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I don’t have eyes on your face now.

You could be freakishly gorgeous with superb facial symmetry and enough collagen in them thar cheeks to make injectables look like a joke.

But maybe with a bigger bank balance, ego or both, there are bits of your visage you’d wanna tweak and tuck? 

When I was in my teens being called beautiful wowed me. It was a big word and a big deal.

Attractive never impressed. Cute was for babies or pups. But, beautiful? 

The stuff of shock n’ awe. Yeah, youth wasted on the young.

My late father is one of the few people to ever call me beautiful. I’m not fishing for anything here. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I get it.

But I am bemused by the delusional, I mean optimistic, among us, who insist that scalpels and needles can cheat the years. 

This week, out of a sheer car-crash kinda fascination, I watched a detailed ‘before and after’ plastic surgery video shared by a cashed-up 50-something from NYC. Gone were the jowls, sags and bags of middle-age. She was now photo-ready! 

I can tell you, after walking a couple red carpets, those drum-tight eyes and chins ain’t a pretty sight up close. Anti-aged smiles are a horror movie, kids. 

Resistance is futile.

Our bone structure changes as we age. The eye sockets, jawbone, cheeks, nose and forehead of your 20s don’t do time travel well.

Yesteryear you is, history. Any way you cut it. 

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Writers are hard-wired…

…to cannibalise their lives, throw friends and family under buses all for the sake of a sparkling piece of prose.

The grand dame of personal essays, Joan Didion, once said, 

“Writers are always selling somebody out.” 

I confess that occasionally (every day) I look at my life as a ridiculously compelling series of stories and characters I must immortalise in a book, film (soon). Not because I think my laundry is dirtier than yours, but maybe it’s better out than in? 

That sharper than sharp writer, Nora Ephron (also known as the scribe who immortalised orgasms served up in a New York deli – thanks to Sally and a bemused Harry) was raised to believe that everything is copy. Eventually, she realised this meant, control; slip on a banana peel and folks will laugh at you. But write about slipping on that peel and it’s your laugh. Now you’re the hero of the pratfall, not the victim. 

Before I started today’s Phylosophy, a fashion crisis hit me outta nowhere. I changed three times before I deemed myself ‘ready to write’. 

Sequinned track pants? Too shiny. White linen? Are you nuts? A star-patterned black jumper? Too broody. A slightly moth-eaten, long cashmere cardigan in dirty vanilla over a one-shouldered black onesie. Perfect. 

Not me a distracted, procrastinating, attire-obsessed writer with one eye on scroll-holing and the other on snacks. 

So, sure. One of these days, I may sell you out. I just gotta get my outfit right, first. 

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Glamour razzles and dazzles.

Turns heads. Fuels red carpets. Inspires love and envy. This week the HQ of glam blazed through a billion media outlets. 

The 98th Oscars conjured up the usual shiny suspects in all their bejewelled finery. But is it all benign – I mean, really? Well. The clue is in the conjuring.

Ever since I read Maggie Hamilton’s deceptively sweet book, Inside the Secret World of Fairies, my view of ‘glamour’ has had a makeover because its etymology is a little sinister.

Originally from the Scottish word for grammar, glamour’s sole purpose was to beguile ‘the victim’ into seeing something other than the reality.

Hm. Victims, fans, red carpet reporters. You say tomato, I say Tom Ford.

Walter Scott summed it up in his charming medieval verse, The Lay of the Last Minstrel circa 1805:

“It had much of glamour might;
Could make a ladye seem a knight;
The cobwebs on a dungeon wall
Seem tapestry in lordly hall;
And youth seem age, and age seem youth:
All was delusion, nought was truth.”

But. For one brief, genuinely shining moment, the Oscars honoured Jessie Buckley when she won Best Actress for her role in Hamnet.

She took to the stage, a slender row of diamonds at her neck, Chanel around her shoulders – accoutrements that paled in comparison when she dedicated her new little gold friend to “…the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart.”

And as mamas the world over will gladly tell you, there’s no glamour in that.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Wanna buck social norms?

Adopt a radical, new lifestyle? Travel to lands of untold cerebral beauty?

Do you want to be a maverick, a renegade? 

Read a book.

It’s one of the most counter-culture things you can do now. And I don’t mean scrolling through digitised bestsellers or slapping on headphones so authors can read to you instead.

