Meet Amelia Alisoun

Oh I do love it when I find a new site that has some good thought provoking content .  I was thrilled when I discovered “Musings of the Media Obsessed”.

The author, Amelia Alisoun, it turns out is a country girl, gone city, gone country and she has a particular interest in women’s issues. Knew it flew under my radar for a reason!

The first post I read was On Fidelity , it raises some really interesting points and was a refreshing read.

I have since browsed through her content and have been suitably impressed.

I love nothing more than sharing great finds and sites when I stumble upon them so tracked Amelia down for an interview.

Who is Amelia Alisoun?

I am a 24-year-old journalist working full-time on a rural newspaper. I grew up in country New South Wales and Victoria but studied and lived in the city, so I have had a real balance of both. I studied arts at university and was very unhappy doing so; I lacked direction or purpose and writing fell by the wayside for a long time. After I finished uni I went travelling and lived in New York briefly doing public relations, but my true love was always writing so I finally decided to take up a deferred place and study journalism. It was the beginning of a fantastic journey of learning for me and I absolutely love my job.

Tell me about your website – Musings of the Media Obsessed.

I started my website last year but really lacked the confidence in my writing and in my “voice” to do much with it.

It wasn’t until I started full-time work and developed the discipline and confidence to write everyday that have started to I get it looking and sounding the way I set out to.

There are a lot of amazing women doing some amazing work in the blogosphere and it is easy to get intimidated, so in the end I made the decision to stop trying to compare myself and just write what I want.

The response so far has been very positive.

My goal with the website is to analyse and critique sexual politics in the media and the politics of everyday life, discuss issues affecting women, and also showcase women who are doing really amazing, inspiring things; the emphasis being their achievements, not their looks. It is still early days but I am really enjoying writing and challenging myself to create better content.

What do you believe are the biggest issues facing women today?

That is a tough one. I think women today, on the surface, have so many opportunities and outlets and, in the affluent west at least, have so much more freedom to pursue their own career goals than our parents’ generation.

But, at the end of the day, we still live in a culture that values looks and sexual appeal and it can be very hard for women to fight the machine.

Critics might say women have sexual and social freedom but my argument to that is the culture in which we live in makes it very difficult for women to truly have freedom from these strongly-held cultural ideals of beauty and physical attractiveness.

What is your take on “Pop Culture” are we as a society obsessed with it? Is it healthy in any way?

To an extent I think it is a normal part of human nature to consume pop culture (music, music videos, film, gossip mags etc) as there is an element of fascination and aspiration and it offers an escape from reality.

The problem as I see it is that pop culture has become so much more sexualized and women and girls are being fed this diet of pop culture from a young age.

If that is what they model their sense of self worth on, it is highly problematic. I feel like we have lost the kind of society where kids would go and play and read books and use their imagination- now their imagination is being hijacked by these highly sexualized images that have become so normalised.

Pop culture in moderation is healthy and fun but I think we need to balance it by what is real- focusing on achievements and emphasising that those images are fantasy and are simply not attainable or desirable.

What are your favourite places to visit online and why?
In the past year or so I have really got in to reading blogs, because there are some fantastic voices coming through that you might not have an opportunity to read in the mainstream media.

I love Erica Bartle’s Girl with a Satchel for her magazine critiques, Phoebe Montague’s Lady Melbourne for her lovely take on Melbourne Style, Rachel Hills’ Musings of an Inappropriate Woman for her feminist critiques and Mia Freedman’s Mama Mia for her mix of issues.

My latest favorite blog has to be Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh, she is a comic genius and I wish I had her talent for storytelling.
Being a journalist I am also addicted to the news and spend a lot of time online reading at the New York Times and New York Magazine.