Hijabs and motherhood seem to be high on the news agendas this week.
Last week The Australian columnist Janet Albrechtsen questioned Western women's concerns with dating, marriage and motherhood over supporting the struggle of Muslim women, writing on two very different films: Sex and the City 2 and The Stoning of Soraya. Seemingly the only thing they have in common is that hijabs are seen in both - used to very different effect, as you can imagine.
In suburban Melbourne, sisters Seyman and Ebru Yagci are doing their bit to bring a bit of glamour to Muslim dress, with their store, Sorayya Designs, as featured by Dewi Cooke in Saturday's Age A2: 'Putting the hip into hjiab'.
Over in France meanwhile, "latter-day Simone de Beauvoir" Elisabeth Badinter is offending and delighting in equal measure with her book Conflict: The Woman and the Mother. Due out in English next year, the book questions the return to "naturalism" and idealised concepts of motherhood. Her advice: "...to listen to your own desires and know that no one knows the secret of good motherhood" sounds pretty sensible to us. Read Emma-Kate Symons' article.