Twelve years ago, photographer Sarah Wong started documenting the journey of transgender children, aged between 5 and 17, undertaking hormone therapy. The resulting portraits are incredibly beautiful
Twelve years ago, photographer Sarah Wong was working as a healthcare photographer when she met a group of transgender children. At the time they were aged between 5 and 17, and amongst the first in the world to undergo a therapy developed by Peggy Cohen-Kettenis, the founder of Europe’s first clinic for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, at VU University in Amsterdam.
Wong was profoundly moved by their stories, and was inspired to document their experiences with her camera. That was the day the photoseries, Inside Out: Portraits Of Cross-Gender Children, was born.
“The greatest nightmare from a cross-gender child is your body growing the wrong direction,” Wong tells The Weekly. ” A boy doesn’t want breasts and girls don’t want to have a beard. The puberty-blockers gave relief and thinking time, and they could grow up like ‘normal’ teenagers.”
It was important for Wong to use her talents as an artist to try and raise public awareness about the transgender community.
“It’s very important for society to see these images — there’s nothing sensational about transgender kids. Again, at the end we’re pretty much the same: we’re all souls who want to live happy and give meaning to our life and others,” Wong says.
During her time photographing the children, Wong was particularly careful not to make their transition the focus of the portraits. “With their portraits I wanted to empower them — no sensational journalistic approach,” Wong says. “Not a boy in a dress or a girl with a football. I wanted people to see the portraits and say, ‘Lovely children, but who are they?’
“At the end we’re all the same. Souls who want to live happily and give meaning to our lives and others.”
*Sarah’s latest photoseries is called SoulFlowers, and is inspired by the transgender children she has photographed over the years. It aims to capture the soul of different people in the world.
A group of cancer survivors have proudly displayed the scars from the surgeries that saved their lives in a breathtaking photo series.
Called “Scar Stories”, the collection of images is the brainchild of Jasmine Gailer, who was just 22 years old when surgery to remove her osteosarcoma left her with a 30cm scar on her leg.
“My whole body image had changed and I was focused on hiding my scar,” she said. “I was ashamed of it and I was ashamed of my story.”
Jasmine started the Scar Stories project to help normalise scars from cancer surgery and raise money for cancer charity CanTeen.
The powerful images have been exhibited around Australia, raising more than $7000.
Hayley, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivor. Photography by Lisa Auger. WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES
Chris, leukaemia survivor. Photography by Lisa Auger.
Jasmine, osteosarcoma survivor. Photography by Charmaine Lyons.
Breast cancer survivors and victims. Photography by Suzanne McCorkell.
Jas, rhabdomyosarcoma survivor, and Sue, melanoma survivor. Photography by Charmaine Lyons.
Sara, osteogenic sarcoma survivor. Photography by Fiona Vail.
Charlotte, liver cancer survivor. Photography by Steve Tyssen.
Ashleigh, thyroid cancer survivor. Photography by Georgia Brizuela.
Criag, brain tumour survivor. Photography by Brihannah Rilstone.
Hannah, Ewings sarcoma survivor. Photography by Lisa Auger.
Jasmine, osteosarcoma survivor. Photography by Georgia Brizuela.
Jasmine, osteosarcoma survivor. Photography by Georgia Brizuela.
Jason, osteosarcoma survivor. Photography by Lisa Auger.
Lisa, Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivor. Photography by Steve Tyssen.
Lisa, Hodgkin’s lymphoma survivor. Photography by Steve Tyssen.
Lucy, Ewings sarcoma survivor. Photography by April Kendall.
You’ve heard it all before, you’re meant to be getting eight hours of Zzz’s every night. But whenever you hit the pillow, you’re wide awake. So, here are 10 helpful tips you need to try tonight before sliding under the sheets. Trust us, after reading this, you’ll wake up feeling reading to take on the world.
Create a sleep schedule
A regular sleep routine is best for your biological clock, so try to wake up and go to bed the same time every day – and yes, this even means weekends!
Exercise
Ever feel like snoozing after finishing an epic workout? Well, that’s the sleep-inducing melatonin that’s released in your brain after you begin to cool down. Having a sweat-sesh, especially cardio, improves sleep. Avoid it within four hours of your bedtime though, as this inhibits your Zzz time because your body temperature is high.
