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Magda Szubanski gets emotional as she thanks family, friends and fans for their support after revealing her stage four cancer diagnosis: 'The wind beneath my wings'

Magda Szubanski gets emotional as she thanks family, friends and fans for their support after revealing her stage four cancer diagnosis: 'The wind beneath my wings'

Daily Mail​02-06-2025

Magda Szubanski has expressed immense gratitude in the wake of her devastating stage four cancer diagnosis.
The beloved Aussie comedian, 64, who revealed she is battling Mantle Cell Lymphoma last week, took to Instagram to thank her family, friends and fans for the outpouring of support.
Speaking in a video posted on Sunday, Magda said she had been 'overwhelmed' by the response to her announcement.
'I just wanted to say a massive thank you for all the love and support,' she said in the clip.
'It's just been so moving and, really, youse are the wind beneath my wings. Thank you very much, love you all. Sorry I can't reply this.
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'It's pretty overwhelming, but I just feel so loved.'
Last week, Magda shocked her followers when she revealed she was battling a rare and fast-moving blood cancer.
She appeared on camera with a shaved head after beginning her treatment to fight the disease.
'Hello my lovelies. So, the head is shaved in anticipation of it all falling out in a couple of weeks because I have just been diagnosed with a very rare, very aggressive, very serious lymphoma,' she began.
'It is one of the nasty ones, unfortunately. But the good thing is I'm surrounded by beautiful friends and family and an incredible medical support team.
'Honestly, we have the best in the world here in Australia, particularly in Melbourne, so I feel very fortunate.
'It's pretty confronting. It is a full on. But new treatments keep coming down the pipeline all the time.'
Magda said she has started a treatment called the Nordic protocol, which treats Mantle Cell Lymphoma by shrinking the tumours with a combination of drugs administered in five phases.
It's known as the Nordic regimen based upon its clinical trial sites in Denmark and Norway.
The actress explained she will be 'lying very low' due to her weak immune system.
'I won't sugar-coat it: it's rough. But I'm hopeful. I'm being lovingly cared for by friends and family, my medical team is brilliant, and I've never felt more held by the people around me,' she said.
'Please keep a distance though because I will be very immunocompromised. So I can't hug no more.
'Don't hug me, kiss me, or breathe anywhere near me! Wave enthusiastically from a safe distance and know I love you madly.'
The Kath & Kim star said the cancer was discovered during a routine breast screening.
'This is an obscure cancer and was only discovered incidentally via a breast screen where they found my lymph nodes were up,' she explained.
'TBH, I've been feeling pretty rats**t for ages. So I asked for extra bloods and - voila! So the take away is - get tested and listen to your body!
'For now, just know I'm in good hands, good spirits - but I reserve my human right to be a cranky old moll. Love you all, Mags.'

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The chemist beauty buys under $12 that make me look 'expensive' and radiant: POLISHED with Elise Wilson
The chemist beauty buys under $12 that make me look 'expensive' and radiant: POLISHED with Elise Wilson

Daily Mail​

time25 minutes ago

  • Daily Mail​

The chemist beauty buys under $12 that make me look 'expensive' and radiant: POLISHED with Elise Wilson

