Here’s a guest post from author Delilah Des Anges. If you have a guest post brewing in your brain, you know what to do: pitch us at [email protected].
In terms of consumption and emotional language, the pop song occupies a similar status to the sonnet. Well, not exactly, but certainly for the purpose of romance or desire, pop lyrics are an absolute boon for the tongue-tied (a group which includes “most of the English population”). They’re used to express whatever happens to be lurking unformed in the minds of the listener, and as a point of identification when the lurking stuff has been given a concrete identity.
Reams have been written about the depiction of women in pop music by male songwriters and the presentation of women by the music industry, but recently I was having a wee listen to PJ Harvey (while drunk in someone’s living room in Portsmouth on a Saturday night, because I am very cool) and it occurred to me that I’d not seen as much on the subject of how female desire’s presented in pop songs BY WOMEN.
This thought came up because This Is Love felt like an anomaly: it presented desire as active on the part of the female narrator. PJ Harvey’s persona for the song has sexual agency, and longings that do not centre around waiting for someone else to make a move. She uses the phrase “I want” and backs it up with action: “to chase you round the table, wanna touch your head”, and in that “wanna touch your” she rather casually and without fuss flips the entire common model of heterosexual desire on its head by pointing out that women also want to touch, as well as being touched.
It shouldn’t sound unusual, and yet at the time of listening it was borderline revolutionary, at least to me. There are other lines from the song which imply action: “I can’t believe that the axis turns on suffering when you taste so good”; suggestive of all kinds of sexual acts, instigated by and controlled by the narrator, but nothing else is quite as direct as that seemingly harmless “wanna touch your head”.
This Is Love is not unique, but on examination it becomes harder to find other songs which inhabit the same active, instigating desire.
I Just Wanna Make Love To You does, but even the Divinyls’ famously salacious anthem to female masturbation and banned song I Touch Myself is self-contained sexuality; the desire is there, but it is self-directed. The narrator says nothing of what she wants to do to the object of the song, only what the thought of him makes her do to herself!
Interestingly, when the object of desire is no longer male, the desire becomes more active in its expression: contentious and open to a variety of interpretations, Katy Perry’s I Kissed A Girl does at least carry the flow of action from the narrator to her object of desire: Katy KISSED a girl, rather than being kissed BY a girl, as so many heroines of pop songs are kissed BY a boy rather than kissing him.
In a song of the same name, Jill Sobule’s narrator makes the same distinction: Jill KISSES Jenny, the narrator as the actor rather than the acted-upon.
This is a small sample to draw a conclusion from, but it is intriguing that female desire is more acceptable as active, instigating, and potentially dominant when the object of the woman’s desire is also female. The repurposing of songs originally intended for male singers often underscores this, as in Patti Smith’s cover of Gloria.
There are songs with male narrators in which the instigation of action is undertaken by the female half of the heterosexual proto-couple (usually because the narrator is far too shy or lacking in confidence, rather than because of any societal prohibition on his asking her out): the main contender in this category is Teenage Dirtbag by Wheatus. A casual glance over popular music seems to reveal far more male references to female desire (“she wants me”) than female references to female desire (“I want him”).
PJ Harvey is not, of course, the first or only female artist to sing about desire. Ani Difranco has filled several albums with heartfelt songs cataloging the effects of desire on the psyche: primarily in the aftermath. Ani writes about regret or lack thereof, but rarely if at all about the white-hot moment of simple wanting.
By now there’s a good chance you’re wondering how anyone could skip over Bikini Kill on this subject: they have a song entitled I Like Fucking – surely this must qualify for a candid and unabashed demonstration of naked female desire?
Well, yes and no. Riot Grrrl has an agenda which is unshy of communicating, and sexuality is, as all other aspects of feminine experience, politicised. The song itself discusses internal obstacles to feeling and acting upon desire, the ubquity of rape, and the “radical possibilities of pleasure”, which while a notable feminist sentiment on the reclamation of sexuality, is a far cry from Harvey’s “I just want to sit here and watch you undress”. Politicised recognition of the rightness of female desire and its value is highly important, but isn’t quite the same thing as an unselfconscious expression of that desire.
