Dandy Magazine Issue Two by dandythemag dandythemag

Issue 2

DANDY : a collection of talents, thoughts, ideas, inspirations, aspirations, desires, hopes, trends and traditions based on the gay lesbian bisexual transgender intersex queer community of Sydney. DANDY : a magazine designed to showcase the initiative and talent of our community. It fills an inexcusable gap in the media. DANDY : it's not an oiled, buff, beefcake magazine. It isn't thinlyveiled porn. We are curious, interested, pleasing to the eye.

ote

Holla bitchez! Welcome to the second issue of DANDY! It’s been a busy couple of months for us. We’ve launched a new website with a fast-paced, daily blog so you can get a daily dose of DANDY – check it out at dandymagazine.com.au. We’ve also been to New York and back, and of course been busy compiling our second issue! We hope it’s even bigger and better than before and that you join us as we talk faith and same sex marriage with David Pocock, travel through Asia with Ben Law and feature some of Jake Terrey’s amazing photography. A quick thanks for the support so far, we plan to continue and expand DANDY so stay with us!

S&C XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

CON T RO DANDY N0 2 Editor-In-Chief /Creative Editor Sebastian Andreassen

Managing Editor Cyna Strachan

Editor/Online Editor Richard Sawyer

Cover Image Jake Terrey

Thanks To Thomas Bradley Chris Browne Benjamin Law David Pocock Brendan Maclean Rami Mandow Rhys Nicholson John Paine Caitlin Park Michelle Retford Katherine Sherrie Mitchell Oakley Smith Peter Sneddon Jake Terrey Joseph Terrie

O L R OOM Designers Tessa Curran Adam France Lachlan Guthrie Ellen Porteus Lucy Tann

Writers Tom Ballard Pat Bateman Sean Corcoran Josh Forward Jack Freestone Robert Grigor Andrew Geeves Ashley Scott Cate Summers

CONTENTS REGULARS Opinion piece Pride and Politics Launch photos Reviews Homoscopes

FEATURES The Benjamin Law Home and a gay David Pocock

PROFILES Thomas Bradley Rhys Nicholas Caitlin Park Community Brave

STYLE A fashionable gentleman Boys in the band Joseph Tenni role model

WRITTEN BY

TOM BALLARD SO THE GIG HAD FINISHED, I WAS PRETTY JOLLY DRUNK AND MY FRIENDS HAD GONE HOME. BUT HE WAS STILL THERE. AND, OF HIS OWN ACCORD, HE’D COME UP TO ME AND HAD STARTED DANCING FRENETICALLY WITH ME DURING THE SHOW. WE’D EVEN HIGH-FIVED JUBILANTLY WHEN THE SONG HAD FINISHED. HOW ‘RIGHT ON’ IS THAT?! As I walked out of the venue, I saw him having a cigarette. I approached, promptly stole a death stick like the dirty tar-thief I am and we got chatting. I met his friends. I discovered that he and his friends were quite high. We danced as a pair of hipster DJs played wonky glitch stuff. We laughed at a girl who was properly, properly munted. We had more drinks. We caught a cab to Oxford St. I thought he’d said we were going to ARQ. It soon became clear that he’d said “Arts”, as in “Oxford Art Factory”. But hey, that was ok; gay people go to the OAF. Everything was going just fine. More drinks, more songs, more dancing. My friend was DJing and I requested Diana Ross’ I’m Coming Out and he played it, followed by Notorious B.I.G.’s Mo Money Mo Problems, which motherfucking samples Diana Ross’ I’m Coming Out!!! The night was going splendidly. The time seemed right. I boogied on over to him, leant forward for a charming and passionate kiss...and was bashfully shrugged off in a move that somehow seamlessly became some kind of floppy indie dance nonsense. He had a girlfriend. It seems he was not, in fact, a homosexual; he was just a nice straight man who was into cool things. That was the conclusion I reached, anyway. Perhaps that was not the case. Perhaps he was just a human being who didn’t want to kiss me (specifically) at that particular time. Questions surrounding identity and labels and stereotypes are a constant feature of discourse in the gay/lesbian/bisexual/ transgender/intersex/queer/questioning/same sex-attracted/sexually diverse/rainbow-coloured community/agenda/cult/quorum. For some people, the process of “coming out” and identifying with other queer folk is a momentous and liberating milestone in their lives. For others, the notion is an absurd one, derived from a ubiquitous hetero-normative perspective that can, quite frankly, go fuck itself.

Words like “gay”, “lesbian”, “bi” and “straight” can be banners and they can be chains, depending on your perspective. Recently, prominent people-who-do-not-necessarily-have-sex-or-relationshipswith-people-of-the-opposite-sex Helen Razer and Josh Thomas partook in a back-and-forth via twitter, discussing the potentially demeaning implications of the term “homosexual”. Helen pointed to the questionable etymology and limiting nature of the word; Josh argued that it’s simply a practical way to communicate information about human beings. Reading over the exchange between these two people who I genuinely like and admire left me unsettled. I couldn’t quite tell you which side I came down on. Yes, I identify as “gay” and have no qualms in doing so. That’s the word I used when I came out to my parents, it’s the word I use in my stand up, it’s one of the words we rally around in advocacy and at marches and at Mardi Gras. After the long and occasionally painful journey it took to arrive at the place where I can happily own that label, using it loudly and proudly has become something of a badge of honour for me. But perhaps that’s a limited way to go about things. I’m not ashamed of who I am, but I certainly don’t think my fondness for cock is the most interesting thing about me. I refuse to let my sexuality be my first impression nor my epitaph. Why kowtow to the human habit of labelling things in order to psychologically cope with them? I’ve been in love with men and women over the course of my life, and who knows what the fuck will happen tomorrow or a decade from now (feel free to call me to start finding out!) Why not just employ language that includes and allows, yet still doesn’t bullshit?

WORDS CARRY BAGGAGE, AND I THINK LIFE, LIKE INTERSTATE TRAVEL, IS ALWAYS BETTER WITHOUT CARRY-ON. NO MATTER HOW OPEN-MINDED YOU ARE, HEARING “GAY” OR “HOMOSEXUAL” OR “LESBIAN” OR “BISEXUAL” OR “SLUT” OR “TWINK” OR “MAN” OR “WOMAN” IS IMMEDIATELY GOING TO MAKE YOUR BRAIN MANUFACTURE CERTAIN IMAGES AND PRECONCEIVED IDEAS AND STEREOTYPES.

And my life experience chips away at those stereotypes almost daily. I know same-sex attracted football enthusiasts and soldiers and heavy metal fans. I know gay people who are monogamous and I know gay people who really, really aren’t. I know gay men who hate musical theatre and I know lesbians with long hair. I know people who are loathe to pigeon-hole themselves in any way at all, others who consider their queerdom to be an intrinsic part of who they are that ought to be celebrated and announced at every opportunity. I even know a remarkably hairy, previouslyheterosexual blokey surfer doctor Gold Coast resident whose best friend was in a long-term gay relationship but who’s now in a long-term relationship with a woman he met at a gay club. And then of course there’s always Anne Heche. I realised at one point in my drunken haze that night that I was actually harbouring anger towards the straight man for being…well, straight. I was annoyed that he was straight whilst being a bit gay and a bit sensitive and a bit not-manly. It was as if I considered him to be a fraud, like a car salesman or Dawn French doing Coles ads. Didn’t he know the rules about things? Didn’t he know about how you’re supposed to act and the signals you send and the lines within which one must keep? These are the stupid inner gripes of the ignoramus who’s been shot down and who has to stumble home horny. I’ve always considered myself an open-minded person, but the subtleties of prejudice and moronic conservatism that lurk in our psychology seem to take quite a while – and a lot of examining – to purge.

