia’s tertiary education qualifications from 60% to 80% by 2050. This means we need to find ways to support more students to study.

To reach its target, the government may need to consider easing daily costs for uni students now and into the future.

Lucas Walsh, Professor of Education Policy and Practice, Youth Studies, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Across parts of the internet where young men trade tips on self-improvement, the latest project is scent. Deodorant is out and washing less is in.

These “stinkfluencers” promise that the right aroma will work wonders on attracting a mate.

But while humans can find smells pleasant, or malodorous, or something in between, there’s no evidence we can detect and respond to pheromones, let alone produce one.

Many animals communicate with pheromones, often around sex or marking territory. The problem is what happens when you look for the same sensory hardware in humans.

What is a pheromone?

A pheromone is a chemical messenger made inside the body of one member of a species, such as a cat, that’s secreted or excreted and reliably produces a response in another member of that same species.

It’s like openly broadcasting a chemical signal that is then picked up and acted upon by someone else.

Pheromones were first identified in silk moths back in 1959. That chemical, bombykol, is a sex-attractant released by female silkmoth to draw in mates.

A male silkmoth exposed to this pheromone will beat his wings and walk upwind toward the source. He doesn’t have a choice in the matter and his response is inbuilt, not learnt.

Other animals, such as mice, pigs and cats, release and can sense pheromones. The purpose is usually to attract a mate or mark territory.

Not all animal pheromones have a fragrance

A pheromone isn’t defined by whether you can smell it or by which organ picks it up.

Some pheromones are volatile and smellable. Bombykol, for example, is detected by ordinary smell (olfactory) receptors on the moth’s antennae.

Others aren’t detectable to us at all, such as the feliway diffusers people plug in to chill out their cats.

What makes a chemical a pheromone is the reliability of the response it produces in members of the same species. Not whether it has a fragrance.

Humans don’t have the anatomy to receive the message

For a pheromone to be functional, something has to be able to receive it.

In many four-legged animals, that job falls to the vomeronasal organ, a small structure in the nasal cavity. It’s wired to a dedicated processing station in the brain called the accessory olfactory bulb.

But it doesn’t have to be a dedicated organ. Plenty of pheromones are picked up by the ordinary smelling infrastructure – the lining of the nose in mammals, or, in the case of the silk moth, receptors on the antennae.

Some humans have a vomeronasal pit. But from birth, there are no nerve cells in it connecting to the brain, and no accessory olfactory bulb for a signal to report to.

What’s more, no chemical has ever been found in humans that meets the criteria to be labelled a pheromone.

Can’t sweat do something similar?

So if the signal isn’t there and we couldn’t receive it anyway, could the answer be in our sweat?

Not likely.

For a start, fresh sweat is practically odourless. Sweat is just a mix of 99% water, electrolytes (salts) and then tiny amounts of urea, ammonia and other compounds.

If you stay sweaty and avoid washing yourself, eventually that sweat will provide a cosy breeding ground for bacteria, and that will start to cause a stench. It’s unlikely to be an attractive odour.

But people can find smells attractive, of course. Though this is more likely to be due to positive associations, such as fancying someone or being romantically involved with them.

What about the T-shirt study?

In a 1995 study that gets a lot of play in the pop-psych and maxxing communities, male students wore a T-shirt for two consecutive nights after not washing with soap or using deodorants or other fragrant products.

Female students sniffed and rated six T-shirts each.

Both groups of students had also given samples for gene testing. Each woman was given three shirts worn by men whose major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes (the ones her immune system uses to recognise invaders) were similar to her own, and three worn by men whose MHC genes were different.

The main result implied women preferred the smell of T-shirts worn by men with different MHC genes. But, among women taking the contraceptive pill, the preference switched. They rated men with similar genes as smelling better.

The interpetation was that women could sniff out men who are “immune-system compatible.” In other words, people with more variety in their MHC genes have more tools to fight off infection. So being attracted to mates whose MHC genes are different from yours means any resulting children will have stronger immune systems.

The idea didn’t come out of nowhere. Mate choice is influenced by scent in many other vertebrate species, and MHC has a role.

But the study doesn’t hold up well

Despite how T-shirt study caught the public imagination, there are two problems for pheromone maxxing.

First, the results don’t hold up all that well. A 2020 meta analysis of all the studies that tested for MHC-odour effects in humans found no overall effect.

It also found evidence of publication bias. That happens when people get more exited about publishing their positive results, and when journals prefer the eye-catching stories.

We suggest that showering with soap and using deodorant is still the best route to maxxing olfaction-attraction.

Samuel Cornell, Research Fellow in Public Health, The University of Queensland and Rob Brooks, Scientia Professor of Evolution, UNSW

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

You’re standing in the skincare aisle and pimple patches are everywhere – clear ones, flesh-coloured ones, stars, hearts. They promise to flatten a pimple overnight.

Then there are those satisfying social media videos where someone peels off a pimple patch to reveal a much calmer-looking pimple underneath.

But do pimple patches actually work? And what are they really doing to your skin?

What’s a pimple?

