A version of this article appeared on Liberal Conspiracy
For those who dare to tell us that feminism is dead, no longer necessary, no longer vital, you need to open your eyes to see that the inequalities women face are still very real, very pertinent and very damaging.
Last year, Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl Wudunn published their game changing book, Half the Sky. In it, they talk about the 107 million missing women. These women are missing because of femicide, because of lack of healthcare, because of domestic violence and because of trafficking. They write:
“in normal circumstances women live longer than men, and so there are more females than males in the world. Even poor regions like most of Latin America and Africa have more women than men. Yet in places where girls have deeply unequal status, they vanish...Every year at least another 2 million girls worldwide disappear because of gender discrimination.”
These are the women who we don't hear about on the news. These are the women whose stories are too terrible for our 'compassion fatigue' society to deal with. These are the women who are forgotten, whilst bored commentators dismiss feminism as a lost cause because, after all, we have equality now don't we.
It is estimated that three million girls across the world will be affected by female genital mutilation this year alone, according to the UN. For those of you who don't know, FGM involves cutting a woman's clitoris and sometimes sewing up a woman's vaginal opening until marriage – this is also called infibulation. FGM can cause infection, issues with menstruation, pain during sexual intercourse, and, at worst, death through infection. But fundamentally it is about control. A few weeks ago I spoke to Nimko Ali, one of the founders of Daughters of Eve, a charity that supports girls in the FGM community. She believes that FGM is about a disgust of women's organs, a desire to control women, that all starts with a fear and disgust of women's sexuality. She argues that the same issues arise with the increase of western women seeking labiaplasty to get the perfect vagina. Ali argues that:
“The women I speak to in the FGM practising community use the same language of disgust to describe un-cut women, as women outside of the community talk about their own, 'un-perfect' bodies that need surgery to fit into an ideal of beauty. The result is the suppression of women’s sexuality to the benefit of men who start these myths in order to get women to want to alter their bodies.”
FGM happens to a girl every ten seconds. Every ten seconds a woman's sexuality, ability to experience sexual pleasure and potentially her reproductive health are compromised. Although FGM is a crime in the UK, no-one has ever been prosecuted.
It is tempting to think this is a problem for 'over there'. But this is completely wrong. This is a problem for all women, and it is something we should all be involved in the fight against. This disgust, this fear of women, women's bodies and women's power affects every woman across the world. The oppression of women across the world is a fight for all of us.
But, of course, we have equality now, don't we. The battle has been won.
According to the UN, an estimated 2 million women are trafficked over international borders every year. When you add the numbers of women who are trafficked internally, the number is even higher, around 4 million. These women are trafficked into the sex and domestic service trade. They are repeatedly raped every day, for money that they don't see, or work as slaves for privileged women and men. They lose their lives, their health, their identity. They may lose any children they have to the brothels or homes they work in. Some escape, as described in Half the Sky. But many don't. In the UK, teenage girls are internally trafficked in to the sex industry. Whatever your view on the sex industry, and I am sure some of you who have read my articles before will know mine, surely there is something very damning and disturbing about a society that will pay money to rape a woman. And yet, it happens every day, all over the world, to millions and millions of women.
Across the world, 70 million girls are deprived of an education. And yet, study after economic study has found that educating girls improves the economy. By educating girls, you empower them for future generations, who will also benefit from the education of their mothers. Improved literacy has a positive effect on empowering women to have control of their families and their reproductive health. Educating girls not only makes good moral sense, but it makes economic and political sense too. What's stopping us? Inequality and sexism.
Still not convinced? Here's some more numbers that might change your mind.
Across the world, sixty million girls will be sexually assaulted on their way to school. A girl in South Africa is more likely to be raped than finish her education. One in three women in the world will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. One in four women in the UK will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. Two women a week will be murdered in the UK by a current or former partner. About six women who work as prostitutes will be murdered in the UK every year (British Journal of Nurses). Three million women across the world are left incontinent with fistulas that are caused by rape, or lack of care during pregnancy and labour. Women with fistulas often find themselves treated as outcasts, unable to get or access the healthcare they need. And they are the women who survive childbirth. The maternal mortality rate is actually getting worse in some parts of the developing world; the number of African women who die in childbirth has risen from 205,000 in 1990 to 261,000 in 2005.
These are all big problems. And this is the tip of the iceberg in a world where women do two thirds of the world's work, earn 10% of the world's income and own 1% of the world's property.
If you think that International Women's Day is a waste of time, that feminism no longer has any battles to fight, then please, I beg you, think again. Think of the women in the Congo, who's stories have been silenced. Think of the girl who is being held down as her clitoris is cut to be made a 'real woman'. Think of the teenage girl who thinks the only way to success and self esteem is to have her breasts cut open and stuffed with silicon. Think of the women who don't go to school, who are kidnapped and forced into sex or domestic slavery. Think of the women who have died this year in the UK already as a result of domestic violence. Think of the women who are raped every day for profit. Think of this and tell me that we don't need International Women's Day. Hear these women's voices and tell me that we don't need feminism.
For stats and references please check:
Living Dolls by Natasha Walter
Half the Sky by Kristof and Wudann
http://www.unfpa.org/gender/violence1.htm
http://weareequals.org/blog/james-bond-supports-international-women%E2%80%99s-day/
http://www.forwarduk.org.uk/
http://www.unfpa.org/public/
http://www.amnestyusa.org/violence-against-women/justice-for-the-women-of-juarez-and-chihuahua/page.do?id=1108394
http://www.halfthesky.org/
http://www.stopthetraffik.org/humantrafficking/problem.aspx
http://www.thepixelproject.net/
http://www.crimestoppers-uk.org/crime-prevention/latest-crime-statistics
http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/…/Rape%20-%20The%20Facts.doc
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Monday, 7 March 2011
Where are the women - speech
I'm going to start by talking about our own findings of where women are often absent in the media, alongside the research conducted by UK Feminista in this area, and share with you how clear and manifest this kind of discrimination that renders women invisible is. I'll then explore with you where women are represented in the media, and how this can so often be problematic.
Bristol Fawcett began collecting data in 2007 and in 2008 and 2009 Bristol Feminist Network joined in, to try and discover and understand why we always had this nagging feeling that the way women appear in the media and in our cultural landscape just wasn't quite right, that there was something missing or something that didn't match our experiences of being women living in the UK. And so we started counting, collating and recording where and how women appeared in the media. The results shocked even us, who had expected to be shocked.
We found, for example, that in November 2008, none of the comedy venues in Bristol featured any women comedians. A random sampling of turning the TV on and off during the month found that whilst men appeared on the the screen eight out of ten times, women only appeared 5 out of the 10 times. The rest of time was a man and a woman. This was even more exaggerated on the weekends when men's sports dominates the schedule. In this period women only appeared 13% of the time, men appeared 64% of the time.
One woman counted the number of images in the November 2008 Observer Sports Monthly, to find that out of all the pictures, 177 were of men, 13 were of women. In 2009, one volunteer took this a step further, counting all the images of women in the sports pages of the Guardian over November. She found that out of 1048 images, 1019 images were of men, and 28 were of women. Further, none of the images of women were of women doing sport. None of them showed the energy, passion and vitality of women actively engaging in sport. Instead they showed women crying, dressed up, in the crowd, WAGs and the head shot of a journalist.
Film was a similar story. Sue, who is sitting here, counted the number of films showing on one day in the summer of 2007. None of the films showing in Bristol were directed by women. In 2009, she repeated the experiment over the month of November, counting how many films were directed by women and showing in Bristol. At first the results were encouraging. The numbers had gone from zero, to a whole 17 in 2009. Until we realised that 108 films had been directed by men. These numbers are backed up by UK Feminista's findings in 2010, where they found that only 7% of film directors were women. Similarly, according to UK Feminista only 7% of BAFTA winning screenwriters have been women.
Keeping on the film theme, I'm going to read you some reviews from Venue magazine taken from Sue's research in 2009:
.gratuitous gore and nudity…..pleasingly unpleasant….Special mention should be made of the game Betsy Rue, who remains completely naked throughout her sub plot. This is so enjoyable that only afterwards does one realize it was entirely superfluous”
you may be persuaded to give this a go if we tell you that it features a cameo by Miss Nude Australia, who inevitably gets an extended shower sequence
What this shows is that not only are films overwhelmingly being written, directed, created by men, but that very often the presumed audience of a film is male. These reviews are not addressing a womanly film audience. They are maintaining the status quo that men are the default, and that women are 'other'. And Sue will be talking to you more about what this means and why it's important.
Of course, films aimed at women do exist. But they tend to be a very narrow kind of rom-com, where women still play the props to a male character, rather than have their own independent storylines or lives. In the world of mainstream cinema, women's lives revolve around men! Our happinesses, successes, conversations and friendships all orbit the ultimate male character. Unsurprisingly, many films aimed at women also tend to originate in the mind of male directors, from SATC 2, Bridget Jones's Diary, No Strings Attached and that sexist celebration, He's Just Not that Into You. Rom coms that are directed by women, such as Mamma Mia are rather sneered at by the critics and movie buffs, but could its popularity be explained by this being a film, directed by a woman, that was full of silliness and fantasty, but actually spoke to women in a fun and honest way?
Literature is my passion. I did an English lit degree and my head is always in a book. It is well documented that women are bigger readers than men. Surely then, as the leading audience, women writers would be top notch in the representation stakes? However, research from UK Feminista shows just how little women's writing is represented in the important publishing awards that mark out which literature we see as being canonical.
For example,
• 78% of the authors shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction in the past decade have been men, and men make up 70% of winners (10) • 38% of the authors shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in the past decade have been women (11) • 70% of the winners and 68% of those shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year in the past decade have been men (12)
One of the interesting issues in women's representation in literature is that whilst women are happy to read books written by either gender, research has repeatedly shown that men tend to gravitate towards books by men. Could this explain the dominance of men in the awards stakes? And yet, the best selling Booker Prize novel of all time was written by a woman, Hilary Mantel. So it isn't that people aren't buying books by women. But when you put this research next to the recent report that women are underrepresented as reviewers in book journals, with only 74 women reviewers at the London Review of Books, compared to 343 men, and the idea that male reviewers tend to gravitate towards books written by men it becomes clear why this discrimination in whether men or women write award worthy literature comes in. These journals decide which books should be taken seriously, so it is easy enough to see why women writers struggle to get their names on the awards lists when they can't even get their books reviewed. Another interesting point to make before I move on, is that the books we traditionally associate with women writers, such as historical fiction, fiction about emotional or family relationships, are rarely seen as counting as serious literature by the male-dominated reviewers's world.
