Visible Disabilities, Clothing, Advertising, and Gok Wan

I originally wrote this for my own blog, but this is an edited version.

Isabel on the DMHFfH facebook group raised a question about Gok Wan's new series of How To Look Good Naked, which started on Channel 4 in the UK last week. It is devoted to women with visible disabilities (Tracy, who is in a wheelchair, was the focus last week - the other women are blind and an amputee) who want to have a makeover and feel more confident in their bodies. MsKitton (she of our twitter feed) linked to this blog, and which point I decided I wanted to have a look at it.

I hadn't heard about this particular series, as I don't watch an awful lot of TV, but the idea struck a chord with me. After going to see a gig on Sunday, I decided that I needed an extra leg getting home and got my walking stick out (I have fibromyalgia, a chronic illness, that affects my mobility, co-ordination and ability to think clearly; I use a stick occasionally to help keep my balance - otherwise, I am not visibly disabled). I was wearing a miniskirt (with mini bustle bum-ruffles) and pink tights and boots, and I thought I looked alright. Apparently, however, I was accessorizing with a second head the way I was being stared at once I got my stick out. Attention people: just because a person has a walking stick, doesn't mean they immediately lose all interest in clothing, or mutate into an old lady. If you don't stop staring I'll shove said stick so far up your arse you'll be able to taste it.

So, yes, anyway. How to Look Good Naked... with a Difference was on Channel 4 last week, but I watched it on 4OD earlier (I fucking love internet tv catch up stuff, despite what I said about not watching a lot of tv). I don't usually watch HtLGN, mostly because I'm not a massive fan of makeover shows - I'm uncomfortable with the public critiquing of women's appearance, although at the same time I can see how it can help women become more open with each other about their body issues. I do like that HtLGN encourages body-acceptance over surgery or diets to change the women's physical appearance - it's message of confidence in one's self is a good one, at heart. That and I find Gok Wan a bit much a lot of the time. Ah well.

Like Sadie Stein at Jezebel, though, my biggest issue is that they feel they need to devote a whole series to disabled women - in a way, it is still excluding a group by virtue of circling them out for "special attention". To me, it shouldn't be a special attention thing - there should just be disabled women involved in the "regular" HtLGN series without a big thing being made about it. However, because disabled women (and men, for that matter) are so rarely seen outside of alternative and fetish modeling, perhaps drawing a big red circle and screaming "oi, dickheads, pay attention" is the way forward; we have to increase the visibility of disabled persons in shows like HtLGN (and not Britan's Missing Top Model, which was just endless rounds of trying to make typically-attractive girls who happened to be disabled look like able-bodied models while still screaming "no, they're disabled, see, they're different, we're being inclusive") before they can be seen as a normal part of the advertising and fashion industry.

I liked Tracy (the first participant) for her honesty - and her bravery - in admitting that she didn't like her body. I understand her anger at having a body that doesn't quite work "right", at being that one step further away from being "perfect". I admire her confidence, and how much she did change (while I might get almost-naked for LSG's charity drive for Haiti, total strangers in a very public place is not happening). While I don't think being confident in one's body requires the ability to get naked in front of a crowd of strangers, or that it's particularly feminist to do so, at the same time I do like that HtLGN does not require the women taking part to be typically beautiful to do so - there is a part of my feminist side that sees nudity of all forms as an important move away from restrictive bodily ideals.

It is important that disabled women and men have the same access to fashion as able-bodied people; while Tracy showed that there are sometimes clothing has to be adapted to meet the needs of a disabled person - elasticated panels in the waistband of jeans, for example - there is no real difference between asking yourself "will the sleeves catch in my wheels?" or "how long can I wear these heels for before I won't be able to walk any more?" and "will this top be too big in the chest?". They're just bodies, different sorts of bodies with different needs - but the people who inhabit them want - and deserve - the same access to and enjoyment of clothes.

The Torygraph article on the show, which is quite good.

Next step: realising just because someone isn't in a wheelchair or using a stick, doesn't mean they're not disabled.