Spritz some scents
There are certain scents which help with relaxation, like lavender and chamomile. Mix in a few drops of essential oil with water and spritz it onto your pillow.
Keep it cool
Having a restless sleep is usually because your bedroom is too hot. A warm shower or warm bath before bed is actually really helpful, as it will temporarily raise your body temperature, but cool down once you hop out. This mimics what your brain does when it readies the body for sleep. Between 18 degrees and 30 degrees is the perfect temperature for a deep slumber.
Make sure your bed is comfortable
Since most of us will spend approximately one-third of our lives asleep, your bed deserves serious investment. Buy the right mattress and ensure you get a pillow that suits how you sleep – on your side, back, firm or soft.
Heading into Winter, a good quality quilt is key. Whether you prefer white duck down for warmth without the weight or wool for its natural vapour management system, the type of quilt you choose can considerably improve your quality of sleep. Fresh sheets are also an easy indulgence, invest in an extra set so you can change them frequently.
Cover up light sources
Keep your bedroom quiet and dark. Any kind of light, like electronics that are on, can still sometimes penetrate your closed eyelids into the part of your brain that controls sleep. Maybe consider an eye mask, as the darker your room is, the deeper your sleep will be.
Power down
Smartphones and tablets use a blue light which tricks the brain into thinking you need to wake up. To really wind down, ban screen-time an hour before bed. That Candy Crush game can wait till morning.
Ditch the caffeine
Try to ease off the coffee or tea by the early afternoon. The stimulating effects of caffeine can take hours to wear off, which can disrupt sleep.
Relax
Get all zen and chill out before hopping into bed. Dim the lights, do a bit of reading, or write down in a journal anything that’s been on your mind.
Consider kicking your pets off the bed
As much as you may love cuddling up to your furry friend at night, more than half of people who sleep with their pets say the animals disturb their slumber, according to a survey from the Mayo Clinic Sleep Disorders Center. So if your pet doesn’t sleep soundly through the night, pull their little mat next to your bed – and not on it!
Ditch the arvo naps
Sure, you might feel like you absolutely need a cat nap after a long day of work, but if it’s not done right, it could put serious pressure on a good night’s sleep. Try and eliminate naps altogether, or limit them to 25-30 minutes max.
This article is brought to you by MyHouse. For expert advice on selecting the best quilt, pillow, sheets or underblanket to suit your needs, click here.
If as a mother, there’s one little tip you can pass on to your daughter that might help her enjoy a productive, happy and neurosis-free life, I reckon it’s this: don’t tidy your room.
I mean it. And here’s why. Amid all the extraordinary changes that have befallen Australian women over the past half-century (the surge into the workplace, reproductive freedom, no-fault divorce, military combat roles, Botox, the periodic arrival and departure of high-waistedness as a fashion trend), there is one significant feature of life that hasn’t changed very much at all; women still do about twice as much housework as men.
Now, there are two ways you can approach this disparity, as a gender.
You can whine and moan about men doing more. Or you can take the radical option and just do less yourself.
The Canadian writer Stephen Marche recently observed that, “housework is the only political problem in which doing less and not caring are the solution, where apathy is the most sensible and progressive attitude”.
And that’s the approach I have taken to heart. My house, where my partner and I and our three children live, is a glorious tribute to all the things that are more important than housework.
Mine is one of those homes which would – should we ever feel like selling – need about two weeks of concerted scrubbing and sorting, and dusting-of-high-ledges and a vicious targeted eradication of old craft projects.
Mine is the sort of home where guests for lunch present – apart from menu planning – the added unspoken question as to whose job it will be to clear the dining room table of its drifts of paper, unopened letters and things that people dumped there on the way in from school.
Deposits of useful items (sticky tape, the rare and invaluable Pens That Work, the keys to my son’s toy handcuffs, spare batteries) cluster together on vulnerable surface areas like mice in a haystack.
My partner, Jeremy, is an intrepid housework-sharer, talented launderer and instinctively much tidier than I am. Yet we both work full-time and the numbers don’t lie; the hours in the day just aren’t sufficient to accommodate two working lives plus all the time we need to spend with our children.
And if it comes down to a choice between tidying the living room and making gingerbread with the children, then in my view there is no contest. Consequently, my house is what it is.
Annabel Crabb with her family.