So there's a snapshot into women's lack of representation in the media. I'm now going to briefly discuss about where women are represented, and whether this is really how we want to be.
Back in 2008, we took a quick survey of magazine covers in WhSmiths and Borders. We found that whilst 85% of magazine covers showed men being active, as in being cover stars for being political, creative, sporting, powerful etc, only 15% had equivalent images of women. The flip side? 15% of images of men on magazine covers showed men in idealised poses, compared to 85% of women. The women on magazine covers were almost universally white, cis-sexual, straight, able bodied, long haired, slim, smiling, young and conforming to our current beauty ideal. Whereas men were allowed to deviate from this young, sparkling model, with wrinkles, grey hair and not universally slim, women were homogenized until we were overwhelmed with a virtual tsunami of idealised, blank women. The only older woman we saw was on the cover of a caravan magazine.
What does this tell us? Well, we believe that it is symptomatic of the objectification of women in the media. It shows us that whilst men are allowed to be portrayed as do-ers, sports stars, musicians, politicians, business leaders, car or fishing enthusiasts, women are told to sit still, and be looked at. The women on these magazine covers are performing for the gaze, rather than being subjects themselves, active agents in the world.
There is cross over of course and we can argue that whilst sports stars, for example, are active on the covers, they are also idealised. But at least they are allowed a bit more variety, a bit more humanity, than simply being teeth, hair, eyes and tits.
Women were also portrayed as being highly sexualised, both in women's and men's magazines. But never in a way that hinted at women's pleasure and women's own sexual desire. Instead, women's sexuality was portrayed on our magazine covers as a performance for a male gaze or audience. Lesbian sexuality was also overwhelmingly shown as a performance for men, rather than as an authentic female desire. And whilst some men were sexualised also, on the covers of gay magazines or men's health magazines, men were never the object of the female gaze (not that this isn't problematic – i'm not saying that men should be treated solely as objects too!) and although there is one documented occasion of a man appearing for the female gaze on Marie Claire, this has never been repeated as far as I know.
The problem with reducing women to sex objects to satisfy a presumed male gaze – in that some images are aimed at women but we have taken on a male gaze to view other women as objects performing their sexuality – is that it reduces the potential for women to be anything else. It also reduces and narrows our definitions of what it means to be beautiful, sexual and desirable. Rather than being a symptom of a sexually liberated society, or a society which is comfortable with and celebrates women's sexuality and desire, it is commodifying and narrowing women's bodies to sell a version of sexuality and beauty back to us that does not reflect our reality and is often unattainable. It measures women's success on their ability to meet a certain level of hotness.
The reducing of women's potential results in issues such as those we saw at last year's general election. Whilst the press couldn't get enough as to whether Sarah Brown or Sam Cam had better pedicures, or indulged in moralistic tut-tutting at Miriam González Durántez
not having the same name as Nick Clegg (would you want to?) women politicians were no where to be seen. It was Where are the women indeed! The result? We now have more graduates from Magdalen College than we do women in the cabinet and Quentin Letts spends his time writing nasty little articles about how our women politicians are not as hot as their world counterparts.
I've gone through a lot of numbers today and to finish I am going to share some final figures with you.
Anna and myself spent Thursday evening doing our bit to save Venue by buying the mag and doing a quick count of how women were doing in the representation stakes in our city. We re-visited film, comedy and, because it's happening this weekend, the Bath Literature Festival.
Here's what we found:
Comedy: 44 male acts 3 female acts Film: 37 films directed by men 2 films directed by women 0 films directed by a man and woman
23 male led events (1 man or all male panel) 8 woman led events (1 woman or all women panel) 4 mixed events (most of these had more men than women on the panel)
The numbers are there. They matter. They clearly show that the nagging feeling we had all those years ago that women just weren't there was entirely justified. So, the question is, why does this matter and what are we going to do about it?
Bristol Fawcett began collecting data in 2007 and in 2008 and 2009 Bristol Feminist Network joined in, to try and discover and understand why we always had this nagging feeling that the way women appear in the media and in our cultural landscape just wasn't quite right, that there was something missing or something that didn't match our experiences of being women living in the UK. And so we started counting, collating and recording where and how women appeared in the media. The results shocked even us, who had expected to be shocked.
We found, for example, that in November 2008, none of the comedy venues in Bristol featured any women comedians. A random sampling of turning the TV on and off during the month found that whilst men appeared on the the screen eight out of ten times, women only appeared 5 out of the 10 times. The rest of time was a man and a woman. This was even more exaggerated on the weekends when men's sports dominates the schedule. In this period women only appeared 13% of the time, men appeared 64% of the time.
One woman counted the number of images in the November 2008 Observer Sports Monthly, to find that out of all the pictures, 177 were of men, 13 were of women. In 2009, one volunteer took this a step further, counting all the images of women in the sports pages of the Guardian over November. She found that out of 1048 images, 1019 images were of men, and 28 were of women. Further, none of the images of women were of women doing sport. None of them showed the energy, passion and vitality of women actively engaging in sport. Instead they showed women crying, dressed up, in the crowd, WAGs and the head shot of a journalist.
Film was a similar story. Sue, who is sitting here, counted the number of films showing on one day in the summer of 2007. None of the films showing in Bristol were directed by women. In 2009, she repeated the experiment over the month of November, counting how many films were directed by women and showing in Bristol. At first the results were encouraging. The numbers had gone from zero, to a whole 17 in 2009. Until we realised that 108 films had been directed by men. These numbers are backed up by UK Feminista's findings in 2010, where they found that only 7% of film directors were women. Similarly, according to UK Feminista only 7% of BAFTA winning screenwriters have been women.
Keeping on the film theme, I'm going to read you some reviews from Venue magazine taken from Sue's research in 2009:
.gratuitous gore and nudity…..pleasingly unpleasant….Special mention should be made of the game Betsy Rue, who remains completely naked throughout her sub plot. This is so enjoyable that only afterwards does one realize it was entirely superfluous”
you may be persuaded to give this a go if we tell you that it features a cameo by Miss Nude Australia, who inevitably gets an extended shower sequence
What this shows is that not only are films overwhelmingly being written, directed, created by men, but that very often the presumed audience of a film is male. These reviews are not addressing a womanly film audience. They are maintaining the status quo that men are the default, and that women are 'other'. And Sue will be talking to you more about what this means and why it's important.
Of course, films aimed at women do exist. But they tend to be a very narrow kind of rom-com, where women still play the props to a male character, rather than have their own independent storylines or lives. In the world of mainstream cinema, women's lives revolve around men! Our happinesses, successes, conversations and friendships all orbit the ultimate male character. Unsurprisingly, many films aimed at women also tend to originate in the mind of male directors, from SATC 2, Bridget Jones's Diary, No Strings Attached and that sexist celebration, He's Just Not that Into You. Rom coms that are directed by women, such as Mamma Mia are rather sneered at by the critics and movie buffs, but could its popularity be explained by this being a film, directed by a woman, that was full of silliness and fantasty, but actually spoke to women in a fun and honest way?
Literature is my passion. I did an English lit degree and my head is always in a book. It is well documented that women are bigger readers than men. Surely then, as the leading audience, women writers would be top notch in the representation stakes? However, research from UK Feminista shows just how little women's writing is represented in the important publishing awards that mark out which literature we see as being canonical.
For example,
• 78% of the authors shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non Fiction in the past decade have been men, and men make up 70% of winners (10) • 38% of the authors shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in the past decade have been women (11) • 70% of the winners and 68% of those shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year in the past decade have been men (12)
One of the interesting issues in women's representation in literature is that whilst women are happy to read books written by either gender, research has repeatedly shown that men tend to gravitate towards books by men. Could this explain the dominance of men in the awards stakes? And yet, the best selling Booker Prize novel of all time was written by a woman, Hilary Mantel. So it isn't that people aren't buying books by women. But when you put this research next to the recent report that women are underrepresented as reviewers in book journals, with only 74 women reviewers at the London Review of Books, compared to 343 men, and the idea that male reviewers tend to gravitate towards books written by men it becomes clear why this discrimination in whether men or women write award worthy literature comes in. These journals decide which books should be taken seriously, so it is easy enough to see why women writers struggle to get their names on the awards lists when they can't even get their books reviewed. Another interesting point to make before I move on, is that the books we traditionally associate with women writers, such as historical fiction, fiction about emotional or family relationships, are rarely seen as counting as serious literature by the male-dominated reviewers's world.
So there's a snapshot into women's lack of representation in the media. I'm now going to briefly discuss about where women are represented, and whether this is really how we want to be.
Back in 2008, we took a quick survey of magazine covers in WhSmiths and Borders. We found that whilst 85% of magazine covers showed men being active, as in being cover stars for being political, creative, sporting, powerful etc, only 15% had equivalent images of women. The flip side? 15% of images of men on magazine covers showed men in idealised poses, compared to 85% of women. The women on magazine covers were almost universally white, cis-sexual, straight, able bodied, long haired, slim, smiling, young and conforming to our current beauty ideal. Whereas men were allowed to deviate from this young, sparkling model, with wrinkles, grey hair and not universally slim, women were homogenized until we were overwhelmed with a virtual tsunami of idealised, blank women. The only older woman we saw was on the cover of a caravan magazine.
What does this tell us? Well, we believe that it is symptomatic of the objectification of women in the media. It shows us that whilst men are allowed to be portrayed as do-ers, sports stars, musicians, politicians, business leaders, car or fishing enthusiasts, women are told to sit still, and be looked at. The women on these magazine covers are performing for the gaze, rather than being subjects themselves, active agents in the world.