Popstars: The Rivals *

You know how Cheryl Cole and Danni Minogue hate each other? Oh, they're always at it like cats and dogs, never have a nice word to say about each other. Danni's jealous you see, because Cheryl is younger than her, and because younger automatically means more beautiful, of course. The rivalry between them has got so bad that all at war has erupted on the set of the X Factor - a style war. Every day they try to outdo each other in that uniquely feminine way, with their outfits. so far Danni's trouncing Cheryl (apart from an embarrassing incident yesterday when they turned up both wearing the same shoes - NIGHTMARE!) and boy, isn't she smug about it.

Dear reader, you may have noticed that the previous paragraph is pure, unparallelled bollocks. I don't know Danni Minogue or Cheryl Cole, they're pop singers and judges on a tv talent show; I live in Essex and have savings totalling 47p, our worlds have yet to collide. They've never publicly said a bad word about each other, no "sources close to (either) star" have been quoted dishing the dirt on their "feud" and there's no evidence whatsoever that any more thought has gone into their outfits every day of last week beyond recognising the need to not leave the house naked.

Yet the Fail has presented every one of the ideas stated in the first paragraph as fact. Daily. I don't like the X Factor (though I'll admit to watching the auditions - yes, I'm a horrible person), Cheryl Cole (the "tv personality" I suppose, as I don't know her as a person) irritates the hell out of me and I have no strong feelings towards Danni Minogue, but Cod, I know every detail of their "feud", thanks to saturation coverage in the Fail.

It started when Cheryl joined the show on the last series. The Fail reported on the day of her appointment that Danni would "obviously feel envious and threated by her younger, thinner rival". She "could not compete" looks-wise, simply because Cheryl was a decade younger. Before filming even started they reported that Danni "would hate" Cheryl. All pure speculation, of course, and ignoring key points like the fact that beauty is subjective and thus not ruled by age and dress size.

And so it went on, and goes on, the last week being dominated by reports of how the judges were "trying to outdo each other" with their choice of clothes, with daily updates suggesting that one was "smug" and the other "furious at being outdone" without ever providing any evidence other than a photo of each of them smiling gaily, and quotes regarding "rumours" that they started, and have not been reported anywhere else.

If you're wondering what my point is, it is this. This "feud" is as manufactured as Girls Aloud theselves. It exists only within Fail writers own minds. Yet they slavishly report on it every day, along with innumerate other "catfights" between female celebrities for which no evidence exists. Why? Because they get to perpetuate their own ridiculous views on female beauty, by both implicitly and explicitly implying that Cheryl is 'more beautiful' because she is younger, and that more beautiful is 'better'. This in turn encourages women to judge each other on these terms and society in general to dismiss women as petty, insignificant creatures obsessed with make-up and clothes. Female solidarity is replaced by in-fighting; the Patriarchy rumbles on undisturbed.

The idea behind this blog was to bring our own brand of Facebook activism into the wider world, where we might one day help to inspire change. With that in mind, while there's no petition to sign and no ombudsman to complain to, we can all do something to help fight this characterisation of women as shallow bimbos in constant competition with one another - don't believe everything you read. At least if you read it in the Fail.

* With apologies to those quite rightly uninterested in fake tv talent contests.

Love all?

So Wimbledon is finally over, and I'm breathing a sigh of relief for two different reasons. First of all, I don't enjoy tennis; it's dull as anything and so far as I can tell, designed exclusively for the upper classes. Who else would pay £12 for strawberries? However, for the week Wimbledon was on, I happened to be working in an office full of people who think tennis is the sport of kings, or possibly Gods, and as such the big screen in the reception area where I worked was duly switched to the BBC for all day coverage, leading to there constantly being a gaggle of suited bankers hanging around my desk all day chatting almonst themselves (or worse, to me) about the tennis. This, in case you were wondering when I was going to get to it, leads me to the second reason I'm glad Wimbledon is over: it brought out amongst these men and women such misogyny that I had to spend seven hours a day restraining myself from reaching over the desk and smacking them in the mouth.