A pimple forms when a hair follicle gets clogged with oil, dead skin cells and bacteria, causing inflammation, redness and sometimes a pus-filled head. You might also hear a pimple called a “spot” or a “zit” – these are just names for the same thing.

“Acne” is the name for the broader skin condition of getting pimples recurrently (along with blackheads and whiteheads), rather than a word for a single pimple.

In this article we’ll mostly stick to “pimple” for an individual lesion, and use “acne” only when we’re talking about the overall condition.

Pimples affect an estimated 20.5% of people worldwide at any one time, and up to 80–85% of adolescents. This makes it one of the most common skin conditions.

What are pimple patches?

Pimple patches look like a TikTok-era invention, but the underlying technology isn’t. They’re based on hydrocolloid dressings, which were developed decades ago for wound care. Then dermatologists began adapting them for skin conditions, such as acne.

Hydrocolloid patches caught on as a beauty product in South Korea almost 20 years ago before crossing into Western markets around 2012.

Today’s pimple patches are made from a hydrocolloid material – a gel-forming substance – which is often a blend of ingredients such as pectin, gelatin and carboxymethylcellulose. This bonds to a thin, flexible, waterproof outer layer.

The hydrocolloid absorbs moisture, so it can soak up fluid from a wound and hold it in place while the skin underneath heals.

On a pimple, the same process kicks in. Press the patch over a pimple with a visible head, and the hydrocolloid layer starts drawing fluid – pus, oil and dead skin cells – out of the pore and locking it into its gel matrix.

As the patch fills up, it turns white or cloudy, which is exactly what people are peeling off in those satisfying videos. The outer layer holds everything in place and keeps the area covered while this happens.

Pimple patches also act as a physical barrier. They cover the pimple, making it harder to pick, squeeze or touch it, which can otherwise introduce more bacteria and worsen the inflammation.

Some pimple patches are medicated, most commonly with salicylic acid. Others contain tea tree oil, niacinamide or benzoyl peroxide. Rather than simply drying out the pimple, these ingredients are meant to help exfoliate the skin, calm inflammation or target acne-causing bacteria.

You can buy pimple patches at supermarkets or pharmacies, typically for about A$6–20 a pack, depending on the brand and whether they’re medicated (medicated patches typically cost more than unmedicated ones).

Do they actually work?

A 2025 review found most evidence for hydrocolloid patches comes from wound care, not for pimples specifically.

Of the handful of studies on pimples, many are small and industry-funded that test the brands’ own patches. Often these studies are not “blinded”. This means either the researchers, participants or both knew if they were using pimple patches, which risks skewing the results.

So while the early results are promising, the evidence for pimple patches is still limited.

One manufacturer-funded trial of 41 people found applying a patch to a pimple that had already come to a head and been popped improved its appearance in a day.

Another small industry-funded study followed 37 people over ten days. In two days, pimples covered with the patches were 35% smaller and looked 44% less less inflamed, based on a combined visual assessment of size and redness. Untreated pimples showed little change. By day ten, the treated pimples were also less likely to develop post-inflammatory pigmentation (dark marks on your skin after a pimple heals).

Patches seem to work best on pimples that already have a visible white or yellow head. That’s because the pus sitting inside has already risen close to the skin’s surface, putting it within reach of the patch’s absorbent gel.

For the best results, apply to clean, dry skin and leave on for six to eight hours or overnight, swapping it once it turns cloudy and swollen. Afterwards, place your pimple patch in the bin.

Are they for me?

Pimple patches can be handy for the odd pimple. But they can only do so much, and they’re not for every pimple.

They don’t work well for deep, painful cystic pimples because the patch can’t reach inflammation that sits deeper in the skin.

People with darker skin tones may also need to be careful, as irritation can increase the risk of dark marks after a pimple heals. This can happen with any skin tone, but skin with more melanin tends to produce more pigment in response to inflammation or irritation, so the resulting dark marks are often more noticeable and slower to fade.

If you have sensitive skin or an allergy to adhesives, patches can cause redness, itching or a rash. Medicated patches containing ingredients such as salicylic acid can also be irritating.

My pimples aren’t getting better

If you’ve tried patches, cleansers and treatments for a few weeks and your pimples aren’t budging, it’s probably time to get some help. Likewise, if your pimples are deep, painful or starting to leave scars, don’t wait.

A GP can discuss your options, and if needed, refer you to a dermatologist to work out what’s driving your pimples and find a treatment.

Lisa Byrom, Associate Professor, Dermatology, School of Medicine, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Rib contouring – a cosmetic procedure aimed at creating a smaller, more defined waist – is one of the newer appearance trends on social media.

Influencers are sharing their experiences online, bringing a procedure many of us had probably never heard of into our social media feeds.

As a clinical psychologist specialising in body image and eating disorders, what interests me is not only this procedure, but what it tells us about the way our ideas about appearance develop in the first place.

It’s a type of ‘looksmaxxing’

Rib contouring involves fracturing, then repositioning, the lower ribs to alter the appearance of the waist. Ribs are not removed.

This is part of the broader trend of “looksmaxxing”, essentially trying to maximise your physical attractiveness. This might involve changing your hair, skincare or exercise routine, but can extend to cosmetic procedures and surgery.