There is cross over of course and we can argue that whilst sports stars, for example, are active on the covers, they are also idealised. But at least they are allowed a bit more variety, a bit more humanity, than simply being teeth, hair, eyes and tits.
Women were also portrayed as being highly sexualised, both in women's and men's magazines. But never in a way that hinted at women's pleasure and women's own sexual desire. Instead, women's sexuality was portrayed on our magazine covers as a performance for a male gaze or audience. Lesbian sexuality was also overwhelmingly shown as a performance for men, rather than as an authentic female desire. And whilst some men were sexualised also, on the covers of gay magazines or men's health magazines, men were never the object of the female gaze (not that this isn't problematic – i'm not saying that men should be treated solely as objects too!) and although there is one documented occasion of a man appearing for the female gaze on Marie Claire, this has never been repeated as far as I know.
The problem with reducing women to sex objects to satisfy a presumed male gaze – in that some images are aimed at women but we have taken on a male gaze to view other women as objects performing their sexuality – is that it reduces the potential for women to be anything else. It also reduces and narrows our definitions of what it means to be beautiful, sexual and desirable. Rather than being a symptom of a sexually liberated society, or a society which is comfortable with and celebrates women's sexuality and desire, it is commodifying and narrowing women's bodies to sell a version of sexuality and beauty back to us that does not reflect our reality and is often unattainable. It measures women's success on their ability to meet a certain level of hotness.
The reducing of women's potential results in issues such as those we saw at last year's general election. Whilst the press couldn't get enough as to whether Sarah Brown or Sam Cam had better pedicures, or indulged in moralistic tut-tutting at Miriam González Durántez
not having the same name as Nick Clegg (would you want to?) women politicians were no where to be seen. It was Where are the women indeed! The result? We now have more graduates from Magdalen College than we do women in the cabinet and Quentin Letts spends his time writing nasty little articles about how our women politicians are not as hot as their world counterparts.
I've gone through a lot of numbers today and to finish I am going to share some final figures with you.
Anna and myself spent Thursday evening doing our bit to save Venue by buying the mag and doing a quick count of how women were doing in the representation stakes in our city. We re-visited film, comedy and, because it's happening this weekend, the Bath Literature Festival.
Here's what we found:
Comedy: 44 male acts 3 female acts Film: 37 films directed by men 2 films directed by women 0 films directed by a man and woman
23 male led events (1 man or all male panel) 8 woman led events (1 woman or all women panel) 4 mixed events (most of these had more men than women on the panel)
The numbers are there. They matter. They clearly show that the nagging feeling we had all those years ago that women just weren't there was entirely justified. So, the question is, why does this matter and what are we going to do about it?
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Book review: One Dimensional Woman
This review was written for the F Word website and can originally be found here:
http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2011/02/one_dimensional
This explosive book with its pink and black cover should have pride of place on every woman’s book shelf. Written by renowned academic Nina Power, One Dimensional Woman is a roar of anger against the co-opting of feminism by consumerism and right-wing politics.
The book is only 69 pages long, but in that space we explore how the right has co-opted the language of feminism to defend its wars and anti-choice stance, how the market sells us empowerment in a glass of Chardonnay and a shiny shampoo, how the feminisation of labour puts women’s bodies/goods on display and how looking at the history of pornography can provide us with new narratives with which to talk about the performance of sexuality.
The book opens with an introduction delineating its key themes. Power asks the reader “where have all the interesting women gone?” Based on an assessment of pop culture, you would believe women are a dull, homogenous mass excited by handbags and giggling over vibrators.
Her book predicts Finn McKay’s closing speech at Feminism in London 2010, when she said “feminism has to mean something, or it risks meaning nothing at all”. She argues that feminism has come to mean anything that makes a woman feel good, that shopping for designer shoes and eating chocolate bars has become as feminist an act as marching for your right to choose or volunteering at a rape crisis centre. The idea of ‘it’s good for me’ feminism, that puts the individual’s happiness at its centre, regardless of the effect individual actions have on those around us, is an idea that chimes with a capitalist and consumerist outlook. As Power says in her introduction:
That the height of supposed female emancipation coincides so perfectly with consumerism is a miserable index of a politically desolate time.
The first section of the book deals with Sarah Palin, the self-styled pitbull in lipstick, who uses the language of feminism - of choice and empowerment - to pitch herself as a powerful woman who stands equal to the men, but is still a hockey mum at heart.
Power asks us: if Sarah Palin, a war-mongering, anti-choice, anti sex-education, gun-toting Republican can call herself a feminist, then perhaps we really are at a crisis of what feminism means. She cites three examples of differing definitions of what feminism can mean today, the philosopher Jacques-Alain Miller who “fears” the “castrating Palin” and sees feminism as being like a man; Jessica Valenti who sees feminism as being pro-choice and about equality; and Palin, a pro-war, anti-choice ‘feminist’.
Power touches here on how Palin, Condoleezza Rice and Margaret Thatcher have all shown that feminists don’t just want to see a woman in power, that a woman in power is meaningless if it is not the right woman. Should Palin have won the vice-presidency (or, indeed, if she wins the 2012 election), then anti-feminists would have had the perfect opportunity to point at her and say ‘see! You have equality now! There’s a woman in charge!’ The token woman shows just how far we have to go before we do get true equality and real power.
Power moves on to how the Republicans in the US used the rhetoric of feminism to ‘sell’ the wars in the Middle East as a way to emancipate women from the repressive regimes of the Taliban.
I hasten to add at this point that, contrary to John Pilger’s recent essay in the New Statesman about feminist support for war in the Middle East, I believe it was primarily feminists in the US who took this line, and that UK feminists were generally opposed to war being fought in our, womanly, name.
Power argues that the line taken by Bush and Co, that the women needed to be liberated in Afghanistan via military action, handily paints women as victims who need to be saved by an incoming (male) hero. The conviction that women need to be rescued by carpet bombing that would kill women, their children and their families, and that this was ‘feminist’, was shouted from the rooftops by a president who was anti-feminist enough to cut off all funding to international providers of abortion and abortion counselling on his first day in office. As Power writes:
Feminism is something merely to invoke to convince the fence-sitting morally-minded voters that war is the only option on the table… feminism has become so broad that it can be used to justify almost anything, even the invasion of other countries.
But where has this broad, and ever broadening, definition of feminism come from? Nina Power argues that it is linked to ‘Feminism™’ - the idea that feminism is a lifestyle choice that might be political, but is really concerned with making sure that you’re having fun.
So, what is Feminism™? Power links it to Valenti’s book Full Frontal Feminism and Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards’ book Manifesta - confidence building manuals full of sass that treat feminism as a tool to a better life and to ensure we all have more fun. She writes:
In these books, the political and historical dimensions of feminism are subsumed under the imperative to feel better about oneself, to become a more robust individual. As a response to the ‘I’m not a feminist but…’ pose it’s very successful. Almost everything turns out to be feminist - shopping, pole dancing, even chocolate.
Power argues that the ‘liberating’ mode of this style of feminism is remarkably similar to ‘liberating capitalism’. If feminism is a lifestyle choice about the individual, rather than a political movement intent on making the world better for all woman and men, then this creates a space for the market to sell us ‘empowerment’.
And this selling happens at the expense of exploited women the world over, from the women working in appalling conditions stitching the clothes you buy, to the woman for whom lap dancing isn’t a fun, ‘empowering’ workout or lifestyle choice. This form of feminism desperately tries to scrabble away from its perceived ‘unfun’ and ‘hairy’ predecessors (as if there is something wrong with being hairy and not something wrong with false body ideals) to portray itself as something hip and fancy-free. The result? Feminism lite that tells you that all choice is a feminist choice because it’s your choice, with no thought for how your choice affects the women in the world around you.
Of course feminism can be fun. I have lots of fun being a feminist. But the idea that feminism is something solely to improve the individual’s life, a reason to buy a designer handbag or ‘treat yourself’ to a chocolate bar, or buy a vibrator, is a dangerous one. If feminism becomes something you define for yourself, as Valenti has it, then what stops feminism becoming defined as being anti-choice, pro-war, anti-sex education and gun-toting, like Sarah Palin? What stops feminism being used as a rhetorical term to justify harm to women?
The feminisation of labour is another key issue to Power. She argues that the presentation of many forms of work are now ‘feminine’, and that the selling to women of the idea that they are ‘caring’ and ‘good communicators’ has pushed them towards the instability of temping life, flexible working and gives them a lower status in the job market.
Women’s skills are seen as valuable and simultaneously de-valued. She argues that this has an effect on discrimination against mothers who can’t be ‘flexible’ and that women are pitted against each other to be the most obliging, while still looking after most of the housework and childcare, because, after all, that too is woman’s work.
This leads us to the idea and image of the ‘working girl’, bright eyed, glossy haired, suited in stilettos, selling herself to her employer and to the women behind her. You’re “an advert for yourself” at all times. Power argues that this has caused a blurring between free and labour time - a woman is always selling herself, and that selling is often predicated on her body. We are on display, we are looked at, we are the object. She cites the porn series Girls Gone Wild where women are having their ‘free time’ but using their bodies as part of a business transaction, giving something away (their breasts) to receive something (their Girls Gone Wild souvenir hat).
As Power puts it, in this situation “you are your breasts”. That is where your value lies and from here breasts have become increasingly something that are separate from a woman’s body and instead are objects with a market value.
The final section of the book deals with pornography and its links to capitalism, before exploring how historic studies of porn give us an alternative visual language of sexuality. Power believes that looking at pornography from the past shows us that porn’s “future need not be as grim as its present”.
She argues that, unlike porn in most other points of history, the porn we see today is divorced from the human. It’s all about the money shot, porn as sex is sex as work: boring, grinding and with a cash prize at the end of it.
Comparing this endless show reel of “grim orgasms and the parading of physical prowess” to porn made in the early 20th Century, Power notes how silly, funny and slapstick much of porn was. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t explicit, but that as well as having a range of bodies and faces on display, the participants in early 20th century porn seem to actually like each other, consent to and enjoy sex, unlike in today’s mainstream porn that seems to relish violence, force and expressions of actual pain rather than pleasure.