I speak, of course, about Venus And Serena Williams. Now I never heard anyone once comment on Andy Murray's physique (a bit weedy looking, if you ask me) or ponder if the male player who was 6'7 had an unfair advantage. But when it came to the Williams sisters, two dedicated atheletes who are famously known for having the muscular physiques of, um, a dedicated athelete, the bile poured.

"Oh, I hope she doesn't win - look at her, she looks like a man", "yuck, I hope she gets knocked out, she's revolting, so manly", "it's unfair for them to get this far, they look like men", "I prefer Venus to Serena, at least she's a bit more feminine looking..." - yep, my charming colleagues, male and female, were rooting against two talented players because they don't have the most feminine of physiques (I'd also ask whoever wrote the book saying muscles were a masculine attribute, but I fear that's a different topic for a different day).

It just goes to show how thin the veneer of equality we have these days truly is. Yes, we can have female atheletes but heaven forbid they actually *look* like atheletes. Women players now get equal prize money to men, but we only really approve if they remain slim and delicate, and you know, non-threatening. Because that's what it's about, isn't it? We, men and women, don't like strong women, still. Women should be fragile, delicate, submissive, or so the Patriarchy would have us believe, so we freak out when someone comes along who challenges that ideal.

Add to that the fact that Wimbledon officials have admitted to putting the most attractive female players on centre court, regardless of ranking, or the importance of the match (hence Serena Williams, 2nd in the world found herself playing an important match on court number 2, which attracts virtually no tv coverage while two unknown but nubile blonde beauties battled it out for the cameras on the centre stage) and the constant lingering close-ups of whichever women in the audience that day had made the sartorial mis-step of wearing a low-cut top in the sweltering heat, and I think we can all agree tennis is a strong contender for the prestigious title of Most Sexist Sport Ever.

And so we have the overprotective mother...

Hokay so it’s my turn to write a blog post, bit late I know. And while the issue about France’s recent ban on burkas has got me thinking about the imposing of clothes on women by state and/or religion, I found that writing as a white, atheistic-secularist male I wouldn’t really be able to comment much beyond that of wtf. So instead this post is about three articles by Penny Marshall, Middle-England’s defender from sex and pornography.

Anyway, there are three articles in the Daily Fail archives to choose from. The most recent is about lipstick lesbianism and how it is an evil and corrupting force that destroys young girls, the next is about the TV and how it is an evil and corrupting force that destroys young girls, and finally an article about teenagers making their own porn (which actually is disturbing, but the scapegoat of TV returns as the evil and corrupting force that destroys young girls). And from these three articles I got the picture that Penny Marshall is conservative and over-protective and elitist. Three properties of an individual I consider diabolical and unnerving.

The first article, that is the one about lipstick lesbians, I got the feeling that the writer was not only homophobic but also shocked at the type of culture her conservative upbringing never allowed. However in trying to defend her way of thinking, that sexuality should be like a binary labelled object such as a consumer product might have, and pointing to the problems of peer pressure that occurs in youth culture, she comes off as sounding a wee bit homophobic and sounding more like Mary Whitehouse. Pointing at famous lady liplockers (horrible phrase I know), whose lip-shtick whatever shenanigans are more likely to appeal to lonely male divorcees than teenage females; it hawks more of Edward Woodward’s Sergeant Howie screaming at the Wicker man than a serious article about the connotations of association from the media-infused culture delegating the practices of young women.

But then the problem, that they are doing it for the sake to appeal more attractive to potential mate, is surely a problem about the current media obsessed necessity in coupling, pregnancies, marriage and the alienation of people being single for the sake of being single. Shoot if two girls are kissing to appeal more attractive to males then surely the problem is not the kissing but the apparent necessity to be non-single. But we can’t be blaming the press can we?