While rib contouring might be new-ish, wanting a tiny waist certainly isn’t. Women have been encouraged to change their silhouette for centuries. Think of corsets designed to cinch the waist, or the hourglass figure associated with 1950s stars such as Marilyn Monroe.

The fashionable body has changed over time, but the message that women should work on their appearance is hardly new.

What social media has done is bring those messages to us more often and make new trends in appearance travel incredibly quickly.

Being exposed to social media content about ideals of what we should look like is linked to believing in these ideals, anxiety about your appearance, and considering cosmetic surgery.

Influencers add something different to the mix because they can seem much more like us than traditional celebrities.

On social media, we watch them get dressed, exercise and eat. They talk to us from their bedrooms and kitchens. When someone we follow changes their appearance, it can make doing the same seem more normal and achievable.

It invites us to compare ourselves

Social media content that focuses on our appearance also invites us to compare our appearance to other people’s.

For instance, engagement with beauty content on social media has been linked with people comparing themselves with those they think look better than them, and a greater consideration of cosmetic surgery.

Often this comparison is subtle. We see somebody else’s waist and suddenly notice our own. A feature we had never given much thought to can become something we inspect.

This is what I find particularly striking about rib contouring. Until recently, how many of us were thinking about our ribs as an appearance issue? Once we learn a part of our body can be altered, it can be surprisingly easy to start questioning whether ours needs changing.

Experimental studies have found exposure to appearance-focussed influencer content can make women less satisfied with their body. But this doesn’t mean we should judge somebody for considering rib contouring or any other cosmetic procedure.

Adults can make decisions about their own bodies, and wanting to change something about your appearance doesn’t automatically mean you have poor body image or a psychological disorder.

Why might someone consider rib contouring?

The more useful question is, what’s sitting behind the decision to consider rib contouring?

There is quite a difference between “I’d prefer my waist to look different” and “if my waist looked different, I’d finally feel good about myself”.

When we expect changing one physical feature to transform our confidence or self-worth, it is worth being curious about that expectation and questioning if that expectation is realistic.

At the more serious end, persistent distress about perceived flaws can be a feature of body dysmorphic disorder. This mental health disorder is more common among people seeking cosmetic procedures than in the general population. Body-image difficulties can also occur with eating disorders.

What if someone I know wants this surgery?

If your daughter, friend or partner tells you they are thinking about rib contouring, try not to rush in with “that’s ridiculous”, “you don’t need it” or even “but you’re beautiful”.

Although these comments may come from a good place, they can stop the person talking. Reassuring someone they are beautiful can also unintentionally bring the conversation straight back to whether they are attractive enough.

Try curiosity instead. Ask what has led them to consider it, how long they have felt this way and what they hope will be different afterwards. Ask what they have been seeing online and whether influencers or accounts have shaped how they now see their body.

It is also useful to notice whether appearance concerns are beginning to affect everyday life. Is the person checking their body repeatedly, comparing themselves constantly, avoiding photographs or clothes, changing how they eat or exercise, or withdrawing from things they normally enjoy?

We all look in the mirror

Having a positive body image doesn’t mean looking in the mirror and loving everything you see. Most of us have aspects of our appearance we would happily change. The important thing is being able to live comfortably in our body without believing it must meet an ideal before we can feel OK about ourselves.

Rib contouring may disappear or another looksmaxxing trend may replace it. Either way, when somebody we care about wants to make a significant change to their appearance, we don’t need to tell them what to do.

We can help them slow down the decision, understand where it has come from, and think about what they really hope will change.

If this article raises issues for you or someone you know, contact the Butterfly Foundation on 1800 33 4673 for information and support.

Vivienne Lewis, Clinical Psychologist and Senior Lecturer in Psychology, University of Canberra

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

In a world of doomscrolling and the prescriptive responses of AI, young people are increasingly turning to poetry: a form that is raw, honest and authentic. Poetry also invites the absurd and the experimental, making it a truly flexible way of facing both intimate and global complexity.

Around 24% of children and young people (aged eight to 18) read poetry in their free time at least once a month, a 2025 United Kingdom survey found. And around 18% said they wrote poetry in their free time at least once a month. Compared to results a decade earlier, poetry reading had increased. The survey found that poetry was “a way to express and process their feelings and emotions”, a “quiet refuge”, a “tool for voice and agency”.

There are no similar studies in Australia, but this passion for poetry among young people is evident here, too. It can be seen in their performances at poetry slams and pop-up events, readings at Sydney’s Sappho Books, Cafe and Bar and the memorably named Slugs in the North in Melbourne’s Coburg, and publications in chapbooks (a type of small, cheaply produced booklet), literary journals and on Instagram.

Young poets breaking out

K.J. Hayward was 16 when she performed at an open-mic night in Ballarat. Within a year, she had co-won the 2023 Australian Poetry Slam, on stage at the Sydney Opera House. (Solli Raphael was even younger when he won it in 2017, aged 12; he’s published three books since.)

Spoken word poetry appealed to Hayward, she told Radio National’s breakfast show in 2024, because she felt she had “lost her voice sitting at a desk every day”.

