It came from the LUSA entertainment organiser and was passed on to everyone on campus.

Totally sexist – girls are free!

But seriously I never thought I'ld…

I just want to repeat this. I agree with it. Vehemently. In a kind of scary 'backing away from the crazy person at the party who is ranting at you about something really important to them' way.

I may be familiar with this facial expression.

I think I may also…

feminism still largely blames men for everything

Forehead, meet desk. I despair.

How about 'not lying'? How about describing girls in some way where girls who DO experience sexual desire in their early teens can recognise themselves?.... But mostly, how about 'hey, you know what, everybody's different, and it's okay…

I've been told Romeo & Juliet were 14yrs old?

That sounds about right. Juliet's nurse swears by her virginty at twelve years old, which carries an obvious implication. But in England the age of consent was 12 until 1875. Most twelve year olds would have been working, and they wouldn't be…

And a little unsettled at the 14yr old model who sat for Hinemoa and is cast in bronze at the edge of lake Rotorua.

I think, to a degree, our sensibilities have changed in relation to our extended years upon this earth.

All young women deserve someone who sings love songs to them. I don't know if you get too much of that these days.

Call one a cock-eyed optimist, but I suspect there's a lot of teenagers out there who deserve a lot more credit that the grown-ups give them.

Not according to the latest Roy Morgan, taken before the budget. It’s to close to call between LGPM and NUA.

More to the point, do you think sexual predators will ask "Is that 'Future Porn Star' T-shirt for real, or an ironic post-feminist statement of sexual empowerment through Rophynol?'

Yes,…

It looks like it's the difference between entering puberty and starting periods that is the confusion.

Cheers, Aquila. It had indeed been a long time since I read it, and it switches between talking about puberty, periods, and the beginning and end of menarche. Hence the confusion.

I hate the…

And wow, it's amazing how a few years in the fashion…

And I don't think one should ever try to read anything into what a teenager says or how they act as being indicative of what they think. Teenagers habitually lie to keep their secrets or to appear cooler to their…

Which brings me to menarche (sorry.) I menstruated at 11, one of my sisters was…

I think more evidence of feminist intentions of magazine editors would need to be presented to support the reframed…

What really shocked me was the level of comment from your panellists.

I was shocked by Pebbles' comment that the models need to be 14-16 y.o. because by 17-18 your bum gets big and it all over. (Pebbles is 18 herself?)

I don't think anyone here would argue that calling yourself a feminist means that you are one. Or that it's a uniform movement, for that matter. Neither of which makes the "women are the authors of their own misfortune" argument any more valid.

That's a super paragraph.

What really shocked me was the level of comment from your panellists.

I hate the way sex education is gendered, so that it always ends up being 'girls are pressured innocent flowers, but boys are little horndogs'. It's insulting to both sides.

True, but what's the alternative? Telling boys that girls…

I don't think anyone here would argue that calling yourself a feminist means that you are one. Or that it's a uniform movement, for that matter. Neither of which makes the…

feminism still largely blames men for everything

I thought, and I could be corrected, that actual feminism, unlike your straw-feminism, blames a thing called "patriarchy", and it's perfectly possible, not to mention depressingly common, for women to be agents of the patriarchy almost as much as men are.

I'm sure…

Not the feminism I know.

Women are quite capable of making bad decisions that hurt other women, and the feminists I know would be calling them on it – and in the case of destructive magazines and the sexualisation…

I finally found some statistics – Section E pg 183 of NZ Food, NZ Children 2002 gives 3% of Maori girls and 1% of Pacific Island girls as starting menstruation at the…

Try being Gay

At least once.

I'm not convinced that it's constructive to have 'things we tell boys' and 'things we tell girls'.

This this this. Exactly. I hate the way sex education is gendered, so that it always ends up being 'girls are pressured innocent…

If children are bigger younger (not necessarily fatter, just being proportionately larger would do the trick) then…

Hell, if it can affect shellfish, and it does,…

And not only has the average age dipped, but the number of those who start puberty at the younger end of the range has increased.

