frankie Magazine Issue 101 - May/Jun 2021

1. You don’t have to be a good cook to make a tasty meal – chucking some ingredients in a jar and shaking them about can be enough. 2. On the scale of pancakes to hot dogs, Aussie tongues tend to be on the more bulbous side, which is part of what gives us our distinctive vocal twang (and why other folks struggle to mimic it). 3. Fun dates can sometimes include maggots and cadavers. 4. Chickens are actually big snugglebugs, and use a different voice when ‘speaking’ to humans they know. 5. It’s possible to be a feminist and go absolutely wild for household chores. (A Sunday spent vacuuming and washing the dishes? Bliss.) 6. We have more in common with worms than we realised: the squirmy invertebrates struggle to digest dairy and onions,…

Dearest frankie, When I saw the 100th issue on sale, I felt a small pang of guilt. My mum bought me my very first copy many moons ago – issue 45! – and we both fell in love. Sure, frankie had fashion and beauty and all that jazz, but it also had a point of difference to the other mags on offer for girls and women: it had an Australian, Kiwi-esque feel; it was homely, comfortable, diverse and inclusive. And so, my mum and I continued to collect them. But when she passed away, I stopped for a while. You hadn’t done anything wrong, but I felt lost. When issue 100 rolled around, looking sweet as my very first mag, I felt an urge to carry on her legacy... and…

companion hats As any paleskin can attest, the sun is an enemy. A big, hot, fiery enemy that sometimes wears sunglasses in pictures drawn by kids. Wearing a hat is the best way to flip the bird at the solar bully (aside from actually, you know, flipping the bird), and if you’re going to pop something large and protective on your head, it may as well look good, too. Enter the clever folks from Companion – a New Zealand label that’s been churning out some pretty sweet brims of late. They’re made in collaboration with refugees and migrants in Aotearoa, and if you’d like to see more, you can visit companion-store.com v. happy co Your ABCs have never looked better thanks to Melbourne dames Vanessa Perilli and Esther Navarro-Orejon – aka V. Happy…

On my seventh birthday I was gifted a notepad. The pages were light blue, and on the bottom of each one sat a row of sweet pink bows and a content-looking teddy bear. I’m sure I received other presents that year, but this is the only one that stands out in my mind to this day (sorry Mum). The notepad rested in my tiny hands, palms quivering with gratitude and excitement. I felt an enormous sense of responsibility and immediately knew that paper must be saved for a special occasion. It’s unclear what grand plans seven-year-old me had for those teddy bears. A letter to the Prime Minister? A sonnet of childhood woe? I liked to draw as a child, but the pad was far too precious for pencil sketches of…

TAKING THE REINS At the start of my career as a singer, I really struggled being a woman in the industry. I felt like I was battling off a lot of shit all the time – people very subtly trying to manipulate me into wearing certain things, or I was being made to feel like I needed to be a certain way. Often people would take credit for my ideas. Just the usual stuff women put up with all the time! I felt pretty low about it for a long time, like I wasn’t cut out for the music industry. But then I was like, “You know what? I can actually express this in an album if I want to,” and that’s kind of what I did with Californian Soil.…

Walking into a restaurant and ordering a meal can seem simple enough, but it’s an experience riddled with landmines in the form of small plates served before a slightly larger plate (often referred to as the main course). Atop those small plates – or in extreme cases/the 1970s, cocktail glasses – sits the entrée or ‘starter’. What you may not realise is that your choice of opening bite will set you up to be judged by your dining companions, as well as the entire restaurant staff. Allow me to explain. PRAWN COCKTAIL There are two types of people who are into prawn cocktails: those who know they’re terrible but still love them, and those who love them but don’t know they’re terrible. Either way, the prawn cocktail person is my kind…