Hayward’s debut poetry collection, Puzzle, was published the next year, in 2024. It weaves stories of feminism, youth and her journey of the transition between “normal” school and home-school with the rap, rhythm and rhyme of slam.

The same year, she undertook a transnational collaboration with Aamani Kanda, the Young Poet Laureate for Coventry, UK, on a poem about body image, Scars. Their shared practice led her to realise that the two shared similar “worries, insecurities and concerns – even if we voice them differently”.

Last year’s Australian Poetry Slam champion, 23-year-old Arantza Garcia Ferrand, will publish her poetic collage memoir, Cotton-Filled, about being a queer Peruvian woman in Australia, with Pink Shorts Press next year.

Goorie and Koori poet and literary editor Evelyn Araluen was in her mid-twenties when she won the 2017 Nakata Brophy Prize for Young Indigenous Writers aged 30 and under.

This was followed by the Judith Wright Poetry Prize for New and Emerging Poets in 2018, then the Stella Prize for her debut poetry collection, Dropbear in 2022. She would go on to win the 2026 Victorian Prize for Literature, worth A$100,000, for The Rot, a collection exploring the violence of settler colonialism and late-stage capitalism.

Araluen told interviewer Annabella Luu that she also turned to external sources like Tumblr, blogging sites and Live Journal when writing The Rot, in order to better understand her teenage self. This kind of self-archival inquiry alongside a navigation of larger cultural histories is increasingly common among younger writers and artists.

Narungga poet playwright Mali Harkin-Noack, aged 17, is on the editorial committee of Adelaide’s Splinter Journal, where her poetry was published in its First Nations issue last year. Her poetic essay grieving the effects of South Australia’s algal bloom was published in Cordite last year.

DIY readings and publishing

Melinda Bufton, CEO and publisher of Australian Poetry, points out that younger poets often hold public poetry reading nights (or reading series) that have “a real sense of immediacy” and a “positive ‘pop-up’ feel”. With these kinds of events, young poets might find a location through friends, arrange a few readers, and publicise quickly on socials, she says. Audiences may include non-poets, too – these events are social.

In Melbourne right now, there’s Fitzroy’s Ad nauseam, Coburg’s Slugs in the North and the circulating Round Table Readings.

Monthly reading series Bad Flaneur, founded in late 2024, is run from the upstairs band room of Bar Open, Fitzroy. Founded by American poet David Motamed, former host of Ratbag Poetics on Hobart’s Edge Radio, and Aotearoa New Zealand born poet Zarah Butcher-McGunnigle, it crosses generations – and often has elements of irreverence.

In Sydney, Sappho’s is a monthly reading series, named for the Glebe bookshop where it’s held. Having been hosted by poet Toby Fitch for a decade and now organised by Dave Drayton, Sarah Attfield and Anne Casey, it includes an open-mic section.

Adelaide’s monthly series, No Wave, held at the inner-west Wheatsheaf Hotel, was started by poet Dominic Symes in 2018. A series of guest poets now curates the reading line-up. The Ern Malley reading series, in Adelaide’s Stepney, (which began in 2023) has featured emerging writers like 30-year-old Olivia de Zilva, whose debut poetry collection, Sick Note, is published next month.

And in Canberra, the Poetry to Pay the Rent reading series joins readings with community fundraising. The latest event, hosted at Fyshwick bookshop Book Runner, raised funds for the NSW/ACT Aboriginal Legal Service and Palestine Australia Relief and Action.

Some reading series combine with small press journals, zines, and anthologies. In Melbourne, there’s Daniel Ward’s No Purchase. Sick Leave, an event series started in 2018, now focuses on publications too. Similarly, Subbed In started as a backyard reading series in Sydney in 2015, and has since developed into an extensive small press, featuring working-class, queer and First Nations writing.

Opportunities for young and emerging poets

Cordite Poetry Review is one of many journals and book publishers that offer regular opportunities for emerging writers – a category that spans all ages, but is often a good point of entry for young people. Tell Me Like You Mean It, the eighth of its annual chapbooks showcasing emerging writers, was published in March.

Express Media is Australia’s dedicated literary organisation for people under 30. Its flagship journal, Voiceworks, is made by writers, editors and artists aged 25 and under. Bestselling poet and author Maxine Beneba Clarke is just one of the successful Australian writers with roots there.

Red Room Poetry runs Poem Forest, a free national nature writing program for students, their teachers, and parents or guardians, in partnership with Woollongong City Council. A tree is planted for every poem received, linking the wellbeing potential of poetry with the healing of habitats.

Red Room’s new Youth Poet Laureate program will support a Youth Poet Laureate (aged 18–25) from every Australian state and territory to join a curated mentorship program. This will complement Australia’s inaugural Poet Laureate, to be announced later this year.

The Emerging Writers Festival, held annually in Melbourne, has long supported new and young writers. So has the National Young Writers Festival, based in Newcastle, an annual gathering of young writers next happening in 2027.

Melbourne poet Addis Grande says poetry’s primary attraction is in what it can do as a form, rather than as personalised stories about “you or your friends or sex or beer”. Grande finds that fellow writers have an honesty: “There’s not room to hide bad art in poetry, and people will let you know. I could see that being appealing to young people. It is to me”.