WRITTEN BY PAT BATEMAN

PRIDE AND POLITICS

OBITUARIES AREN’T REALLY MY THING. However, I feel obliged to say a few words about the untimely passing of Channel Ten’s television masterpiece, “The Circle”. Sure, nobody ever watched it, and the Ab King Pro commercials were seemingly endless, and the hosts periodically abused Australian war heroes, but it was my mid-morning chat show. Like all great shows, The Circle got into its fair share of scraps. My favourite was when Bob Katter turned up to spruik his latest literary masterpiece, An Incredible Race of People, only to find himself being ambushed about his views on gay marriage. It was a doomed venture, of course. Why, the Force from the North pleaded in his craziest falsetto, should they waste time debating such trivia when there were important issues to discuss, like rural suicide and the end of Australian farming? For those of us who support marriage equality, this common argument tends to provoke little more than a reflexive roll of the eyes and an obligatory gay sex joke about the crank in question. Yet it persists as an indispensable part of every PR-savvy bigot’s arsenal. So, in the spirit of knowing thine enemy and as a final tribute to the cunning hostesses of The Circle, let’s look at whether Katter actually had a point. To begin with, the argument doesn’t justify opposition to marriage equality. As Bob surely knows, there’s no magical end-point at which the totality of our material needs and existential doubts are finally answered and we can at last turn to the question of what to do with the gays. Though the issues he cites are extremely important, it’s also not clear why we have to sacrifice or even sideline those to achieve marriage equality: if we could give women the vote when the average Australian only lived to 50, why shouldn’t we be able to multi- task again? More importantly, same-sex marriage is a pressing issue. To refuse loving, same-sex couples entry to the same institution used and abused by their heterosexual counterparts is to allow clear-cut, state-sponsored discrimination. Treat it like it’s not a life-and-death issue and it soon becomes one. Any law that would humiliate a group whose suicide risk is already 15 times higher than the national average should be opposed, with urgency. Yet for all that, I feel decidedly uncomfortable when friends assure me that the LGBT community is Australia’s ‘last minority’, or when people say they’re not normally ‘political’ but they support marriage equality. While it may be easier to get passionate about something that directly affects your life, doesn’t this civil nimbyism represent the same kind of insularity and casual blindness to a world of discrimination which we rightly condemn in the likes of Bob Katter?

TO REFUSE LOVING, SAME-SEX COUPLES ENTRY TO THE SAME INSTITUTION USED AND ABUSED BY THEIR HETEROSEXUAL COUNTERPARTS IS TO ALLOW CLEAR-CUT, STATE-SPONSORED DISCRIMINATION Even within our own community, we must never allow the push for full equality in Australia to obscure the persecution faced by our LGBTI brothers and sisters all over the world. Homosexuality is still illegal in 76 countries, and punishable by death in five, while gays and lesbians continue to face extra judicial violence even in countries without sodomy laws. Yet while many Australians rightly went to the mattresses over Katter’s comments, there was a strange silence when only days later a 23-year-old gay rights activist was brutally tortured, castrated and then murdered in Northern Cape, South Africa. So while we push on in the fight for marriage equality, let’s not miss the small kernel of truth lurking, inadvertently, in Katter’s logic: refusing to queue up for our rights is one thing - and a good thing too - but it’s quite another to pretend there’s no one else in line. The Circle (9/2/2010 – 3/8/12) Requiescat in pace.

Iss u

lau

Sly Fox Enmore

TO ROME WITH LOVE CYNA STRACHAN

You have to admire the ever so prolific Woody Allen, who continues to direct, star and write films (making one every year) at the age of seventy-six. To Rome with Love is Allen’s latest postcard of a European City, set of course in and around Rome. Allen picked Rome because of the diversity of the city exclaiming “it’s an amazing city to walk in. The city itself is a work of art” To Rome with Love is a kaleidoscope of many stories and characters (thirteen main characters in fact, with four minor characters) These include: An architect revisiting his youth (Alec Baldwin) a young American woman who has met and fallen in love with an Italian man (Alison Pill) an ordinary Italian couple who experience fame, and a recently married couple who are separately seduced on their own adventures (featuring the gorgeous Penelope Cruz) Whilst you expect to see the characters run into each other, or the stories somehow merge Love Actually style, they are all very much separate, told in different time frames, brought together through themes of love, sex, fame and stories of Rome. To Rome with Love is a little ridiculous, with a few hits and misses, but it made me laugh, a lot (one story in particular). It’s good to see Allen on screen again, acting for the first time since 2006, playing a neurotic (surprise surprise) opera director. Judi Davis is beautiful and ever so cool opposite Allen as his psychiatrist wife, as they visit their daughter and her new fiancée in Rome. There are some great performances in To Rome with Love, and a fabulous cast including Ellen Page, Jesse Eisenberg and Greta Gerwig just to name a few. It’s always good to see what Allen is up to, and although there are some misses in To Rome With Love, it is genuinely a very funny and enjoyable film (and it will make you want to visit Rome!). 3 Stars To Rome with Love opens October 18th.

LORE

Killing Them Softly is Australian director Andrew Dominki’s (Chopper, The Assassination of Jesse James) latest offering. Killing Them Softly is the story of two guys (Ben Mendelsohn, Scoot McNairy) who rob a high stakes poker game, thinking they have made a smart move, but which turns out to be an incredibly dumb one. Whilst a simplistic story, the film is set in the deteriorating landscape of 2008 around the economic financial meltdown. Desperation and the restoration of justice and order are major themes, adding a level of complexity and depth to a simple plot.

It’s rare to have an Australian film submitted to the Academy Awards as a contender for Best Foreign Language film, but this year Cate Shortland’s Lore a German/ Australian co-production is a candidate. Lore is the anticipated follow up to the film Somersault, but Shortland has brought us a very different film. Adapted from the novel The Dark Room, Lore is set in Germany at the end of the Second World War. Lore is the story of five siblings who are left to fend for themselves after their Nazi SS parents are taken into allied custody. Teenager Lore, the eldest of the siblings is forced to take charge and navigate a grueling journey to Hamburg, 900 km away. Throughout their journey they see a country suffering from the effects and tragedies of war and must scavenge and bargain for food, and other survival items.

CHRISTINA DAVIES

Whilst set in 2008, Killing Them Softly visually feels like a 1970’s crime thriller, which highlights and focuses the moral messiness of the story. The film visually differentiates itself from similar films through the use of this deteriorating, dusty landscape, and through weaving imagery and the sounds of the Obama campaign throughout the film. Killing Them Softly is a smart, gritty mob/crime thriller, which challenges morality by having an efficient killer as the only person in the film with any morals. The journeys and dry characterization make the film interesting, along with strong performances. Brad Pitt’s hypocrisy and final speech quoting Thomas Jefferson “Crime is the business of America” will be widely quoted, deservingly so. It’s very good viewing, and really pulls the audience into the story. So go and see it (even if it’s only to see Pitt playing a badass hit man)

V IE WS

Killing Them Softly features a strong cast including Australian Ben Mendelsohn playing an incredibly dirty, scum of the earth type character (which he does a little too well) contrasted by Brad Pitt’s intelligent, smooth, hit man character. James Gandolfini is great as Mario the badass-turned-sop, with Richard Jenkins playing a corporate mob boss.

SEBASTIAN ANDREASSEN

KILLING THEM SOFTLY

Lore has been beautifully shot by Adam Arkapaw, and although visually it may not be everybody’s cup of tea (due to the use of handheld camera) this style reflects the journey that Lore and her siblings must undertake. The performances are all very strong, particularly Saskia Rosendahl who plays Lore perfectly.

Lore is a coming of age story, set in a country that is in ruins. The film is both a portrayal of history and tragedy, and an emotional and honest journey of a young woman. Australian directors seem to excel at portraying raw emotion, and this is another film that does this incredibly well, with very little dialogue. Lore is beautiful, honest taking; the audience on a painful journey of war, coming of age and morals.

3.5 stars

3 stars

Killing Them Softly opens October 15th.

