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Sunday, March 23, 2014
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Thursday, March 6, 2014
wife
The former model Susan Sangster has already been awarded
around £18million from three divorces, and is looking for another payout when a
judge in the High Court next month rules on her fourth divorce.
Whatever would Caroline Norton have made of her?
Caroline was a moving force behind one of the most
emancipating pieces of legislation in our history, the Marriage and Divorce
Act, which became law 150 years ago this month.
By the time the Bill passed, she had experienced first-hand
the suffering and despair which were the lot of many married women at that
time. Attractive, witty and intelligent, Caroline was the grand-daughter of the
playwright Richard Sheridan.
She had everything going for her, except money. The family
was not rich, and to help improve their prospects, she agreed to marry, in
1827, the younger son of a peer, the ambitious George Norton, MP for Guildford.
It was a fraught marriage from the start.
They disagreed about everything: Caroline favoured social
reform; George was a hard-line Tory. In those days, a wife did not openly
disagree with her husband.
George beat his wife. Sometimes their servants had to
intervene to protect her. Twice, Caroline left her husband. Each time she came
back for the sake of their children.
By the 1830s Caroline was an acknowledged society beauty
with a flourishing political salon.
She was close - some said intimately so - to the Home
Secretary and future Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne.
When George Norton realised that Melbourne was not going to
help him up the greasy pole, he sued him, citing adultery.
It was a spurious charge which the court soon dismissed
through lack of evidence, but in his fury, George barred Caroline from the
family home and forbade her access to their children.
Caroline began to realise that she was helpless in the eyes
of the law.
In the early Victorian era, a woman entering upon marriage
had almost no rights. All her property automatically became her husband's. Even
if she had her own land, her husband received the income from it.
A husband had the right to lock up his wife. If he beat her,
she had no legal redress. The law mostly removed itself from marital relations.
Married women were put into the same category as lunatics,
idiots, outlaws and children.
Even her children were not hers, according to the law. And
if a woman left the home to take refuge elsewhere, as Caroline did twice, her
husband could lock her out, without needing a court order.
As for divorce, there were only three ways of applying for a
separation, 150 years ago, all of them under the control of the Church of
England, which regarded it as an offence against God's will, each of them with
a heavy penalty.
One was if the marriage was a nullity, through impotence,
insanity or potential incest.
In those cases, the Church permitted the divorcees to
remarry, but rendered their children illegitimate.
A second was available in cases of adultery, sodomy or
physical violence: it did not let the petitioners remarry, but permitted a
separation.
A third was to get a separation and then sue the spouse for
adultery. If successful, Parliament eventually allowed the couple a proper
divorce which did not make their children illegitimate.
Yet this long, expensive process was out of reach of nearly
everyone, as the Church intended it to be.
Caroline was not a suffragette, nor even a feminist, but she
was enraged that the divorce laws should be so unjust.
So with the help of a sympathetic MP she persuaded
Parliament to pass a law allowing mothers who had not had adultery proved
against them the right of custody of their young children.
It was the first small step on a remarkable campaign that
would transform marriage - and society - for ever.
Caroline continued to dash off pamphlets enlisting MPs in
her bid for further liberalisation of the law.
She was 50 when, in 1858, largely due to her unflagging
efforts, the Bill she had fought for was passed into law.
But it was only after George died, in 1877 that Caroline,
now aged 69, could re-marry - this time to Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, who
gave her three months of happiness before her death.
The new Act transferred jurisdiction from Church courts to a
new civil court - a principle which gave rise to the divorce courts of day, and
which set in motion the social revolution that has ended in today's statistic
that 40per cent of marriages end in divorce.
It permitted men to be divorced on the grounds of adultery
and women to be divorced on the same grounds so long as there was also physical
cruelty, incest, rape, sodomy, bestiality, bigamy or two years' desertion.
It also gave women control over money from bequests and
investments, and was the first crack in the wall which barred women from sexual
and financial equality. Traditionalists were outraged.