As to article two, the TV viewing, this is just hilarious. ‘PARENTS YOUR CHILDREN ARE WATCHING FILTH’ to paraphrase the humour. I’m not sure whether I’m a prime candidate to criticise, having watched the likes of Monkey Dust, Neco Z Alenky, the Godfather, the Shining, Alien, South Park: the Movie and series and Trainspotting before the age of fifteen, I’ve supposed to be a mass-murdering, cynical junkie with a deeply dark sense of humour. Well the last bit is true but as of twenty I haven’t murdered anyone yet and in being a very moderate drinker I don’t think diving into the filthiest toilet in Scotland for a hit is going to happen anytime soon. But it is funny the angst the author has about what the teenage girls are watching. It is like seeing a nervous breakdown in typographical form. See as TV shows are lined up and criticised for being corrupting and wrongly influential (as opposed to say the popular press pushing criticisms of any famous women who are not married, with children, without a strong voice, within a certain body image, and are not Kelly Brooks).

But then that worried mother screaming “Won’t somebody please think of the children!?” (as Helen Lovejoy would cry) is just what suites the Daily Fail. That is, cheap criticism on modern culture (that doesn’t feature ITV) and the degradation of youths, and the collapse of morals. This brings me onto the third article, the actually mildly disturbing article.

This article’s content is mildly alarming. Not because what is happening, that teenagers are making their own porn and distributing it among their peers (this is more disturbing than alarming and has a whole range of problems not least that the Daily Fail is probably the culprit), but the way that this article insists that this thing is a problem because it has ‘infected’ middle class girls. For the sake of Pete I cannot abide by this elitist bullshit any more than I can abide the Daily Mail itself. Because what it is saying is that it is okay for teenagers to make porn of themselves so long as they are of what was once called the working class. Hence because some prissy private (dick-)eds and grammar girls are doing it it is now a moral decadence that must be stopped for “Won’t somebody please think of the children?”.

In closing I look forward to more Penny Marshall articles, as she strives to defend teenage girls from reality, as they’re nothing short of stereotypical wailing that can never be taken seriously.

"The views expressed... are those of our users and do not necessarily reflect the views of MailOnline."

In this litigious age, guest publications about toothpaste tubes on Have I Got News For You probably feature many a disclaimer, but the Daily Mail must need them more than most. After all, even a police force that is itself still enormously sexist and racist might have to hold them to account if they printed their readers' comments without such equivocation. Of course, anywhere that invites public comment will draw its share of fuckwittery (just look at dear old CiF) but just how much responsibility should the Mail bear for the user-generated bile throughout their website?

Their Terms and Conditions make interesting reading. In amongst all the usual legalese about "waiv[ing] all your moral rights" by submitting content (that must really stick in their self-righteous readership's craw!) they also prohibit anything "threatening, defamatory, offensive, abusive, liable to incite racial hatred, discriminatory or" - of course - "blasphemous". This might seem reasonable enough, but for two things; firstly, the fact that they select what to publish, and secondly, that they deviate from their own guidelines.

Accurate journalism (forgive my inclusion of this phrase in a blog about the Daily Mail) depends upon reporting all angles of a given story, including those you don't like. This would excuse the decision to publish the gamut of submitted comments were there not such a clear, discriminatory bias; even with a wealth of objective and printable comments to choose from, the Mail consistently chooses to publish the most bigoted, even if this means repetiton of the unintelligible. Perhaps most tellingly of all, they would rather publish none at all than any that undermine the party li(n)e; the tale of Hans Blomberg's live televised sexual harassment of his co-host, for instance, remains conspicuously comment-free despite a number of cogent submissions made by various groups and individuals. Thus, although the Daily Mail cannot be held responsible for the content submitted, they are distinctly accountable for its editorial use.

On then to their supposed distaste for the offensive, abusive and discriminatory (I omit the small matter of "racial hatred" only for reasons of time, space and theme - feel free to submit your own treatises on this issue!) Prohibiting something in one's Terms and Conditions would seem to imply its unsuitability for publication, certainly on so controlled a basis as the one upon which Daily Mail commenting operates.

