#section: comment

If you are not a Fresher living on campus, you will already be well acquainted with our bus system and the Thorpe-Park-esque queues witnessed at Brougham Hayes in the morning. Last year these were improved upon slightly with the introduction of the X18, which cuts out the town part of the route. This year the U10 is now timetabled twice an hour, which is great news for those of us that live further from Oldfield Park. Despite this, however, completely full buses far before town remains very much a problem for those within the town centre and beyond, and Oldfield residents continue to unnecessarily experience the nightmarish rush hour traffic jams while packed like sardines.  Yet none of these issues take the cake for the most enraging and pressing transport complaint: namely, that the timetable appears to be as fictional as a Harry Potter book.

After my non-existent U10 bus debacle, the obvious thing to do (apart from going back to bed, hung-over and defeated) was to talk to my peers to see if they’d had similar experience with Wessex Connect. Maybe I’d been caught in a freakish accident involving an abducted bus driver? Perhaps there was a flower show in Southdown that day and traffic was hellish? Not so; upon discussion, it became obvious this was happening regularly, and to everyone. People have found themselves waiting half an hour in town for a service that was promised every 10 minutes or having to walk up the hill after realising that hitchhiking would probably have more success than waiting at Bathwick. Paying for a taxi to an important lecture has unfortunately had to become an option following another U10 never showing up, which is being the worst if you live far down the U10 route and have no other choice of bus.

How a woman reveals her body uproots so many assumptions deeply engrained in society. Last month in Steubenville, Ohio, a young girl was raped and assaulted by two footballers. While she was completely unconscious and bystanders watched, the two young men posted explicit details on twitter. Despite this, victim-blaming comments on social media appeared, describing her as ‘a loose drunk slut’. This yielded sympathy for the rapists, as ‘they did what most people in their situation would have done’.  As this girl was attractive and dared to expose her legs while at a party, she lost ownership of her body. This sends out a clear message to women; you cannot dress or look how you want to. Feminists using their body to expose this inequality, reply to this oppression using a clever tactic that angers and disturbs men most of all – my body is mine and I can do what I like with it.

The media focusing on a narrow type of a nineteen year old with a banging body has a cascade of ramifications for everyone’s body image and self-worth. As we are being constantly bombarded with images of pert tits and tiny waists, toilet papers such as the sun are defining female attractiveness with airbrushed and unrealistic images. Women are reduced to hyper-sexualised caricatures, packaged for male gratification. The high turn-over of these models reinforces female inferiority in society, as women are treated like disposable objects only useful for entertaining the male gaze. Femen, a Ukrainian topless protest group, are quite rightfully angry about the way women are devalued and have staged many topless demonstrations in response to the inequality. A nineteen year old Femen protester recently received threats of stoning after displaying the words ‘my body belongs to me’ on her chest. These women are putting themselves in real danger to reclaim their bodies and rights, and it is definitely effective at highlighting how society treats women.

On the flipside though, this method could be seen to be a cheap gimmick in order to get press attention – attention which probably won’t convey the desired political message. Unfortunately feminists are in a power struggle, where ironically their most potent weapon is their bodies (and its objectification). Femen have been covered by the press internationally, appearing as news features and articles on CNN, BBC and Euronews. But you can’t help but think one of the reasons they have this much media impact is because they are slim, blonde and attractive – a narrow desirable category of appearance that normally decorates the pages of newspapers anyway. People probably aren’t looking at their chests to read the Ukrainian protest slogans. Sex sells, but it’s effectiveness at challenging patriarchy is questionable.

My drinking has led me to many bars and pubs come to think of it and though my memory of some of these instances is not as precise as I would like I am quite certain of the decorum. Before Starbucks I think that most people also felt that they too understood how to use a bar. Unfortunately it is quite obvious that they do not.

I live in the SU, much like a sort of civil service-hobo of the student world, and so I frequently go to The Plug throughout the day for a Coke. I am distraught on almost all of these occasions to find a queue has formed, from a single point at the bar, moving perpendicularly away from the bar consisting of up to a dozen people. There is always a member of bar staff, diligently manning a till, helpfully, tacitly, condoning this ridiculous behaviour by serving the queue in order.

I merrily ignore the queue and stand at the bar, next to the person at the front, hearing over my shoulder the tutting and muttering from everyone waiting. Sometimes I am also treated to a seminar from the staff member on being considerate of queuing.

HAVE THESE PEOPLE NEVER VISITED A BAR BEFORE!!!!??!?!?!?!

I have, for most of my time in Media, lamented print media in general for its tendency to overuse exclamation marks. How things change.

The bar is long. If it were the designers’ intentions to have people queue away from the till, then the bar would be very short, and manned by one member of staff. I’m not sure what irritates me more, that students think that their behaviour is normal, or that some of the staff get onboard with the whole thing.