When The Weekly’s Editor-In-Chief Helen McCabe (in her matchlessly charming way) suggested a chat and possible family photograph after I published my book The Wife Drought, my policy was clear: sure, you can come and take pictures in our house, but I’m not tidying up.
Posing in an artificially tidied home, pretending we’re a relentlessly ordered family, would be a fib. Our house is messy. Messy is what it is.
In the end, we ended up in a studio, romping about self-consciously for photographs in an artfully disordered but controlled environment.
However, I like the way my house is. It’s like my parents’ house, on the Adelaide Plains farm where I grew up and where friendly disorder always reigned; Lego citadels, intricate costumes made out of paper shopping bags and the serial projects of my crafty, kitchen-innovator of a mother. She made her own soap. She wove her own baskets.
In a fabulous burst of activity, she once knitted a blanket from wool she had carded, spun and dyed herself, with wool shorn from our own sheep.
That blanket is – in any future will and testament – the only thing on which I really will insist.
My room was always a mess and it still is, and sometimes I think not minding about that is the greatest gift my mother has given me.
Genuinely not minding that the kitchen cupboards are dusty – or that my desk is still cluttered with notes, splayed reference texts and illegible little Post-It notes from a book I finished writing nearly a year ago – is like a season ticket to the happiness that comes from doing other things.
One of the reasons the housework debate is so diabolical – and why, in countless households across Australia, the dishes and the recycling, and the timeless dispute about whose job it really is to clean the toilet carry such potential for discord – is that men and women often have asymmetric standards about what constitutes an acceptable level of clean.
It’s one thing to agree that housekeeping will be split equally, but it’s another thing entirely to reach agreement upon the absolute minimum that must be done and this is where the frustration often erupts.
One party might think that a kitchen bench is clean if it’s been given an optimistic swipe with a dingy Chux. The other, meanwhile, might be incapable of sleep until it’s been fully cleared and disinfected.
Why do women, on average, have higher standards? Well, it’s not the case in my household, so I’m an unreliable witness, but my best guess is that it’s because women have more skin in the game than men.
An untidy house belonging to the Brown family is far more likely, in local gossip, to be “Mrs Brown’s filthy house” than “Mr Brown’s filthy house”.
And, you know, every now and again, when I’m rampaging through the house looking for nail scissors or that birthday present I bought two days ago for the kids’ party to which we are, right at that minute, already 20 minutes late, I do feel the siren call of orderliness and wish I had one of those houses in which minimalist furniture sprawls languidly across vast empty planes of dust-free space, interrupted only by the odd witty vase or coffee-table book about wallpaper.
Yet then I remember. Skiving off housework is my international ticket to more fun things, like hanging out with my slightly dishevelled children. A bit of mess never hurt anyone, after all.
Annabel Crabb is the author of The Wife Drought, published by Random House.
This story was originally published in the March issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Diane Kruger and Joshua Jackson have called it quits on their relationship after 10 years together.
Reps have said that Kruger, 40, and Jackson, 38, will remain friends.
The couple lived in New York together, and owned houses in Paris and Vancouver.
They never married, with Jackson explaining in 2014: “We’re not religious. I don’t feel any more or less committed to Diane for not having stood in front of a priest and had a giant party.
“We’re both children of divorce, so it’s hard for me to take marriage at face value as the thing that shows you’ve grown up and are committed to another person. But it may change at some point. We may get married.”
According to the Daily Mail, Pippa Middleton is officially off the market after her investment banker boyfriend James Matthews popped the question.
Insiders reveal James got down on one knee during a weekend escape to the Lake District recently.
The report also claims James, 40, asked Pippa’s father Michael Middleton for her hand in marriage.
“James is a traditionalist and very much wanted to do things properly. That meant getting his future father in law’s consent,” an insider tells.
“Mike and Carole are very happy. They like James and they are sure he will make Pippa very happy,” the source adds.
Apparently the proposal caught the 32-year-old off guard and she is over the moon.
The younger sister of Kate Middleton did little to dispel the engagement rumours when she stepped out at the Frost Family Summer Party in London on Monday evening, expertly hiding her left hand.
Watch Pippa talk about her close bond with her sister, Duchess Catherine, in the player below. Post continues after the video!
Pippa and James, who dated briefly in 2012, rekindled their romance in January this year shortly after she split with businessman Nico Jackson, whom she dated for three years.