Behold, then, a few pearls of wisdom from merely the previous week that the Daily Mail considers neither offensive, abusive nor discriminatory*:

"She's quite hot, and just the right amount of stupid."

"Looks so much younger and really soft and pretty, just as women ought to be. Take note, girls..."

"people are losing their homes and havent got jobs and this silly women are having cash thrown at them... get some kids, a dog and a tubby hubby"

"Women should realise that men prefer long hair on women. Those who say they prefer short masculine styles are lying (to their wives/girlfriends with horrible short masculine hair)."

"As a red blooded male, I think [Cheryl Cole] looks fantastic, so get to the back of the queue all of you fatties."

"Single British women... are not comparable, most are overweight, bossy and lazy and oh, CAN'T cook"

"only a blind man would prefer UK women to what is the 'average' girl in Eastern Europe"

"There are Not many single women over 25 in the UK that are worth the effort 4 a relationship 2day. Wane be men/Power trippers/ drunks/pretentious, and all the problems they get into."

"Come on English women - start being feminine again!"

"British women...are too forward and not sophisticated."

"You only have to look at what British woman have become to realise why men are now looking elsewhere."

"Woman want their cake and eat it. Sorry ladies, you can do everything we do, but we can't have the kids so make a choice for crying out loud. is this why we have spoilt middle class kids running amok, spoilt little brats the lot of them. is this why marriages are falling apart. JOB OR KIDS not both."


And the award for Most Prejudice In One Post goes to:

"Although it may be easy for people to mock these guys i know exactly where they are coming from.
I am a guy in my early thirties not too ugly and doing fairly well for myself.
However, finding a woman in Britain who doesn't swear constantly, is fairly intelligent, keeps fit and healty and is not engrossed with chav celebrity pap is almost an impossibility !!!! and add to that pretty, single and can cook, no chance.

Its only a matter of time before they cotton on to this sort of business in Africa where i'm sure the women may actually be greatful."


*All comments quoted sic, much as it pains my linguistic sensibilities.

Those Mad, Mad Men

On Valentine’s Day I went out with a couple of good friends who have offshore, foreign girlfriends and were thus at a loss while other couples PDA-ed all over town and singles stayed in and cried. As we all were living local, we opted on going out in leafy suburb Richmond.

The topics of conversation flitted between football, hard rock and the perfect murder, but at one point it switched to the excellent US television series Mad Men, which two of us were enthusiastically gobbling up at the time.

The non-believer, who is a Czech lager commie (one rung below champagne socialists on the liberal elite ladder) pointed out that he had watched an episode with his (admittedly faintly pretentious) partner and that the two found it chauvinistic, sexist, racist and outdated. CLC, as he shall be known from hereon in, went so far as to jokingly accuse me of being a misogynist for liking the show.

Now, my friend clearly missed the whole point of Mad Men - to the uninitiated it is a beautifully crafted and scripted drama set in a New York advertising agency at the start of the 1960s. An arena in which men dominate everything as unscrupulously as one could possibly imagine. But here’s the catch - the beatniks are taking over the world, segregation is falling apart, Kennedy is in office and - crucially - the pill just came out and abbos are legal.

In between getting hit on by a really wrinkly guy who was a dead ringer for Max Clifford (we were in a gay bar full of old boys looking for trade. Safest option after hours in the 'burbs), I explained that most of the male characters are nasty, sexist pigs, and that we are not supposed to sympathise with them. What they say and do is funny, but then Patrick Bateman in American Psycho and Alan Rickman in Die Hard have some cracking lines and awesome killings but, clearly, they are not meant to be the good guys.

Yes, the main protagonist - shady creative director Don Draper - cheats on his wife, but we are shown that to be the result of a repressed desire to escape from the shackles of the convention he wears to escape a troubled past and identity. He shouldn’t even have a wife, but society has dictated that he conform to a nuclear family that he develops affection for but instinctively resents. Unlike his hissing, wolf-whistling male colleagues, his infidelity is shown to be born from deep unhappiness and an emotional complexity he is struggling to fathom - much like the philandering of many the female characters.

