I Wish I Was One of Those Women Who Just Knows She Wants to Have Kids

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dawn-porter/dawn-porter-children_b_1110780.html?ref=uk

Am I The Only One Who Doesn’t Need My Boyfriend To Be My Best Friend?

am-i-the-only-one-who-doe_b_969313.html

When I was thirteen years old I asked my uncle who his best friend was.

‘It’s your aunty.’ He replied. ‘Obviously!’

Obviously? Was that really obvious? To me it was the least obvious thing I had ever heard. How on earth could your wife be your best friend? He was just being ridiculous.

At the time of this nonsensical conversation I was best friends with a girl called Alice. She was ever so nice and we did everything together, but I certainly never planned to marry her. Why would I do that? She was my best friend, not my boyfriend. At that age I saw those two roles as being distinctly different, and if I am completely honest, I still do.

Nowadays it seems to be totally normal for your partner to also be your best friend. I was at the wedding of a very dear male friend of mine only last year, when at the end of his speech he proclaimed that his new wife was his best friend. I shot my glare over to the best man who, having just been denounced, I felt very sorry for. He didn’t react at all. Maybe he didn’t care? Personally I found the whole thing to be a quite awkward.

It got me worried, should I be aiming for this in my own relationship? I just don’t know if my brain works that way. My best friend and I do things like walk around the house wearing nothing but tights and bras (men don’t ‘get’ tights). We don’t wait until the other one goes out before we bleach our facial hair because it makes us laugh when we are not allowed to smile with the cream on (men don’t laugh at our facial hair), and we also talk openly about our past sexual conquests whilst laughing about it and high-fiving each other (men don’t laugh and high five you when you talk about your sexual past). So taking all of this into account, how on earth could my partner EVER be my best friend? The role he plays in my life is entirely different. And that is what I love about it.

The Huffington Post – Women Like Me Are Not Like Women Like You, Does That Mean We Have To Be Enemies?

I was recently subject to a bit of criticism over some of the documentaries I have made. I won’t name the journalist as she got quite a battering on Twitter and I think that’s quite enough. But sometimes things get said that take things further than a bad review, and on those occasions I like to respond. This is one of those occasions. Amongst her low blows she accused me of making a mockery of feminism, and on this I feel I need to say my bit.

The journalist’s main beef was with a film I made called ‘Dawn Gets Naked’, where I challenged the media’s idea of perfection and the pressure that it puts on women. This involved many things, but most memorably for her was the ending where me and about thirty other women jollied around London on an open top bus with no clothes on. She didn’t like this, she didn’t like it one bit. She drew the conclusion that I presumed that feminism is just about getting your tits out.

But I don’t think that is all it is about, I really don’t.

The Huffington Post – Is Good Luck Really About Patting a Stone Dog in Todmorden?

I have been thinking a lot about luck lately. And after the past few days that saw the streets of our country ransacked by vicious, fire cracking, looting scumbags I have been thinking about it all the more. Yesterday, I got myself so wound up by obsessing over the riot coverage on Sky News and Twitter that I spent the day quivering in my living room feeling like they were coming to get me, just me. When I woke up this morning and realised I still had all of my fingers and that my house was still standing, I felt lucky.

But was I lucky? Of course I wasn’t. The thugs took a night off and the odds of them torching my house were probably about 1000/1 anyway. But still, something about saying I was lucky made my relief all the more satisfying.

I am currently filming a program for Channel 4 about luck, and as part of this I am spending a lot of time in a Yorkshire town called, Todmorden. It’s very pretty, the people are nice, and in the local park there is a statue of a dog that is apparently a lucky dog. I named it Lucky.