Ultimately, poetry’s capacity to test language and form is key to its resurgence in popularity. Its capaciousness makes poetry possible for young people (and, indeed, all of us) to navigate a world in polycrisis. It can provide a means of refusal, survival, wonder, or connection – and to imagine, variously, what might come next.

Ann Vickery, Professor in Writing and Literature, Deakin University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Mary Genevieve Gaudron, the first woman judge on the High Court of Australia, has died aged 83.

Known for her courage, integrity and compassion, Gaudron brought her fierce intellect to bear on some of the nation’s most significant legal cases. In the process, she helped change the legal profession and became an inspiration to many young women lawyers.

Early life

Born in Moree in country New South Wales in 1943, there is a famous anecdote about young Mary that came to exemplify her career and her impact on the country.

In 1951, then opposition leader “Doc” Evatt was in Moree to campaign for the “no” vote on a referendum to outlaw communism. Eight-year-old Mary famously approached him and asked “please sir, what is a constitution?” She was not impressed when he gave her a copy, finding it to be a rather flimsy document.

But the image of that clever young working-class girl seeking out a copy of the Constitution from a figure such as Evatt speaks to the significance of the trajectory of her life achievements.

When Australia’s Constitution was drafted, it could scarcely have been imagined that someone like Gaudron would exercise legal authority within it.

Legal career

Gaudron entered Sydney University law school in 1961, graduating in 1965 with first-class honours and the university’s Medal for Law. She was the second woman to be awarded this honour (after another eminent lawyer, Elizabeth Evatt), and the first to do so as a part-time student.

She married and had her first child while still at law school, where she faced barriers as someone who did not fit the mould. After marrying she was forced to leave her part-time job at the Crown Solicitor’s Office because of the rule that married women were not permitted in the public service.

Gaudron had been told of an attempt by the vice-chancellor to award her medal to the male student who had come second to her, with the rationale being that because she was a wife and mother, the man would be more likely to make good use of the medal. Gaudron is reported to have said, “The only difference between us is that I sit down to pee.”

She made more than good use of the medal and was a woman of many firsts. She was the first woman appointed Queen’s Counsel in NSW, and the first woman to serve as solicitor-general in any jurisdiction across Australia. Then in 1974, she became the youngest person (and first woman) to be appointed a federal judge with her 1974 appointment to the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission as deputy president.

When Gaudron came to the Bar in 1968, her extraordinary academic record did not translate into an easy path to chambers. She was repeatedly refused a room simply because she was a woman, eventually sharing chambers with fellow pioneering barrister Janet Coombs.

As a barrister she successfully argued the Equal Pay Case for the Whitlam government before the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission. Yet she famously quipped “we won equal pay for equal work in 1967. We won again in 1969, and again in 1972, and in 1974. Yet we still do not have equal pay.”

Gaudron might be described as a larger-than-life figure. She had a brilliant legal mind with a sharp wit, a fondness for champagne, and a formidable temper — earning her the nickname “Mary the Merciless”. She also had an irreverent streak that made her anything but conventional.

Her appointment to the High Court occurred at a time when two vacancies arose more or less at the same time. This made it possible for then prime minister, Bob Hawke, to appoint a woman without making it appear as if he was pandering to “special interests”.

A trailblazer leaves a lasting legacy

Justice Gaudron keenly perceived the weight of expectations generated by her appointment to the High Court. As the first woman to sit at the apex of Australia’s judicial hierarchy, she well understood the historical significance of her appointment. This is partly reflected in her insistence at the time that she wanted to be seen as just “one of seven”. It is also reflected in comments she made ten years later that she did not want to be “the first and last” or give occasion for people to say “we tried a woman once and it did not work”.

In a speech she delivered in 1997 while a sitting judge, Gaudron spoke to some of tensions and challenges that existed for trailblazing women trying to fit in a system that was not made for them:

To be different, to challenge the codes of conduct derived, as often as not, from rules developed on the playing fields of Eton for the male members of the British aristocracy, would have been to invite ostracism, perhaps, even, the attention of the Ethics committee; to assert that women were different with different needs would have been construed as an acknowledgement of incompetence; to question the bias of the law would have been to invite judgement as to one’s fitness to be a member of the profession.

And, thus, very many of us became honorary men. We thought that was equality and, on that account, we rightly deserved the comment of the graffitist who wrote “Women who want equality lack ambition”.

Gaudron’s expertise in equality and discrimination theory meant her appointment to the High Court contributed to the development of a more sophisticated understanding of discrimination law. In the case Street v Queensland Bar Association, for example, she explained that discrimination is not simply about treating people differently: it can also occur when people in different circumstances are treated the same.

For many, her joint judgment with Justice Deane in the Mabo case is perhaps one of her most significant and memorable. Their Honours described past treatment of Indigenous Australians as “the darkest aspect of the history of this nation” and argued the “nation as a whole must remain diminished unless and until there is an acknowledgement of, and retreat from, those past injustice.”