There was still a long way to go. Infant Custody Acts of
1873 and 1886 built upon Caroline Norton's measure. The Married Women's
Property Acts of 1870 and 1882 gave married women the same rights over property
as unmarried women: they could retain their capital, possessions and wages.
But no grounds for divorce other than adultery were
recognised: women were still second-class citizens. Well into the 20th century,
women had no remedies against abusive husbands.
A solicitor defending a husband against an application for
separation could argue that, "in Blackburn and in Wigan it is the usual
thing for the husband, when he comes home at night, to give his wife a kicking
and beating".
The children were still legally the husband's, and if a
couple separated, the husband had first claim to them, unless he had a
conviction for assault.
Divorce was still the preserve of the rich - among the
peerage, one-third of the marriages of the 1900s ended in divorce.
In Edwardian times only one politician held the torch for
reform of the divorce laws.
Earl Russell in 1902 spoke up in the House of Lords for
allowing trial separations, making the legal position of men and women equal
and giving the poor an equal right to divorce.
He argued that the law was illogical and unjust, that it
encouraged immorality by denying unhappily married people release.
The Lords reacted with horror, moving that his Bill be
rejected, not least because they believed Russell "had form".
The elder brother of Bertrand Russell, the earl was a distinguished
barrister who had been thrown in jail, after being convicted of bigamy.
He had married a harridan, who in the Lord Chancellor's
words "had poisoned the whole atmosphere in which he lived".
Having - as he thought - divorced his wife, after getting a
decree of judicial separation, Russell went to Nevada where he married an
American divorcee Mollie Cooke.
But his British wife had successfully appealed against the
decree, and when Russell returned to England he was found to have been in
defiance of the law.
He was sentenced to three months in jail - although at the
end of it his divorce went through and his marriage to his second wife was made
legal.
The divorce issue would not go away.
While Russell continued his campaign in the Lords, a Royal
Commission was appointed to consider reforms in the divorce laws.
The mood was changing. On the throne, in place of prim Queen
Victoria, was Edward VII, whose succession of mistresses gave a lighter tone to
public life. But the Church still objected.
The Archbishop of Canterbury abhorred divorce as
unChristian, also expressing his alarm at "extending those facilities to
classes other than those who take advantage of them now".
The Suffragette movement and the rise in the use of
contraception sharpened fears that women and the lower classes were getting out
of control.
After three years of hearings, the Royal Commission
delivered their report. The majority, comprising social, medical and legal
experts, favoured reform.
The minority, the Church militants, resisted. The Prime
Minister, Herbert Asquith, shelved the issue, and it didn't return until after
World War I.
It re-emerged into a different world. The war had made
people aware that life was for living.
Promiscuity was no longer associated with the upper-classes:
it was down to tennis-club level.
A kiss no longer signalled an engagement. Young people
smoked and drank, and women put on lipstick in public.
They talked about "companionate marriage" which
amounted to living in sin but being faithful to one partner.
It was rumoured that in Los Angeles and New York one girl in
10 carried a contraceptive in her vanity case. Gradually, at least among the
Bright Young
Things, the American view prevailed that marriage was a
social habit, not a sacrament.
In 1918 there were more divorces than ever before; in 1919
there were half as many again.
Divorce still held a social stigma in stuffy circles, and it
was still a matter of honour for the man to take the blame in adultery lawsuits
- even if they had to spend a weekend with a "woman unknown" in a
hotel to gather the necessary evidence from a chambermaid.
But divorces only truly proliferated after the 1923
Matrimonial Causes Act which established equality between the sexes in divorce
cases, and made divorce more accessible to poorer people.
Divorce numbers rose, and the most telling drawback to
divorce was newspaper publicity.
Papers revelled in the 1921 case of Archdeacon Wakeford,
accused of committing adultery at the Bull Hotel in Peterborough, in which the
verdict appeared to stand or fall on chambermaid's evidence of whether the
Archdeacon was wearing pyjamas or a nightgown.
Despite his assertion that he had never worn pyjamas,
Wakefield lost his appeal and soon after died.