Welcome to Polished with Elise Wilson, where FEMAIL's qualified makeup artist and hair stylist answers your questions, shares advice and trials the up-and-coming beauty and skincare trends so you don't have to. If there's one thing I've learned in the age of skyrocketing rent, $9 lettuce, and energy bills that make me genuinely consider living by candlelight, it's that I refuse to sacrifice my beauty routine. Just because the cost of living is testing every one of my financial boundaries doesn't mean I'm about to give up glowing skin, great brows, or clean hair days. I love a luxe moment as much as the next person. As you're probably aware by now too, I've dabbled in the $150 (plus) serums and been seduced by the glass bottles, gold lids and marketing promises of miracles in a jar. But do I think you have to spend half your pay check to look and feel amazing? Absolutely not. And I would never preach that either. Over the years, through trial, error, and more spontaneous half-price pharmacy hauls than I care to admit, I've discovered a bunch of budget beauty buys that seriously punch above their price tag. They're not just affordable for the sake of it, they genuinely deliver. Some are so good, I've been quietly gatekeeping them for selfish reasons… like avoiding the heartbreak of them selling out or, even worse, being discontinued entirely. However, in the spirit of sisterhood (and because I know we're all in our 'recession-core' era), I'm finally sharing the list. And the best part? They're all $12 or under. This list isn't just about saving money, it's about getting clever with it. Seriously, these are the affordable gems I reach for every day, and I know you're going to love them too. Don't worry, I've discovered a bunch of the best budget beauty buys that seriously punch above their price tag - and I'm no longer gatekeeping them! Rimmel London Stay Matte Pressed Powder – translucent, $9.57 Rimmel London Stay Matte Pressed Powder – translucent, $9.57 If I had a dollar for every time someone asked how I keep my face shine-free without looking cakey, I'd… well, I'd still be buying this powder. It is light, breathable and somehow magically mattifying without flattening the skin. It's been around for decades, and for good reason. When I asked around the office if other makeup lovers agreed, I was keenly reaffirmed, with one saying that it's better than Charlotte Tilbury's. She's not wrong. I've even used the tinted versions too, which even skin tone, set makeup, and give an airbrushed finish. Garnier SkinActive Micellar Cleansing Water, $8.49 Garnier SkinActive Micellar Cleansing Water, $8.49 The original beauty multitasker and an absolute cult for a reason. Who's tried this and not loved it? A micellar water removes makeup, grime and the general fatigue of a long day without stripping your skin or requiring a full skincare thesis. I've used high-end versions and always find myself coming back to this one. Sensitive skin? They've got one for that. Feeling dull? Yep, there's a Garnier slippery formula to sort that too. Schwarzkopf Extra Care Instant Volume Powder, $12 Schwarzkopf Extra Care Instant Volume Powder, $12 I first discovered the transformative powers of a volume powder when I was an 18-year-old hairdressing apprentice, and I haven't been without it since. The $30 alternatives always left me underwhelmed, which eventually led me to this gem - originally purchased for one very scientific reason: Heidi Klum was on the packaging. You would've too, she's a babe. I'd say this is like dry shampoo's grungy, edgier cousin. A tiny tap of the bottle, a quick tousle at the roots, and boom, instant lift. It's perfect for flat, day-two hair, and the grip it gives is also amazing for styling ponytails or messy buns that won't budge. Hada Labo Moisturising Facial Sheet Mask, $4.76 This face mask is cheaper than your morning coffee! But I know what you're thinking, 'it's simply too cold to apply a sheet mask at the moment'. I promise I won't harp on about putting this one in the fridge first. Instead, apply it directly after a nice, warm shower to freshly exfoliated skin, then bask in it with your dressing gown on and a cup of tea in hand, preferably on the couch. Hada Labo is Japan's No.1 skincare brand, but it's only been available on our shores for a few years, if you hadn't heard of