Gaudron retired in 2003, well before the constitutionally prescribed retirement age of 70. In her farewell speech to Australian Women Lawyers, Gaudron remarked that leaving the Court was the best way of ensuring another woman was appointed. It was a comment that demonstrated some awareness of the prevailing gender politics of judicial appointment. At that time, it was thought perhaps there was only room for one woman on the High Court.

After her retirement she joined the International Labour Organization, serving as the president of its administrative tribunal from 2011 to 2014.

Although Gaudron maintained a commitment to law, and its possibilities to change and improve people’s lives, in retirement she was not keen to insert herself into public discourse or debate. She eschewed interviews with journalists, and did not cooperate with a biography of her.

She did however, attend the 2011 swearing-in of Nicola Roxon as Australia’s first woman attorney-general, and pose for a historic photograph with the other women “firsts” – the first woman prime minister, Julia Gillard, and first woman governor-general, Quentin Bryce.

When I began my law degree, Gaudron was the “one and only” – the slightest crack in the long-held notion that judging (especially at the very apex) was the proper business of men.

As someone who went on to write a PhD about gender and judging, she has always felt like something of a lodestar, perhaps made all the more magnificent for being brash and brilliant in equal measure.

Gaudron’s experiences of class, place, racism, gender discrimination, work and motherhood shaped the way she understood law and the world around her. Her legacy is distinctive not simply because she broke the barrier of the High Court, but because of the particular perspective she brought with her.

Kcasey McLoughlin, Associate Professor, University of Newcastle

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Collage is ancient, with roots going back to the invention of paper in East Asia.

In 12th century Japan, paper was used for calligraphy, and artists pasted different papers, fabrics and torn elements alongside their writing. They were interested in how calligraphy could be amplified or accentuated through different graphic compositions.

Paper was introduced to Europe during the late Middle Ages, when texts were painstakingly copied onto paper by hand. Around 1440, Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of movable type for letterpress printing created a huge demand for paper. Over the next few hundred years printing on paper spread around Europe.

By 1702, the world’s first daily newspaper was published, the Daily Courant, so cheap it could be thrown away – or, perhaps, used in creative ways – at the end of the day.

The word collage is from the French coller, “to glue” or “to stick together”. The artform was popularised by European artists in the early 20th century responding to the chaos of war such as George Braque, Hannah Höch and Pablo Picasso.

When they saw newspapers, propaganda posters and flyers, they saw art materials. Rearranged on a canvas, this work could subvert fascism and critique totalitarian regimes.

Collage is relatively cheap, fast and easy, so it moved between various distinct waves of Modern Art during the 20th century, including Surrealism, Dada, Cubism and Feminist Art.

While artists generally made individual works, it was a technique that was socialised through groups of thinkers and makers. In Germany, playwright Bertolt Brech collaborated in collage with his friends and visual artists such as George Grosz and John Heartfield.

Artists such as Man Ray and Elemérné Marsovszky cut and pasted photographs to bring a fragmented cultural landscape into view. Joseph Cornell represented shared experiences of anxiety and dislocation by challenging distinctions between painting and sculpture through collage.

Collage was a way for artists to reject the unachievable perfection of naturalism and realism, focusing on the messages communicated by the words and images already around them. Confronting reality and rearranging its material representations could create new meanings from fragments.

The world has not become less complex since these avant guard artists began reinterpreting what they saw. Australian collage artists are as committed as ever to confronting the world by cutting and pasting what they find in it.

Collage in Australia today

Contemporary Australian artist Deborah Kelly is known for her colourful, eclectic, activist art.

She uses collage extensively in her work to create posters, postcards, banners, billboards, installations, videos and performances.

In her recent project, C.U.L.T (Collaging Using Library Things), Kelly explored how materials discarded by libraries — books, journals and ephemera — could be repurposed into something new, meaningful and transformative.

Through her workshops, she gently invites participants to think differently with the materials in front of them. A participant might amplify the contours of a bodybuilder with butterfly wings; cut out the perfectly painted lips of a women’s magazine and recomposing them; create a “Dog Women with Alligator Fetus”.

This process disrupts gender norms and power structures. It encourages participants to write their own histories from their own perspectives. And rather than starting with a blank page, they can start with what they find around them, what makes them feel weird or uncomfortable, or what offers a sense of whimsy.

The Social Glue of Sydney is also focused on communal collage practice. They are committed to taking away barriers to serious art-making: time, space and money.

Their approach is to sit around a communal table and simply make collages. There is no leader and there are no constraints.

The collective recently held a major survey exhibition at the Chrissie Cotter Gallery, and works from the exhibition can now be viewed online by artist, or by themes such as “skulls, bones and anatomy”, “hands” or “tourist albums, pianola, etc.”.

The collective includes Mia Ardianto, whose surreal combinations of transnational family archives and magazines reflect years of playful experimentation in Australia and Indonesia, and Kathryn Bird, the self-proclaimed “devotee of medieval weirdness”.

Getting started on collage

Collage can be very therapeutic, providing a low-barrier outlet for self-expression. And for those who are feeling othered by the injustices and chaos of the world, it offers a medium for social commentary.

While the Social Glue of Sydney is unique, there might be collage collectives near you. And if you can’t find an existing group, you can go it alone, or start your own collective.