This is only a fraction of the many interesting, complex but always accessible arguments and themes in Power’s wonderful book. Re-reading it to write this review, I was amazed at how much is crammed into these 69 pages, from feminist analysis of Sex and the City, a discussion on the Bechdel test, the politics of choice, advertising and fashion magazines, self harm, socialism, shopping and philosophy. There’s a lot to take in but even though the book is so short, you don’t feel that the information is crammed in, or not developed enough. This book is angry, imaginative, subversive and perhaps most of all, it is exciting.
Perhaps the one thing worth mentioning is that a lot of the criticism of modern feminism in the book feels very focused on the US. Maybe it’s because I’m a UK feminist, but I feel that most the feminists I speak to don’t believe in the “any choice you make is a feminist choice” line, that this is something encountered more in state-side feminist writing. It does happen in the UK (The Noughtie Girl’s Guide to Feminism by Elly Levenson) but I feel that right now, UK feminists are closer-aligned to Nina Power’s thinking than the Fun Feminism™ stance she is criticising. Power is UK-based herself and it would be interesting to know if she shares this thought, or whether she sees this happening in the UK also.
http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2011/02/one_dimensional
This explosive book with its pink and black cover should have pride of place on every woman’s book shelf. Written by renowned academic Nina Power, One Dimensional Woman is a roar of anger against the co-opting of feminism by consumerism and right-wing politics.
The book is only 69 pages long, but in that space we explore how the right has co-opted the language of feminism to defend its wars and anti-choice stance, how the market sells us empowerment in a glass of Chardonnay and a shiny shampoo, how the feminisation of labour puts women’s bodies/goods on display and how looking at the history of pornography can provide us with new narratives with which to talk about the performance of sexuality.
The book opens with an introduction delineating its key themes. Power asks the reader “where have all the interesting women gone?” Based on an assessment of pop culture, you would believe women are a dull, homogenous mass excited by handbags and giggling over vibrators.
Her book predicts Finn McKay’s closing speech at Feminism in London 2010, when she said “feminism has to mean something, or it risks meaning nothing at all”. She argues that feminism has come to mean anything that makes a woman feel good, that shopping for designer shoes and eating chocolate bars has become as feminist an act as marching for your right to choose or volunteering at a rape crisis centre. The idea of ‘it’s good for me’ feminism, that puts the individual’s happiness at its centre, regardless of the effect individual actions have on those around us, is an idea that chimes with a capitalist and consumerist outlook. As Power says in her introduction:
That the height of supposed female emancipation coincides so perfectly with consumerism is a miserable index of a politically desolate time.
The first section of the book deals with Sarah Palin, the self-styled pitbull in lipstick, who uses the language of feminism - of choice and empowerment - to pitch herself as a powerful woman who stands equal to the men, but is still a hockey mum at heart.
Power asks us: if Sarah Palin, a war-mongering, anti-choice, anti sex-education, gun-toting Republican can call herself a feminist, then perhaps we really are at a crisis of what feminism means. She cites three examples of differing definitions of what feminism can mean today, the philosopher Jacques-Alain Miller who “fears” the “castrating Palin” and sees feminism as being like a man; Jessica Valenti who sees feminism as being pro-choice and about equality; and Palin, a pro-war, anti-choice ‘feminist’.
Power touches here on how Palin, Condoleezza Rice and Margaret Thatcher have all shown that feminists don’t just want to see a woman in power, that a woman in power is meaningless if it is not the right woman. Should Palin have won the vice-presidency (or, indeed, if she wins the 2012 election), then anti-feminists would have had the perfect opportunity to point at her and say ‘see! You have equality now! There’s a woman in charge!’ The token woman shows just how far we have to go before we do get true equality and real power.
Power moves on to how the Republicans in the US used the rhetoric of feminism to ‘sell’ the wars in the Middle East as a way to emancipate women from the repressive regimes of the Taliban.
I hasten to add at this point that, contrary to John Pilger’s recent essay in the New Statesman about feminist support for war in the Middle East, I believe it was primarily feminists in the US who took this line, and that UK feminists were generally opposed to war being fought in our, womanly, name.
Power argues that the line taken by Bush and Co, that the women needed to be liberated in Afghanistan via military action, handily paints women as victims who need to be saved by an incoming (male) hero. The conviction that women need to be rescued by carpet bombing that would kill women, their children and their families, and that this was ‘feminist’, was shouted from the rooftops by a president who was anti-feminist enough to cut off all funding to international providers of abortion and abortion counselling on his first day in office. As Power writes:
Feminism is something merely to invoke to convince the fence-sitting morally-minded voters that war is the only option on the table… feminism has become so broad that it can be used to justify almost anything, even the invasion of other countries.
But where has this broad, and ever broadening, definition of feminism come from? Nina Power argues that it is linked to ‘Feminism™’ - the idea that feminism is a lifestyle choice that might be political, but is really concerned with making sure that you’re having fun.
So, what is Feminism™? Power links it to Valenti’s book Full Frontal Feminism and Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards’ book Manifesta - confidence building manuals full of sass that treat feminism as a tool to a better life and to ensure we all have more fun. She writes:
In these books, the political and historical dimensions of feminism are subsumed under the imperative to feel better about oneself, to become a more robust individual. As a response to the ‘I’m not a feminist but…’ pose it’s very successful. Almost everything turns out to be feminist - shopping, pole dancing, even chocolate.
Power argues that the ‘liberating’ mode of this style of feminism is remarkably similar to ‘liberating capitalism’. If feminism is a lifestyle choice about the individual, rather than a political movement intent on making the world better for all woman and men, then this creates a space for the market to sell us ‘empowerment’.
And this selling happens at the expense of exploited women the world over, from the women working in appalling conditions stitching the clothes you buy, to the woman for whom lap dancing isn’t a fun, ‘empowering’ workout or lifestyle choice. This form of feminism desperately tries to scrabble away from its perceived ‘unfun’ and ‘hairy’ predecessors (as if there is something wrong with being hairy and not something wrong with false body ideals) to portray itself as something hip and fancy-free. The result? Feminism lite that tells you that all choice is a feminist choice because it’s your choice, with no thought for how your choice affects the women in the world around you.
Of course feminism can be fun. I have lots of fun being a feminist. But the idea that feminism is something solely to improve the individual’s life, a reason to buy a designer handbag or ‘treat yourself’ to a chocolate bar, or buy a vibrator, is a dangerous one. If feminism becomes something you define for yourself, as Valenti has it, then what stops feminism becoming defined as being anti-choice, pro-war, anti-sex education and gun-toting, like Sarah Palin? What stops feminism being used as a rhetorical term to justify harm to women?
The feminisation of labour is another key issue to Power. She argues that the presentation of many forms of work are now ‘feminine’, and that the selling to women of the idea that they are ‘caring’ and ‘good communicators’ has pushed them towards the instability of temping life, flexible working and gives them a lower status in the job market.
Women’s skills are seen as valuable and simultaneously de-valued. She argues that this has an effect on discrimination against mothers who can’t be ‘flexible’ and that women are pitted against each other to be the most obliging, while still looking after most of the housework and childcare, because, after all, that too is woman’s work.
This leads us to the idea and image of the ‘working girl’, bright eyed, glossy haired, suited in stilettos, selling herself to her employer and to the women behind her. You’re “an advert for yourself” at all times. Power argues that this has caused a blurring between free and labour time - a woman is always selling herself, and that selling is often predicated on her body. We are on display, we are looked at, we are the object. She cites the porn series Girls Gone Wild where women are having their ‘free time’ but using their bodies as part of a business transaction, giving something away (their breasts) to receive something (their Girls Gone Wild souvenir hat).
As Power puts it, in this situation “you are your breasts”. That is where your value lies and from here breasts have become increasingly something that are separate from a woman’s body and instead are objects with a market value.
The final section of the book deals with pornography and its links to capitalism, before exploring how historic studies of porn give us an alternative visual language of sexuality. Power believes that looking at pornography from the past shows us that porn’s “future need not be as grim as its present”.
She argues that, unlike porn in most other points of history, the porn we see today is divorced from the human. It’s all about the money shot, porn as sex is sex as work: boring, grinding and with a cash prize at the end of it.
Comparing this endless show reel of “grim orgasms and the parading of physical prowess” to porn made in the early 20th Century, Power notes how silly, funny and slapstick much of porn was. This doesn’t mean it wasn’t explicit, but that as well as having a range of bodies and faces on display, the participants in early 20th century porn seem to actually like each other, consent to and enjoy sex, unlike in today’s mainstream porn that seems to relish violence, force and expressions of actual pain rather than pleasure.
This is only a fraction of the many interesting, complex but always accessible arguments and themes in Power’s wonderful book. Re-reading it to write this review, I was amazed at how much is crammed into these 69 pages, from feminist analysis of Sex and the City, a discussion on the Bechdel test, the politics of choice, advertising and fashion magazines, self harm, socialism, shopping and philosophy. There’s a lot to take in but even though the book is so short, you don’t feel that the information is crammed in, or not developed enough. This book is angry, imaginative, subversive and perhaps most of all, it is exciting.
Perhaps the one thing worth mentioning is that a lot of the criticism of modern feminism in the book feels very focused on the US. Maybe it’s because I’m a UK feminist, but I feel that most the feminists I speak to don’t believe in the “any choice you make is a feminist choice” line, that this is something encountered more in state-side feminist writing. It does happen in the UK (The Noughtie Girl’s Guide to Feminism by Elly Levenson) but I feel that right now, UK feminists are closer-aligned to Nina Power’s thinking than the Fun Feminism™ stance she is criticising. Power is UK-based herself and it would be interesting to know if she shares this thought, or whether she sees this happening in the UK also.
Wednesday, 16 February 2011
Column for Fresh Outlook
I have started writing a column for the Fresh Outlook newspaper.
