Latest news with #BriannaParkins
Irish Times
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Oh, Mother
Sir, – I always enjoy Brianna Parkins' musings but her article about her Mother in today's edition st ruck a chord. She could win a Pulitzer Prize and be met with 'and is that the dress you're wearing?' My own dear old Mum, on finding me wearing shorts and a T-shirt sniffed, 'I wouldn't mind but when you do dress up, you look like someone!'. I've never figured out who that 'someone' is. –Yours, etc, BRÍD MILLER, READ MORE Athlone Road, Roscommon.
Irish Times
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Being a woman on TV: One viewer described my teeth as ‘tea-stained'
If you work in television, you can't really complain about work to other people. One of the reasons is the outdated assumption that everyone on air is paid loads. But the opposite is true – aside from a few people at the top, often the industry gives off the vibe that employees should be paying them for the privilege of being on air. The other reason is that while telly is hard work, at the end of the day we're hardly going down the mines. Which actually does pay well and is a job more young people seem to aspire to than getting their mug on the TV. But it's too late for me to learn a trade or to drive a big digger, especially when I can't even reverse-park a Yaris in a generous spot. So TV journo it is. My biggest and silliest gripe since returning to television full time in the past few months is that it's now a professional requirement that I care about my appearance. People don't trust you when you deliver information in your boyfriend's under-20s GAA jersey with biscuit crumbs down the front, even if this outfit allows me to operate at my peak function. Instead, I'd say a good 15 per cent of my daily brain function is taken up with what am I going to wear, what's clean, what did I wear two days ago, what have I left at the dry cleaners a month ago and forgotten about, and so on. READ MORE [ Brianna Parkins: I'm sick of being asked why I don't have kids Opens in new window ] Then there's the eternal dilemma between an extra hour's sleep and freshly washed hair. Can I get another day out of it? Or is there so much dry shampoo in there that there's a chance it might turn to glue if it rains? If I put another round of hairspray on these curls will they eventually just snap off in a stiff wind? It's a high-risk, high-reward situation. Luckily, slicked-back ballerina buns are in fashion. We have to be thankful for small mercies. Women don't want to be vain, but from birth we're taught the price of ignoring our appearance, of not playing the game, is too high. We saw the commentary on female politicians, athletes and media personalities. We've heard it in our personal lives. The whispering of how so and so has 'let herself go' or 'doesn't make an effort'. The majority of audience emails and letters I have received have not been about the quality of my journalism or the questions I've asked in an interview. They've been about what I wore and the state of my hair. Botox could improve my career prospects by freezing my facial expressions, which tend to uncontrollably mirror whatever is going on in my head During Covid I was due to interview a female health expert who had decades of experience and education. She was the smartest person in the room doing amazing work in a time of crisis. But we still had a discussion about whether she should lie in or get up early to wash her hair for the segment. As she put it, even though people should be focusing on the words coming out of a person's mouth, they judge the hair and the face it belongs to. Even the strongest of us can be turned by seeing themselves in HD every day. The handy thing is, if you miss a chin hair in the bathroom mirror, the studio lights will pick that up no problem. You start seeing more and more wrong with yourself. My Google search history is a cry for help. It now contains gems such as, 'When is too young for a facelift?' I'm not against tweakments or those who chose them. I think Botox could really improve my career prospects by freezing my facial expressions, which unfortunately tend to uncontrollably mirror whatever is going on in my head. Imagine where I'd be in life and love now if I didn't have the ability to frown! Except I enjoy it too much. I love being able to say 'Are you well?' with only my eyebrows so I can deploy it against people playing TikToks at full volume on their phone on the bus. Who am I to take away the gifts God gave me? Lately I've been investigating the gateway drug of teeth whitening. TV-people teeth are straight and white while mine are neither. They're potentially the biggest indicator of my socioeconomic background, given I am also missing one. A viewer once described them as 'tea-stained', which is the closest I've ever had to a man write poetry about me. I've been getting quotes to have them whitened at the dentist and none of them have offered a discount despite the fact they'll have one less to do. Maybe this is the path to self-acceptance: feeling ripped-off enough to stay unattractive.