It is this emotional sensitivity that makes him so good at his job: he senses, knows what people feel and want, for good and bad. It is also this instinct that leads him to take what was then a huge professional risk in promoting a young woman from the secretarial pool to junior copywriter, much to the derision of his superiors and subordinates. He encourages and develops Peggy as he feels she deserves it and - crucially in a capitalist context - knows that her insight into the powerful female market that his contemporaries dismiss is a key to a new, untapped market for the advertising industry.

Anyway, enough of this, but what stuck with me most from this discussion was the somewhat casual accusation that I was a sexist. I hauled CLC up on this, asked him to justify it and pointed out that it was as serious an accusation as one of homophobia or racism and one that should not be tossed around like rocket in a salad dish. He apologised and admitted that he “only said it to wind me up”. I then pointed out that, as a regular contributor to forums on women’s rights and issues, I would have a greater claim to lay for being a feminist than he does as he rarely discusses or even thinks about such matters.

And this is when it almost kicked off. CLC scoffed and said “you can’t be a feminist, for starters you’re a man, and furthermore your attitude to sex and relationships is as casual as a burberry cap, England away” (his actual words, I love this guy really).

Wooooaaaaaahhhh. Hang on there son. You’re meant to be this Guardian-reading ultra liberal who always thought New Labour smelt of shit and marches for peace on a monthly basis. Since when did feminism require membership to a specific gender group? Since when did being in a monogamous relationship have any bearing whatsoever on gender equality? B-b-but sexual freedom and the discrepancy in accepted behaviours between men and women are some of the key debates here? No?! I also pointed out that my conduct re: dating was significantly less anarchic than that of the majority of our co-drinkers, only heterosexual - yet no-one would call those big, hunky bears sexist, dammit!

Here lies the problem. There appears to be a misconception of what feminism means. Educated, liberal men and women who - without realising it - sympathise with feminist views still think that a. all feminists hate or want to dominate men, that b. feminists oppose any representation of female physical beauty and that c. a heterosexual man cannot, by default, be a feminist. Jebus, the last girl I was seeing had this view; she even said that she hated feminists, citing Valerie Solanas as a case study (ironically, perhaps, this girl has an almost identical job to Peggy in Mad Men, and indeed originally worked in an agency that is considered macho by modern standards). That would be like saying Al Qa’eda represent all muslims - which is considered an ultra-right view - except, it seems, a lot of people think this.

I thought feminism was about equality, bridging the gender gap in pay and opportunity, ensuring women have control of their bodies, addressing the heavy female skew in sexual assault victims and campaigning against unnecessary objectification of women in mainstream media. Right? Am I wrong?!

Now we, of course, know better than this, but we are not helped by negative, extremist portrayals by those mad folk who tied themselves to a tacky but harmless University Beauty pageant, and that crazed, shouty Twisty woman who thinks men should all be neutered and that any dissenting voice is one of fascism. Please, stop. You are doing as much good for our cause as those Al-Muhajaroon nutters that used to hang around Finsbury Park mosque were doing for Islam. We don’t need you.

You, however, need us. “Us” meaning “men”. The math, as our American friends say, is quite simple.

Half of our population is male; half is female. Of the female half, the majority will, if encouraged and allowed, support women’s rights. A significant minority - even if unleashed from the restraints of domineering men, which remains unlikely until victory is achieved - will retain a natural submissive streak that is manipulated and fostered by partners or family members. Same happens to chaps too. But this natural function of diversity leaves less than half of the population - already lagging behind the dominant half - to challenge the status quo.

What I’m slowly etching towards is this: Yes, we fucked up for several thousand years. Yes, we waste an inordinate amount of time watching musclebound chaps in shorts running about trying to stick a leather penis substitute between some hoop or other. Yes, we smell. But if men are excluded from the debate and the action, women are doomed to lose.

Let us in. Most of us are actually alright, given the right guidance. You need us as much as we need you - and we make a mean risotto.