Theories abound as to why the onset of puberty is moving earlier: unhealthy lifestyles and unstable…

Emma, do you have stats for the average age at first period in NZ being 10? I'm pretty sure it's closer to 12 3/4.

Meh, I hit it in a Listener article some months ago, and by then I'd already read it... somewhere.

Here we go:

According to the Ministry…

Dolly was what I read in a desperate attempt to fit in in the late 80s.

my 14 year old daughter returned from our Japan trip with a French maid's outfit

that's because Playboy is sooo passe these days — all the kids are wearing it.

I'm not sure 'fiercely independent' is compatible with the emotional shit-fest that is adolescence, and gender is pretty much irrelevant to…

Interview with Iti (in Dutch): http://www.indymedia.be/nl/node/27545

If you need anything translating, let me know.

WTF? You're not using contraception? Do you actually want a baby right now?

I don't know for sure, but I believe a lot of health educators feel that the calm approach is more effective, in the same way as not telling kids that one puff on a joint will turn…

Not withstanding the enlightened PAS female readership who were quite possibly fierce independent enlightened girls and realised early on that they were in charge ...

I'm not sure 'fiercely independent' is compatible with the emotional shit-fest that is adolescence, and gender is pretty much irrelevant to that.

So they got…

I was wondering if/when the PAS Laydees were going to weigh in. I've also wondered if 'mums' are more relaxed because they remember what it was like to be a girl, and 'dads' (with daughters) are less relaxed because they remember what it was like to be a…

Q: Whats the difference between a social liberal and a social conservative?

A: A teenage daughter.

They may well want kids, or be not too worried if they show up. Not what I'd do, but I'm…

And yes, wow . . .

And wow, it's amazing how a few…

We didn't end up using the reply to this one:

"I've been sexually active with my boyfriend for a couple of years. We don't use condoms but I have never fallen…

I was wondering if/when the PAS Laydees were going to weigh in. I've also wondered if 'mums' are more relaxed because they remember what it was like to be a girl, and 'dads' (with daughters) are less relaxed because they remember what it was like to be a…

I thought…

Then I had a daughter ... now I'm a born again Puritan.

This issue's one of those times when I feel like I might have dropped in from another planet. People keep telling me this will happen, but my daughter is eleven, I wasn't shocked by the Girlfriend content, and…

__LL:
No, you can't get pregnant that way. You shouldn't do it, because you could catch a very nasty nasal infection.

MC:…

Then thought it was probably something I didn't want to know more about.

And yet...

Pam Corkery's bum exploding is bad enough in text.

I'd still like to know more about this though. What the hell is going on in our society when exploding bums warrant only a passing mention in a blog post?

Not to name drop (which of course leads to doing it anyway) ... Once upon a time I used to work with Marty in…

Stella editor Emily Wilson, who kindly stepped in at the last moment, after Pam Corkery's bum exploded.

...

Other subjects include Tiki Taane, Jan-Marie, Kevin Milne, Pam Corkery and Mike Hosking.

I'm hoping that these two things occurred apart in time. Pam Corkery's bum exploding is bad enough in text.

Oops, that should be Craig, not Graig.
Sorry mate.

No harm, no foul. Me spulling and poof-riding rilly sux so cant complan. :)

Where's the politicians on these issues?

As far away as possible I hope, Andrew. One of the greatest Simpson characters is Helen Lovejoy, whose mantra ("Will someone please think of the children?!") is inevitably the prelude to an act of utter imbecility.

Finn's partner, Sophie, and Finn's dad, Sean, sent us down a heap of his old recordings and we used them in our film.

That's a really lovely thought. I can't wait to see it.

The only advice quoted from the magazine was how to french kiss. Hardly that shocking for teens.

There was also the advice on deceiving your parents and putting yourself in a risky position with some guy you hardly (go off the the beach where there's no one around!), and just…

He was in our team last year and we wanted to do something for him. Finn's partner, Sophie, and Finn's dad, Sean, sent us down a heap of his old recordings and we used them in our film.

I can remember a few years ago driving with…

Wouldn't it be great if we could affirm people's contribution to our lives, remember funny things…