Can we please fall back in love with turning actual pages? New (or worn) inky scents that escape from well-thumbed pages? As nose-pleasing as a lover’s skin.

Last year I read 24 novels. I don’t share this to chest beat or lord it over those of you who haven’t read a book since 2005.

Reading is my revolutionary act – especially when I do it in public.

I’m that person on your commute who makes a big show of pulling a fat book outta her bag – even when I don’t have a seat, even when I need to elbow someone to make this happen. And then I’ll turn the pages with a flamboyant rustle so hopefully even the tram driver can hear me starting a new chapter.

But alas. I’m very aware my one-woman crusade is futile, since I’ll never be louder than the chick conducting a desperately urgent, deafening Teams meeting on her phone opposite me.

We’re living in crazy times, friends.

In the 1960s, being a free-loving, weed-sucking, flower-strewn, dreadlocked hippie meant you defined the counterculture.

But in 2026, you’re sticking it to the bots when you have a library card.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

There are certain humans…

…in life you must love with ferocity because… even though they may fumble at first, surprised and bleary eyed as they reach for their ringing phone in the wee hours, they’re still going to answer when you are calling them.

These are your 3am people, the special folks who would readily take an ungodly hour phone call from you – even if they’re mid-REM.

I treasure these men and women – the few, the far between.

The older I get the more conscious I am that my friend circle doesn’t need to be so big it warrants a postcode.

In the last ten years, friendships have soured, distance has taken a couple bonds hostage while some other pals just changed their minds about me and severed ties – without explanation; this mystery hurts more than name-calling. And while the sting of silent rejection smarts, ultimately, time has done its thing and only a faint scar remains. 

Reflecting on the people who have actively shut me out of their lives is scary enough; the questions come… am I a bad person? A bitch? Too self-involved? But writing this all down is terrifying. Now the unanswered questions that trip me up now and then, are free to taunt me in these paragraphs.

Still. The passage of years comforts and writing soothes. 

As for my 3am folks. I hold them steadfast to my heart and I’m loyal to the last. So, I keep the phone by my bed every night, ringer on.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

Popular culture has been…

…rather pummelled lately with a withering new romantasy that reflects the height of toxic coupling. Or painfully obvious moor porn.

The planet’s entertainment outlets have come over all hot and bothered too.

Thing is, I love me a silver screen lust romp or two, but when the flick in question dresses up co-dependence, obsession, violence and abuse in peasant blouses, velvet coats and snappy, breathless dialogue, “I can follow you like a dog to the end of the world.” I lose interest.

“But it’s only a movie!” 

Well maybe. Perhaps it’s just me who gets more than a little uneasy when Hollywood makes freakishly photogenic humans the poster people for dysfunctional pairings.

As cameras flashed and fans drooled, the stars of the movie were grilled at the recent Sydney premier. 

“Did you feel a sense of responsibility not to present (the movie) like couple goals?”
And here are the direct quotes as they rode a red carpet high…

“(Love) isn’t all rainbows and sunshine and beautiful things. There’s something very sweet and wretched about their relationship. Love is this multi-faceted thing. It’s beautiful and it’s awful. We need to teach everyone about all the different colours of love.” 

No. We need to stop asking movie stars, dazzled by fat contracts and spotlights, for reality checks. Trying to understand quite how these fragrant folks justify problematic characters and storylines is impossible when they’re trapped by their own fever dream. 

Pass me the paracetamol – and an iced drink.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

I’ll never ever…

…fall out of love with writers.

The storyteller who can spin a yarn at pace. Sentences are clean. Nothin’ fancy. It’s just wham, bam, I want you to keep reading, ma’am. Their words aren’t meant to inspire, just thrill with spills and rollercoaster plotlines.

The wordsmith who flirts with wanky wordplay. But the turns of phrase are so delicious, you forgive them a five-paragraph description of a dried-up-leaf-that-crunches-and-cracks-like-dying-burnt-orange-embers-on-the petrified-ground.

The scribe who teases your grey matter and fills your heart while they throw you into labyrinthian plots, riddled with twists. Their real skill lies in how they can guide us out of rabbit holes so that we emerge blinking into the light of… a new page.

I’ll never fall out of love with writing. 