it. This particular budget-friendly mask is drenched in hyaluronic acid, which is exactly what the brand is famous for. Their popularity stems from their patented Super Hyaluronic Acid, which has been developed over 100 years. e.l.f. Instant Lift Brow Pencil $10 e.l.f. Instant Lift Brow Pencil $10 I should start by saying that this brand just bought out Hailey Beiber's Rhode beauty for cool $1billion, so they're clearly doing something right. A crisp brow can change your whole face, and this $10 pencil proves you don't need to splurge to get that snatched, sculpted look. The formula is creamy enough to glide on without dragging but stiff enough to stay precise, which is exactly what you want in a brow product. The built-in spoolie is a bonus and blends everything out effortlessly for that soft, natural finish. I'd happily put this up against brow pencils three times the price. Dermal Therapy Crystal Deodorant Stick, $8.99 Dermal Therapy Crystal Deodorant Stick, $8.99 This one was most definitely a case of 'TikTok made me buy it.' I know it sounds like a strange concept, but hear me out because it's the most underrated swap I've made. No nasties, no fragrance, no white marks. Just a mineral salt stick that keeps me feeling fresh, even through hot days and sweaty gym sessions by combatting all the odour-causing bacteria. Plus, it lasts forever. I've had one stick for over six months. Batiste Brunette Dry Shampoo, $8.55 Batiste Brunette Dry Shampoo, $8.55 I love that the big cans of Batiste are always on special, because it is the best dry shampoo on the market, and I won't hear otherwise. Plus the mini's are like $4, so I always have one in my bag for emergencies like post-gym, surprise meetings, spontaneous dates, etc. The original formula is amazing, but I now use the brunette tint because it blends seamlessly into my dark hair, and no one will ever know your wash day is... (three days overdue). OXX Skincare Bronzing Facial Drops, $8 OXX Skincare Bronzing Facial Drops, $8 TikTok might love the Drunk Elephant version of this (which retails for $68), but my wallet says OXX, and you can pick them up from Kmart. You can use this alone for serious shine, or add a few drops into your favourite moisturiser for that smug 'I just-got-back-from-Bali 'glow – minus the sun damage and dodgy tummy, thank God. Plus, it's infused with peptides. Fancy, nourishing, and... frugal. Maybelline Lash Sensational Sky High Mascara, $12.99 Maybelline Lash Sensational Sky High Mascara, $12.99 Is it just me, or do all mascaras claim to be life-changing? Well, this one might not promise the earth, but its tubing formula really delivers, and it's now available in a range of fancy colours. From black to brown to blue to maroon, you can have a whole mascara wardrobe for one of its bougier alternatives. It lengthens and volumises without clumping too. My lashes are naturally fine, and this gives them drama without the drama of falsies or extensions. TRESemmé Lamellar Shine Shampoo and Conditioner, $11.90 each TRESemmé Lamellar Shine Shampoo and Conditioner, $11.90 each I stumbled across these at Coles during a half-price sale and haven't looked back. And if you've read a few of my articles by now you'll know I'm actually obsessed with the whole Lamella Shine range. My hair feels like silk and the shine is real. Lamellar tech is usually something you'd see in fancy salon products, so this supermarket find is a serious win. Gem Fragrance Mists, $12 each Sometimes perfumes can be a bit too overbearing to reapply multiple times, but now I keep a handy spritz at my desk and in my car. These mists are brand new and smell genuinely divine – think sweet luxe luxury scents, not teenage body spray. The Vanilla Macadamia one gets compliments every time I wear it. And that's a wrap! We all love a little luxury, but I hope you can see that looking good doesn't have to cost a fortune. From chemist shelves to supermarket surprises and even Kmart gems, great beauty on a budget is very possible. And as a budget beauty queen since way back, I feel very qualified in telling you so. You just need to know what to grab, what to skip, and most importantly, what actually works. And now that you know, don't be surprised if your next beauty haul totals less than your phone bill, but leaves you looking like you paid triple. You're very welcome.

