The Cat and the Love Rat

Here’s my take on the whole Cat-Lawson drama that has been clouding over Big Brother Australia for the past few weeks.

If you have been avoiding anything Big Brother related, I don’t blame you, but you must have your head in the sand if you haven’t heard of the Cat-Lawson saga, like that emu who has its head in the sand. But again, I don’t blame you.

Who are you to stop such a beautiful smile?!

Who are you to stop such a beautiful smile?!

If you’re reading this confused, let me catch you up to speed: Lawson is a mid-late 20 something year old magician who has a girlfriend named Candice. He went into the house still in a strings-attached relationship with the girl. Enter Cat, the stunning 30 something year old midwife who immediately has a liking for Lawson. One night spent in a secluded hut and lo and behold, Lawson and Cat are hooking up like a pair of pelicans. (Terrible, terrible simile, but bear with me) Naturally, some of the other housemates are appalled at their behaviour and many Australians around the world who view that reality program have also shared their disgust.

Since then, both Cat and Lawson have been eliminated from the house – no doubt because they’re both “cheaters” – and have both expressed their sorrow for what they’ve done. In saying that, however, they both went on the record to basically say that “Love is love and who are we to deny those feelings that we had.”

Ooooooohhhhh.

And as any top Aussie blogger would do, I’m here to give my two cents on the Cat and Lawson drama that has plagued Big Brother Australia for nearly its entire season.

My thoughts on this situation can be summed up in four simple words: it doesn’t affect me.

Think about it. How does someone I have never met before cheating on his girlfriend whom I have also never met with a sexy midwife whom I have also never met affect me? It doesn’t. At all. Sure, the act of infidelity is frowned upon, especially if it’s done on national television, but face it, you’re still going to wake up the next day and you’re still going to work or college or wherever it is that you go unaffected. Something that Cat and Lawson may have done does not affect the way I think about them and, if we’re going by the “judge not less ye be judged” path, it shouldn’t affect the way anyone else thinks about them.

Cat was my favourite housemate this year and even throughout this crap, she has still been my favourite. I’ve always thought Lawson was a charming character and I still think he is to this day.

Reading some of the comments on Big Brother Australia’s page has really disappointed me in mankind… so quick to throw judgements and nasty insults around as if they’re totally clean and pure. No one is like that. People are going to make mistakes; it’s just what you learn from them which makes you a bigger person.

Now as a personal disclaimer, I am in no way advocating what they’ve done. I don’t agree with infidelity and think that if you do decide to get your jollies off with someone else, you should have the decency to break it off with your partner before you do so. Or don’t engage in a relationship at all.

But think about it. Lawson didn’t have the opportunity to do the right thing and tell his beloved Candice “Hey, I may have feelings for another woman, can we like take a break so I can pursue these feelings and see what happens after?” No. He was stuck in a small, secluded house with like 12 or so other people for over a month. Surely that is going to play on someone’s psyche after such an extended period of time. Some people don’t take into account the mentality of being secluded in the house can have on these housemates. They don’t have the privilege of going out wherever and doing whatever because they are stuck in that house.

The main point I’m trying to make is this: unless it truly affects you, like, truly affects you, you should probably take a few steps back and think “Hey, I don’t know how these people are feeling, I can’t really comment on their personal lives.” At the end of the day, who are we to get in the way of someone’s love lives if it doesn’t involve us at all?

Yes, that also means if someone is in a relationship on Facebook, it is NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS.

Js.

– by The Black Widow

Review: Beautiful Oblivion

Bear with me, as I actually read this novel over a month ago during SolSat’s absence.

Jamie McGuire is back (and not soon enough, if you’re as thirsty as me when it comes to the Maddox boys) and she’s come with the love story of another Maddox boy and his girl. Because, if you’ve followed the series closely, you know that when a Maddox boy falls, he falls hard.

It's that good, I get teary just looking at this cover.

It’s that good, I get teary just looking at this cover.