You can read the first one here:
http://tinyurl.com/5rf2htp
You can read the first one here:
http://tinyurl.com/5rf2htp
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
Airbrushing in the Media
I wrote this in 2009 and interviewed Jo Swinson MP regarding the anti airbrushing campaign. Unfortunately it never got picked up by anyone so, 2 years on, here it is:
Pop culture fans may have realised that Barbie, with her smooth skin, impossible anatomy and perfect coiffure, celebrated turning fifty this year. Not that you’d know it to look at her. Her face is free of wrinkles, pores or spots; her body as firm and pert as the day she first graced the shelves of toy stores way back in 1959.
Barbie, we could argue, is the ultimate in airbrushing. Her smooth features say no to “flaws”, her unlikely physiology says the unreal is the ideal. And in the month when Barack Obama suggested the controversial botox tax – charging more money for non necessary cosmetic surgery operations, over in the UK, MP Jo Swinson has proposed to her party that airbrushed images in ads and mags should come with warnings, indicating to the reader where images have been digitally “enhanced”. She also more radically asks that all airbrushing in images aimed at children should be completely banned.
Swinson’s argument is simple – by exposing young men and women to airbrushed images we are presenting them with an unrealistic representation of the human body. She hopes that by raising the public profile of the effects of airbrushing the media will be encouraged to “portray women as they are, images of women looking good but without this ideal narrow fixation on thinness and particular shapes that we have at the moment.”
The evidence does suggest that unrealistic representations of women’s bodies can have damaging effects on body image and self esteem. Psychologist Dr Emma Halliwell has conducted extensive research into the ways body image and self esteem are affected by media imagery. She believes that “ultra thin models can lead to body dissatisfaction, low mood and low self esteem in women who are vulnerable and who have internalised the idea of being thin as being ideal. Increasingly we are growing up in a culture where we see being beautiful as being thin.”
Airbrushing is everywhere in the media. Women’s shoulders are made smaller and narrower by the magic of photo manipulation; arm hair is carefully erased; cheeks and eyes are made brighter and hair gets an added lustre. The result? An ad or fashion shoot is created featuring the unreal woman. And because we use “enhancing” technology to change the image, the implicit suggestion is that the altered body and face is also the perfect or ideal body and face.
“Throughout time we have looked at pictures of beautiful women,” explains Swinson. “But this idealisation of extreme thinness is something new, and the current media ideal of a woman’s body is a shape most women can’t achieve. This is then made so much worse by airbrushing to extreme levels.”
The problem with airbrushing, both Swinson and psychologist and Co-director of the Centre of Appearance Research, Professor Nichola Rumsey have argued, is the way that digitally altered images perpetuate the beauty myth. They, quite simply, contribute to the pressures on all women, and increasingly men, to achieve the “perfect” body.
“We are increasingly under pressure to conform to these ‘perfect’ faces and bodies we see in the media. This discrepancy between what we actually look like and what we feel we should look like has been identified as one factor in why young people, especially young girls but increasingly young men, feel dissatisfied with the way the look” argues Rumsey.
The perfection airbrushed images demand is impossible. Women can’t match the software’s paintbrush. Yet we are allowing airbrushed images to dictate what women should look like even though we know that the images themselves are not even real. As Cindy Crawford famously quipped, even Cindy Crawford doesn’t look like Cindy Crawford. So how is anyone else going to?
Swinson is proposing a ban on all airbrushed images aimed at under 16s, and warnings or notifications on images that have been airbrushed which are aimed at adults. “I want to make people think twice about these images as an interpretation of reality,” she explains. “A public debate around this issue is so important, as it allows us to really ask what is ideal? Is it health, is it a body shape, is it confidence and inner beauty? We want to say that airbrushing no longer has to be the norm, celebrating a more natural beauty.”
The issues are beginning to reveal themselves at younger and younger ages. Research conducted by the Girl Guides has found that girls under 10 equate beauty with happiness. According to Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty in the USA, 80% of women and 92% of girls were dissatisfied with their body. Although it would be fatuous to just blame airbrushing for women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies, it would be as equally disingenuous to say it plays no part at all. The media and the images we are exposed to affect us in many strange and subtle ways, from making us want to choose this cleaning product, to thinking that one body type is an ideal, compared to our own.
The beauty myth goes this way. We open a magazine and see a digitally altered image of a beautiful woman. Societal codes have made us believe that she is successful and happy, because she is beautiful. We want to be successful too, but we feel like we can’t be, because we don’t look like the image in the magazine.
“Thin models contribute to the societal ideal that is then communicated through friends, family and even the health service that being thin means you are successful, happy and healthy,” explains Halliwell. “But this isn’t necessarily the case, especially when you consider that on average models are 20% underweight, and the medical diagnostic for anorexia is being 15% underweight. This is made more problematic in that women are super critical of their bodies, but aren’t allowed to admit to dieting or exercise regimes.”
As all international readers will undoubtedly recognise, this is not just a UK problem. The rise of women worldwide wanting cosmetic surgery, from botox to boob jobs, can be linked to our airbrushed culture. Have we reached a point where we have become so isolated from the reality of women’s bodies that we see airbrushed images as representing what is “right”, and aspire to copy it? The cosmetically altered body more closely resembles the airbrushed body than the women’s bodies we are born with.
So where can we find solutions? The first, Swinson argues, is the banning of airbrushing of images aimed at children, and having mandatory warnings on all airbrushed images. But airbrushed images are only part of the problem in a culture where if we’re not looking at Charlize Theron’s perfected torso, we are looking at a red circle of shame highlighting Julia Roberts’ body hair.
One solution lies in encouraging greater discussion on body image and self esteem issues through media literacy as part of social and health education.
“With proper training available to teachers we would encourage classes to look at the media, maybe use before and after photos to learn about airbrushing, engage with journalists and have more discussion about this issue with young people,” explains Swinson. “Many young women and men feel insecure about their bodies; these lessons would help young people to gain the skills to deal with these pressures, to teach them that people in the media aren’t ‘perfect’.”
Halliwell agrees. “There is a lot of evidence that media literacy interventions work, reducing the classic examples of the effect of women feeling bad about their appearance due to images in the media. Media literacy shows young women that media images are not appropriate comparison targets. By having these discussions we shift our evaluation of ads, it gets women to talk about what they feel about what the ads are saying, which can then help reduce ideal internalisation and disordered eating.”
And perhaps even more importantly than media-led solutions are those that we can find within ourselves, and act out in our own homes and peer groups. An even greater impact on body image is the way we talk about bodies, weight and appearance amongst our friends, colleagues and family. If those around you have a negative body image, then this can affect the way you view your own bodies. This is particularly true of the mother and daughter relationship, with research suggesting that if your mother has self esteem and body issues, then you are likely to pick up on that, and experience the same worries.
“Our relationship with our appearance is complex and is influenced by a number of factors” says Prof Rumsey, “our culture, family and peers all play a part in developing how we view ourselves and therefore, can help us develop a positive relationship with our appearance, but can contribute to dissatisfaction”.
So what can we do? Well, we can celebrate our appearance, our shapes, sizes, colours and styles, and we can learn to really help ourselves overcome the negative messages we hear about our bodies, and rejoice in our beautiful diversity. Try to question it when someone criticises a celebrity’s weight, or tell your mum to put the calorie counter away. Tell your friends how beautiful they are and tell yourself the same.
The fact remains however that you can’t always stop your mum from worrying about her weight, or convince your friend that she’s a goddess. But media regulators can do something about unrealistic representations of men and women’s bodies. And with more and more young women suffering from low self esteem and the continuing rise in eating disorders in teenage girls, it’s time they did something about it.
Pop culture fans may have realised that Barbie, with her smooth skin, impossible anatomy and perfect coiffure, celebrated turning fifty this year. Not that you’d know it to look at her. Her face is free of wrinkles, pores or spots; her body as firm and pert as the day she first graced the shelves of toy stores way back in 1959.
Barbie, we could argue, is the ultimate in airbrushing. Her smooth features say no to “flaws”, her unlikely physiology says the unreal is the ideal. And in the month when Barack Obama suggested the controversial botox tax – charging more money for non necessary cosmetic surgery operations, over in the UK, MP Jo Swinson has proposed to her party that airbrushed images in ads and mags should come with warnings, indicating to the reader where images have been digitally “enhanced”. She also more radically asks that all airbrushing in images aimed at children should be completely banned.
Swinson’s argument is simple – by exposing young men and women to airbrushed images we are presenting them with an unrealistic representation of the human body. She hopes that by raising the public profile of the effects of airbrushing the media will be encouraged to “portray women as they are, images of women looking good but without this ideal narrow fixation on thinness and particular shapes that we have at the moment.”
The evidence does suggest that unrealistic representations of women’s bodies can have damaging effects on body image and self esteem. Psychologist Dr Emma Halliwell has conducted extensive research into the ways body image and self esteem are affected by media imagery. She believes that “ultra thin models can lead to body dissatisfaction, low mood and low self esteem in women who are vulnerable and who have internalised the idea of being thin as being ideal. Increasingly we are growing up in a culture where we see being beautiful as being thin.”
Airbrushing is everywhere in the media. Women’s shoulders are made smaller and narrower by the magic of photo manipulation; arm hair is carefully erased; cheeks and eyes are made brighter and hair gets an added lustre. The result? An ad or fashion shoot is created featuring the unreal woman. And because we use “enhancing” technology to change the image, the implicit suggestion is that the altered body and face is also the perfect or ideal body and face.
“Throughout time we have looked at pictures of beautiful women,” explains Swinson. “But this idealisation of extreme thinness is something new, and the current media ideal of a woman’s body is a shape most women can’t achieve. This is then made so much worse by airbrushing to extreme levels.”
The problem with airbrushing, both Swinson and psychologist and Co-director of the Centre of Appearance Research, Professor Nichola Rumsey have argued, is the way that digitally altered images perpetuate the beauty myth. They, quite simply, contribute to the pressures on all women, and increasingly men, to achieve the “perfect” body.
“We are increasingly under pressure to conform to these ‘perfect’ faces and bodies we see in the media. This discrepancy between what we actually look like and what we feel we should look like has been identified as one factor in why young people, especially young girls but increasingly young men, feel dissatisfied with the way the look” argues Rumsey.
