Cheek Media Co

With the rising diet culture content we are being fed, it is time to question our relationship with fitness trackers and whether they are helping or hindering our relationship with our body, food and exercise, writes Cheek Media’s Varsha Yajman. Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash I went from my mum forcing me to take math seriously in primary school to it becoming my entire world in high school.

Last week, Cheek Media’s Bernadette Clarke joined 200 Illawarra locals to hear UN Commissioner Chris Sidoti and neurosurgeon Dr Ruth Mitchell speak about the impacts of Israel’s genocide on Palestinian children. The evening served as a stark reminder of how the Australian Government has turned a blind eye to its obligations under international law.

Australia has a world-leading record of arresting climate protestors, meanwhile multi-billion dollar corporations are perfecting the tactic of “legal bullying” to intimidate their critics, writes Cheek’s Varsha Yajman. In November 2025, NSW Police arrested 141 people who attempted to block the shipping channel in Newcastle Harbour during Rising Tide protests. It included 18 children - one of them was just 15. A year earlier, 170 were arrested for doing the same.

Conflating criticism of Israel with genuine antisemitism makes Jewish Australians less safe, because it tells us all that criticism of a foreign government and hatred of a diaspora community are the same thing, writes Jewish Council of Australia executive officer, Bart Shteinman. Photo by Nikolas Gannon on Unsplash There is a fight underway over who gets to define antisemitism in this country.

For this week’s Culture Bite, Emily Coogan asks: In a world where perfection has been democratised, now what? In news that is shocking but not surprising, Meta has allegedly implemented data processing that recognises when a person deletes photos of themselves as the perfect time to serve beauty and weight-loss advertisements. It’s a nice, light form of emotional exploitation within the safety of our own social archives. It’s also another symptom of the self-improvement scourge.

Those celebrating Labor’s proposed solution to Victoria’s pothole problem must ask themselves what we want from our justice system, writes Tahlia Isaac. Do we want people who go to prison to come out better and to be contributing members of our community? Or are we only seeking punishment and revenge?

Cheek sits down with UN Commissioner Chris Sidoti ahead of his address for the Association for the Promotion of International Law, in which he will present the findings of the latest UN report into Israel's systematic destruction of childhood in Palestine. Chris Sidoti has spent the last fifty years working at the forefront of human rights law.

As survivors, we are taught to keep our emotions out of it - it’s built into the foundations of our legal process. But we cannot be expected to switch off our feelings as the headlines cycle through a relentless stream of cases that mirror our own experiences, writes Anna Coutts-Trotter, co-founder and director of The Survivor Hub. Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm on Unsplash It’s okay to be angry. It’s okay to be terrified and exhausted and sad.

As a South Asian Australian, the lack of coverage on the Global South’s climate disasters is a constant reminder of how racism continues to pervade our media, writes Cheek’s Varsha Yajman. Seeing headlines about the floods in Nepal has felt bittersweet - let me explain. On the one hand, the headlines about the collapse of a glacier tearing through Nepal and China’s Tibet are horrifying.

Content disclaimer: Hannah Ferguson intends to run as an independent candidate in the seat of Grayndler at the next federal election. Photo by André Eusébio on Unsplash 49 women in Australia have been killed so far this year. Yesterday, journalist and leading campaigner against femicide, Sherele Moody, pointed out that we have just lost three women to male violence in the last four days.