The most gripping high-society divorce case concerned John
"Stilts" Russell, heir to Lord Ampthill, whose wife Christabel,
refused to have a child or to use contraceptives.
Though this meant Russell could not have full sexual
intercourse with her, a child was born - due to what she claimed were his
"Hunnish practices". The Press had a field day.
They reported on her appearance (Christabel's
"ribbon-edged black hat hid most of her hair, and its broad rim cast
shadows over her pale, girlish face"), her love of ballroom dancing, not
shared by her husband who preferred dressing in women's clothes, and the
clairvoyant who had detected the pregnancy.
The mystery of this immaculate conception remained: had her
husband been sleepwalking?
Russell simply claimed that his wife had committed adultery
with one of the 30 or so men she claimed to have been in love with.
Yet none of the men could be produced and Christabel won her
case, whereupon she set up a Mayfair shop which was wildly successful.
Meanwhile, the public cogitated on what the 'Hunnish
practices' might have been.
For the next 40 years, churches continued to preach the
sanctity of marriage and the sin of fornication.
Yet the men and women of Britain tended to respond to
different imperatives, affected by war and peace, depression and plenty.
Divorce rates peaked in 1928, then plummeted 40per cent
lower in 1933 at the height of the Depression.
At the Divorce Division of the London High Court, 1841 cases
were brought in the Easter term of 1949.
In 1941, during the Blitz, they fell to 802.
Petitions to the divorce courts were five times higher in
1945 than in 1939, a sign of the sexualfreefor-all which began when the GIs
landed in Britain and ended with couples realising that their separation during
the war had ruined their relationship.
(The 12 months after 1945 saw 38,000 divorces in England and
Wales - a number that rose to 60,197 by 1947.)
What had been for many an unthinkable social disgrace had
now to be accepted in every community, whatever was said behind neighbours'
backs.
A poll in 1949 found that 57 per cent "more or less
approved" of divorce as a regrettable necessity.
Not until the 1960s were the last strictures against free
and fair divorce finally dumped.
The doctrine of "the guilty party" was abandoned
and desertion of one's spouse after two years was made a cause for divorce.
Finally, in 1969, the Matrimonial Property Act declared that
housework should be regarded as a financial contribution to the family.
The impetus for this Act, which provided Britain with the
most humane divorce laws in the world, came from the most unlikely source - the
Church of England.
At last, Caroline Norton had been vindicated. Women were now
recognised in their own right.
"Why write? Why struggle? You will do no good!"
she wrote in one of her pamphlets, "but if everyone lacked courage with
that doubt, nothing would ever be achieved in this world."
Caroline's campaign was a remarkable achievement, granting
women equal status in marriage and no longer obliging them to endure life with
a loveless, unfaithful or cruel husband.
And yet one cannot help but feel that were Caroline able to
survey the social landscape today, where divorce has become so commonplace and
so readily available that it scarcely raises an eyebrow, she might well think
her legacy had been cheapened.
Above all, she would be horrified to hear of those
"career divorcees" for whom the divorce courts are not a lifeline out
of misery, but a very profitable enterprise.
Article credit: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-508936/The-wife-changed-history--asking-divorce.html#ixzz2v88VDER8
Domestic violence
Domestic violence, also known as
domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, dating abuse, and
intimate partner violence (IPV), is a pattern of behavior which involves the
abuse by one partner against another in an intimate relationship such as
marriage, cohabitation, dating or within the family. Domestic violence can take
many forms, including physical aggression or assault (hitting, kicking, biting,
shoving, restraining, slapping, throwing objects, battery), or threats thereof;
sexual abuse; controlling or domineering; intimidation; stalking;
passive/covert abuse (e.g., neglect); and economic deprivation.
Alcohol consumption and mental
illnesscan be co-morbid with abuse, and present additional challenges in
eliminating domestic violence. Awareness, perception, definition and
documentation of domestic violence differs widely from country to country, and
from era to era.
Domestic violence and abuse is
not limited to obvious physical violence. Domestic violence can also mean
endangerment, criminal coercion, kidnapping, unlawful imprisonment, trespassing,
harassment, and stalking.