Beautiful Oblivion by Jamie McGuire thrusts the reader into the perspective of Camille “Cami” Camlin, a bartender at the infamous Red Door club. Interesting note: Cami made brief appearances in the other Disaster books. She’s in a steady relationship with a man named TJ, and her love life is on the rocks when Travis’ older brother Trenton begins to court her, regardless of her long-distance relationship and constant declining of his advances. Can the troubled Cami tame this Maddox boy, and can Trenton win the girl of his dreams?

Okay. I’m going to say it. Jamie McGuire can do, like, no wrong in my eyes. Beautiful Oblivion had me hooked from cover to cover, and I’m not just saying that. I remember drinking a lot of energy drinks one day, and I was consuming one in the middle of my pole dancing class, and my instructor asks me “Are you going somewhere after?” to which I replied with “No, I just want to finish this book before I go to sleep tonight.” True story. Like most (if not all) romance novels, the destination is always easily predictable and “the same”, but you don’t read a romance novel for the destination: you read it for the travel, and boy, was this travel ever exciting! The interactions between Cami and Trenton were always amusing and entertaining to read, and it was just the cherry on top of an already perfect highly-stacked cake.

It must be a Maddox thing, but I found Trenton to be incredibly interesting as a character: he was charming, witty, funny, and all of the above, but he had that Maddox fault about him where he was desperate and troubled and tortured to an extent, and those imperfections are what make him and Travis so real. McGuire has done an excellent job in making these really outstanding men seem real and almost attainable. I found Cami to be more bearable than Abby – another book heroine who suffers from “my first name and my surname sound the same”-itis – and thought she was interesting to say the least. Her juggling of Trent and TJ did piss me off, however. It was made better by the fact that she is fiercely loyal to her family, even if they don’t deserve it.

McGuire writes Beautiful Oblivion with the same easily read vibe that made her other Disaster books so damn great. She writes with this hidden flavour of “OMG I need to know more now” and that’s what really makes an author great IMSAHO.

Oh, and don’t even get me started on that swerve on the end. I can’t even handle it.

Solst-o-meter
Storyline: 8.5/10
Style of writing: 8/10
Overall: 
8.25/10

For anyone who’s read the Disaster books, or even if you haven’t, Beautiful Oblivion is definitely a book I can see myself reading again, and again, and again. Another top read by McGuire with only more to come hopefully.

– by The Black Widow

Social media has ruined dating

“Oh my god, I can’t believe he has another girl in his Snapchat best friends!”

This one sentence is a prime example of how social media has ruined 21st century dating.

(EDITOR’S NOTE: after a lengthy absence, Solstice Satisfaction is back and sassier than ever. Keep tuning in to be entertained in that sassy way only SolSat can do)

Back in the day, couples were more focused on what to wear to their first date or what movie to watch or even what is the surname of their potential date. Now with social media – coupled with the fact that “social media stalking” can give you a ton of information on your date before you have even met him/her – people are more focused on how many girls he’s following on Instagram and why this one guy keeps liking all of her bikini pictures on Facebook.

"OMG he's seen my Snap but hasn't replied. He's SO cheating on me!"

“OMG he’s seen my Snap but hasn’t replied. He’s SO cheating on me!”

A couple of my girlfriends have expressed their concerns with their significant other because:
1) He has a picture with his ex on Facebook that he has neglected to delete or
2) He has other girls in his Snapchat best friends.

Girl bye, why is this even a problem? Even without social media, your fella/lady will still have other friends of the opposite sex. You just weren’t privy to this information beforehand because you couldn’t see what they were doing 24/7.

That’s where the major problem in social media/dating lies: at the touch of a button, you can see who someone is with, what movie they’re watching, what book they’re reading and where they are. All of that information in about 10 seconds tops. In a way, social media has made it “okay” to stalk someone to the point of knowing everything about them, even before they’ve met you. Sometimes you’ll find things that you wish you didn’t see and you will overthink the situation to the point where you have planned out an entire altercation with your loved one before it has even happened.