Someone else who believes in the radical possibilities of pleasure, even if she doesn’t phrase it that way, is Rihanna. In Shut Up And Drive, she creates a shallow but effective metaphor in which she is a car to be driven: it is potent, referencing power and femininity, but ultimately it is – no matter how transparent and brazen – a metaphor and rerouting of desire through the stalking-horse of car culture, rather than the bald, outright statement of This Is Love.
I could go on, but I’m sure the general idea is clear. That was my little radio revolution, thanks to Polly Harvey, and with any luck I’ve given you something to think about too.
The Magic of Madame Yevonde
One should be a painter. As a writer, I feel the beauty, which is almost entirely colour, very subtle, very changeable, running over my pen, as if you poured a large jug of champagne over a hairpin.
Lady Bridgett Poulett as Arethusa by Madame Yevonde (1935)
The above quote comes from a letter between two of my heroes – Virginia Woolf to her sister, painter Vanessa Bell – which always comes to mind when I look at the work of a third: photographer Madame Yevonde.
Madame Yevonde was a British photographer in the early twentieth century, and an early pioneer of colour photography using the complicated and costly Vivex process. It wasn’t just that she produced photos in colour – she broke new ground in special effects and filters, using coloured cellophanes to lend sensuality and symbolism to her work, in particular her most famous series, The Goddesses.
When she shot her famous pictures of aristocratic ladies dressed as classical goddesses in 1935, Yevonde was already a successful society photographer, having set up her own photography studio at the age of 21. Before that, she was involved in the suffragette movement. Her hero was Mary Wollstonecraft, and she remained an outspoken advocate of women’s rights her whole life, saying “if I had to choose between marriage and a career I would choose a career, but I would never give up being a woman.”
Mrs Edward Mayer as Medusa by Madame Yevonde (1935)
Yevonde introduced her 1940 autobiography In Camera as not “the story of a woman’s life but of a photographer who happened to be a woman”. Although in the early twentieth century photography as a profession was open to women, most roles were low-paid and semi-skilled, assistants in photographic laboratories, and Yevonde was the first woman to give a lecture to the Royal Photographic Society.
The first thing everyone says about Madame Yevonde’s photos is how modern they look. Her influence is difficult to overstate, as new generations of photographers have discovered her work, images which look at home on the walls of an art gallery and the pages of Dazed and Confused. I see the Goddesses series as a hymn to Yevonde’s medium, to colour, and also to the strength and beauty of women, in myth and in the modern age.
Bust of Nefertiti with Flat Iron and Letter by Madame Yevonde (1938)
And it’s not just the Goddesses pictures that have been influential. Bust of Nefertiti with Flat Iron and Letter (1938) reads to me like a comment on women’s elevated position as the subjects of art contrasted with their unglamorous low status in real life, and makes use of the same symbolism as that classic punk work by feminist artist Linder (link prolly NSFW) which graced the cover of the Buzzcocks single Orgasm Addict.
Yevonde’s portraits are beguiling, but what I like best about her work, apart from that devastating, dazzling use of colour, are the tinges of Surrealism. She was clearly influenced by Man Ray and Lee Miller, but also brought in her own sense of humour and playfulness, particularly to what she referred to as her ‘still life fantasies’ such as Bust of Nefertiti.
With her symbolism – and all that colour – Yevonde sits on my ‘favourite feminist artists’ shelf alongside Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo.
Whenever I look at their work, I just want to drink the beauty in like Woolf’s jug of champagne.
Self Portrait with Image of Hecate (1940)
[Gamer Diary] Self-segregation and “Girl Gamers”
I am a gamer. First and foremost. My physical sex and gender identity do not factor into this. The only other identity-factors that come into play when I talk about gaming are age, time and style preferences: e.g. “I’m a twenty-something gamer, I’ve been gaming for over 17 years and I play FPS games a lot, with single-player RPGs in second.” Simples, as the cool ‘kats say.
I’m also a bit of an amateur linguist; I look at the language people use and what it means to use it in different circumstances for no other reason than it interests me. I’ve been considering a discussion on the language of gaming with BadRep for some time now, and I think this would be a good first topic: the problem with ‘girl gamer’ as an identifier.
Obviously, everyone is welcome to self-describe however they see fit, but I’d just like it if people could think about this term a little bit before applying it to themselves or others.