Irish Times
29-04-2025
- Irish Times
The challenges of moving to another country
The trials and tribulations of moving abroad were a common theme throughout the abroad section this month. Brianna Parkins writes about how she noticed an influx of videos on TikTok 'deinfluencing' people from moving to Australia. It is a hard thing to do, she says, uprooting your whole life – and that's without the added bonus of visa limitations, housing shortages and pressures from social media. This being said, don't let what others post online dampen how you spend your days. She writes: 'The best thing about the beach is that you can go any time of the day. Don't let these influencers who base their day around getting a cute coffee at 7am convince you otherwise. Who cares what people at home think – you're already so far in advance of everyone else who just talked about [leaving] but never followed through.' Laura Kennedy, who is also based in Australia, writes about how the 'lead against bone' feeling of homesickness crept up on her in recent weeks. Though agonising, she acknowledged: 'This homesickness is not a dissatisfaction with the life you have built abroad. Neither is it a wish to return home for good. It isn't a yearning for return but rather for reconnection. It is an involuntary tendency to feel a little lost inside the distance between this and your other life – the one you left behind but which continued without you.' READ MORE Building a meaningful life wherever you settle is important and Margaret E Ward looks at just how to do this. Moving country, finding a job and settling into a social scene can all be exciting, but how can you avoid the loneliness trap once the novelty wears off? Ward suggests building habits and exploring your interests, to name a few, and chats with Dubliner down under Rachel Rushe about the network she built in Sydney when she moved in 2020. Meanwhile, Deirdre McQuillan spoke to Lauren McNicholl , a Ballymena native who is possibly the only Irish woman tailor in Spain. McNicholl finds the people sociable and welcoming. She says: 'If you make an effort to speak the language, they will encourage you to keep going and they love to chat and talk so it is very similar to Irish culture.' Rita Hogan, an Irish teacher based in China, writes about her experience meeting an everyday hero in Wu Guo Liang, a security officer who put her at ease after a frightening incident. The pair got to know each other and Hogan learned of the selfless acts he took on to make their campus, and the world, a better place. 'I really believe in 'one world, one family',' Wu told her. Lucan native Conor O'Driscoll is now based in Columbus, Ohio, in the United States, and speaks to Frank Dillon about how he won $100,000 on NFL Fantasy Football. Having coached the sport for years before he left Ireland, he put his winnings to good use and bought a house with his wife, Lauren – a feat he does not think would have been possible had he stayed in Ireland. There are pros and cons, as always, as O'Driscoll explains: 'Columbus is an easy city to live in. The cost of living is a lot cheaper than Dublin. The wages are at least comparable, and the commute is short – it's just 20 minutes to drive anywhere in Columbus. The only thing is that you don't have the same variety as you would have in Dublin where you can go to the coast or the mountains, which are things I miss.' For Sibéal Turraoin, a landscape and travel photographer, a permanent move abroad wasn't on the cards . The Waterford native and her aunt, the musician Máire Breathnach, were the first Irish women to navigate through the Northwestern Passage to Alaska in 2010. When another sailing voyage to Greenland was thwarted due to problems with the boat, Turraoin decided to take a hiking trip to Iceland and stay for the winter. 'And then, sure I'll stay for the summer and then make that a year – and I am still here eight years later,' she says with a laugh. Having lived in the country for so long, she says it's changed her. 'When I come home, I am quite Scandinavian and quieter. I lived for 10 years in Dublin and can't imagine going back and when I do come back to Ireland, it is to home in the Gaeltacht in Ring [Co Waterford].' In 2002, 25-year-old Ronan Guilfoyle was mesmerised by life on the Cayman Islands and, all these years later, has no intention of leaving. On his laptop in rainy Cork way back when, he 'could see pictures of Irish people enjoying sun-drenched beaches, a GAA club and an Irish bar. What the hell I am doing here, I thought?' He's now raising a young family alongside wife Cait Kelleher (sister of Liverpool goalkeeper Caoimhín) and says he gets his fill of Irishness through regular trips home. Finally, Paul Kearns, a freelance journalist from Dublin but based in Tel Aviv, Israel, writes about how he has questioned why he remains in the country in light of the occupation of Gaza. He says: 'I felt a pit in my stomach, and couldn't help but think to myself: why am I here? Why am I here at all, in Israel, with my two young Israeli daughters? And that despite the undeniable rise in anti-Semitism and a visceral hatred of all things Israeli in Ireland, would it not be better for them to grow up in Dublin?' You'll find plenty more stories by and about the Irish diaspora that you might have missed on . If you would like to contribute by writing your own story, you can contact abroad@ . Thanks for reading.
