I hated uni. Obviously. However, I was lucky to learn a few valuable things that I will always use in my life. Things that will stop me from becoming a dumb bitch. Maybe people think I’m slow or dumb, or maybe they don’t realise that I couldn’t give a fuck. I like to think. I like to think way too much. And sometimes I overthink that I cause a blowout. I blame uni. Slightly. But then I guess I can also blame the fact that I was brought up without a single issue of Cosmopolitan or Vogue in the house.

When I was growing up, my parents and grandparents pushed me to constantly be more girly. More female. Not that I wasn’t. I liked playing with Barbie Dolls. As I got older, I wanted to play with make up. At 13, I wasn’t allowed to buy a Dolly magazine. But I did anyway and hid it under my mattress like a porno.

One of the most interesting things I remember - my mother dragging me around at the Perth Royal Show every year to get me the Barbie bag, or any bag that was for girls. Although I did show an interest in them, the moment we got home I would fight my brothers for their Batman capes or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle’s plastic nun-chucks. I liked to play footy and cricket.I liked to watch wrestling. And then I got into metal.

As I was sitting in the salon waiting for someone (ANYONE!) to come rescue me from looking like a tin foil alien, I tried to pass the time by reading Vogue and Cosmopolitan. I confess, I usually do read these magazines at salons because I don’t exactly want to seem out of place (more so than I already am) by just staring ahead as my hair is being done. Sometimes I will just stare at a page so it looks like I’m reading. But what I’m really doing is counting how long until I turn the page or think about conversations I had earlier in the day. I realise that in trying not to seem odd, I have just outdone myself.

I came across one of Vogue’s poor excuse for an article about women, youth, society and the media. I am somewhat aware that women in Hollywood who are nearing 40 are considered “hags”. And I am also aware that there is immense pressure on women to remain youthful looking and beautiful all the time or some guy won’t like us. I somehow thought it was Anna Wintour’s obsession with youth that seemed to fuel this fire. I don’t read fashion magazines, but I somehow know who Anna Wintour is. And I have a fair idea of what she is probably like in person. Ouch.

I thought it was amusing that I was reading an article that seemed to further shoot the world of fashion magazine’s in the fucking face. Here was this article, claiming that the media was to blame for this very ideology, when in fact the whole ideology was their doing in the first place. I almost laughed out loud. See, the one thing this uni class taught me was that these fashion magazines ‘condition’ women to stay or become society’s idea of what a woman should be - sexy, beautiful, youthful, thin, flawless. Possibly even some variation of “intelligent”. Not much has changed in these magazines in my lifetime. They are the chunder, constantly recycled. The article was based purely on their own doing and now they were questioning it? Classic.

After a while, I remembered why Cosmo and Vogue was not for me. Too shallow. Too easy. Too 2-dimensional. Too fake. I would much rather go out and find things that please me, instead of being served the monthly “how a woman should be” memo.

I am of the female sex, that is obvious. But one thing that has always affected me is the bitchiness of women. Mind you, I am guilty of being bitchy. Especially in my younger years… the things that used to come out of my mouth - I was certainly on the path to being smacked in the teeth. After a while, I had a epiphany and decided that no one in life gets far by being bitchy. And no one gets far calling other women “bitches” for no reason. I found it easier to call women I did not know a bitch. But when a few people calling themselves friends did and said questionable things - it wasn’t hard to hold back.

On Sunday, I went to pay for something at Live Clothing in Perth. I saw that someone was already being served and that only one girl was serving so I formed a line. However, after 10 seconds of my line-forming, a young girl and her really short friend who I could probably hurt just by sitting on, came up and put their items on the table ready to be rung up. I was pissed off that she had pushed in front of me but tried to remain polite. I said “Excuse me, I was here before you.”. However you can say that nicely without seeming like a bitch to the receiver I am not sure. She looked at me and narrowed her eyes and said “But you weren’t standing here.”. Her short friend looked at me - giving me a sort of “ghetto” look which I’m sure would have involved a lot of “ho!” and “slut!” had I gone any further with this confrontation.

I was slightly shocked - although I was partly expecting it. It’s not hard to find young women who are genuinely nice but it is hard to find them in Live Clothing stores.