The perfection airbrushed images demand is impossible. Women can’t match the software’s paintbrush. Yet we are allowing airbrushed images to dictate what women should look like even though we know that the images themselves are not even real. As Cindy Crawford famously quipped, even Cindy Crawford doesn’t look like Cindy Crawford. So how is anyone else going to?
Swinson is proposing a ban on all airbrushed images aimed at under 16s, and warnings or notifications on images that have been airbrushed which are aimed at adults. “I want to make people think twice about these images as an interpretation of reality,” she explains. “A public debate around this issue is so important, as it allows us to really ask what is ideal? Is it health, is it a body shape, is it confidence and inner beauty? We want to say that airbrushing no longer has to be the norm, celebrating a more natural beauty.”
The issues are beginning to reveal themselves at younger and younger ages. Research conducted by the Girl Guides has found that girls under 10 equate beauty with happiness. According to Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty in the USA, 80% of women and 92% of girls were dissatisfied with their body. Although it would be fatuous to just blame airbrushing for women’s dissatisfaction with their bodies, it would be as equally disingenuous to say it plays no part at all. The media and the images we are exposed to affect us in many strange and subtle ways, from making us want to choose this cleaning product, to thinking that one body type is an ideal, compared to our own.
The beauty myth goes this way. We open a magazine and see a digitally altered image of a beautiful woman. Societal codes have made us believe that she is successful and happy, because she is beautiful. We want to be successful too, but we feel like we can’t be, because we don’t look like the image in the magazine.
“Thin models contribute to the societal ideal that is then communicated through friends, family and even the health service that being thin means you are successful, happy and healthy,” explains Halliwell. “But this isn’t necessarily the case, especially when you consider that on average models are 20% underweight, and the medical diagnostic for anorexia is being 15% underweight. This is made more problematic in that women are super critical of their bodies, but aren’t allowed to admit to dieting or exercise regimes.”
As all international readers will undoubtedly recognise, this is not just a UK problem. The rise of women worldwide wanting cosmetic surgery, from botox to boob jobs, can be linked to our airbrushed culture. Have we reached a point where we have become so isolated from the reality of women’s bodies that we see airbrushed images as representing what is “right”, and aspire to copy it? The cosmetically altered body more closely resembles the airbrushed body than the women’s bodies we are born with.
So where can we find solutions? The first, Swinson argues, is the banning of airbrushing of images aimed at children, and having mandatory warnings on all airbrushed images. But airbrushed images are only part of the problem in a culture where if we’re not looking at Charlize Theron’s perfected torso, we are looking at a red circle of shame highlighting Julia Roberts’ body hair.
One solution lies in encouraging greater discussion on body image and self esteem issues through media literacy as part of social and health education.
“With proper training available to teachers we would encourage classes to look at the media, maybe use before and after photos to learn about airbrushing, engage with journalists and have more discussion about this issue with young people,” explains Swinson. “Many young women and men feel insecure about their bodies; these lessons would help young people to gain the skills to deal with these pressures, to teach them that people in the media aren’t ‘perfect’.”
Halliwell agrees. “There is a lot of evidence that media literacy interventions work, reducing the classic examples of the effect of women feeling bad about their appearance due to images in the media. Media literacy shows young women that media images are not appropriate comparison targets. By having these discussions we shift our evaluation of ads, it gets women to talk about what they feel about what the ads are saying, which can then help reduce ideal internalisation and disordered eating.”
And perhaps even more importantly than media-led solutions are those that we can find within ourselves, and act out in our own homes and peer groups. An even greater impact on body image is the way we talk about bodies, weight and appearance amongst our friends, colleagues and family. If those around you have a negative body image, then this can affect the way you view your own bodies. This is particularly true of the mother and daughter relationship, with research suggesting that if your mother has self esteem and body issues, then you are likely to pick up on that, and experience the same worries.
“Our relationship with our appearance is complex and is influenced by a number of factors” says Prof Rumsey, “our culture, family and peers all play a part in developing how we view ourselves and therefore, can help us develop a positive relationship with our appearance, but can contribute to dissatisfaction”.
So what can we do? Well, we can celebrate our appearance, our shapes, sizes, colours and styles, and we can learn to really help ourselves overcome the negative messages we hear about our bodies, and rejoice in our beautiful diversity. Try to question it when someone criticises a celebrity’s weight, or tell your mum to put the calorie counter away. Tell your friends how beautiful they are and tell yourself the same.
The fact remains however that you can’t always stop your mum from worrying about her weight, or convince your friend that she’s a goddess. But media regulators can do something about unrealistic representations of men and women’s bodies. And with more and more young women suffering from low self esteem and the continuing rise in eating disorders in teenage girls, it’s time they did something about it.
Why I love Philippa Gregory
Philippa Gregory and her strong, doomed women
I have a secret which is about to be revealed. Despite my bookshelf being crammed with Blake, Woolf, Eliot and Dostoyevsky, I absolutely love romantic historical fiction. The fatter the book and the glossier the cover the better. And most of all I love my recently discovered Philippa Gregory's Tudor novels.
Gregory is first and foremost a really good writer. She has a deft use of language and a density of description that means she fully recreates the world of the Tudor courts she writes about, the smells, the colours, the landscapes, the houses and the costumes. Reading her novels, she puts you right there, timid behind the throne, absorbing the action. Secondly, she has a brilliant way with characterisation, particularly in my mind of her female characters. They leap out of the page, alive and strong and passionate, often angry and often sensual. They are full characters who invite your love, hate, distaste and admiration. And thirdly, her books are well researched, from the details of the colour of the gown Mary Boleyn wore at a gala, to the complex hatreds and schemings of Jane Boleyn and Thomas Howard.
David Starkey recently spoke out against the 'feminisation' of history, that we are all so obsessed with Henry VIII's wives that we don't care about his rule. As the F Word rightly pointed out, this was an absurd statement to say the least. In the main, history has been written by men, for men and about men. Although there are ever more wonderful female historians coming through and being published, the names we associate with popular history are still overwhelmingly male. This very masculinist way of writing and looking at history has often put me off a subject I love. For me, Gregory's novels (and Alison Weir's fiction works) have opened up a feminine and feminist angle in history, particularly Tudor history, that has enticed me to move from the novels to non-fiction history books (Alison Weir again!). They have introduced me to a history beyond the male perspective, a history of women. And although I know that the novels Gregory writes are just that, novels, her works have inspired me to discover more about the women behind the fiction.
Gregory's most renowned novel is The Other Boleyn Girl, which tells the story of Mary Boleyn, the less-well known sister of Anne, who was mistress to Henry VIII before he fell in love with Anne and turns the whole country upside down to marry her, before turning it upside down again to murder her. (it's not a spoiler! We all know the story!)
What comes across most strongly in The Other Boleyn Girl is the sense of powerlessness of the women in Henry's court, and yet the independence of spirit, bravery and loyalty that they also embody. According to the fictional account, Mary is married at 12, becomes Henry's mistress at the age of 13, having been pushed into Henry's bed by her uncle, father and mother. She is a pawn in the political game to get the Boleyn and Howard power on the throne, and she plays her part willingly. As she says later on in a rage 'I have always been obedient!' She doesn't have any choice. She is Henry's mistress for a number of years and (in the fictional account) has a daughter and son by him, children whom she must leave in the country in order to serve Henry sexually and in court. It is the extent to which she misses her children and adores being a mother that leads to her eventually forging her own path away from the power games of her family. During the Tudor period, women could not have sex whilst pregnant, or afterwards until they had been 'churched', and so to keep Henry's eye in the direction of the Boleyns, Mary's uncle pushed Anne into his flirtation, and the rest, as they say, is history.
So far, so woman victim, Mary appears to be someone who is pushed from man to man by other men. But as she grows up and becomes a mother, you see a woman who is determined to form her own way and her own independence. She recognises that as a member of the Tudor court she is not allowed to live her own life, and as Anne's star rises she stays by her sister's side and supports her as she moves from favourite to wife. But eventually she stamps her feet, falls in love and has had enough. She scandalises the court by choosing her own path and creates her own happiness. She is marvellously self aware, self-determined, and a woman who is incredibly aware of her sexuality and sensual pleasure. After a youth of being pushed and pulled in every direction at the whims of an increasingly deranged and power hungry king and family, as an adult she forges her own way. In her determination to choose her own destiny, Mary Boleyn is painted as a very modern woman, a woman you can respect.
As well as the feminist portrayal of Mary, The Other Boleyn Girl viciously exposes the destructive nature of sexism and hatred of women. As we all know, Henry VIII was determined to have a son, and both Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn had daughters. Gregory terrifyingly portrays the absolute fear inherent in being pregnant with a daughter, and the terror the queens felt at not falling pregnant at all. It was treason to suggest the King was impotent, even though clearly his health was such that it was difficult for him to conceive. Therefore, the lack of pregnancies are blamed squarely on the women he marries. Gregory portrays a court where women were driven to desperation in the fight to have a son, where women were seen as nothing but breeding machines (the reason for a wet nurse was to minimise the period after birth when the woman was unable to conceive) or sex toys. We see Anne driven to terrible deeds to conceive a baby, knowing that her life depended on her ability to produce a son.
The novel ends with Anne's execution, as Henry's love for her is poisoned to hatred at the lack of a son. It is a devastating scene, where we truly realise the terrific power of the King and the affect of such a male-centric court on the lives of women. Despite Anne's often appalling treatment of Mary, Gregory beautifully portrays the relationship between the two sisters and their brother George. We see Mary's loyalty and love of her siblings, who, in so many ways, are marooned in a court which sees them not as fully human, but as conduits to power and breeders of sons.
What really stands out about this novel is that Gregory doesn't patronise the reader by making the characters one dimensional – purely heroes and purely villains. In this way she almost rescues women such as Anne Boleyn from their historical legacy. We often think of Anne as either a victim or a whore. Yes, she was a victim but she was also a viciously ambitious woman, willing to tread on anyone in her path, including her sister and Katherine of Aragon. She could be brutal and single minded in the pursuit of the power that she craved. Yet, she was also a woman trapped in a plot determined to destroy her, she was a pawn in a male dominated court and the wife of a King who was becoming increasingly power crazed and paranoid. One of the most poignant scenes in the novel comes when she helplessly faces the King, holding aloft her daughter, pleading for him to love her again. Gregory refuses to make her a simple character, and whilst at moments you want to scream at her to be nicer, you can't help but feel devastated by her downfall at the hands of such vicious, unrepentant and greedy men.