In cimemas now

WRITTEN BY ANDREW GEEVES

EVEN IF YOU DON’T REALISE IT, THERE’S EVERY CHANCE YOU’VE ENCOUNTERED SELF-CERTIFIED GAYSIAN BENJAMIN LAW. REMEMBER THAT ARTICLE YOU READ IN THE GOOD WEEKEND (OR FRANKIE OR THE MONTHLY OR THE BIG ISSUE OR MYRIAD OTHER INFLUENTIAL AUSTRALIAN PRINT MEDIA PUBLICATIONS) THAT HAS REMAINED WITH YOU DUE TO ITS INCISIVE BALANCE OF WIT, SENSITIVITY AND INSIGHT? I BET BENJAMIN LAW WROTE IT. Recall that contestant who made you chortle on Andrew Denton’s Randling or that guy on Q&A who you thought would one day make an excellent Australian presidential candidate? Yep, that was Benjamin Law. What about that touching, hilarious and enlightening collection of autobiographical essays you ploughed through last summer that told of growing up gay in the backwaters of Queensland as the third of five children in an Asian family; who authored that again? Oh zing, it was Benjamin Law (and the book is titled The Family Law and was nominated for three 2011 Australian Book Industry Awards too, just FYI) As a humourist, journalist, author, freelance writer, TV personality, advocate and doctor (he has a PhD in screenwriting and cultural studies, you know), Brisbane-based Law is as multi- talented as he is ubiquitous and is set to release Gaysia, his second book. Skyping on the eve of Gaysia’s release, I am struck by Law’s down-to-earth and relatable nature. He offers up Shangdykes, Bimese and Laosbian as some of his other favourite regionally specific GLBT portmanteaus, before adding “I think they usually come out in moments of drunkenness when you’re trying to pay out on your friends”. Especially given his impressive achievements, Law’s humility and sincerity make him instantly likeable – a trait that, no doubt, helped him gather data for Gaysia.

In Gaysia, Law transitions from memoirist to investigative journalist, channelling the spirit of predecessors such as Hunter S. Thompson, William Burroughs and Louis Theroux. Gaysia tracks Law’s odyssey through Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, Malaysia, Myanmar and India on his quest to find and report queer (in all senses of the word) stories. Despite the success of The Family Law, Law denies experiencing ‘second-book syndrome’ anxiety when writing Gaysia. “The two books are really different,” he explains, “They reflect the two ways in which I write. When I’m writing for columns, I’m usually writing about first-person, experiential stuff. That’s all packaged up in The Family Law. The second way in which I write is immersive, first person, narrative journalism. This is what you see in Gaysia.” Its GLBT subject matter notwithstanding, Gaysia is intended to appeal to a mainstream audience. “It’s clearly a queer book”, he summarises “but I was mindful of trying to make it funny and accessible so that people would get an insight into a whole different world which they might not have considered exploring.” Law would seem to have been successful in fulfilling this brief given that the adventures portrayed in Gaysia include his dalliances inside the worlds of a clothingoptional Balinese sex resort, the globe’s biggest transsexual beauty contest in Thailand and

Japanese celebrity drag queens. “Whenever I hear a story about, say, men in China who get married to lesbians in sham marriages to make sure that their parents are happy, I’m always thinking ‘Who are these people behind these stories?’ What actually happened?’” Law discloses. This approach shines through in Gaysia, with Law ensuring it is neither the indulgent exercise in introspection or dry recollection of facts it could so easily have become. Instead, it is educational, entertaining and engaging, thanks largely to the very real, very human connection Law makes with the people whose stories he helps tell. As Law is well aware, the sensitivities required to make a personal connection with his interview subjects can result in this connection incurring a high personal cost. At the end of the Myanmar chapter of Gaysia, Law recounts an interaction he had with a young sex worker in which their subjectivities were intertwined in a way that was particularly harrowing. “Sometimes, there are confronting moments that make you realise you are a part of the life of the person to whom you’re talking. That makes you question how much can you do as someone who is an outsider coming into their country and investigating their stories. I was completely heartbroken throughout the time I spent in Burma.

EVEN THOUGH I WAS SHITTING MY GUTS OUT IN MUMBAI’S PUBLIC TOILETS WHICH ARE GROSSER THAN YOU CAN POSSIBLY IMAGINE, THERE WAS SOMETHING SO MOVING ABOUT MARCHING WITH THEIR PRIDE PARADE

I came back away from that country feeling pretty shattered,” Law states with solemnity, before adding almost guiltily “I mean I say that from a pretty privileged luxurious position. I came back to Australia where I have all basic amenities at my fingertips and I felt sad. These guys [in Burma] have a lot [more] to feel sad about.” Other challenges Law faced when writing the book were more, erm, physical. “I was really sick writing this book in various magical ways . . . I got really bad gastro,’ he says, referring to a passage in which an analogy is made to expelling hot soup through various sensitive corporeal passageways. Yet, despite all these challenges, writing Gaysia was an invaluable experience. “Even though I was shitting my guts out in Mumbai’s public toilets which are grosser than you can possibly imagine, there was something so moving about marching with their pride parade. These people have only just had homosexuality decriminalised. To be a part of the moment where they feel that there is a turning point is extraordinary. I was in my mid-late 20s when I was writing this book and I often thought about how this was a once in a lifetime thing. By the time I finished this book I was completely fucking buggered, but over the 18 months I was writing it, I was on a complete high.” According to Law, he wrote Gaysia for three reasons: “Writing a memoir is quite a solitary experience. You lock yourself in a room and go back through your childhood memories; it’s a recipe for mental illness. When I was writing The Family Law I kept wishing I could travel the world. Secondly, I started getting interested

in stories about queer people in Asia from a journalist’s perspective. Thirdly, I’m ethnically Chinese. When you come from a migrant family, you spend a lot of your life wondering what your life would have been like if you’d grown up in the birthplace of your parents. Writing this book was partly a personal investigation of how I might be taking things about my life in Australia for granted. ” Now Gaysia has been written, I ask Law what he is most grateful for about his life in Australia. “We operate in completely different cultural spheres so it’s hard to make comparisons . . . but I had mixed feelings,” Law answers straight forwardly. “In Buddhist countries like Thailand or Burma, there isn’t a palpable hatred of gay people. Instead, they are completely invisible. In some ways, I felt that [gay people in these Asian countries] had it better [than gay people in Australia] because no one was being bashed up. On the other hand, not even recognising that homosexuality or queer identity exists is a really hideous thing and it raises huge health problems. I wouldn’t want to be a gay person in Malaysia or Burma where you’re 40 times more likely to get HIV than the rest of the population if you’re a man who has sex with men. I was born in Australia and although we’re still fighting for equal marriage rights, in comparison to the rest of the world, we’re doing OK. What I feel most grateful for about Australia is that we tackled HIV super effectively. When I travelled throughout Asia, people upheld the Australian model of dealing with HIV/AIDS as this world standard. We were completely ahead of every other developed world when it came to how we managed HIV. That blew my mind and instilled some civic Australian pride at heart”.

WRITING A MEMOIR IS QUITE A SOLITARY EXPERIENCE. YOU LOCK YOURSELF IN A ROOM AND GO BACK THROUGH YOUR CHILDHOOD MEMORIES; IT’S A RECIPE FOR MENTAL ILLNESS.

