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What the Hell Is That! The Audacious Grotesquerie of ‘The Substance’ – Episode 177

In this episode, Dara is still reeling after watching Coralie Fargeat’s astonishing film ‘The Substance’, a scarifyingly vicious body-horror satire on the pressure that results from the extreme demands of celebrity and the beauty expectations inflicted on women. The film is centred around a TV fitness personality whose middle-age renders her undesirable in the eyes of the network. In a ferocious performance by Demi Moore we bear witness to the lengths a woman will go to to preserve her looks and corresponding status.

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Where the Magic Happens, or Winning in the Empty Spaces – Episode 44

In this week’s episode, Dara is set off by a tweet from a female account that first explicitly requests pictures of beautiful men – ‘rides’ is the term of desire used – and then disclaims accusations of objectification. Is objectification of men by women better, or less loaded, than objectification of women by men? Dara isn’t sure…

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If I can’t get love, I’ll take acceptance – Episode 17

In this episode, Dara reflects on body image and the objectification and commodification of female beauty and sexuality. He discusses the sexist rhetoric and dynamics that he has always found pervasive among many of the men he has known. Along the way, he revisits his own introduction back in the day to the sexualised female iconography of Playboy magazine.

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Beauty, mate!

  The photograph above was taken seven years ago during an acting workshop I took part in in the southwest of France. The workshop consisted of a week of methodical theatrical experimentation with the text of Cervantes’ Don Quixote and it was one of the best acting experiences I’d ever had. The French director, seated, was

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