My glittery middle finger to the Grace nightmares

up as young women knowing that there’s always the threat of being attacked or raped or killed. Whether that’s on a date, by your partner or even just walking home.

That shared subconscious knowledge among women is weighing particularly heavily this week. It gets heavier and heavier every time we see a story about Grace.

Or Amber-rose Rush, or even the jogger in Auckland who was attacked in broad daylight by a man with a history of assaulting women walking alone. Dragging around the threat that comes with having a vagina isn’t woe-is-me-paralytic, but it is tiring.

It’s particularly heavy with young women when it comes to sex and our sexuality. Even just going on a date, especially now a Tinder date, comes with the question mark, is this guy going to kill you? And we also have to remember that, even in relationships, we’re not safe: half of all female homicide victims in New Zealand every year are killed by a partner or ex-partner.

The other day one of the guys was talking about his night. He’d gone home with a girl, then walked home after via the gas station in the wee hours, got icecream and sat in the public gardens watching stars. God, I thought, how great would that be? A carefree one-night stand, a light-footed walk home with icecream and the starlit whispering streets. It just sounded so . . . free.

But young women know we can’t have that, so the question is, how do we fight this heaviness we’re feeling? Especially when it feels overwhelming. For me it happened on stage that weekend. See, burlesque is outrageous, fun, celebrates women through unashamed sensuality, and is largely performed for a female audience. And I looked out into a sea of women laughing, really laughing, and felt them letting go of something. It’s the same thing I’m letting go of when I get up there, covered in nothing but rhinestones and a few feathers.

That moment was a rare chance to celebrate female sexuality in an empowering way, but more importantly it was a deliberate, outrageous, feathery, glittery middle finger to the heaviness.

We have every reason to feel vulnerable as young women, especially when it comes to our sexuality. So it is more important than ever to take every chance to also celebrate moments of fun and lightness as an act of strength – however that looks to you.

It’s not a solution. But it may keep you going while we work at glacial speed to make a world where young women feel safe.