AUSTRALIAN TV AND GAYS TODAY WRITTEN BY JOSH FORWARD BACK IN 1972 AUSTRALIANS SPILLED THEIR TV DINNERS ONTO THEIR BELLBOTTOMS WHEN IN A NOW FAMOUS EPISODE OF SOAPIE ‘NUMBER 96’, THE CHIVALROUS ‘DON’ RESPONDED TO ‘BEV’S’ DECLARATION OF LOVE WITH “I THOUGHT YOU KNEW… I’M… I’M A HOMOSEXUAL”. NATURALLY ‘BEV’ CALLS HIM A “DIRTY, FILTHY, LITTLE QUEER!” AND DEMANDS HE “GET OUT!”. AND OUT HOMOSEXUAL CHARACTERS HAVE STAYED FROM AUSTRALIAN TV SINCE. In the last two years Summer Bay and Ramsay Street have featured gay storylines, a progression from days where these small communities defied statistics and were populated entirely by heterosexuals. But the backlash these storylines have received is a telling and worrying look at how Australian TV viewers like their gay characters. Channel Seven was inundated with complaints about the lesbian storyline, and as a result was then downplayed with kisses cut from scenes and the plot line fizzling out shortly after the screening of a “controversial ad” which reduced two lesbian characters, to two hot girls that might kiss. And of course the only-gay-in-the-village on Ramsay Street gets beaten with a wrench. Is it too much to ask that a character merely be gay and not have the fact that they’re gay also be the basis of this storyline?

Of course gay themes, issues and struggles should be portrayed but is this all gay characters are good for? The Secret Life of Us made headlines when it first aired because they had cast an Aboriginal woman, Deborah Mailman, in a role that hadn’t been written for an Aboriginal. Shock horror that Mailman could play an everyday girl who just happened to have Indigenous heritage! Is there something similar occurring where we like our gays characters when they’re “being gay” but have no use for their day to day issues that have no bearing on their sexuality? It would be foolish to dismiss the impact of shows like Glee, Will and Grace, Modern Family and Brothers and Sisters in insidiously educating the wider public about gay life (which is, that it’s pretty much the same as straight life). But none of these are Australian shows. Even so, there is still an “other-ness” to gay representations on TV, from any country, that relegate gay characters to quirky best friends, gossips, drama queens, scandal makers, and almost always comic. Interestingly, the Australian shows that might be doing the most for the LGBT community are reality shows. Is there anything more educating to the ignorant public than seeing their favourite Masterchef, Biggest Loser or Voice speaking of affection towards their same sex partner or even exchange a casual kiss? Not to mention the gayest show of all time “I Will Survive” which just aired on channel 10. For all the flack shows like this get, there really could be some “reality” amongst the “TV” that could be doing service for the LGBT community. But why is fiction so much harder to swallow? Perhaps the appeal of fiction is more character focused, and audiences don’t want to be challenged or confronted with the unfamiliar when they nest in a snuggie in front of the TV after a long day. TV at the end of the day is a ratings game and the LGBT community are called minorities for

a reason. Remember, this is the same platform that has Two and a Half Men entering its tenth season and cancelled Firefly after less than one. TV was never a platform that sought out niche markets. America might have the population to support queer shows against the conservative audience, but Australia does not. Despite a 2010 CNN poll once revealing that 44% of those polled believe gay characters were “bad for society” America has come a long way, with endless shows now featuring LGBT characters in diverse ways. Australia has even willingly watched many of them. But in terms of Australian made telly? Unless it’s Mr G declaring, “Thank god you’re here, Grandma’s been raped”, there is still a decisive “no thank you” from the Australian public. Lest we forget The Secret Life of Us or Tripping Over, two great Australian dramas that didn’t last as long as they should have that featured well-written and complex gay characters. There are signs that things are getting better with Channel Nine’s show “House Husbands” that features a gay couple, played by Gyton Grantley and Tim Campbell, who are raising a child. However even before the show made it to air, the move to include a gay couple was labelled by some as a move to stop the show becoming “too blokey”. Gay characters stop something being “too blokey”? What the hell does “blokey” even mean?! Oh Australia. The mere fact alone that a TV show featuring gay characters and storylines in a “family time slot” makes headlines is a troubling thought. As social attitudes shift, hopefully television will reflect the change. Caught in a chicken and the egg scenario, accurate gay character representations will surely push and help these social attitudes along.

DAVID POCOCK RICHARD SAWYER TALKS TO DAVID POCOCK: WALLABY, BRUMBY, SOCIAL ENTREPRENEUR

Men like David Pocock are rare. A true renaissance man, he is as ferocious on the football field as he is passionate about grassroots sustainable development. He is a vocal Christian, whose faith ‘underpins the way [he] sees the world and [his] place in it’ and yet, he is an equally vocal campaigner for same-sex marriage rights. For Pocock, these are not inconsistent – rather, both form part of a deeply thought-out approach to life and morality. Pocock is openside flanker for the Wallabies and, from next season, the Brumbies. He is cofounder of Eighty twenty Vision – an organisation that assists communities in Zimbabwe to become self-sufficient. Pocock has also founded a company dedicated to producing ethically sourced sporting goods named Heroes Boots, after refusing financial incentives to wear sports goods that were connected to sweatshop production. All of this at 24? We at Dandy HQ have very much fallen head over heels.

ON FAITH

FROM WHERE DOES YOUR FAITH ORIGINATE? My parents brought us up in a Christian home and church was a part of my life growing up in Zimbabwe. I wouldn’t say it was a particularly conventional kind of ‘Christian upbringing’. While Mum and Dad have a relatively traditional understanding of their faith they are very interested in exploring new ideas – and old ideas that are new to them. They certainly passed this onto my brothers and I. I’ve never felt like I’m trapped in an ideology that I’m not comfortable with and have always felt free to explore and contemplate and make decisions for myself. That’s always been really important to my folks.

HOW SHOULD A MODERN CHRISTIAN APPROACH THE TASK OF RECONCILING THE NEW TESTAMENT’S SEXIST OR HOMOPHOBIC MOMENTS WITH CONTEMPORARY ETHICS WITHOUT ‘CHERRY PICKING’ FROM THE BIBLE?

This is a big question and one I have spent a lot of time thinking over. There are a lot of excellent biblical scholars who have done a great deal of work to contextualise biblical texts – NT Wright and Walter Wink immediately come to mind. A big difficulty for me – in thinking about the contemporary, institutional church – is their approach to the Bible, which rarely shows a consideration for the complexity of it as a historical document where events are relevant to a particular time and place. This is not to say we can’t learn from it – but that when we come to it we should come knowing that the meanings we apply are not necessarily at all relevant to what we’re reading. One of the key ways I have come to approach biblical texts is to consider them through the lens of what we know of Jesus. He radically overturned traditional notions about race, gender and class. He was a nonviolent revolutionary who directly challenged those structures – which were so clearly defined in both the Hebrew and Roman cultures he lived amongst. In light of that - and his very direct teachings on serving the least – it’s not difficult to stand up on the side of the oppressed and marginalised in our society and feel that I’m standing on the side Jesus would ask me to.

IN AN OPINION PIECE FOR ABC RELIGION AND ETHICS YOU QUOTED DESMOND TUTU ON HOMOSEXUALITY, ‘[DURING APARTHEID] BLACK PEOPLE WERE BEING BLAMED AND MADE TO SUFFER FOR SOMETHING WE COULD DO NOTHING ABOUT - OUR VERY SKIN. IT IS THE SAME WITH SEXUAL ORIENTATION. IT IS A GIVEN.’ DO YOU BELIEVE THAT SEXUAL ORIENTATION IS ‘HARD-WIRED’ (BIOLOGICALLY, SAY)? IF SEXUAL ORIENTATION WERE A CHOICE, WOULD THIS MAKE HOMOSEXUALITY SINFUL?

I don’t think that homosexuality is a sin – hard wired or not. I’m sure there are probably a range of responses to this and I’m not sure which side of the nature/nurture or choice/biology arguments I come out on. I don’t even necessarily think it has to be a binary – with two options, one of them being right (or righteous). Perhaps for some people it’s a choice and for others it’s a biological imperative – like in many other animal species?

DOES YOUR SUPPORT OF SAME SEX MARRIAGE EXTEND TO SUPPORTING FULL, EQUAL ADOPTION LAWS FOR SAME-SEX COUPLES? DO SAME-SEX COUPLES MAKE GOOD PARENTS?