Laws on domestic violence vary by
country. While it is generally outlawed in the Western World, this is not the
case in many developing countries. For instance, in 2010, the United Arab
Emirates's Supreme Court ruled that a man has the right to physically
discipline his wife and children as long as he does not leave physical marks.
The social acceptability of domestic violence also differs by country. While in
most developed countries domestic violence is considered unacceptable by most
people, in many regions of the world the views are different: according to a
UNICEF survey, the percentage of women aged 15–49 who think that a husband is
justified in hitting or beating his wife under certain circumstances is, for
example: 90% in Afghanistan and Jordan, 87% in Mali, 86% in Guinea and
Timor-Leste, 81% in Laos, 80% in Central African Republic. Refusing to submit
to a husband's wishes is a common reason given for justification of violence in
developing countries: for instance 62.4% of women in Tajikistan justify wife
beating if the wife goes out without telling the husband; 68% if she argues
with him; 47.9% if she refuses to have sex with him.
Traditionally, in most cultures,
men had a legal right to use violence to "discipline" their wives.
Although in the US and many European countries this right was removed from them
in the late 19th/early 20th century, before the 1970s criminal arrests were
very rare (occurring only in cases of extreme violence), and it was only in the
1990s that rigorous enforcement of laws against domestic violence became
standard policy in Western countries.
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Shaving
The Biggest Mistakes You Make Shaving Your Legs
1. Shaving your legs as soon as you hop into the shower.
Understandably, you want to get your morning routine
underway, but experts advise hanging out in the shower or bath for about 15
minutes before you start shaving -- this will soften the hair and open up
follicles. Any longer, though, and your skin will wrinkle and swell, making it
harder to score a close shave.
2. Doing it first thing in the morning.
Shaving at night will leave your legs smoother. As you
sleep, your legs swell slightly, which can make hair retreat back into its
follicles.
3. Not using anything to lather up (or worse, using bar
soap).
No matter how in a hurry you may be, skip the temptation to
shave "dry." Lather up your legs with a moisturizing shaving cream to
make sure the razor glides easily over your skin, and you'll avoid nicks and
cuts. In a pinch, hair conditioner will do just as good a job. But skip the bar
soap: "It doesn't create enough lubrication for a razor to slide easily
against your skin, which can up the odds of cuts," dermatologist Ellen
Gendler, M.D., told Good Housekeeping.
4. Using those single-blade disposable razors.
This is fine once in awhile, like if you're staying in a
hotel, but for every-day use it's best to invest in a four- or five-blade
razor. They provide the smoothest results, letting you navigate tricky areas
like your knees and ankles. "Single-blade disposables are likelier to drag
against the skin," says cosmetic dermatologist Neal Schultz, M.D.
5. Not replacing your razor blade often enough.
You may have bought yourself a nice razor, but it won't do
you any good if you don't change your blade at the first sign of dullness
(usually, about five to 10 shaves). Old blades are not only ineffective, but
more likely to cause bumps and redness and trap bacteria, which can potentially
cause infections.
6. Shaving up the leg before you shave down the leg.
On your first pass, only shave in the direction your hair
grows (down the leg), and if you have very sensitive skin, don't shave upward
at all. While going "against the grain" may get you a closer shave,
it also increases the possibility of irritation, nicks, and cuts. Once your
hairs are already very short, and the skin is warm and lubricated, going
against the direction of hair growth is much safer. "If you'd still like a
closer shave, reapply the gel and shave again -- against the direction of the
hair growth," says Dr. Schultz.
7. Not preventing or treating razor burn.
Close shaving can result in ingrown hairs, and untreated
razor burn can turn into long-term scars. To help prevent those annoying red
bumps in the first place, use an exfoliating body scrub twice a week to shed
the skin that's trapping hairs. To treat bumps, put a warm compress on the
affected area -- the heat will relax the hair. After showering, apply lotion to
soften the hair, leaving your skin less prone to infections.
