Summer 2016, Love Island is on its second season and the Anastasia Dip Brow was on the rise. Life is good and Love Island is the hot new show. Shows like Big Brother are well and truly on their way out, as they scramble in an attempt to compete with the new-found success of the ultra-glossy, highly produced heteronormativity of Love Island.     Next year marks the ten-year anniversary of Love Islands reboot, but the show is neither made nor received in the same way— now "Big Brother" and "The Traitors" seem to be the hot shows tackling the limited representation and storyli ..read more

The years 2021-2023 saw roughly 5,894 books banned within public schools in the US. Whilst book banning is by no means a new concept (authors have been faced with literary censorship for centuries), the past few years have seen a drastic increase in banned content for underage American citizens. Such rapid censorship is a cause for concern to many authors, consumers, teachers, and politicians across the world.  It is clear that recent book banning targets minority demographics within the US. According to PEN America, those targeted are ‘frequently female, people of colour, and/or LGBTQ ..read more

Inseparable from the family who once resided there, the Brontë Parsonage Museum evokes the creeping sensation of mausoleum where visitors come to commune with the ghosts of literary past. Since its conception in 1893, the Brontë Museum has become a repository of the Brontë genius, acknowledged as the “best known literary shrine in Britain” (Christine Alexander). The rather quaint parsonage sits at the top of a hill overlooking the village of Haworth in England’s North, the surrounding area now known as ‘Brontë country’. Like many past pilgrimages – including a 21 year old Virginia Wolf – I t ..read more

The awards season has come to an end… a month ago. However, it is worth reflecting on what actually happened at the 96th ceremony of the beloved Oscars. After having a short break from watching the gala, I had a chance to immerse myself in this night full of emotions and entertainment once again. I watched my very first Academy Award ceremony back in 2017, when Emma Stone won the award for Best Leading Role, and guess what? She’s done it again. However, before she won the award for Best Performance in “Poor Things” and famously broke her dress, the ceremony started as usual with celebrities t ..read more

What once was a rock festival, has it now become a GCSE celebration? In recent years, Leeds Festival has seemed like a teenage standdown, a proof of being more mature, older, and adult. Growing up just over an hour away from Leeds Fest site, I spent teenage years anticipating my escape from my parents’ clutches and doing some classic English drinking in a field – but with louder music and a couple thousand more people than the local park. Braham Park contained all the hopes and dreams of nearly every Northern 16-year-old, and still does. There’s magic in that first festival experience and for ..read more

In August of last year, I exchanged Leeds for the Netherlands for my study abroad adventure. When I first told people about moving here, I was immediately confronted with: “I love Amsterdam!” Despite settling in Nijmegen for the past 8 months, just a short bike ride from the German border, the questions about the Netherlands’ capital persist. I must confess: I, too, find myself captivated by the allure of the ‘capital city buzz.’ Living in Nijmegen has made it all too easy and tempting to explore European hotspots like Brussels, Paris, and Copenhagen. However, amidst this wanderlust, a quest ..read more

If you’re a fan of podcasts, you’ll be happy to know that there’s a new one on the scene. In fact, if you’re chronically online like myself, you might have already seen its trailer on TikTok and Instagram Reels. Hometown Boring, funded by BBC Sounds Audio Lab, is brought to you by Lippy alumna Anouska, A.K.A. HistoryHun. HistoryHun is a persona that developed from Anouska’s article about the history of vibrators published in our 2020 print edition, ‘Euphoria’. The series explores hidden histories from towns that are frequently stereotyped as boring. Anouska is on a mission to prove that thes ..read more

In the ever-evolving landscape of the music industry, the Grammy Awards remain the pinnacle of musical recognition. Yet, beneath the star-studded ceremonies and prestige, a troubling undercurrent of racial bias persists, often side-lining genuine artistic innovation within communities of colour. Recent years have seen artists such as Frank Ocean, The Weeknd and Zayn shining a spotlight on the politics behind the Grammy voting process, prompting a critical examination of whether the awards inadvertently uphold a culture that prioritises white mediocrity over ground breaking talent from underrep ..read more

Lippy’s Sophie Fennelly sits down to discuss neurodivergence and the music industry. If you’ve been a regular gig-goer in Leeds over the past few years and are into soft girl bedroom pop, it’s difficult to have missed Mollie Coddled. In case you have, Mollie is a self-produced indie singer songwriter who hit the Leeds scene through her attendance of Leeds Conservatoire.   Having not released new music in over a year, Mollie celebrated the release of her new single ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ with a launch party at Hyde Park Book Club on 17th February. I sat down with Mollie to chat a ..read more

(Contains spoilers for both the book and film adaptation of The Virgin Suicides)  ‘”Obviously, Doctor” she said, “you’ve never been a thirteen-year-old girl.”’  The Virgin Suicides, published in 1993, is the debut novel of writer Jeffrey Eugenides. The narrative centres around the five Lisbon sisters and the unanswered question which plagues the narrator’s life: why did these girls commit suicide? Upon writing this review, I had just finished reading The Virgin Suicides for the first time, after watching Sofia Coppola’s 1999 film adaptation of the novel. Within the world of the nov ..read more