Let’s think about ‘gamer’. We all recognise this as meaning ‘someone who plays games’ with the extended connotation nowadays that this means computer- & video-games (as opposed to card games or board games). There’s no other extended definition: it’s not exclusive to male players. A gamer is just a person.
Now: ‘girl’. I have a serious problem with the general use of this word when referring to adults, anyway. A girl or a boy is a child. Use of either when speaking of an adult is insulting, infantilising and diminutive. (I won’t even use the words boyfriend or girlfriend if I can avoid them). The problem with coupling ‘girl’ with ‘gamer’ is that it accentuates the misconception that the gamer in question isn’t mature enough or capable enough to play with the adults – thereby widening the void between male and female gamers and adding to the sexism that some experience.
~Insert disclaimer on how we all know that not all gamers are sexist. Furthermore, it’s not just male gamers who are sexist in gaming either.~
Using ‘girl gamer’ on one’s self and others is just adding fuel to the sexist contingent’s fire, because it’s a way of self-segregating, and not a very positive way at that. We rarely hear of other segregated terms – you don’t nearly as often see references to black gamers, white gamers, asian gamers, boy gamers, gay gamers, intergalactic invader gamers – at least, not in the same way. So why should we encourage the use of ‘girl gamer’ if at the same time we’re trying to fight against being segregated based on sex or gender?
Sure, if we’re actually talking about children, then by all means use ‘girl’, as long as we’re willing to use ‘boy’ alongside it. In the adult world, however, self-referral as a ‘girl’ plays into the patriarchal control mechanisms of English, which then eke their way into the gamer consciousness. Unfortunately, as English-speakers, we get to speak a very sexist language, historically used by the powerful to subjugate and cling to power. In the past, those powerful people have primarily been male, so there’s no surprise that the language of the realm has been adapted to keep others out of power and quash protest.
You can see this simply in the way people talk without even touching on gamers and gaming. How many times have you heard someone refer to male and female adults as ‘guys’ and ‘girls’? ‘Guy’ is widely accepted as referencing an adult man, whereas ‘girl’ is a word for a child, and puts the women in the inferior position.
Language is important and so is the use of language. Any linguist will tell you that, regardless of their sex or gender. If you pause to think about it, anybody can realise how important language is. The words we choose to use are always vital to building the way we want to describe, discuss, identify and progress. ‘Girl gamer’ is problematic. It’s used as a derogatory term by some in the community to imply that female gamers are separate and inept, and that they should be kept that way. Attempts at reclamation of the term are fraught with complications as no matter how positive the intention, it still perpetuates this segregation, infatilisation and dismissal from the realm of The Gamer.
We need to remember that within gaming, it’s the game that matters. Games are forms of escapism, so why should anything about us personally be important when we’re gaming? Yes, our identities come into play when we discuss development and progression of our preferred art form/entertainment source, but when we’re playing, they’re irrelevant. You don’t need to be male, female, trans*, gay, straight, bi, queer, old, young, white, black or anything else; when you game, you are a gamer. Anyone can game, and we have the potential to create and mould a fantastically inclusive community to wrap around our favourite hobby – we just need to take care with how we define ourselves and the language we use.
We are all gamers.That’s it.
Fashion, Feminism and Astrology
Yesterday found me flicking through a copy of the relaunched Company magazine looking for emergency blogpost inspiration (or “inspo”, as they call it). I was thinking I’d bash out a quick snarky post about the tyranny of the women’s mag and how they are warping the minds of young women etc etc.
But as I turned the pages, I found myself snarkless. There were no relationship advice pieces, or sex tips. No weight loss articles, or sly ‘how many lovers is too many?’ slut-shaming. No soul-searching cod psychology telling you to be yourself by following a set of detailed instructions. Instead, there were an impressive number of successful, independent, creative women featured, and none of them were asked if they have a boyfriend.
Fashion Forecasts
But I knew, I knew this radical refit wouldn’t part with that ageless women’s magazine staple, the horoscopes page. And there it was, tucked in at the back amongst the plastic surgery ads. However this is astrology with what I suspect Company‘s writers would refer to as ‘a twist’ (or perhaps a ‘twiso’). You can find out what the fates have in store for your fashion sense as well as your career and love life with Company‘s Fashion Forecast: “Librans are very good at mixing up soft and hard trends and finding the right balance. A tip for Librans is to finish off a statement look with some equally statement eyes to match.”