You are going to need a base to build on, such as a piece of cardboard or paper, some printed material, scissors and glue.

Begin with cutting out images or words that make you feel something: curiosity, anger, love or humour. Then combine these elements in new ways. Intuition is important – there is no wrong way to compose a collage.

Alexandra Crosby, Professor, Faculty of Design and Society, University of Technology Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Some of Australia’s most powerful policy institutions are now being led by female economists.

Between 2023 and 2026 came a remarkable run of firsts. Danielle Wood became the first woman to chair the Productivity Commission, Michele Bullock the first female governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), and Jenny Wilkinson the first woman to lead the Australian Treasury.

It might seem as though women economists have suddenly arrived at the top.

Yet these remarkable firsts began much earlier.

Did you know the first economics textbook used in Australian schools was written by a woman? In 1880, the writer, reformer and suffragette Catherine Helen Spence published The Laws We Live Under and it stayed on the curriculum for 20 years.

Or that Australian economist Marion Phillips became the first Australian woman elected to a national parliament – entering Britain’s House of Commons in 1929?

If these stories are unfamiliar, you are probably not alone.

A new book, Power in Numbers: Australian Women in Economics, by economists Melissa Bray and Catie Bradbear, tells the stories of 16 women who helped shape Australian economics.

Review: Power in Numbers: Australian Women in Economics by Melissa Bray and Catie Bradbear (Melbourne University Press)

Where are the women in economics?

Even today, economics remains stubbornly male-dominated. Women make up only around one-third of economists in Australia, and just 17% of economics professors.

Why does this matter? Because who becomes an economist can shape which questions are studied and which policies are recommended.

As Professor Betsey Stevenson writes in the book’s foreword:

Diversity matters because it gives us better perception, a better understanding of problems, of wants and needs, and of potential solutions.

And the pipeline is not encouraging. In the early 1990s, roughly equal numbers of girls and boys studied Year 12 economics. Today, boys outnumber girls by around two to one.

Part of the challenge is economics’ image problem. Reserve Bank research from 2021 found female students were less interested in economics, less certain they would be good at it and less clear about its career paths.

Role models matter and several women in the book supported women coming after them, including through the Women in Economics Network. By making these women and their achievements visible, the book can help younger women imagine a place for themselves in economics.

Their brilliant careers

The range is striking. Trailblazing policy reformer Meredith Edwards was the only woman in her economics honours class. She went on to become a key architect of child support, Austudy and HECS, reforms that affect millions of Australians.

In 2008, Besa Deda became the first female chief economist of an Australian bank at St George Bank. Former RBA assistant governor Luci Ellis later became the first at a big four bank (Westpac) in 2023.

The influence of female economists was not confined to Australia. Persia Campbell pioneered consumer economics in the US, arguing that economic progress should be judged by whether people’s basic needs were met and living standards improved – not just by economic statistics. She later advised US President John F. Kennedy and even had her own television show in the US in 1960s.

These are all exceptionally accomplished women. But that raises an uncomfortable question: how brilliant did a woman have to be just to enter spaces where men already belonged?

Did men have to be quite this brilliant?

Just a glimpse of the challenges

Power in Numbers deliberately does not dwell on the obstacles these women faced. There are glimpses – universities that did not admit women, jobs that were closed to them, and careers built in overwhelmingly male institutions – but the focus stays firmly on achievement.

The result is a celebratory account, rather than an even-handed one. That choice carries a risk: readers still confronting those barriers may fail to see their own struggles reflected in the stories.

The book’s admiring tone also comes through in its use of the women’s first names. At times it feels overly familiar for an account of their professional achievements.

The book would have benefited from photographs, particularly of the historical figures, putting faces to women whose stories have too often remained invisible. And for a book on Australian women in economics, an Australian economist might have been a more natural fit for the foreword.

Many ways to be an economist

Many of the women came from families that valued girls’ education and later found support from mentors and colleagues. But did they all come from similar backgrounds?

Far from it.

Some grew up in a farming community; others found economics by unexpected routes.

Leading businesswoman Jillian Broadbent, a former board member at Qantas, Woolworths and the ASX among others, never had a grand career plan. Yet her career took her from the Reserve Bank to chairing Australia’s Clean Energy Finance Corporation.

Again and again, these women were willing to take a leap when an interesting opportunity appeared, tackle difficult problems and move into unfamiliar territory.

Danielle Wood advises: “Be curious […] Read broadly” and “be brave” enough to defend your views, even when they differ from those above you.

What many also share is a desire to make a positive difference.

Policy reformer Meredith Edwards describes her career philosophy as pursuing positions in academia and the public service

where I believed I could effect improvements in public policy and where my mind and heart were at one.

I particularly enjoyed the questions about each woman’s “superpower”, advice and how she would like to be remembered.

Broadbent stresses looking after your health and not carrying emotional baggage. A similar message recurs: learn from setbacks, move on and keep going.

Taken together, these stories leave a powerful message: there is no single path into economics, and no single way to belong in it.

Duygu Yengin, Associate Professor of Economics, Adelaide University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Anyone who has ever woken up with a hangover will recognise its physical and psychological effects: headache, nausea, self-loathing, regret, and perhaps even some shame at the uninhibited behaviour that accompanied the intoxication.