The Boleyn Inheritance picks up on many of the themes and characters of The Other Boleyn Girl, including the monstrous Jane Boleyn, sister-in-law to Mary and Anne. Just as in some ways we see Anne Boleyn's character being rescued from historical stereotype, so she does the same for Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard. Rather than 'the ugly one' and the 'stupid but pretty one', we see two women who are again, at the mercy of male power, trying to forge their own paths. And whilst Anne achieves it, surviving her marriage to Henry and after his death, having the freedom to live a life away from fear, on her own terms, Catherine follows the path of her cousin to the block. Catherine's story is heartbreaking, married to the King at 15, and executed at 17. Again, we see a story where women are persecuted for not getting pregnant (although it is clear that by this stage, Henry was most probably impotent) and subject to the whims and jealousies of a King who is deluded by power. Yet whilst in some respects, Anne and Catherine are powerless women, Gregory imbues them with a spirit and bravery that has perhaps been missing in the public's general view of the two short lived queens. We see a woman such as Anne determined to escape a destructive home life and be a woman on her own terms, and Catherine who despite her frivolous nature is incredibly self aware about the paranoia and idiocy of the court.
But tragedy is still, clearly, inherent in her story. Gregory heartbreakingly describes Catherine's intense sexual frustration and disgust that she can't put into words regarding her relations with the king, and the unspeakable sadness she feels about having her youth wasted and ultimately destroyed.
As in The Other Boleyn Girl, Gregory explores the still present today sexual double standard for men and women. Anne learns to 'pleasure the king' to keep him in love with her, her sexuality is then used against her to brand her a whore and a traitor. Similarly, Catherine uses her sexuality, her 'French whore tricks' to try and get pregnant by the King, and her sexuality is obviously something he enjoys, until he chooses to see it as evidence of wantonness and treachery. And whilst Henry can have a mistress at every turn, from Mary Boleyn to Madge Shelton and many more, the idea that his wives were not virgins or the rumour that they were unfaithful puts their heads on the block. Just as these women weren't free to love who they chose, neither were they allowed a sexuality. In this way, by choosing to pursue her love and express her sexuality, I believe Mary Boleyn is portrayed as a very modern, very feminist heroine, whilst the repression of Catherine's desires go a long way to explaining the ways in which sexual women are seen, then as today.
Gregory's depiction of Jane Boleyn is another stroke of mastery. She has a much bigger role in The Boleyn Inheritance than in The Other Boleyn Girl, a woman who is so damaged by jealousy and greed, and yet who we almost feel sympathy for, she again is just another pawn in male games, and perhaps the most powerless of them all, for her ambition are never her own, but those of the men around her.
I'll finish with a word about Gregory's latest novel, The Other Queen, about Mary Queen Of Scots. Gregory said that she avoided writing about her as she thought she was 'an idiot', but after discovering more about her she realised that she too had been caricatured by popular perception. Rather than a silly frivolous queen ruled by her heart, we see a woman of bravery and determination, who could have fulfilled her promise to rule Scotland. There is a terrifyingly modern moment in the book when Mary speaks to her hostess/jailer Bess of Hardwick, about her rape by Bothwell. In response to Bess asking why she didn't accuse him in court, Mary says how could she, when men believe that woman are easily seduced and say no when they mean yes, when juries will always believe a man's words over a woman. A truth in 1569 as much as it is now.
I hope I have given a flavour of why I believe Gregory's books can be read from a very real feminist perspective. As well as being fast paced, well written thrilling reads, we see a writer who is very focussed on giving a female perspective on a period of history where women were seen as breeders and wives. She presents characters who are determined to form their own lives, or who are helplessly caught up as pawns in destructive games of powers. She rescues women from their historic stereotypes, presenting a female-centric view of history that allows us to see women who we so often only think of in relation to men, as real fully formed characters, flawed and brave, trying to break free.
I have a secret which is about to be revealed. Despite my bookshelf being crammed with Blake, Woolf, Eliot and Dostoyevsky, I absolutely love romantic historical fiction. The fatter the book and the glossier the cover the better. And most of all I love my recently discovered Philippa Gregory's Tudor novels.
Gregory is first and foremost a really good writer. She has a deft use of language and a density of description that means she fully recreates the world of the Tudor courts she writes about, the smells, the colours, the landscapes, the houses and the costumes. Reading her novels, she puts you right there, timid behind the throne, absorbing the action. Secondly, she has a brilliant way with characterisation, particularly in my mind of her female characters. They leap out of the page, alive and strong and passionate, often angry and often sensual. They are full characters who invite your love, hate, distaste and admiration. And thirdly, her books are well researched, from the details of the colour of the gown Mary Boleyn wore at a gala, to the complex hatreds and schemings of Jane Boleyn and Thomas Howard.
David Starkey recently spoke out against the 'feminisation' of history, that we are all so obsessed with Henry VIII's wives that we don't care about his rule. As the F Word rightly pointed out, this was an absurd statement to say the least. In the main, history has been written by men, for men and about men. Although there are ever more wonderful female historians coming through and being published, the names we associate with popular history are still overwhelmingly male. This very masculinist way of writing and looking at history has often put me off a subject I love. For me, Gregory's novels (and Alison Weir's fiction works) have opened up a feminine and feminist angle in history, particularly Tudor history, that has enticed me to move from the novels to non-fiction history books (Alison Weir again!). They have introduced me to a history beyond the male perspective, a history of women. And although I know that the novels Gregory writes are just that, novels, her works have inspired me to discover more about the women behind the fiction.
Gregory's most renowned novel is The Other Boleyn Girl, which tells the story of Mary Boleyn, the less-well known sister of Anne, who was mistress to Henry VIII before he fell in love with Anne and turns the whole country upside down to marry her, before turning it upside down again to murder her. (it's not a spoiler! We all know the story!)
What comes across most strongly in The Other Boleyn Girl is the sense of powerlessness of the women in Henry's court, and yet the independence of spirit, bravery and loyalty that they also embody. According to the fictional account, Mary is married at 12, becomes Henry's mistress at the age of 13, having been pushed into Henry's bed by her uncle, father and mother. She is a pawn in the political game to get the Boleyn and Howard power on the throne, and she plays her part willingly. As she says later on in a rage 'I have always been obedient!' She doesn't have any choice. She is Henry's mistress for a number of years and (in the fictional account) has a daughter and son by him, children whom she must leave in the country in order to serve Henry sexually and in court. It is the extent to which she misses her children and adores being a mother that leads to her eventually forging her own path away from the power games of her family. During the Tudor period, women could not have sex whilst pregnant, or afterwards until they had been 'churched', and so to keep Henry's eye in the direction of the Boleyns, Mary's uncle pushed Anne into his flirtation, and the rest, as they say, is history.
So far, so woman victim, Mary appears to be someone who is pushed from man to man by other men. But as she grows up and becomes a mother, you see a woman who is determined to form her own way and her own independence. She recognises that as a member of the Tudor court she is not allowed to live her own life, and as Anne's star rises she stays by her sister's side and supports her as she moves from favourite to wife. But eventually she stamps her feet, falls in love and has had enough. She scandalises the court by choosing her own path and creates her own happiness. She is marvellously self aware, self-determined, and a woman who is incredibly aware of her sexuality and sensual pleasure. After a youth of being pushed and pulled in every direction at the whims of an increasingly deranged and power hungry king and family, as an adult she forges her own way. In her determination to choose her own destiny, Mary Boleyn is painted as a very modern woman, a woman you can respect.
As well as the feminist portrayal of Mary, The Other Boleyn Girl viciously exposes the destructive nature of sexism and hatred of women. As we all know, Henry VIII was determined to have a son, and both Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn had daughters. Gregory terrifyingly portrays the absolute fear inherent in being pregnant with a daughter, and the terror the queens felt at not falling pregnant at all. It was treason to suggest the King was impotent, even though clearly his health was such that it was difficult for him to conceive. Therefore, the lack of pregnancies are blamed squarely on the women he marries. Gregory portrays a court where women were driven to desperation in the fight to have a son, where women were seen as nothing but breeding machines (the reason for a wet nurse was to minimise the period after birth when the woman was unable to conceive) or sex toys. We see Anne driven to terrible deeds to conceive a baby, knowing that her life depended on her ability to produce a son.
The novel ends with Anne's execution, as Henry's love for her is poisoned to hatred at the lack of a son. It is a devastating scene, where we truly realise the terrific power of the King and the affect of such a male-centric court on the lives of women. Despite Anne's often appalling treatment of Mary, Gregory beautifully portrays the relationship between the two sisters and their brother George. We see Mary's loyalty and love of her siblings, who, in so many ways, are marooned in a court which sees them not as fully human, but as conduits to power and breeders of sons.
What really stands out about this novel is that Gregory doesn't patronise the reader by making the characters one dimensional – purely heroes and purely villains. In this way she almost rescues women such as Anne Boleyn from their historical legacy. We often think of Anne as either a victim or a whore. Yes, she was a victim but she was also a viciously ambitious woman, willing to tread on anyone in her path, including her sister and Katherine of Aragon. She could be brutal and single minded in the pursuit of the power that she craved. Yet, she was also a woman trapped in a plot determined to destroy her, she was a pawn in a male dominated court and the wife of a King who was becoming increasingly power crazed and paranoid. One of the most poignant scenes in the novel comes when she helplessly faces the King, holding aloft her daughter, pleading for him to love her again. Gregory refuses to make her a simple character, and whilst at moments you want to scream at her to be nicer, you can't help but feel devastated by her downfall at the hands of such vicious, unrepentant and greedy men.