On a night out the week before, a “friend” started disclosing unwanted information to me about two close people in my life. I am being gentle. Because, by god, that sentence could read something far more malicious. Ok, so by “disclosing unwanted information” I mean she was having a bitch to me. And by “two close people in my life” I mean my boyfriend and my best friend. So now you can probably understand me just that bit more. It was unwarranted, and so was the surprising part of her rant - she was telling me lies about events or occurrences that happened right in front of my face - as if I had never been there in the first place. It was shocking and upsetting as you could probably imagine.

It is sad, I don’t really understand the need for dramas. Can’t chicks just get along? Can’t everyone just get along in general? So much stress and shit like this is because people have crap attitudes and obviously blab to the wrong person about certain things. Why are women so bitchy?

I just came back from seeing Disturbia. It wasn’t really something I wanted to see but because it is a boring public holiday with nothing else to do, it seemed like the only option. All the other movies that were playing looked quite shiteous and it was between Disturbia and The Reaping.Disturbia it was.

Before I go and see a movie I don’t really give a shit about, I like to read up on it as much as I can. This includes reading people’s comments on IMDb, reading reviews of the film or sometimes even finding the entire plot and reading that. I don’t know why I do that, it probably is because I don’t really care about the movie so I just want to know all about it so there are no surprises. However, this does not apply with movies that I am very interested in seeing. I will avoid reading IMDb (aka The Whiny Bitches Database), Wikipedia, film reviews… ANYTHING to do with the film.

Disturbia is not really a film I would see. I don’t really like thriller movies that much. Well… okay. I don’t mind thriller movies but honestly, after about an hour of watching a film that conveys thrills very well I feel like taking up smoking again. The stress is unnecessary. If I want a scare, I’ll watch a horror film. The only problem is this - while to the outsider, a thriller and horror movie may seem similar they are in fact, very different.

Thriller films are different to horror films because women will actually go and see thrillers. They will actually WANT to go see a thriller, to get scared and to jump in their seats. I’m not exactly sure why women would rather see a thriller than a horror movie since horror is really just big comedic gore fest whereas I feel like I’m going to die in a theatre when I see a thriller. I don’t really like to go to the cinema to die of a heart attack, I’d much rather someone do that on screen with hilarious consequences if you get my drift.

Horror movies are taboo for women. You will rarely see a female watching a horror film without a male escort. She will most probably be there against her will. For my friends and I, this is usually not the case. My friend Petra is always up for watching a horror movie with me, and Nessa is up for it too. The others… I don’t think so. I don’t think I’ve seen that too often; where a bunch of females willingly go and see a horror movie that isn’t The Grudge or Saw or anything super gay like that.

So what the fuck is the difference between being scared shitless for about 45 minutes, or watching someone die on screen in a gory yet comedic way? Well.. there’s the obvious difference there. But why is forcing yourself to watch something that will scare you so much easier than watching something that will gross you out or make you laugh?

Women will willingly go to thriller films. They’ll go with a bunch of their friends, sit there and squeal about how scared they are. You know, like I did tonight. But they won’t go to horror films. Why. WHY!

Because maybe we like being scared. Maybe we like the rush of being freaked out for a little while. And maybe we also can’t stand to be grossed out. Maybe we can’t take horror films so thriller films are like our ’soft core’ shit. Who knows? Maybe we like the clues… the build up to the chase. The psychology of it all. The fact that it creeps us the fuck out. The emotions that the main character goes through. Maybe the Thriller film is like a Romantic Comedy that men are dragged to while the Horror film is like the Action movie that women are dragged to.

The experience of tonight has taught me a few things:

1) Treat the thriller genre like the romantic comedy: don’t see this movie on a first date. The guy will think you’re lame when you start screaming and cutting off the circulation of his arm. Kind of like how you would act in a romantic comedy movie, only instead of screaming you’d be crying and you’d probably still be cutting off the circulation of his arm.

2) Don’t buy any popcorn, especially the large serving. During the tense scenes, I ate like a pig. Guess it beats biting your nails. Wait. I did that too.

3) There is nothing you can do to stop squealing girls. Get it out on DVD if you want to see it without the added sound effects.

4) If you can see a thriller, you CAN see a horror film. Do it. Trust yourself. I believe in you!