Journalist & Magazine Columnist

Kathy is a prolific writer for a variety of magazines.

Following are a sample couple of Kathy's discerning, perceptive and entertaining writing style.

Birth of the Uterosexual!

“There is a collective force rising up on the earth today, an energy of the reborn feminine … She remembers our function on earth … This is a time of monumental shift, from the male dominance of human consciousness back to a balanced relationship between masculine and feminine. The Goddess archetype doesn’t replace God; she merely keeps him company. She expresses his feminine face.”

Marianne Williamson author of the international bestseller of A Return To Love, wrote the above quote in her book A Woman’s Worth in 1993, ten years before Dan Brown’s 2003 phenomenon Da Vinci Code, with its contentious story-line. This biggest selling novel of all time messed with the biggest story ever told. But let us remind ourselves, Dan Brown insists it is a fictional novel.

However, much of the worldwide adulation for his book has related directly to its focus on the re-emergence of the ‘Sacred Feminine’ – in response to mankind’s historic subjugation of women. And the timing could not have been riper for women, and the world, of a divine feministic reawakening of womanhood.
Our first wave of infamous feminists to vehemently oppose the long-held belief in women’s second-class citizenship, were the 19th century suffragettes who fought to give women the right to vote.

Our second wave of feminism was during the 1960s-70s with our Women’s Rights Liberationists and the sexual revolution, fighting with political solidarity to demand economic and reproductive rights.
The third wave of feminism was far more clandestine – most women weren’t even consciously aware of it, as they weren’t marching parliament carrying placards: It was the 1990’s era of GIRL POWER.
‘Girl Power’ started to emerge in the late 1980s with the likes of Sigourney Weaver in Alien; the evening soaps (Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest), MTV, Deborah Harry (Blondie), Annie Lennox (Eurhythmics), Oprah, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Roseanne … and teenage girls all over the Western world, dressed as Madonna wannabes with their teased boofy hair, ripped tops, miniskirts, spandex tights and loads of chunky jewelry – oh, and the ghastly girls-can-do-anything television adverts.

“You go, girl!” became the catch phrase of the 1990’s as Hollywood assisted transitioning ‘Girl Power’ into the everyday psyche. The decade is a heady collection including the enormous publicity of a seven-month pregnant Demi Moore appearing nude on the cover of Vanity Fair; Edina and Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous; Rachel, Monica and Phoebe in Friends; Lucy the Warrior Princess Xena; Buffy the Vampire Slayer; Demi’s G.I.Jane; Calista’s Ally McBeal; Trinity in Matrix; and Eve Ensler’s provocative stage-show, the Vagina Monologues.
There were also those pop icons to ‘Girl Power’, The Spice Girls (who were voted by Brits as their biggest cultural icon of the nineties). And the list would be incomplete without including the adored Carrie, Charlotte, Samantha and Miranda of Sex and the City.

‘Girl Power’ giddiness continued into the new millennium with Hollywood repetitively spewing out the super-heroines in rapid succession during 2000-2001: The remake of Charlie’s Angles; Max in Dark Angel; Storm, Rogue and Mystique in X-Men; Angelina in Lara Croft:Tomb Raider; and Jennifer as Sydney Britsow in Alias. Although the female characters were consistently powerful, they often ended up appealing more to the male viewers.
New Zealand 2001 was another momentous time in international history, as the world looked down-under at the stunning line-up of female political, legal, constitutional and commercial leadership. For Kiwis had a female Prime-Minister, female Opposition Leader, female Governor-General; female Attorney-General – and female CEO for their largest telecommunications company.

To call this level of success ‘Girl Power’ insults women’s intelligence.

The world globally is now aglow with female leadership. This is what the academics are defining as the ‘fourth wave’ of feminists, nicknamed the Uterosexuals – strong women who are emancipated, educated, ambitious, feminine, intuitive, articulate and immensely proud of their almighty womanliness … the feminine feminists … women who love being women, and love being womanly.

‘Girl Power’ is finally passé. Uterosexuals are not women trying to succeed in a man’s world – they are women who are succeeding in a unisex world. They do not dislike their metrosexual, heterosexual, bisexual and homosexual men, in fact they enjoy their company, tremendously – uterosexuals just don’t always need their company.
Hollywood has paid notice too. Female characters on TV and film are becoming more real, self-assertive and intellectual – women that other women enjoy to watch, even more-so than men.
Such as the central characters in various CSI series; Susan, Bree, Lynette, Gabrielle and Edie in Desperate Housewives; Meredith, Christina, Izzie and Addison in Grey’s Anatomy; and the zenith of the strong woman role with Geena Davis as the US President in Commander-in-Chief.