Meanwhile James’ brother Spencer Matthews is reality TV royalty thanks to his role in the hit TV show Made in Chelsea, which documents the glamorous lives of the London elite.
Something to hide? Pippa Middleton made sure her left hand was out of sight when she stepped in London on Monday evening.
Pippa became a household name in 2011 after stealing the show as the Maid of Honour at her sister’s wedding to Prince William.
Dubbed “Her Royal Hotness” thanks to her stunning white bridesmaid’s dress, the British beauty was praised for her enviable figure and down-to-earth demeanor.
“It sounds funny to say, but we saw it, as just a family wedding. And actually, I didn’t realize, perhaps, the scale of it until afterwards. We all took on the the roles as any family would,” she later reflected of the momentous day during one of her only interviews with USA show Today.
Insiders claim James popped the question during a romantic weekend away to the Lake District.
Sonia Kruger made some controversial comments on the Today Show yesterday morning that left viewers divided.
Scroll down for video
She called for Australia to stop Muslim immigration, saying that there’s a correlation between the number of Muslims in a country and the number of terrorist attacks.
She said: “Personally, I would like to see it stop now for Australia – because I want to feel safe as all of our citizens do when we go out to celebrate Australia Day.”
Her comments caused major uproar, with people on social media labelling her ‘racist’.
Sonia later defended her comments with a tweet, saying it is her democratic right as a mother to discuss immigration and religion.
Channel Nine also backed her up by releasing a statement yesterday afternoon.
“Nine’s view is that we believe in freedom of speech and the Mixed Grill segment on the Today Show is a place where that happens. Sonia, David and Lisa each expressed a variety of opinions on the show this morning,” read the statement.
Will a judge get the final say in the feud between Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian?
According to RadarOnline, Taylor Swift has already threatened Kanye and Kim with legal action when she learned their phone conversation had been released without her consent.
The 26-year-old’s legal team are convinced Kanye and Kim have violated California penal code 632 that makes it illegal to record calls without permission from both sides.
Kanye is in some murky water… See the situation rundown in the video below, then post continues.
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The love between these two is gone.
According to reports, Taylor’s team swiftly issued a legal letter to Kim and Kanye, stating “demand is hereby made that you immediately destroy all such recording, provide us of assurance that this has been done and also assurance that these recordings have not previously been disseminated. “
Initially Taylor retaliated to Kim leaking the potentially illegal recording by posting “That moment when Kanye West secretly records your phone call then Kim posts it on the internet.”
See the scandalous video in question below. Post continues.
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Wonder whether having proof Taylor allegedly lied is worth all this trouble for Kanye?
If charged and convicted of the felony, Kanye and Kim could reportedly face up to three years in jail.
So it seems that even though the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star was trying to defend her rapper husband, her actions could ultimately land the pair an a lot of trouble.
A woman who was gang-raped in 2013 has been raped again by the same five men who attacked her three years ago.
The unnamed woman was walking home from university last week when she was kidnapped and drugged by the same men she took to court for rape previously.
The men, who are out on bail, raped the woman again, before dumping her unconscious on the side of a road near New Delhi, where police later found her.
The victim’s family claims the attack was motivated by revenge.
“We had filed a case in the court for the arrest of the remaining three and re-arrest of the two out on bail,” the woman’s brother told the Hindustan Times.
“We were getting constant threats from the accused to reach a compromise outside the court, but we remained firm. That’s why they have attacked her again.”
A nursing home employee who sexually abused an elderly dementia sufferer has been jailed for just three years.
Wayne Brownsey, 44, preyed on the woman – who couldn’t speak or care for herself – for more than a year before he was eventually caught in the act by two fellow staff members.
Brownsey met his victim at Alderwood Care Home in Salford where he worked as a maintenance man.
The woman’s carers began to fear something was amiss, but didn’t dare report it at first because the home’s manager was Brownsey’s partner of 14 years.
Eventually, their suspicions became too great and they called Crimestoppers and asked for a camera to be installed in the woman’s room before they caught him in the act, with his hands still tangled in the panicked woman’s clothes.
The woman died soon after the attacks were uncovered.
Despite repeatedly protesting his innocence, Brownsey was found guilty of sexual assault earlier this year and was yesterday jailed for three years and nine months at Manchester Crown Court.