8. Shaving with your guy's razor.
A lot of women think using a men's razor is more effective,
so we tested the market leaders. The three-blade Gillette Mach3 disposable
finished in last place, while the refillable three-blade Gillette Mach3 Turbo
did just as well as the top women's razors.
Image and Article Credit: http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-beauty/biggest-mistakes-39-shaving-legs-163000035.html
Saturday, March 1, 2014
Bollywood
1. Shirish Kunder and Farah Khan
Film Editor turned Director (of mega-flops like Joker)
Shirish Kunder is 8 years younger than his wife, Farah Khan. Shirish was the
Editor of Farah’s directorial debut Mai Hoon Naa. Their friendship on the sets
soon changed into love. The society odds like 8-year age gap and different
religions too couldn’t stop these two love birds from being one. They got
married in 2004 and are blessed with two daughters and a son. In Farah’s words:
“I don't know if one is reborn or not, but if it were so, then I would like to
marry Shirish in my second birth too."
2. Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai
The power couple of Bollywood- Abhishek Bachchan and
Aishwarya Rai Bachchan also has this age- angle to their love story. A 37 year
Abhishek is two years younger than his wife– Aishwarya. After much speculation
concerning their relationship, the couple got married on April 20, 2007. Age
difference, Aishwarya’s Manglik yoga, or a heart-broken Vivek! There was
nothing that could stop the two of them from tying the knot. This is such an
adorable couple of Bollywood that their one-year old daughter, Aaradhya, has
already become a ‘celebrity’ much before she can barely understand this term.
3. Farhan Akhtar- Adhuna Bhabani
Director-turned-actor, Farhan Akhtar is married to Adhuna
Bhabani who is six years older than him. Adhuna met Farhan when he was still
writing the script for Dil Chahta Hai. They got married in the year 2000 and
are blessed with two daughters.
4. Aditya Pancholi and Zarina Wahab
After surviving quite a few turbulences Zarina and Aditya
have been married for almost 26 years now. Aditya who is 6 years younger than
his wife considers age was never a problem for them and even their families
were very supportive of their marriage. Zarina believes that it is destiny that
brought them together and their love for each other has kept their marriage
strong.
5. Sunil Dutt and Nargis
Legendary actor Sunil Dutt got married to Nargis, who was a
year older and also a bigger star than him at that time. Their relationship began
when Sunil Dutt saved her from the fire that broke out on the sets of the 1957
film Mother India. Once Nargis wrote to Sunil, “Darling, don't get angry, but
remember even if I die, I will always be there with you spiritually. I am so
much attached to you that even death can't take me away completely from you.”
We must say, when love speaks such a refreshingly vibrant language age
certainly becomes an inconsequential number.
6. Parmeet and Archana
After going through a failed marriage Archana met Parmeet Sethi
at a friend's place and hit it off instantly. Parmeet, who is seven years
younger than Archana says, he was bowled over with her beauty and grace. They
had a live-in relationship for four years. Parmeet’s parents’ were against
their marriage, but against all the odds, the two got married. They have been
together for more than 20 years now and are still very much in love. In
Archana’s words: “Had age been the paramount criterion then so many marriages
with the right age ratio would not have fallen apart."
7. Arjun Rampal-Mehr Jessia
Even after over a decade of marriage, actor Arjun Rampal
seems to be madly in love with his wife. Arjun tied the knot with the former
super model Mehr Jessia in 1998. Mehr is two years older than Arjun and the
couple is blessed with two daughters. Their love exemplifies the commitment of
lifetime in every true sense.
8. Raj Kundra and Shilpa Shetty
The 37 years old long-legged lass of Bollywood, Shilpa is
three months older than her husband. Raj and Shilpa met often during the launch
preparations of Shilpa’s perfume, S2 and in no time fell in love. Supposedly,
Raj always harboured a special place for Shilpa in his heart. They tied the
knot on November 22, 2009. Shilpa in an interview to a leading newspaper said
that it wasn't love at first sight for her, but it was for him.
article credit: http://in.lifestyle.yahoo.com/photos/in-b-wood-age-is-just-another-number-slideshow/vday-photo--910618074.html
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