I absolutely think that same-sex couples can make good parents. Just like opposite-sex couples can. It’s certainly not a given. Parenting seems to be incredibly difficult irrespective of your sexual orientation. Having met many children in need of loving families to care for them, and in light of the lack of any real difference in same-sex couple parenting I would fully support them having the same access to adoption as an opposite-sex couple.

YOU HAVE OFTEN SAID THAT YOUR SUPPORT OF SAME-SEX MARRIAGE RIGHTS STEMS FROM HAVING GAY AND LESBIAN FRIENDS – WHERE IS THE SIGN UP SHEET TO JOIN THIS GROUP?

Em makes friends like it’s going out of fashion so our list is full with a backlog! More seriously though, we have been lucky enough to have some wonderful friends who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and queer. Some of our closest friends are two gorgeous women whose relationship we have been so fortunate to witness up close. They are one of the most loving and committed couples we’ve ever seen and their dedication to one another and the community around them is inspiring, to say the least. This has raised a lot of questions for our fairly conservative parents who also know them well. It’s very difficult to stand opposed to marriage equality (or homosexuality more generally) when you’ve witnessed such a beautiful and sincere love as theirs that is so lifegiving for so many others.

ON HOMO SEXUALIT Y

HOW IS HEROES BOOTS COMING ALONG? CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF HEROES BOOTS’S PRODUCTS AND WHEN THEY WILL BE AVAILABLE TO SNAP UP?

It’s progressing slowly. Our rugby ball is finally ready after a lot of testing and improving and is now available through our website. The boots – which provided the impetus for starting it are still a long way off. While a lot of big companies are finding ways to become more ‘green’ or just better at green-washing, the ethics when it comes to the people involved in production still has a long way to go, and as a small business we are still struggling to find viable alternative

WHAT ARE SOME PRACTICAL, DAY-TODAY WAYS THAT PEOPLE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO GLOBAL UNFAIR WORKING CONDITIONS?

I don’t think we have even begun to understand the power the consumer has. A company’s worst nightmare is having no sales, and we can choose which companies we support with our dollars. Being informed and supporting companies with strong social and environmental responsibility and boycotting companies that violate human rights and destroy the environment can have a huge impact. We may never know the coffee farmer in Ethiopia who grew the beans for the cappuccino we are sipping – but we can change things by ensuring that we support companies who support those farmers and help them to earn a living where they can provide for their families.

ON AC TIVISM

ON BEING A STUD

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET LEGS LIKE YOURS? Ha. A bit of hard work (generally a lot of compound movement exercises like squats, dead lifts, etc) and some of it is genetics. I was in the gym with my mum in Brisbane a while back and a guy came up and started chatting to me and when mum came over and he realised that she was my mum he said, “you’ve given him such good genetics.” She looked at him and said, “what are you trying to say mate?” Big calves do run in the family. You can donate to Daivd’s organisation at eightytwentyvision. org or find out more at heroboots.com

WRITTEN BY JOSH FORWARD

For any dancer, finding full time work with an internationally recognised company is an opportunity given to the fortunate few. Dancer Thomas Bradley, who only graduated from the New Zealand School of Dance last year, is fully aware of how fortunate he is to be dancing with Sydney Dance Company: “at the moment I’m really just a complete sponge and I’m really soaking up everything that is kind of coming my way this year”. Bradley was offered six months with the company as the recipient of the Sydney Dance Company Foxtel Sponsorship, but this ended up being extended to a full year dancing under artistic director Rafael Bonachela. Whilst he has achieved so much success so quickly, there is no doubting that it has much more to do with Bradley’s hard work and ambition than luck. From humble beginnings to sold out crowds at Sydney Theatre, it has been a persistent and demanding journey. Bradley explains where it all began, “I started dancing when I was 11 when I lived in Coota[mundra]. My first kind of dancing was literally out in the middle of nowhere, I ended up choreographing this Jazz routine for my friends.” A trend that has continued through his dancing, with his eye also firmly focused on a choreographic career. Growing up in Cootamundra, a predominantly sporting regional community as a dancer, provided its obvious challenges, but Bradley is quick to talk up his home town and the support given to him over the years. “I think a lot of people want me to tell the story of Billy Elliot but I really didn’t have it anywhere near as hard as him. I means sure, I had tough times, but I had a wonderful community that supported me”. Earlier this year Thomas even travelled with the company to do workshops back in Cootamundra and remarked that the experience was, “really cool to give back to the people that supported me”.

Bradley even attributes growing up in the sporting culture of Cootamundra as an important part of becoming the dancer he is today, as well as the musical education he received there explaining, “I studied music for about 11 years and my brother and I were really active sports guys, we played basketball, AFL and I trained in sprinting. I suppose in hindsight it looks like a natural progression that I would move into dancing after studying music and being very active. Putting the two together: here I am as a dancer”. And the form that this musical talent took? Bradley briefly hesitated before confessing, “Look, I’ll tell you, I’m not embarrassed I studied recorder playing for eleven years”, so another talent that could have seen him get a place at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music had his passions not led him elsewhere. Talent and determination seems to be a family trait, with his brother Joe now playing professional football. But despite the different worlds they inhabit, Bradley insists there are more similarities than differences in their chosen fields, “So many people say “oh, you’re so different, opposite ends of the scale and blah blah blah” but really we’re both elite athletes at the top of our game… and you have to look after your body, it’s not something that will just kind of fall into place, it’s a lifestyle more than anything for both of us”. With the gruelling nature of a dancer’s lifestyle, one often underestimated by most, it goes without saying that Bradley has committed to his career with supreme dedication and he admits “…it’s a challenge every day, I mean just dancing is a challenge every day but that’s why I do it. I don’t do it for the money, don’t do it for the fame, you do it because you love it and I’m sure that every dancer will tell you that”. But getting into a company as renowned as Sydney Dance Company at his age takes an extra level of dedication and ambition. Leaving nothing to chance, Thomas Bradley used his summer breaks from the New Zealand School of Dance to take classes with Sydney Dance and he explains how he was sure to “put a lot of time and effort into making sure my face was known around the place

and being there for every opportunity that I could be, because I really wanted that job.” But aside from the company’s growing success and the stability of a full time dance job, what was it exactly that made Thomas gravitate to Rafael Bonachela and his company? Bradley explains, “He so clearly knows what he likes when it comes to movement... It’s just a really sexy way of moving and I think it’s a complete experience with Raf’s. I keep saying sensual and sexy, but it totally is, it’s delicious and it’s lavishing and it’s wonderful but when you combine that with the kind of composers that he commissions and gets to the collaborate with…It’s a massive feast and it’s rich. It’s really, really rich”. This year Thomas has performed in the world premiere of 2 One Another, toured performing The Land of Yes and the Land of No, and will later perform in Project Rameau, all choreographed by Bonachela. An impressive line-up of performances for a performer first year out of study, especially considering this means he’s rubbing shoulders with collaborators to the calibre of the Australian Chamber Orchestra and Ezio Bosso. As an aspiring choreographer (and already accolade winning at the New Zealand Festival of Dance for his solo piece Manipulated Living), Bradley also found Sydney Dance as the perfect fit to his choreographic aspirations. “It’s his process as well

that’s really gained my attention”, Bradley goes on to say, “The way that Rafael works is a really collaborative effort so we do have that opportunity to explore our own kind of creative minds and creative processes while he’s working with us”. Simultaneously relishing the opportunity he is currently in, whilst itching for the time to work on his own work, Bradley seems keen to make his mark on the contemporary dance landscape. The ambition this young dancer has is unashamedly high, with his sights aimed high for his future endeavours “I see myself in a similar position to Raf. I’d like to see myself in an Artistic Director position or a resident choreographer. I’m feeling pretty ambitious at the moment and happy with where I’ve gotten to in my career so far, why stop now?” For a boy who once could have been a professional recorder player, and even once had ambition to be a lawyer, his feet seem firmly planted, or rather twirling, stretching and launching, in the dance world. With a fierce determination, it seems Bradley has a long career planned that will be buoyed by his already large number of supporters and by living by his own advice to aspiring dancers; “You have to love it because it hurts. Don’t wait for anyone to create opportunities for you, make them yourself and people will admire you for that.”

