Women Affairs

World Breastfeeding Week can leave bottle-feeding mothers feeling guilty and resentful of society's judgemental pressure. Picture this. A newborn child is brought to the mother for its first feed. Mother and child both glow with health and happiness as they bond over this age-old ritual, which has well-documented benefits. But in the case of Simran Jha, 28, the experience wasn't quite like this rosy picture. "It was embarrassing as I tried to breast-feed but couldn't produce milk for over an hour," says the accounts executive. The fact that all her relatives were around, trying to figure out what was going wrong, only added to her woes. Jha eventually opted for bottle-feeding a month after her baby was born but resents the labels that come with the decision. "Women who don't breast-feed their kids are accused of being selfish and lazy," she says. "To people who make such harsh allegations, I say: it is my breast, my milk, and my ...

Time heals all wounds, especially in the entertainment business' and none would vouch for this truism of life more than super icons Shah Rukh Remember, they parted on a sour note after her hasty departure from his home production Chalte Chalte six years ago? She had already canned a portion of the film when Salman Khan reportedly landed on the sets... and, well, the rest as they say is history. Post that scene, SRK let Ash off the hook and took Rani Mukerji as his leading lady. And, since then, many big banners including Yashraj and Dharma failed to reunite the pair that created such magic in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas. Subsequently, though the Bollywood Badshah wasn’t invited to the Ash-Abhishek wedding, King Khan and wife Gauri posed with the Bachchans for the shutterbugs at the Drona premiere last year. And more recently, at Karan Johar’s birthday party on May 25, the two couples — SRK and Gauri, Ash and Abhi — spent quality time together. In the light of this thawing of rel...

Sexy eye makeup will only really be sexy if you know what you are doing. That means that before you can learn how to apply sexy eye makeup, you need to figure out what your best colors are. To do this, you can either experiment or ask an expert. Keep in mind that the colors you choose may also depend on what you are wearing. Prep your eyes with concealer: Concealer can be used to cover dark circles or the bluish discolouration just under your inner eye. Apply three dots of concealer under each eye. Start at the inner corner where skin tends to be darkest, then under the pupil and the third on the outer edge. Pat until it disappears. Apply eye base to your lid: Eye base is the secret to keeping your shadow in place for hours. Your eye shadow is likely to end up as a greasy line if you don’t prime your lid properly first. Apply shadow: It’s great to use a three-toned shadow and build from lids to brow. Start with a light colour that almost matches your lid. Sweep the colour across t...

'They said they were going to give us ostrich eggs,' Esther Mbarga, aged 49, recalls. "'They're huge,' they said. 'Come and we'll give them to you.'" Aged ten or eleven, she and her friends had never seen an ostrich egg. They were really excited. They were taken deep into the bush and waited expectantly. Then, one at a time, they were led off to have their genitalia mutilated. Esther was pinned to the ground by four women and cut by a fifth. She limped away bleeding and crying. It was hard to walk and urination was incredibly painful for days afterwards. For some reason, the women weren't happy with the excision. On further checking they decided that there was more to cut. They cut more the following day and yet more a week later. Esther lives in Burkina Faso where female genital mutilation is not legal but is still carried out covertly. Female genital mutilation comprises 'all procedures involving partial or total removal of the exte...

Paris Hilton wants to warn young girls from making "humiliating" sex tapes. The blonde socialite was devastated when X-rated footage of her and ex-boyfriend Rick Salomon surfaced in 2003 and has vowed to stop other girls from agreeing to film themselves engaging in sex acts to please their lovers. She said: "I want young girls to never put themselves in that situation I was in. Don't ever let someone talk you into doing something you don't want to do." She added: "I was humiliated, embarrassed and in shock that it happened. It wasn't my fault, it was something that someone did to me, so I've just learned to be a strong woman and nothing can hurt me at this point. "It was definitely very painful. When you trust someone and love someone - for them to do that to you, it's really hard. It's something that bothers me everyday." The 28-year-old hotel heiress - who receives a percentage of profits from the footage, which was eventuall...

The chance to explore the complexities of the mother-child relationship in new movie Blessed was too much to pass up for mothers Miranda Otto, Deborra-lee Furness and Frances O'Connor. The Australian actresses join forces in director Ana Kokkinos's film, adapted from the play Who's Afraid of the Working Class? Furness plays Tanya, a married mother of a teenage boy and the family's sole breadwinner. Otto is Bianca, who is more like a sister than a mother to teenage Katrina. O'Connor is Rhonda, a welfare-dependent woman whose three children have different fathers. They are joined by Russian-born actress Victoria Haralabidou, who plays Gina, a widowed and very religious mother who feels her son and daughter are a mystery. Speaking before the world premiere of Blessed at the Melbourne International Film Festival yesterday, the four women said they were drawn to the project because of the powerful bond between mother and child. "It's about mothers and chi...