"I won't be resigning because I'm quite comfortable with what I said," Molony told the Townsville Bulletin. "Mount Isa, my city, has taken the Olympic Games off the front page of papers all over Australia and the world and I've never heard of that happening before…People have supported me everywhere and at the moment I feel like I'm sitting on the top of Mount Kosciusko."

Someone needs to explain the notion of negative attention to Mr. Molony. You know what other locales have made the front page of many papers? Three Mile Island and Chernobyl! Doesn't mean anyone wants to live in or visit your damn burg.

Anyway, the inimitable Kira Cochrane of the Guardian takes Molony's blustering as an opportunity to explore the stereotype that Australian men are chauvinists. We're all familiar with Australian-born Mel Gibson and his "sugar tits" rant, but Cochrane also points out examples of sexism in Australian media and politics. She quotes Labor leader Mark Latham, who was concerned that Australian men are having a crisis of masculinity, with "mates and good blokes" being replaced "by nervous wrecks, metrosexuals, knobs and tossbags." Hahahaha "knobs and tossbags"!! Sorry. Cochrane concludes that despite knobs like Latham, Australian society is no more chauvinistic than any other. What's more marked about the Aussies is their strong women. "The country has produced some of the world's most prominent feminists - Germaine Greer, Carmen Callil, Lynne Segal," Cochrane notes, and "In fact, if there's one aspect of the Mount Isa story that really stands out for me, it's the women's response…As we went to press, they were organising a protest rally on the lawns of the civic centre. Now, that's the spirit."

Ugly' Mt Isa Locals Turn On Publicity-Hungry Mayor Molony [Townsville Bulletin]
The Ugly Face Of Oz [Guardian]

Honestly, I think the most revolutionary thing we could do to halt the onward march of lookism is to stop giving assholes like this the time of day. In some ways, getting upset about it is just proving his point: if being called "ugly" is the biggest, most denigrating insult around, then we're just reinforcing the idea that being pretty is the most important thing. I bet none of you had ever heard of Mount Isa before he started blathering on about ugly women, and ultimately Molony is just the mayor of a bumblefuck town desperate for attention. I'm going to save my righteous indignation for bigger fish than this guy.

Aussie Outback Mayor Seeks "Ugly Duckling" Women [Reuters]
Australian Plea For 'Ugly' Women [BBC]

At first I thought Weldon was just being an asshole, because all children are beautiful to their parents, but then it got me thinking — how often do you hear a mother tell her son that he's handsome? Very rarely. Strangers hardly ever come up to a male child and comment on his looks, while a female child, nearly from the day of her birth, will have all manner of people chattering about her appearance (true story: a total stranger once came up to my aunt and told her my 3-year-old cousin was "unfortunate looking."). [True story: At a wedding last year, during a post-ceremony toast, the father of the bride went on and on about how lucky his son-in-law was because his daughter is "so beautiful". -Ed.]

Are parents just making their daughters narcissistic by telling her she's attractive? Are they setting her up for disappointment if she's not that attractive in reality? Or are they buffeting her against possible future low self-esteem?

Looks Aren't Everything? Don't Kid Yourself [Times of London]

But even if more books are written and purchased by women (Byatt's assumption that schoolchildren are taught more women's literature is just wrong...look at any high school reading list), the fact remains that only eleven women have won the Nobel Prize for literature, and that novels focusing on "women's issues" continue to be critically underrated. In the past ten years, three women have been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (for those counting at home, that's 30%). Even the judges of the Orange Prize themselves are complaining about excessive number of "domestic dramas" written by women.

Kirsty Lang, the chair of a panel of judges (including, um, Lily Allen!) for the Orange Prize, told the Guardian, "Reading 120 books I did find myself thinking, 'Oh god, not another dead baby'...There were a hell of a lot of abused children and family secrets." But then Lang corrects herself, saying, "Yes, there were a lot of domestic dramas. Do I have a problem with that? Not really. Most fiction readers are women and we like our reading to reflect our experience. Women will write about domestic life because that is the reality of women's lives. I'd like to say the opposite, but it wouldn't be true."

But what makes one book inherently more valuable than any other? Does a subject matter of politics or war make for a categorically "better" novel than one about "abused children" and "family secrets?" Shouldn't the quality of the writing and the structural integrity of a book be the most important thing? Until all books are judged equally, I don't have a problem with women getting their own cash prize for fiction. Harriet Hastings, the "project director" of the Orange Prize had the best attitude towards the critics, "Although major prizes have been won by women, the value of the Orange is as a celebration of women's fiction." I'll drink to that.

Women's Fiction Prize 'Infected By Misery Memoirs' [Times of London]
Tim Lott: Orange Prize For Women Is Sexist [Telegraph]
Women's Fiction Prize 'Infected By Misery Memoirs' [Guardian]