Ah, the love between a woman and her giant cosmic crab. (Free wallpaper from Styledip.com)
Balance! Like scales! I see what you’ve done there, clever astrology lady. Must have missed the bit about Libran’s skill with hard and soft trends in the Dendera zodiac.
There’s a snippet of fashion fortune for every sign, of which myself and other Scorpios get the short straw (again – our ruling planet Pluto isn’t even a planet any more) via being warned to “choose clothing in lemon and lime.” Gee, thanks. Hopefully my typical Scorpio charisma and piercing gaze will get me through a month dressed as a Starburst.
These suggestions sit a bit oddly beside the commanding tone of the usual astrological edicts to “be patient with those around you” or “make sure you keep an open diary” or “rain vengeance upon your enemies until the fields run with blood” (I made one of those up). The Fashion Forecast assumes a little of the same mystical authority. When my boyfriend (a Virgo) is advised to “don some trinket style jewellery” I hear an unspoken “Or else…”.
Women and astrology
You can probably sense that I’m not a true believer in the influence of the stars on our daily lives. But I think for the most part it does no harm. It gives people a symbolic system which helps them make sense of the baffling experience of being alive. I don’t believe in fate, and there are plenty of people I’d like to take more responsibility for their decisions and choices, but I can also see that lots of people just aren’t equipped to shoulder that burden. In short: life is hard, any port in a storm.
I can’t remember ever reading a fashion / beauty / shit psychology magazine aimed at women which didn’t have horoscopes, and astrology is generally held to be a feminine pursuit. A 2005 Gallup poll found that 30% of women in Britain claimed to ‘believe in’ astrology compared to 14% of men. But then 13% of both men and women said they believed in witches so the common argument that women are more susceptible to believe in magic and the paranormal is hardly watertight. Alarmingly 20% of men in the USA said they believe in witches. Guys. C’mon.
While researching this post I had an interesting exchange with @stfumisogynists on twitter who suggested that women’s interest in astrology might be linked to a wider belief in fate or destiny arising from social conditioning.
@stfumisogynists @sajarina maybe appeals due to a sense of lacking agency? Or at least did, but it now just standard practice. Plus there is something about ideas of women/girls somehow getting ‘saved’ by fate or whatever (often delivering a man), cf. pretty much every fairytale ever.
There’s also something to be said for women claiming and reclaiming a symbolic language and ideas of the sacred separate to the patriarchal power of organised religion. There is a long, proud history of women’s mysticism or participation in magical or occult societies, often bringing women a freedom and license denied to them in traditional belief systems.
Feminism and astrology?
I also happened upon this bizarre ‘Sisterhood and the Stars‘ article by Ophira Edut, one half of the Astro Twins. A feminist former writer for Ms. magazine and horoscope writer for Elle and Teen People. Credit it to her, despite the incredibly irritating habit of dropping people’s starsigns into the piece whenever they’re mentioned, she clearly has a sense of humour and seems to genuinely see astrology as having the potential to empower women and help them to succeed.
She writes “When you know yourself, you can make quick, clear decisions instead of wasting time second-guessing yourself, a huge psychic burden” which I find difficult to argue with. And given that my starting point is that the movement of the planets has no effect on our behaviour or personality whatsoever (until they start exploding or crashing into the sun of course) perhaps astrology can offer an indirect route to self knowledge or at least self improvement. The language makes me feel a bit queasy (“There was so much I could teach them about unity and self esteem from the stars”) but where’s the harm?
Well, I don’t think astrology deserves to be at the top of any feminist’s hit list, but it’s not all fluff. Edut approvingly quotes J.P. Morgan saying that “millionaires don’t use astrology; billionaires do”, a quote which I initially read as negative – because they’re so utterly detached from anything resembling a normal life they need to try and establish some sort of meaning to their existence no matter how absurd and implausible?
