Australian paper: Rest in peace and sexism, Colleen McCullough

You can’t take it with you. Unless “it” is sexist media coverage.

Australian author Colleen McCullough died yesterday at the age of 77. While researching and teaching neurophysiology at Yale, McCullough started writing novels in her on the side — and ended up writing international bestsellers. Her most famous book was The Thorn Birds, which sold over 30 million copies and was turned into a miniseries. Just last year, she published another novel, titled Bittersweet.

But here’s how the Austrialian (a, erm, Australian publication) began its obituary:

Colleen McCullough, Australia’s bestselling author, was a charmer. Plain of feature, and certainly overweight, she was, nevertheless a woman of wit and warmth. In one interview, she said: “I’ve never been into clothes or figure and the interesting thing is I never had any trouble attracting me.”

Clearly, the most important thing about any woman is how she looks and how she traps those men. And clearly it’s surprising that a fat lady might be smart and nice. (That “nevertheless”!)

On Twitter, ABC journalist Joanna McCarthy named the introduction “the worst opening lines of an obituary,” and others compared the paper’s coverage of McCullough’s life to its laudatory treatment of Bryce Courtenay — who, like McCullough, was an Australian author but, unlike McCullough, was a man.

Update: #MyOzObituary. Go read.

With a decent rack but meh around the face, she nevertheless managed to land a man! She also wrote books, we hear. #MyOzObituary

— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti) January 30, 2015