SO YOU WANT TO BE A COMEDIAN? YOU’RE OFF TO A GOOD START. .

SEAN CORCORAN TALKS TO COMEDIAN RHYS NICOLSON I’D BEEN PUTTING OFF THIS PHONE INTERVIEW FOR WEEKS. I COULDN’T REMEMBER IF I’D BEEN SLAMMED WITH DEADLINES OR TEQUILA BUT CHUNKS OF STUFF JUST KEPT COMING UP. SO IT HAD TO BE JOURNALISTIC KARMA THAT ON THE DAY I FINALLY GOT ROUND TO PLACING THE CALL THE ONLY QUIET ROOM I COULD FIND ON MY LUNCH BREAK AT WORK HAD BEEN DECKED OUT TO LOOK LIKE AN EXOTIC AFRICAN ADOPTION AGENCY. (IT WAS FOR AN ONLINE COMEDY SKETCH BUT I’LL SAVE THAT PLUG FOR ANOTHER TIME.) ALREADY UNCOMFORTABLE IN MY LEOPARD-PRINT SURROUNDINGS, I TELEPHONED A STRANGER.

I GUESS IT P I’M A LAUGH Presenting Rhys Nicholson – a 22-year-old Sydney comedian who is “almost never nude.” Fortunately for us eyebrow-raising folk, one of the few times he was nude (on stage!) is now public domain courtesy of YouTube – but before you stop reading this at least read what lead to such arguably offensive, but undeniably comedic behaviour. Newcastle. In his own words, “it fed the beast of comedy. If you’re creative, you need to leave.” This might sound a little harsh towards the quaint seaside town but also tends to ring true. Daniel Johns and Jennifer Hawkins also hail from Newcastle, and between them also share their fair share of creativity and nudity. I guess being funny is Rhys’ point of difference - but it didn’t happen overnight. “I was quite chunky in high school, and tried to be the class clown but it didn’t work out. I just ended up being weird.” It seems when you have two artists for parents and are a self-confessed Rocky Horror fanatic; one tends to bring a particular upbringing to school. And as he says, “No one was really going for that.” Cue Sydney. Or as Rhys refers to it, ‘Oz’. For it’s true, when you’re young, gay, not so chunky any more, and having had a taste for city-life, “who wants to move back to Kansas?” Or to bring it back down to earth – “People don’t want to glass me! Wow!” Perhaps even more enlightening, by now Rhys had realised that he’d gotten so good at making people uncomfortable, that he may as well try and make a career out of it.

PROVES H WHORE And so far it’s worked. Since moving to Sydney, Rhys has been flaunting his comedic brilliance and inappropriateness anywhere that doesn’t throw it back (even if they did once) – unashamedly playing the ‘gay card’ if only to get away with a bit more. “I think that I can say things that a straight guy couldn’t get away with… Girls can think of me as their gay best friend - I could say to the audience, ‘you’re all sluts!’ and have them laugh; whereas a straight guy might get booted off.” That being said, every audience is different. Rhys admits that sometimes you have to “tread water until you leave”, and indeed unlike the podiums at Swagger at 4am, you would imagine that you’re not always guaranteed a laugh. Rhys confirms this, and interestingly admits that he tends to “do better with bogan crowds”. Perhaps there’s money yet to be made in Newcastle? One thing I wanted to ask him was whether he thought anything was taboo (if you YouTube some of his clips you’ll see it was a pretty fair question). Topics like the Holocaust and rape came to mind, but he assured me otherwise. “I’m not going to do them at a Jewish retirement village or a beaten women’s shelter – it’s all about the context.” So essentially, anything can be done, but as he says, “just don’t be a dumb fuck about it.” Fair call. All in all, despite having one of the “most attention-seeking please-love-me jobs” one can have, Rhys has been able to carve a niche and feel the love. He was a finalist of the Triple J Raw Comedy Award in 2009 and recently

won Best Newcomer at the Sydney Comedy Festival. Pop culture tells us that if he continues on this path he’s sure to become either really successful or get admitted to rehab. For the sake of hearing his material, I’m secretly hoping it’s the latter. Lunch break was up. And just when the idea of poking fun at anyone and anything for the means of a paycheck had just started to grow on me, I suddenly remembered the nudity thing. “I guess it proves I’m a laugh whore.” I think I’ll stay a satisfied customer.

twitter.com/rhysnicholson

caitlinpark. WRITTEN BY CATE SUMMERS CAITLIN PARK’S NAME SEEMS TO BE POPPING UP EVERYWHERE. WHETHER IT BE ECHOES OF PRAISE FOR HER DEBUT ALBUM MILK ANNUAL STILL FLOWING IN A YEAR AFTER ITS RELEASE, OR RAVE REVIEWS FROM COVETED LIVE SUPPORT SLOTS ALONGSIDE ACTS LIKE ACTIVE CHILD AND FIRST AID KIT, PARK IS MAKING HERSELF KNOWN ON THE AUSTRALIAN MUSIC SCENE. Having just recently performed at BIG SOUND 2012, one of Australia’s most reputable and relevant music industry events, Caitlin Park was kind enough to chat with Dandy about her second album; her ‘reverse soundtrack’ style and how her passion for music started.

music in film was the beginning of all this.

“I was very influenced by my older sister who introduced me to Lauryn Hill, and I would walk around my parents’ house singing at the top of my lungs, trying to hit all the high and low notes,” said Park on her early influences. Alongside Lauryn Hill, the music within Disney films was another major player on what drew her to music.“I remember being infatuated with the way characters moved to the music in Fantasia. I’ve never liked musicals, but music in film was the beginning of all this.” This relationship between music and film is one that has helped shape a lot of Park’s work, so much so that some of her music has been based on specific scenes in movies. “I wrote a saxophone piece based on a scene in [Alfred Hitchcock’s] Dial M for Murder, when the husband and killer plan the murder of the wife,” explained Park, who is also a gifted saxophonist, having played for 12 years when she was younger. “I liked the descriptive nature of the narrative. As the script is based on a play, the film is played out in one room only, and therefore the dialogue has to be clever, precise and creative to keep the audience hooked.” Just like Hitchcock’s ability to keep the audience hooked through his films, Park has managed through her music and lyrics to keep listeners captured by the narratives within her work. “People call my sound ‘folktronica’. It’s folk music, basically, with a lot of sound effects and dialogue inspired by old film. I like to call it ‘reverse soundtrack.’”

it’s about being creative and enjoying that process. Not staring at your guitar, sitting in a corner and biting your nails

Her debut album Milk Annual comprised of expressive songs about locked-out lovers, sea adventures and bitter bunny rabbits, and was received warmly by both critics and fans alike. “The reception for Milk Annual was really good. I was very happy with the critical response, as well as people coming up and saying nice things,” said Park. “There is more pressure now for album number two but I’m not fussed by it. After all, you can’t be, it’s about being creative and enjoying that process. Not staring at your guitar, sitting in a corner and biting your nails.” Park’s delightfully laid-back attitude towards creating music translates into a refreshing and vibrant live show, one that has caught the attention of music industry folk and fans alike. “Me and my band like to keep it dynamic, so some songs are big and some are simply solo. Lots of found sounds coming through the speakers and also some beat boxing,” explained Park of her shows. “So lots of things of interest for people that want to hear something a little different.” With a new album on the cards for next year, and a lot of touring and writing set to fill out the rest of 2012, Caitlin Park looks to be quite the busy lady for the foreseeable future. Equal parts talented and charming, it would be no surprise if her name starts popping up all over the place ever faster.