But Edut adds “How’s that for an antidote to the seventy cents women earn to each man’s dollar?” It’s a joke, but that’s where I think the harm is. Self knowledge and individual success is grand and I’d say the identification of astrology with the feminine isn’t any more damaging than the other qualities, interests and traits that stick to gender identities like old chewing gum. But women’s magazines peddle spiritual power alongside beauty and sexual power ,and none of them are a substitute for equal pay; bodily autonomy; freedom from violence; status, authority and representation. Reading your fate in the stars might be reassuring, but you might be missing a chance to change the world.
Mary Russell: If Sherlock Holmes Was A Woman, And A Feminist…
While I wholeheartedly approve of fanfiction, I’ve never been a big fanfic reader. Not because of any quibbles over canon or squeamishness about interpretation, but because I’m too stubborn to spend any time in anyone else’s version of something I love. The versions I craft myself tend to stay in my head, but they entirely prevent me from enjoying myself with fanfic.
However, in the pursuit of pop culture adventures I’ve recently found myself spending some time with Mary Russell, the heroine of a series of books by Laurie R King which also feature Sherlock Holmes as her mentor, and later her husband. Like Holmes, Russell (her preferred moniker) is intelligent, logical, brave, unconventional and excellent at fighting, with a superb aim and a talent for disguises etc etc. She is Jewish, British-American, and studies theology at Oxford. She also dresses in men’s clothes.
What drew me to the books was the fact that Russell is a self-described feminist. Although she mentions her political beliefs in the first book, 1994’s The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, the second is all about feminism. Well, feminism and theology. And murder. It’s even called A Monstrous Regiment of Women. I enjoyed it immensely, despite many silly moments and patchy writing. Incidentally the majority of the writing is pretty good, and I feel that the voice of Holmes rings true most of the time, which is no mean feat.
The author says of the series:
Mary Russell is what Sherlock Holmes would look like if Holmes, the Victorian detective, were a) a woman, b) of the Twentieth century, and c) interested in theology. If the mind is like an engine, free of gender and nurture considerations, then the Russell and Holmes stories are about two people whose basic mental mechanism is identical. What they do with it, however, is where the interest lies.
I find this intriguing, and I’m tempted to read the books again with that genderless mental mechanism in mind. For Holmes, the mind as an engine is his proclaimed ideal; flawless logic and cool rationality. Watson (in Conan Doyle’s A Scandal In Bohemia) famously describes Holmes’ low opinion (and fear?) of those “softer passions” which “might throw a doubt upon all his mental results. Grit in a sensitive instrument would not be more disturbing than a strong emotion in a nature such as his.”
Of course, it’s Holmes’s human deviation from this mechanical ideal that is often most interesting to readers and fans. (See also: Mr Spock.) Russell is more well-adjusted; that is to say she acknowledges her emotions, and her desire, although grudgingly. Whether this is because she is a woman, because she is a citizen of the 20thC or because we as readers have more access to her thoughts than we do Holmes’s I couldn’t say.
She’s also very androgynous, something I enjoyed reading in a historical setting. But her masculine traits made me wonder if a feminine female Holmes is an impossibility. Would the character be in a permament spasm of contradiction or would they make a better go of reconciling femininity and reason than Holmes seems to be able to? Perhaps Conan Doyle came closer than most himself with Irene Adler, often positioned as Holmes’ female counterpart. While she is formidably intelligent, she is also impulsive, emotional, and sexual.
The thing I found most difficult to deal with, like many readers I suspect, is their May to December romance. When they meet, he is 52. And she is 15. When they marry they are 58 and 21 respectively. And for added creepiness, after their first (awful, awful) kiss: “By God,” he murmured throatily into my hair. “I’ve wanted to do that since the moment I laid eyes upon you.” What is there to say except *vom*?
Thankfully, the first hint of anything sexual between them arrives right at the end of the second book in the series when Russell is 21. Holmes just spends most of the first novel in which she is a teenager stroking her hair in a fatherly fashion. Still, there are some unsettlingly groom-y undertones which means the novels rely very heavily on the reader’s trust in Holmes as the embodiment of honour.
The other bothersome thing for me is Russell’s unavoidable Mary Sue-ness. As well as acting as an avatar for the author (also a Jewish, British-American, feminist theologian) she ticks lots of the boxes: succeeds at everything, is effortlessly friends with everyone, has a dramatic and tragic backstory, no flaws that aren’t endearing, and so on.
