Sideswipe: May 13: Bodice ripper parody

Cosmopolitan did their own photo shoot parodying the classic bodice ripper covers, by recreating them with regular folk.

Victorians' prudish ways

Things that displeased proper Victorians:

1. The word "leg". It was considered too sexy and, thus, too vulgar. The preferred term, if one had to refer to a lower extremity, was "limb".

2. Swimming at public beaches. It was not considered appropriate for ladies to be seen bathing in public. A natural outgrowth of this prohibition was "the bathing box". The box, usually made of a wooden frame with canvas walls and a roof, was used to change into swimwear, and then rolled down the beach into the water. A lady could then exit the bathing house and swim with some protection against being seen from shore. (Via Uncle John's Perpetually Pleasing Bathroom Reader.)

For those who like a quiet night in

Gil Brown writes: "Last Tuesday TV3 screened an entire episode of late-night show The Good Wife without sound. (MediaWorks will confirm this). At no stage was the broadcast stopped to correct this and it was repeated without sound on the replay channel an hour later. We wondered if they think viewers are so dumbed down by the constant diet of the channel's reality rubbish that no one would notice. It seems they didn't."

No sweet treat here

I saw this advert from an overseas magazine and thought, huh? I don't geddit. But after a Google search I realised women weren't being filled with gelatinous teddy bear lollies and the term Gummy Bears rather distastefully describes a highly cohesive silicone breast implant that retains its shape and is firmer, yet pliable, compared to the other options of saline or silicone gel.

How to get more screenings

TimeOut film reviewer Peter Calder writes: "As one of the many who loved the excellent documentary The Ground We Won, I must leap to the defence of the exhibitors castigated in yesterday's Sideswipe for scheduling such a limited number of showings. The film, which is not actually about rugby so much as small-town life, is a documentary - always a hard sell to the public. In films, quality and popularity are seldom on speaking terms and the exhibitors who are taking the commercial risk of showing it are to be applauded. Your correspondent may rest assured if patrons line up at the box office, the number of scheduled screenings will expand to accommodate them."