You can catch her delightful live show on Sunday, November 11th at the Newtown Festival in Sydney.

THE COMMUNIT Y BRA E FOUNDATION A LOT OF GAY TEENAGERS EXPERIENCE BULLYING IN HIGH SCHOOL, AND RAMI MANDOW’S HIGH SCHOOL EXPERIENCE WAS NO EXCEPTION. ‘ONE DAY, WHEN WE WERE IN GYM PERIOD, A GROUP OF BOYS WENT BACK INTO THE LOCKER ROOM. THEY TOOK MY SCHOOL PANTS, THREW THEM INTO THE TOILET, AND THEN PROCEEDED TO TAKE TURNS URINATING ON THEM. ANOTHER TIME A BOY PULLED A KNIFE OUT AND ACTUALLY STABBED MY BACKPACK.’ ROBERT GRIGOR TALKS TO RAMI MANDOW, FOUNDER OF COMMUNITY BRAVE.

WE NEED TO MAKE SURE OUR SERVICES SPECIFICALLY RECOGNISE THE NEEDS OF THESE YOUTHS WITH MINORITY SEXUAL IDENTITIES

Growing up in the Western suburbs of Sydney, Mandow wasn’t even openly gay throughout school. He was just smaller than the other kids, and simply picked on because he was considered an easy target. It made for a troubling time at high school, leading to future problems in his early adult life, with alcohol abuse and depression pushing him into a downward spiral that led Mandow to a suicide attempt at the age of twenty-five. “When I woke up in the hospital, I saw my mum sitting at the end of my bed, crying. I realised how close she had come to having to bury her son. No parent should ever have to go through that, and that was when I realised that I wanted to do something about it. First I set myself the challenge of recovering and working to get myself better, and eventually I became strong enough, financially, emotionally, physically and mentally, to put my plans into action.” Six years later, the result is The Community Brave Foundation. The Community Brave Foundation is a volunteer based organisation that is committed to the eradication of homophobic, transphobic and biphobic bullying, and the prevention of suicides among LGBTIQ youths.

‘Statistics show that they’re definitely a high risk group, so we want to make sure our services specifically recognise the needs of these youths with minority sexual identities. Though having said that, we would never turn anyone away because they identify as heterosexual!“ Known as the trained Community Brave ‘Champions’, this trained group of volunteers will be operating the independent social media platform when it launches mid next year. “The idea is to have the site manned by our Champions 24/7. We’ve accumulated a vast database of bullying and suicide prevention resources, and any of these young people will be able to speak one-onone with our Champions, who will be able to help them and direct them to the appropriate support and information.” I compare the idea to existing services such as Lifeline, but Mandow is quick to explain the unique nature of his site. “Lifeline is a crisis service. Community Brave is more of a peer-to-peer network. Our Champions don’t have any more medical or psychological training than the average person, but they’re there to listen, to help, and to make sure these bullied youths get the support that they need.”

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing for Mandow and his visions for social justice and equality. For many, discovering the enormous amount of red tape and paperwork necessary for simply starting a charity would have been extremely disheartening. Instead, this hurdle prompted Mandow to consider alternate and more accessible ways of creating his envisioned youth outreach program, which is where the online approach to the organisation began to emerge. ‘I was working in social media at the time, providing social networking services for companies, and I realised that I could use those skills to get The Community Brave Foundation off the ground.’ The tactic of using what you know has been successful, with their promotional Mardi Gras videos going viral after being shared by the likes of Lady Gaga and Kylie Minogue, helping the number of supporters, dubbed the Community Brave ‘Tribe’ by Mandow, to continually expand.

THE LONG TERM GOAL IS TO ERADICATE HOMOPHOBIA AND TRANSPHOBIA OVER THE NEXT COUPLE OF GENERATIONS

The idea of a social media approach and the online presence of Community Brave led to the discussion of another relevant issue: online bullying. ‘It’s a difficult thing, cyber-bullying, in that you can have large numbers of people simultaneously attacking a single person. That kind of intensity isn’t really as common in a physical setting.’ Under the law, cyber-bulling still counts as harassment the same way that face-to-face bullying does, so The Community Brave Foundation is committed to supporting the victims of all forms of bullying, through the accessible platform of online social media. It’s an encouraging development in a technological climate that is so overrun with online bullies and Internet trolls, and Mandow hopes to create a safe space from that kind of chaos. ‘Social media for social good’, he says with a warm smile. The website is only the first phase in the changes that Mandow’s organisation hopes to achieve. ‘We want to work with the Australian government and the Department of Education to provide teachers with the same training as our Champions, allowing them to utilise these tools on the front line within schools.

We believe if young people are taught these values, they will pass them on to their kids and their kids will pass them on to their kids. The long term goal is to eradicate homophobia and transphobia over the next couple of generations.’ Mandow has implemented the first steps of this operation with rigour and precision, and as the Tribe continues to grow, we’re set to see great things from the Community Brave Foundation in the not too distant future. The Community Brave Foundation will begin the Champions training program in 2013 for the launch of the live site in the middle of the year.

To get involved or become a mentor, visit: thecommunitybravefoundation.org.

A FASHIONABLE GENTLEMAN

MITCHELL OAKLEY SMITH IS A GENTLEMAN IN AN INDUSTRY NOT KNOWN FOR DOING THINGS GENTLY. HE IS POLITE, SOFTLY SPOKEN AND IMPECCABLY GROOMED. DESPITE HIS POLITENESS, OAKLEY SMITH IS NOT A YES-MAN: HIS OPINIONS ARE HONEST, INCISIVE AND CRITICAL, WHERE NECESSARY. IT IS THESE QUALITIES THAT HAVE ENSURED HIS SURVIVAL IN THE FICKLE WORLD OF AUSTRALIAN FASHION. WRITTEN BY RICHARD SAWYER

MANUSCRIPT MANUSCRIPT IS IS NOT NOT YOUR YOUR TYPICAL TYPICAL PRINT PRINT PUBLICATION. PUBLICATION. IT IT DOESN’T DOESN’T FALL FALL INTO INTO THE THE CATEGORY CATEGORY OF OF PUBLICATIONS PUBLICATIONS PEOPLE PEOPLE ARE ARE DISCUSSING DISCUSSING WHEN WHEN THEY THEY TALK TALK ABOUT ABOUT THE THE END END OF OF PRINT PRINT

Oakley Smith has enjoyed a distinguished career as a writer, holding senior roles at Australian GQ and GQ Style, and has written for publications like Art Monthly, The Australian, and Vogue Australia. Oakley Smith is also a published author, having written an authoritative tome each on Fashion (2010) and Interiors (2011) throughout Australia and New Zealand for Thames & Hudson. He is currently coauthoring a book on the collision of the art and fashion worlds since the turn of the millennium, which will be released globally in 2013, again by Thames & Hudson. His latest project, though, reveals a new side to Oakley Smith: a risk taker. As Editor and Publisher of men’s style and art journal Manuscript magazine, Oakley Smith has made his foray into self-funded print publishing at a time when the phrase ‘print is dead’ has become a cliché. In such a climate, how optimistic can one really be about the success of a new print title? “Really optimistic,” according to Oakley Smith, “Manuscript is not your typical print publication. It doesn’t fall into that category of publications

people are discussing when they talk about the end of print.” For Oakley Smith, “print is dead” is overly simplistic. ‘It’s true magazines are closing and editors are being reshuffled and there’s obviously uncertainty in the magazine industry. In the future, going forward with the existing model of magazines? I don’t know if that’s viable. “I believe the future of magazine publishing is in niche markets. It seems like the magazines that are doing well are those who focus on one particular subject. I look at magazines like Candy, Industry, Apartmento and they’re all doing really well. It is the broad commercial magazines who focus on a wide range of subjects who aren’t doing as well. I think, today you can go online and find anything you need, so why would you buy a magazine when it’s talking about so many different topics? Manuscript serves a niche. I mean, I don’t expect this to be selling as many copies as American Vogue – but that was never the intention. If it’s successful, then that’s great; but it wasn’t set up for me to be a millionaire.” There is a charm to Oakley Smith’s insistent faith in print; there are certain books he cannot

ever imagine being viewed on an iPad (‘art and illustration books; those kind of books you put on your coffee table and use as a reference’). Given the relentless pace with which technology is changing the way we interact with the world, his ideas could seem naïve. Nonetheless, they deserve serious consideration. After all, Oakley Smith’s career highlights to date demonstrate a knack for locating gaps in the publishing world. “I don’t think consciously about it but after FASHION came out people told me how needed it was, and the same was true with INTERIORS. In terms of deciding to start Manuscript, I was coming from the commercial background of GQ, which is obviously an important part of men’s fashion internationally, but it is also a broad magazine in terms of content. At the time I thought there wasn’t really a title dedicated to men’s fashion and art or, at least, there wasn’t a title that focused on these subject in a way that was very non-commercial.”