At 21, Madison Griffiths dated her university tutor. It was legal, consensual – and a messy grey area
At 21, Madison Griffiths dated her university tutor. It was legal, consensual – and a messy grey area

The Guardian

time44 minutes ago

  • The Guardian

At 21, Madison Griffiths dated her university tutor. It was legal, consensual – and a messy grey area

At the tail end of 2023, the author Madison Griffiths posed a question on her Instagram: 'Has anyone here ever been in a relationship with a professor or a tutor?' Hundreds of responses flooded in. There were those who revealed that their parents had met in the lecture hall. Younger women reported they'd been involved with a university superior. Their experiences were diverse but what united those who messaged her was gender: no men came forward to say they had been in relationships with a professor or tutor. In Griffiths's inbox, at least, it was all women. For Griffiths, the question had been a personally motivated one. When she was 21, about 18 months after she'd been in his class, she asked a university tutor she had a crush on out for a drink, attracted by his intelligence and charm. They started dating and spent the next five years in an on-and-off relationship, Griffiths changing her university major to avoid winding up in his class again. They were only separated by a handful of years in age but, in the time since their breakup, Griffiths found the afterlife of that romance 'convoluted and complex in a way that I hadn't encountered in other relationships'. 'From 19 years old, my dynamic with him was one where I put him on a pedestal and I wanted him to really 'see me'… and I think that had everything to do with the implicit power imbalance that operated right from the get-go,' Griffiths says. 'It wasn't until the relationship's fallout that I started reflecting on these things.' The conversations she had as a result of that Instagram post snowballed into something bigger. Griffiths's experience and that of four of the women who reached out after her Instagram call-out would form the basis of a new book, Sweet Nothings, which explores the ethics and mechanics of 'pedagogical relationships': those between student and teacher, and a phenomenon Griffiths regards as highly gendered. Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Griffiths spent a year speaking to her four case studies, women now in their 30s and 40s who had 'lived lives well and truly outside of these relationships' and were now able to reflect on what had been. She readily admits that she was probably subconsciously 'looking for women that reminded me somewhat of myself, or could help me make sense of my own [experience]'. In her quest to understand these dynamics, Griffiths also spoke to male professors and tutors who had slept with a student – but not the ones who'd had relationships with her four subjects, to protect their anonymity. (Her subjects are also given pseudonyms and minor elements of their stories, like placenames, were fictionalised to obscure them.) Sweet Nothings is being published into a cultural moment that feels perhaps ready to begin reckoning with professor-student relationships. It arrives just ahead of A24's Sundance winner Sorry, Baby, about one woman's residual trauma from such a relationship, and not long after both New Yorker fiction and Diana Reid's bestselling novel Love & Virtue on the same topic. Perhaps most importantly, it comes in the long shadow of the #MeToo movement, as the conversation has expanded, sometimes uncertainly, to consensual relationships that feel not-quite-right – and what, exactly, in the arena of sex deserves our condemnation. Griffiths focused specifically on relationships that happened at university, where both parties were adults, and no abuse involving minors or high school students. What makes these relationships interesting to Griffiths is the grey area they operate in. Sex between a student and a professor is not against the law and, in many cases, not even expressly against university policy – yet these relationships can leave a lifelong mark on the women who enter them. 'I was particularly interested in sex that was 'problematic' but not necessarily 'bad',' Griffiths says. 'Every woman I spoke to was of the age of consent – [but] well and truly nursing a unique harm. The women that I was in conversation with didn't necessarily feel as if something completely, egregiously untoward took place within the framework of consent. It was something else entirely.' Sign up to Saved for Later Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips after newsletter promotion What unfurls in Sweet Nothings is an examination of the way men in positions of authority can appeal to women when they are younger, at a moment in their lives when they perhaps feel that youth and beauty afford them a power of its own. Instead of flat condemnations, Griffiths wanted to highlight the agency a lot of these women had in procuring these relationships and explore their own desires. But she found that some men appeared over time, as one character notes, 'vile, dull and obvious' for using their sway in the classroom to get with women, sometimes many years their junior, who wouldn't look twice at them in a pub. A complicated shame and anger often bloomed as women looked back on these relationships in the rear-view mirror, their memories of university forever soured. Two of her subjects had seen their former professor or tutor go on to date other students after their own breakup. The revelation that they may have been part of a kink, 'as opposed to necessarily someone who met the love of their life in the wrong outfit, in the wrong place, in the wrong time, did quite severe harm to these individuals' sense of self', Griffiths says. So too did realising that a man they once idolised, who has a mastery of the field they aspire to work in, had made their relationship about sex when perhaps what they were really craving was to be told they could 'be him one day'. It perhaps won't surprise you to hear that Lisa Taddeo's Three Women, the 2019 bestseller about the sex lives of three US women (including one who, at age 17, had a sexual relationship with her high school teacher), was an inspiration for Griffiths. But another book looms much larger: Helen Garner's The First Stone, mentioned directly in Sweet Nothings as a book Griffiths finds both compelling and aggravating. Garner's 1995 account of two University of Melbourne students who accused a residential college master of sexual assault has been critically re-evaluated for its often-scathing cynicism towards its female subjects. Garner herself had an affair with an older tutor while at university, she revealed in The First Stone – but didn't view it as an abuse of power, and regarded the young women's decision to lodge a complaint with police over being groped as a 'heartbreaking' overreaction and affront to feminist ideals. Griffiths read Garner's book twice while writing her manuscript, determined to do her own differently. Garner didn't interview the women involved in the case for The First Stone – they had declined her interview requests – and Griffiths found the absence of their voices distracting. She made her female subjects the centre of her story and is happy to be writing in an era when 'we can speak in less sweeping terms' about gender and consent. 'I think older generations have a very cartoonish view of an assailant and his prey,' she laughs. But even 30 years on from The First Stone, Griffiths found she and her subjects still brushed up against an attitude of, as she puts it, 'Well, what did she get out of it?' Despite typically being in only their late teens or early 20s, Griffiths found that uni students are seen as capable and headstrong, and therefore unable to be victimised like a high school student who is just a couple years younger than them. That disregard for uni students, paired with the innate respect professors enjoy, has muddied understandings of power and allowed men at universities to do what they like. 'There is certainly a class dimension to all of this,' Griffiths says. 'I think professors are held to high esteem and are able to operate in [this] way throughout a cultural understanding of them as quite esoteric, niche, unconventional genius. Genius men throughout history have gotten away with a lot.' Sure enough, while two of the four women featured in Sweet Nothings filed complaints against the men they had relationships with, there have been no repercussions for any of the men. There are rules around student-teacher relationships at most Australian universities, Griffiths says, but 'they are open to interpretation'. At many universities, guidelines only apply to relationships between teaching staff and their current students; for Griffiths and two of her subjects, the relationship began after they were in the same classroom. The order of events didn't change the power dynamic. 'One thing that I found was the origin story of all of these relationships, having once met in the classroom, pervaded the relationships at their core. It never went away,' Griffiths says. The women she spoke to remained eager to impress or prove themselves to their former teachers, forever affording them the upper hand. For Griffiths, now 31, that has proven true. 'I guess at the core of my almost childish want with him was to be taken seriously,' she says. 'I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a shadow of that in my relationship to my work more broadly.' She hopes that if her former tutor reads her book, he will see that she is able to look at their relationship academically now – 'with the fine-tooth comb that perhaps he didn't teach me'. Sweet Nothings is out now ($36.99)

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