Train-wreck article of the weekend: the profile on Collette Dinnigan in The Weekend Australian Magazine. Oh. My. God. The writing. Horrifying. Rolling eyes all around for the "gossamer-light confections" and "exquisite understatement" quotes. Trust me, they're even more terrible in context. And ew, Joy Smithers. What a tool. I'm sorry, but if you say stuff like "Collette's the hardest working person and I think a lot of that came from when her mother died. She really threw herself into it to ease the pain", etc., you should not have friends. You are lame. Really really lame. Anyway, the most egregiously painful section was the writer's take on Collette's mother's garden. "A creative free spirit, she planted a wild garden where lush tomato vines tangled with flowering rose bushes and plump lettuce heads sprouted underneath..." Puke puke puke.

Anyway, I forgot to bitch about how fucked up I think the decision to remove that cool TV ad with the tennis coach and the girls turning into Serena Williams - out of 'sensitivity' or something to the Gavin Hopper case - is. I'm not just pissed off because I think the ad is cool and I want it on my tele, although it really is very very cool. No, I'm pissed off because the thinking behind the decision is just hideously wrong. To say that the ad is uncomfortably similar or 'too close' to the case is just, like, fuuuuck! Because, um, there is a HUGE difference between a situation in which girls have a crush on their older tennis coach, and one in which the tennis coach has sex with them. Like, there are laws against the latter because IT'S DIFFERENT! And to equate the two by going "ooh, creepy, look at the way the girls are looking at him" just reinforces that nutso thinking about girls being complicit in their sexual abuse/pressure from older men who they happen to have a crush on. Having a crush on your tennis coach isn't necessarily a factor in your being harmed by him. His decision to harm you is the significant thing. I can't believe people, like The Panel people, are praising the decision to drop the ad. I mean, christ! It is SO IMPORTANT that the two situations be distinguished from one another, rather than muddying them both together in the 'dodgy' file. One is DODGY and criminal, one isn't. We need to be completely aware of the MASSIVE DISTINCTION between the two. So yeah, I really think that decision was deeply fucked.