Mail & Guardian
Mail & Guardian
Zoe Williams

Creator

Zoe Williams

The Oscars whiteout is driven by racism – and greed

The Hollywood film industry has never tested the idea that a black actor could be more bankable than a white one

The injustice of miscarriage

We need to accept that things can go wrong and there is no place for blame or shame.

Cold comfort: Apple and Facebook have announced an egg-freezing programme for their women employees.

Hell is when Apple freezes ova

Forget freezing eggs – firms should welcome pregnancy as a chance to invest in its staff.

The outcome of the ANC’s long-awaited KwaZulu-Natal conference was a win for the Thuma Mina crowd. (Delwyn Verasamy/M&G)

Free from male manipulation

Kate Bush shows how women come into their own if men don’t mess with their creativity.

Groups are often accorded attention

Atheists: Excluded and overlooked

It’s not just refugee law. The low status accorded to unbelievers has now become a matter of systematic civic exclusion, writes Zoe Williams.

Puberty is not an indication of readiness for sex

Play-Doh to Playboy

A US study of 4000 children has shown that what we have long been wringing our hands about with girls is also true of boys.

Helloooo gentlemen: American swimmers Conor Dwyer

Ogling is an Olympic sport

An objectification amnesty has been declared for the duration of the Olympic Games – a smorgasbord of physical perfection, whatever your taste.

The Olympics is an ideal opportunity to promote safe sexual behaviour.

Olympics medal count excludes sex

Protecting athletes’ sexual health at the Olympics requires many years of planning. There are pool tables to distract them, for example.

Bestseller “Fifty Shades of Grey” will hit Japanese bookshelves this week in the hope of repeating the breathless success it has enjoyed globally.

Whipping up an S&M wet dream

Why oh why have the erotic fantasies in the ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ trilogy seduced millions of women?

Divide and rule, feminists

When we try to present a united front we are not asking too much of ourselves, we are asking too little, says <b>Zoe Williams</b>.

Smacking will never be right

Smacking will never be right

Parental duties must not be done in anger and corporal punishment is therefore not justified

Getting the bad news overload

Revolutions, earthquakes, famine, scandals and killings — the headlines keep coming relentlessly.

Strauss-Kahn is accused, but it’s the maid’s word on trial

The presumption of innocence is extended to defendants but any past infraction can be used to torpedo Diallo’s credibility.

Can a feminist rejoice in the likes of Beyoncé or Lagarde?

Can a feminist rejoice in the likes of Beyoncé or Lagarde?

Powerful women help society muddle towards equality — even if the R&B star is marriage-fixated and the IMF chief is a neoliberal.

The pill that changed the world

Scientist Carl Djerassi discovered the pill 60 years ago — and set the ball rolling from conception to contraception and back to conception again.

Health scare often just a brain scam

Health scare often just a brain scam

Misleading headlines about phones giving you cancer are rubbish. If we’re going to panic, let’s do it well and keep disbelief suspended.

The blush of youth

Maybe adolescents only went into embarrassment overdrive because the rest of us weren’t taking it seriously enough.

The long and short of it

Pictures of Sophie Dahl and her boyfriend, jazz musician Jamie Cullum, are deemed insufficient, by certain newspapers, to ram home what an unnatural pairing they make. The London…

Now working moms are raising fat kids

Children of working mothers are more likely to be obese, apparently. They sit at home, entirely alone but for a designated care-giver, thinking ”Where’s my mummy? Doesn’t she…

Of panties and posers

The celebrity magazine heat probably has it snappiest when it calls them, in its cover story, the ”no-knicker girls”. They are describing famous girls who go to parties without…