In these days of smartphones, any shame experienced by the foggy memory of drunken behaviour the night before is invariably worse when there is photographic evidence online forever for all to see and judge. The old adage that the best thing for a hangover is not drinking too much alcohol the night before is of little help to the afflicted.

Drinking to excess has a long cultural pedigree. In Plato’s Symposium (circa 385-370 BC), which documents a drinking party where guests debate the nature of love, the disruptive drunkenness of the gatecrasher Alcibiades contrasts with Socrates’ capacity to drink to excess while staying sober and avoiding a hangover.

Worshippers of the Greek god of wine Dionysus, meanwhile, advocated intoxication as a means of reaching a state of transcendence. For example, in an ancient Greek collection of hymns addressed to various gods and attributed to the mythical poet Orpheus, Orphic Hymn 29 calls upon Dionysus to “give me in blameless plenty to rejoice”.

The Greeks and the Romans believed that it was dangerous and barbaric to drink wine undiluted. The ancient historian Herodotus wrote that Cleomenes I, the king of Sparta, went mad from drinking undiluted wine with Scythians – the much-feared and reputedly savage nomadic warrior tribes that originally hailed from ancient Siberia.

The Biblical Noah gets drunk on wine from the vineyard he planted after being spared from the flood. He is discovered lying in a drunken stupor in his tent by his son Ham, who promptly reports this to Noah’s other sons, his brothers Shem and Japhet. These two brothers cover Noah without looking at his nakedness. When Noah wakes up “and knew what his younger son had done unto him”, he curses Ham’s offspring.

Biblical scholars have interpreted Ham’s action (what he “did” to Noah) variously as voyeurism, castration or incestuous rape. According to researchers John Sietze Bergsma and Scott Walker Hahn, it’s specifically maternal incest since elsewhere in the Bible the nakedness of the father is synonymous with that of the mother.

Of course none of this explains why Noah feels blameless for getting drunk in the first place. The same question applies later in Genesis when Lot twice becomes so drunk that his daughters have sex with him on consecutive nights, and apparently without his knowledge, so that they might bear children. We are not told whether Noah or Lot are suffering from a hangover – although Noah’s irascibility certainly suggests one.

Christianity retained the ancients’ endorsement of moderate drinking, and made drunken loss of control into the sin of gluttony. Until the Reformation, wine remained special in medieval mainland Europe and Britain: transformed into the blood of Christ consumed by the priest as part of the Eucharistic offering and also a mark of secular rank.

Only the rich could afford to get drunk on wine. Although there were warnings in early modern English guides to living well about the health dangers of drinking too much wine, it was generally strong beer and ale – the cheaper tipples of the poor – that were blamed by the authorities for drunkenness and anti-social behaviour.

In medieval and early modern England, the ale-house was considered a den of iniquity, as is clear from William Langland’s 14th-century poem, Piers Plowman. The poem tells how the character of Gluttony is waylaid on his way to church by Betty the Brewster.

In the 16th-century guide A Compendious Regiment, or A Dietary of Health, author Andrew Boorde describes the effects of drunkenness, where “the wits or senses be dull … the appetite is withdrawn; the head is light, and doth ache”.

He is apparently referring to the effects of drinking too much ale or beer since he mentions “the malt worm [that] playeth the devil so fast in the head that all the world runneth round about on wheels”. The malt worm was a weevil that infested malt used in brewing and also a term used to describe a heavy drinker.

Hangover cures

Might our ancestors help today’s drinker cure a hangover? Then as now, the emphasis was mainly on prevention.

Boorde and his peers looked to the ancients to help forestall the unpleasant effects of excessive drinking. Classical authorities were regularly cited as recommending the consumption of certain foods before a drinking session, with almonds, cabbage, baked quinces, wormwood (absinthe) and even the lungs of a goat being thought beneficial.

They had tips on how to feel better after a surfeit of food and drink. Dietary authors recommended the benefits of moderate exercise, specifically walking, and sleep, with purging by vomit as a last resort.

Does modern science offer any hope of a reliable hangover cure? A recent paper in the journal Addiction found that the drugs tolfenamic acid and pyritinol, and the more readily available clove extract, all “merit further study”, although this is based on “very low quality evidence”.

The medieval dietary authors had praised cloves as restorative and good for stomach trouble. But perhaps any notion of a “cure” for a hangover is based upon the questionable premise that one can undo the self-induced damage to body and mind caused by a bout of heavy drinking.

In his entertaining book On Drink, first published in 1972, Kingsley Amis devotes a whole chapter to the hangover, referring to its physical and metaphysical (emotional, psychological) symptoms.

Amis offered advice on treating a metaphysical hangover with “hangover reading” and “hangover listening”: books and music that would induce a specific state of mind. He thought that “you must feel worse emotionally before you start to feel better”.

Experiencing rather than masking a hangover is essential to expiate the “sin” of excessive indulgence. This is not so far from the medieval ideal of mortification.

Joan Fitzpatrick, Reader in Renaissance Literature, Loughborough University

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