‘We intended to do something very international – the designers or people that we profile – but there is an essential local twist to everything, which you can see in the shoots, there’s always something tongue in cheek that distinguishes us.’ What Oakley Smith, alongside stylist Jolyon Mason, has created in Manuscript is a beautiful object, full of rich and unbridled creativity, cutting-edge styling and beautiful photography.

The decision to print on news-stock (‘we wanted a tactile quality; you get ink on your hands’) was certainly an inspired nod to historical masculinity.

Manuscript Issue IV is available now. For stockists, see www.manuscriptdaily.com

JOSEPH TENNI ROLE MODEL WRITTEN BY ASHLEY SCOTT

HAVING OVER A DECADE IN THE BUSINESS, THERE’S NO DENYING JOSEPH TENNI IS ONE OF THE BEST OF THE BEST IN THE WORLD OF MODEL MANAGEMENT. LAUNCHING THE CAREERS OF SOME OF THE MOST WELL KNOW MODELS INCLUDING ANDREJ PEJIC AND JESSICA HART, JOSEPH IS SOMEONE WHO KNOWS THE INSIDE AND OUT OF A BUSINESS THAT CAN BE FILLED WITH NEGATIVE PRESS AND MISUNDERSTANDING. SO I TOOK THE TIME TO FIND OUT WHAT A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A MODEL BOOKER IS LIKE AND HOW IT ALL GOES DOWN.

Tell us a little bit about your current position? How long have you been there? I am the international talent manager of the women’s board at Chadwick Models in Sydney—a position I have held for over 13 years! How did you get into model management? This job is all about knowing people and making connections. I was always interested in fashion and magazines and I got a job in Sydney working at a now-defunct fashion photo library which enabled me to establish good contacts in this business. From that, I got a job at a smaller model agency, then after that, came to Chadwick. What does a typical day for you entail? Chatting on the phone! A LOT! It can start as early as 6am and go as late as 1.30am! I deal with models, their agents as well as clients and the rest of the team here at Chadwick… What’s your favourite thing about your job? I get to chat on the phone and look at the internet and read magazines and legitimize it as work!

WHEN THINGS CAN GO WRONG IT CAN BE A DISASTER. MODELS MISSING FLIGHTS AND ME BEING LEFT TO PICK UP THE PIECES

Least favourite? When things can go wrong it can be a disaster. Models missing flights and me being left to pick up the pieces. I often deal with young people who may not always make the most professional, mature or rational decisions. I’m sure you’re proud of all your girls, but do you have any in particular whose career you’ve help cultivate really sticks with you? I represented Irina Lazareanu before she became a supermodel. She was (and remains) a very lovely and smart girl—I could see ambition and determination in her back then, so when she began doing really well, I wasn’t at all surprised. It’s also rewarding watching the girls grow up and achieve great success, all the while remaining downto-Earth and grateful for the opportunities that have been presented to them. Jessica and Ashley Hart are good examples of that. Same with Andrej Pejic! If there was any girl working today or in the past who you would love to have managed, who would it be? Milla Jovovich, Michele Hicks and Kate Moss. Even after over 2 decades, I remain obsessed! What’s next for you this year? I will be heading to the US, Mexico and Canada on a HUGE scouting trip. I also hope to place our Australian faces in those markets. Tips for faces we should be keeping an eye out for? Kirsty Thatcher who won our Dolly magazine Model Search is AMAZING—kind of like a baby Christy Turlington! Also, Phoebe O is definitely one to watch!

P h o t o g r a p h y : J a k e Te r r e y Art Direction: Richard Sawyer M o d e l s : A s h l e y & Pe t e r

HOMOSCOPE WRITTEN BY JACK FREESTONE

d o Z y n i t s De

dic

BEYONCÉ KNOWLES QUEEN B APRIL 3RD- AUGUST 5TH A virulent front will threaten the exuberance of Beyonce’s in the coming weeks. A Beyoncé crisis is rare but if left unchecked the eruption is fierce; Sasha Fierce. In times like these it’s no use projecting your inner diva if your life source is hollow. When you wake in the morning practice rolling your eyeballs to the back of your head; some inward thinking and regular attempts to literally see what exists on the inside will establish a tranquil frame of mind. Don’t forget that as a Beyoncé you look and feel your best when standing in between two black women that aren’t as hot as you. If you can’t find two women with whom to accessorise, then it is perfectly ok to dress a man in a black leotard and pretend he is a woman. Do whatever you need to do, to make you feel like you. Right now your perception of self might be a little jayzy. Oops did I say Jay- Z? I meant hazy. What can I say, cupid still got cha. In the coming weeks romance ebbs and flows. It is important that you do your best to keep your love on top; strap on, anyone?

MICHELLE WILLIAMS AUGUST 6TH- DECEMBER 15TH Beyoncé’s moon has departed your valley and as a result you may feel at war with yourself. Two of your utmost internal forces are at odds. In Beyoncé’s absence Michelles can be neither chameleon nor parasite. It is important you take your personality pills at 3pm every afternoon; these will extend the ability of the Michelle to inconspicuously reap the benefits of other people’s talents. Yet the seasonal shift will ignite your desire for greater recognition and this may lead to a change in appearance. When you come home from the parlour with a tattoo stating “non a tergum sursum amur fem canis” your friends will be shocked! However, they will know you mean business when you explain to them that this is merely the famous Latin proverb meaning, “I am not a backup singer anymore bitch!” Don’t expect a change overnight. Michelles, will continue to battle with anonymity, however with Beyoncé’s moon shinning on greener fields, you stand ready to walk the walk and trill the trill solo.

KELLY ROWLAND DECEMBER 15TH-APRIL 2ND Unlike your kindred spirit Michelle, Kellys have been unable to shake Beyoncé’s nasty eclipse. On the dark side of the moon Kellys may find themselves assaulting their palates with an array of tasty treats both savoury and sweet. Objective logic is your ultimate dish of choice. You figure, rather than outshine Beyoncé’s moon, why not outgrow it? Over the winter you have gorged on fetta, you’ve partied with Guetta and you’re one love has been carbohydrates. Be careful though, when the heat season approaches Kellys are inclined to over indulge their primitive side. As a Kelly you may find yourself doing a little nude bathing; just make sure that your skinny dipping doesn’t turn into chunky dunking. Keeping a watchful eye on weight will be the key to romantic success. Nostalgia remains your romantic vice. You may feel trapped by fictional romances of the past. You swoon to the Kelly and Nelly dilemma and you long for a knight with a shining face band aid to win your heart once more. Preserving Nellys band aid under your pillow as a keepsake is not only stunting your ability to be emotionally open but also causing repeated symptoms of conjunctivitis. Throw the band aid away Kelly, move on.

CHECK OUT DA our fast pac your dail dan

WWW.DANDYMAG

ANDY ONLINE : ced blog for ly fix of ndy

GAZINE.COM.AU