The Boleyn Inheritance picks up on many of the themes and characters of The Other Boleyn Girl, including the monstrous Jane Boleyn, sister-in-law to Mary and Anne. Just as in some ways we see Anne Boleyn's character being rescued from historical stereotype, so she does the same for Anne of Cleves and Catherine Howard. Rather than 'the ugly one' and the 'stupid but pretty one', we see two women who are again, at the mercy of male power, trying to forge their own paths. And whilst Anne achieves it, surviving her marriage to Henry and after his death, having the freedom to live a life away from fear, on her own terms, Catherine follows the path of her cousin to the block. Catherine's story is heartbreaking, married to the King at 15, and executed at 17. Again, we see a story where women are persecuted for not getting pregnant (although it is clear that by this stage, Henry was most probably impotent) and subject to the whims and jealousies of a King who is deluded by power. Yet whilst in some respects, Anne and Catherine are powerless women, Gregory imbues them with a spirit and bravery that has perhaps been missing in the public's general view of the two short lived queens. We see a woman such as Anne determined to escape a destructive home life and be a woman on her own terms, and Catherine who despite her frivolous nature is incredibly self aware about the paranoia and idiocy of the court.
But tragedy is still, clearly, inherent in her story. Gregory heartbreakingly describes Catherine's intense sexual frustration and disgust that she can't put into words regarding her relations with the king, and the unspeakable sadness she feels about having her youth wasted and ultimately destroyed.
As in The Other Boleyn Girl, Gregory explores the still present today sexual double standard for men and women. Anne learns to 'pleasure the king' to keep him in love with her, her sexuality is then used against her to brand her a whore and a traitor. Similarly, Catherine uses her sexuality, her 'French whore tricks' to try and get pregnant by the King, and her sexuality is obviously something he enjoys, until he chooses to see it as evidence of wantonness and treachery. And whilst Henry can have a mistress at every turn, from Mary Boleyn to Madge Shelton and many more, the idea that his wives were not virgins or the rumour that they were unfaithful puts their heads on the block. Just as these women weren't free to love who they chose, neither were they allowed a sexuality. In this way, by choosing to pursue her love and express her sexuality, I believe Mary Boleyn is portrayed as a very modern, very feminist heroine, whilst the repression of Catherine's desires go a long way to explaining the ways in which sexual women are seen, then as today.
Gregory's depiction of Jane Boleyn is another stroke of mastery. She has a much bigger role in The Boleyn Inheritance than in The Other Boleyn Girl, a woman who is so damaged by jealousy and greed, and yet who we almost feel sympathy for, she again is just another pawn in male games, and perhaps the most powerless of them all, for her ambition are never her own, but those of the men around her.
I'll finish with a word about Gregory's latest novel, The Other Queen, about Mary Queen Of Scots. Gregory said that she avoided writing about her as she thought she was 'an idiot', but after discovering more about her she realised that she too had been caricatured by popular perception. Rather than a silly frivolous queen ruled by her heart, we see a woman of bravery and determination, who could have fulfilled her promise to rule Scotland. There is a terrifyingly modern moment in the book when Mary speaks to her hostess/jailer Bess of Hardwick, about her rape by Bothwell. In response to Bess asking why she didn't accuse him in court, Mary says how could she, when men believe that woman are easily seduced and say no when they mean yes, when juries will always believe a man's words over a woman. A truth in 1569 as much as it is now.
I hope I have given a flavour of why I believe Gregory's books can be read from a very real feminist perspective. As well as being fast paced, well written thrilling reads, we see a writer who is very focussed on giving a female perspective on a period of history where women were seen as breeders and wives. She presents characters who are determined to form their own lives, or who are helplessly caught up as pawns in destructive games of powers. She rescues women from their historic stereotypes, presenting a female-centric view of history that allows us to see women who we so often only think of in relation to men, as real fully formed characters, flawed and brave, trying to break free.
Thursday, 3 February 2011
My Top 100 Books
In the spirit of Richard and Judy, and Book Elf Leeds, here is my list of 100 books that i love and that you should all read.
It's all fiction btw. Some poetry, some short stories, some plays, some novels.
I expect I have missed zillions out! and there are so many books i haven't read.
What books would you put in the list??
1. The Brothers Karamazarov by Dostoyevsky
2. The Devils by Dostoyevsky
3. Pride and Prejudice by Austen
4. Mansfield Park by Austen
5. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
6. The Mysteries of Udolpho by Radcliffe
7. Northanger Abbey by Austen
8. Dangerous Liaisons by Laclos
9. Othello by Shakespeare
10. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
11. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
12. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
14. Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
15. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
16. Middlemarch by George Eliot
17. The portrait of Dorian Grey by Wilde
18. The Importance of being Earnest by Wilde
19. East Lynne by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
20. Vanity Fair by Thackerey
21. Great Expectations by Dickens
22. Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
23. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
24. Victory by Joseph Conrad
25. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
26. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
27. My Antonia by Willa Cather
28. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
29. The Voyage Out by Woolf
30. Mrs Dalloway by Woolf
31. Orlando by Woolf
32. The Waves by Woolf
33. The Waste Land by TS Eliot
34. The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot
35. The Claudine Novels by Colette
36. Cheri by Colette
37. The Vagabond by Colette
38. 1984 by George Orwell
39. Dr Zhivago by Pasternak
40. Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys
41. After leaving Mr Mackenzie by Jean Rhys
42. Good Morning Midnight by Jean Rhys
43. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
44. Goodbye to Berlin by Isherwood
45. Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
46. The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein
47. Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor
48. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
49. Bonjour Tristesse by Francois Seberg
50. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
51. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
52. A Woman by Sibilla Aleramo
53. Manhattan when I was young by Mary Cantwell
54. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
55. Ariel by Sylvia Plath
56. South Riding by Winifred Holtby
57. The Magus by John Fowles
58. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
59. Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne Du Maurier
60. Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier
61. House on the Strand by Daphne Du Maurier
62. Mary Anne by Daphne Du Maurier
63. The King’s General by Daphne Du Maurier
64. The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
65. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
66. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
67. Cat’s Eye by Margare Atwood
68. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
69. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
70. The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
71. Wise Children by Angela Carter
72. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
73. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
74. The Queen’s Fool by Philippa Gregory
75. The Devil on Horseback by Victoria Holt
76. The Mistress of Mellyn by Victoria Holt
77. Small Changes by Marge Piercy
78. The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
79. The Magician’s Nephew by CS Lewis
80. The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe by CS Lewis
81. The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
82. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
83. The Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson
84. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
85. Home by Marilynne Robinson
86. Moominpapa at Sea by Tove Jannsson
87. Beloved by Toni Morrison
88. The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
89. Sputnik Sweetheart by Murakami
90. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
91. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
92. Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
93. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
94. Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
95. The Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield
96. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
97. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
98. I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou
99. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
100. The Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries by Carola Dunn
It's all fiction btw. Some poetry, some short stories, some plays, some novels.
I expect I have missed zillions out! and there are so many books i haven't read.
What books would you put in the list??
1. The Brothers Karamazarov by Dostoyevsky
2. The Devils by Dostoyevsky
3. Pride and Prejudice by Austen
4. Mansfield Park by Austen
5. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy
6. The Mysteries of Udolpho by Radcliffe
7. Northanger Abbey by Austen
8. Dangerous Liaisons by Laclos
9. Othello by Shakespeare
10. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
11. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
12. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
13. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
14. Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
15. The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
16. Middlemarch by George Eliot
17. The portrait of Dorian Grey by Wilde
18. The Importance of being Earnest by Wilde
19. East Lynne by Mary Elizabeth Braddon
20. Vanity Fair by Thackerey
21. Great Expectations by Dickens
22. Goblin Market by Christina Rossetti
23. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
24. Victory by Joseph Conrad
25. The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
26. The Awakening by Kate Chopin
27. My Antonia by Willa Cather
28. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
29. The Voyage Out by Woolf
30. Mrs Dalloway by Woolf
31. Orlando by Woolf
32. The Waves by Woolf
33. The Waste Land by TS Eliot
34. The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock by TS Eliot
35. The Claudine Novels by Colette
36. Cheri by Colette
37. The Vagabond by Colette
38. 1984 by George Orwell
39. Dr Zhivago by Pasternak
40. Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys
41. After leaving Mr Mackenzie by Jean Rhys
42. Good Morning Midnight by Jean Rhys
43. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
44. Goodbye to Berlin by Isherwood
45. Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
46. The Autobiography of Alice B Toklas by Gertrude Stein
47. Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor
48. The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
49. Bonjour Tristesse by Francois Seberg
50. Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh
51. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
52. A Woman by Sibilla Aleramo
53. Manhattan when I was young by Mary Cantwell
54. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
55. Ariel by Sylvia Plath
56. South Riding by Winifred Holtby
57. The Magus by John Fowles
58. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
59. Frenchman’s Creek by Daphne Du Maurier
60. Jamaica Inn by Daphne Du Maurier
61. House on the Strand by Daphne Du Maurier
62. Mary Anne by Daphne Du Maurier
63. The King’s General by Daphne Du Maurier
64. The Edible Woman by Margaret Atwood
65. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
66. The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
67. Cat’s Eye by Margare Atwood
68. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
69. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
70. The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
71. Wise Children by Angela Carter
72. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter
73. The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory
74. The Queen’s Fool by Philippa Gregory
75. The Devil on Horseback by Victoria Holt
76. The Mistress of Mellyn by Victoria Holt
77. Small Changes by Marge Piercy
78. The Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
79. The Magician’s Nephew by CS Lewis
80. The Lion, the witch and the wardrobe by CS Lewis
81. The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge
82. Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren
83. The Millenium Trilogy by Stieg Larsson
84. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
85. Home by Marilynne Robinson
86. Moominpapa at Sea by Tove Jannsson
87. Beloved by Toni Morrison
88. The Buddha of Suburbia by Hanif Kureishi
89. Sputnik Sweetheart by Murakami
90. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
91. The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford
92. Love in a Cold Climate by Nancy Mitford
93. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
94. Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters
95. The Collected Works of Katherine Mansfield
96. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
97. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
98. I know why the caged bird sings by Maya Angelou
99. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
100. The Daisy Dalrymple Mysteries by Carola Dunn
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)