It’s important to remember that people will always have lives outside of you, so who cares if your boyfriend is following other girls on Instagram or if your boy Snapchats girls that aren’t you? Are you going to shut her out because he has a life? Are you going to withold sex from him because he talks to girls that aren’t you?

Sometimes ignorance really is bliss. Maybe it is better for everyone to settle their sweet horses down, hop in the river, and just go with the flow. Oh, and stop being a stalker.

That’s rich coming from me as I like to use my “investigative journalistic” skills on people sometimes, but at least I admit I’m a social creep.

I’m sure your relationship will be more enjoyable if you stay out of each other’s social lives.

– by The Black Widow

The Problem with Double Standards

First thing’s first, I’m an equalist.

I have given up on the term “feminist“. I’ve now decided that I will label myself as an “equalist” because that is exactly what I want; total equality in all human beings.

Sure, women have it hard in the world where they aren’t afforded the same opportunities as men in some circumstances because of their gender – which is total bullshit – but, as liberal as a human being as I am, men have it hard as well in a different way than women do.

This is where the double standards issue comes in.

Does anyone else want fairy floss after looking at this picture? (Screenshot from "All About That Bass" music video)

Does anyone else want fairy floss after looking at this picture? (Screenshot from “All About That Bass” music video)

Take this picture I saw floating on Facebook recently; in the top half is a cartoon of a regular bloke talking to a heavyset woman, and the man says “Sorry, I prefer to date thinner women,” and there are a bunch of girls in the background saying “BOOO! Typical man!” and “Every woman is beautiful, no matter the shape” and other such things.

In the bottom half, however, is a shorter guy talking to a taller woman, and the woman says “Sorry, I prefer to date taller men”, and the same bunch of girls in the background are saying “Yeah! You tell him girl!” and “I prefer dating taller men as well!”

What makes it okay for a woman to dictate how she would like her man but all of a sudden it’s wrong for a man to do so? Fair enough, most women would not want to be called fat. But most men wouldn’t want to be called short. Men can’t help their height as much as women can’t help their weight (most of the time).

It’s not even just genders that suffer from this.

Take Meghan Trainor’s All About That Bass song (pictured above), where she’s basically singing about how large she is and she’s happy with it. Good on her. But the issue I have is when she says “I’m bringing booty back, go ahead and tell them skinny bitches that.” How is that meant to be empowering to women? What if those “skinny bitches” were actually very lovely women and the men that they have loved them for their great personality and/or gentle soul instead of being “skinny”?

And to put it doubly into perspective, swap the roles around: if a thinner woman, Selena Gomez for example, were to sing a song saying “I love being so thin, tell those fat bitches to back off my man”, shit would be thrown at her something chronic for criticising bigger women. Yet, it’s totally okay to criticise thinner women.

If you want a male example of double standards, then I have one for you.

Gay men and straight men. A gay man says that he doesn’t like a straight man for whatever reason, and I’m assuming most people would be like “Yeah, he doesn’t know what he’s missing out on” and “Good on you! Stand up for yourself!” A straight man says that he doesn’t like a gay man for whatever reason, people would be absolutely slamming him, calling him “homophobic” among other things. If that were true, that would also make the gay man “heterophobic”, wouldn’t it? Why isn’t the gay man criticised as much as the straight man?

The same could be said about black people and white people. Black people make a joke about white people, it’s generally okay. White people make a joke about black people, and you are automatically racist.

Now, I get it. I truly get it. The “minority” groups in these situations have it hard and have had it hard for a very long time and that shouldn’t be the case anymore. I get it. But if we’re striving for equality – and I mean truly striving for equality – then criticising the “majority” groups should not be okay. It isn’t okay.

All humans are born different, raised different, and grow up different. But they all deserve to be treated the same.

Get on the real side of this fight. Not the feminist side, or the misogynist side (if that’s the male form of feminism), or anything like that.

Be an equalist.

– by The Black Widow