Yes the fourth wave of feminism has arrived, with Uterosexual women who are exceptional, intelligent, sophisticated, influential and sexy.

Welcome to this next generation!

Ptyalin – Why Babies Should Not Be Fed Starch

It is pretty normal these days to start a baby on some solids at around 4-6 months. But don’t feel rushed at four months to quickly get them onto solids, as breastmilk (or formula) on its own is recommended for two more months.
However, in conflict to our supermarket shelves adorned with baby-rice, baby-porridge and baby-muesli, much old scientific knowledge warns sternly against feeding infants a diet rich in starchy farinaceous foods (e.g. rice, breads, potatoes, porridge, cereals, crackers, etc), as many believe they are simply the worst meals to feed young babies!

For almost 200 years, medical science has clearly understood that the amylase enzyme ‘ptyalin’ (pronounced ty-u-lin) contained within our saliva is a critical chemical involved in initiating the body’s digestive processes to break down starch into glucose sugars, and science knows that infants do not produce normal levels of ptyalin until they have a mouth full of teeth.
With ptyalin missing from a baby’s saliva, two problematic bodily reactions commonly occur after feeding a baby starch:
- The indigestible starch ‘ferments’, potentially causing numerous digestive disorders
- Mucous ‘thickens’, potentially causing ear, nose or throat problems.

Perhaps that is a plausible partial explanation for the epidemic and endemic levels of continual sore tummies, runny noses, recurring ear infections, tonsillitis, bronchiolitis and asthma that we now see prevalent in the developed world.
What about the Third World or Asian babies being fed rice and other staple starches? Why is it OK for them? It’s an ironically simple answer: for thousands of years, mothers in these continents have always chewed their baby’s food first, before feeding it to their infant – unwittingly coating the baby’s food with the ptyalin enzyme from their own saliva. But getting back to Western medicine and its history…

In the 1800s, renowned surgeon and obstetrician Pye Henry Chavasse wrote, “I wish, then, to call your especial attention to the following facts, for they are facts – Farinaceous foods, of all kinds . . . are worse than useless – they are positively, injurious, they are, during the early period of infant life, perfectly indigestible . . . A babe’s salivary glands . . . does not secrete its proper fluid – namely, ptyalin, and consequently the starch of the farinaceous food is not converted . . . and is, therefore, perfectly indigestible and useless – nay, injurious to an infant”.

Since then there have been numerous other respected doctors, professors and scientists all saying the same thing, over and over and over again. Such as Prospiro Sonsino, Tilden, Routh, Huxley, Youmans, Dalton, Page, Densmore, to name but a few. However, in recent decades medicine and the science of nutrition seem to have ‘forgotten’ this knowledge.
Dr Page wrote, “Milk is the food for babies and contains all the elements necessary to make teeth, and until they are made, it should continue to be the sole food. It is not enough that two or three or a half dozen teeth have come through, that they should be expected to do any part of a grown child’s work … Upon no consideration should any of the farinaceous or starchy articles be added until the mouth bristles with teeth”.

Then, in the early to mid-1900s, rebel health pioneer and prolific writer Dr Herbert Shelton focused on this subject too, when he wrote, “The fact that Nature makes no provisions for the digestion of starches before full dentition [growing of teeth], should be sufficient evidence that she does not intend it to form any part of the infant’s diet. Before the teeth are fully developed the saliva of the infant contains a mere trace of ptyalin, the digestive ferment or enzyme that converts starch into sugar . . . Certain it is that nature did not intend the baby to chew food until its teeth are sufficiently developed to perform this function . . . No starchy foods or cereals should be given under two years”.

This is such important knowledge, I truly cannot begin to fathom why, with such massive indisputable scientific evidence, our society remains so obsessed with starchy baby foods – and the equally nonsensical belief that carbohydrate starches should be the main staple of all infants’ ongoing diet.

Is it all rubbish and lies, yet again? Is it some mad commercial greed for money? Who knows? In some ways it is reminiscent of how completely accepted cigarettes were half a century ago, when most people genuinely did not understand – simply because they were not told – that smoking was damaging their health.

So OK, I hear some readers wondering, if we don’t feed our infants baby rice, baby cereal, baby porridge, mashed potato, kumara, bread, pasta, noodles, crackers, biscuit, rusks, and other starch – then what the heck do we feed a baby instead? It’s such an easy answer: primarily vegetables and fruit – topped up with some protein. Within my book OH BABY…Birth, Babies & Motherhood Uncensored there is a detailed age-appropriate suggested menu on pages 412-416.

Obviously there are loads of ‘experts’ who may disagree with some of the menu’s aspects – for today there is only one thing that all nutritionists can agree on, and that is that there are opponents to all opinions of what nutrition is best practice.