He sits opposite me, whispering on his phone, a hint of handlebar moustache on his upper lip. “Please tell me you’re going to do it.” He urges. A woman hunches in a shop doorway, sucking on a cigarette. A chiselled Clark Kent type spots her as he rushes past, a sour look lasts a nanosecond on his face. In the café an office worker sits with rolled up sleeves, eyes trained on his screen and sushi. The word free is tattooed on his arm. The letters ‘dom’ are only outlined.

I spot a marriage proposal scrawled in black marker on a cardboard scrap. The invitation to ‘do forever’ is attached to a bollard at a busy intersection in the city – signed, Anon.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

The online world…

…continues to burst at the screens (!) with armies of keyboard warriors, occasional chair politicians, desktop record execs, garage gym rat gurus, backyard botox experts, naval-gazing peace advocates.

Everyone’s vying for airtime and comment domination. 

Who can spout the wittiest, dumbest, most divisive, educated, ignorant, positive, love-stuffed, venomous blah blah on a post, video or story? Frankly, I envy their energy because I just can’t be bothered groping for the attention of scrollers looking for a fight.

Though I must confess… the comments section is a must-read for me if the post is particularly beautiful or inflammatory, topical or gossipy; what does the faceless populace think? In some cases, public opinion is the real barometer of truth. Unless it’s just swill in pixels and then you must flick past the glut of grandstanders, fast.

This week, as unreal protest scenes spilled onto Sydney streets, hotheads mingled with thinkers, cameras caught performances mixed with real pain and I wondered… could this be what online vitriol might look like IRL?

Folks walk into a peaceful space where polite discourse should live but then someone says or does something dumb and dissent steps in to mess stuff up.

Passion is hijacked by rage.

Intelligence is swapped for insults. Brawn pummels brain. 

But where’s all this indignation going? Sure, the noise might make us smirk, think or even recoil – but the operative word here is, might.

The lines are blurred when a mouse-click is now the mouthpiece for cowards and heroes.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

In case you missed…

…the tits and tatts fest that was the 2026 Grammy Awards, allow me to enlighten you. But first, full disclosure… 

I’m writing this Phylosophy after a ridiculously long day so my filter has gone to bed together with any inclination I may have to go easy on the clowns masquerading as musical artists these days. 

Let’s begin. 

After a red carpet riddled with flashes of flesh that made Cher’s diaphanous Oscar fashions look like an Amish convention, the ceremony was underway. And the brief? Leave your undies at home, folks. Bieber warbled in his boxers. Bras were burnt in favour of prosthetic nipple piercings. It was one eyewatering look after another.

But I get it. To revisit the days of more class than crass, you’d need a time machine. 

Still, at least Lauryn Hill and her gifted pals blessed the evening and took us all to church with her stunning tribute to giants, D’Angelo, Angie Stone and Roberta Flack. 

Now, let’s get back to the iconic time turner that is, Cher – and her infamous faux pas when she announced the late, great Luther Vandross as the winner of Record of the Year. By the way, she actually said, ‘Grandross’. But I digress… 

So, yes fine. It was Kendrick Lamar’s award, but Luther’s golden vocals fuelled the hit and stole the show, no bare boobs and f-bombs required – just an ageless legend who was the first woman to show her bellybutton on TV once upon a time.

© Phyllis Foundis 2026

When the eyes of the world…

…are not fixed on you, your actions, even your grin – apparently this is when you move closer to the real you.

It’s quite the concept and possibly comforting if you’re at peace with what stands out in the solitude.

But, if you’re not?

She looked like a rough sleeper. Perched on a grimy bench. Restless energy. An ill-fitting dress. No shoes. And I only caught a glimpse as the light rail I was riding zipped past her scene-making.

And she was absolutely the star of a scene I couldn’t ignore. 

Her fingers were flying over an imaginary keyboard. Typing. Typing. In fury. Frustration. Her accidental mime so descriptive, I could tell just by the way her hands sliced through the air, that she was forcing a typewriter’s carriage right and left, right and left, left, left!

Were the words not coming? Her thoughts tormenting?

It was a painfully fascinating tableau, and I couldn’t take my eyes off her in the few seconds it took for my tram to coast by.

She was lost in her own world. Oblivious to life unfolding. In her mind, no one was watching because she was totally alone…

Trapped in the cliché of writing a masterwork in a cabin somewhere? The supernatural satisfaction of art completed, eluding her? Was she was battling her muse, her mania or both?

Maybe the question isn’t, who are you when no one is watching, but…

Who are you when you are not seen?

© Phyllis Foundis 2026