Arguably though, as far as being a freakish overachiever goes she is no more of a Mary Sue than Holmes himself. I think there’s a lot of truth in the argument that Mary Sue and her counterpart Marty Stu face double standards, and that successful, powerful female characters are dismissed or undermined through accusations of being a Mary Sue. Rhiannon at Feminist Fiction writes:
…once the words “Mary Sue” have been uttered, all productive conversation is shut down. It says that the character is not worth talking about, not worth analyzing, because she’s somehow incomplete… She’s not a character but a projection of female fantasy, and therefore innately, indisputably bad. Any character who falls into this category might be somewhat one-dimensional, lacking the depth and flaws needed for a really compelling character, but the term goes beyond that, throwing on implications of worthlessness (at best) and a kind of superior disgust at girlish dreams and ambitions (at worst). Because “Mary Sue” only refers to female characters.
Although I picked up the first book because of the fandom, I found myself wishing the Mary Russell books had simply been a series of novels about a feminist woman detective in the early 20thC. I think Russell would make a fine addition to the ranks occupied by Miss Marple and Mrs Bradley, being a little less genteel and younger, more impulsive, and more of an action detective in the manner of Holmes, employing disguises and fisticuffs as necessary. They’re good stories, and although Holmes is in the background I’m not sure he needs to be there at all.
[Gamer Diary] What I’ve been Playing… August 2012
Well, I hope you all had a lovely summer! My August seems to have been a perpetual cycle of pre-rain, rain and post-rain, with varying levels of humidity just to keep things interesting. Good job I don’t mind staying inside, isn’t it? This month there hasn’t been much new that has taken my fancy – with the exception of Unmechanical, everything has mostly been new content or just new to me. August never seems to have much in the way of games, and moreover it tends to be the realm of the cinema releases. But we’re here to talk about games! Let’s get going.
Unmechanical
Unmechanical is a sweet indie puzzler that is pretty darn gorgeous on the eyes too. It combines a variety of different puzzles (physics, logic, memory) on your quest for freedom through an underground labyrinth designed to feel at once organic and mechanical. You are a little blue helicopter thing that’s been abducted from the surface world and dropped into this maze. You can fly, and you have a tractor beam, but aside from bumping into things like a confused bee there’s not much else you can do. The way you navigate and solve puzzles relies on your interactions with stimuli around you, pulling levers and lifting rocks with your tractor beam to get the desired result. The puzzles range from the fairly familiar – like the remember-the-pattern puzzle involving four different coloured bulbs that make different noises – to the far-reaching and complicated. It’s great fun and a well-composed title – there’s a neat bit of thinking alongside the Aww-Factor -and it’s available through a variety of digital content platforms (Steam, Gog, Gamersgate & OnLive plus it’ll soon be coming to the AppStore (for those of you that use Apple products). Free demos are also out there on the aforementioned platforms or straight from the site.
Sometimes it can get lonely, as a little blue helicopter adrift in an underground maze…
Team Fortress: Mann vs Machine
Mann vs Machine is the new Co-op mode for Team Fortress 2 and yet another sizeable update/announcement coming from the Valve camp (could it be all a distraction to disguise a lacking of Half Life 3?). In keeping with TF2 Free to Play mantra, you can play these new Co-op maps on community servers in what is called “Boot Camp” – but, should you so desire to, you can also pay to enter “Mann Up Mode” in which you can get the chance to win rare items as a reward for completing missions and the Tour of Duty. Currently there’s only one Tour of Duty (“Steel Trap”) consisting of six missions; in Mann Up Mode you have to pay with a Tour of Duty Ticket for each mission, and these are 59p/99c each from the Mann Co Store.
Lured by the promise of rare items, I paid to get into Mann Up Mode and completed a Tour. Unlike my partner, who has now completed three Tours and hasn’t had any SuperCoolRares, I got a rare item at the end of my Tour. Woo! That’s not the best thing I want to talk about, though. The Co-op mode itself is pretty awesome, and a great addition to TF2, because for once you all have to work together, even if you aren’t Pro, with a bunch of people you have been allocated. It can create a really fun atmosphere if you get a good – and nice – team. The robot army you have to defeat presents a challenge if you don’t learn quickly how to coordinate and function as a team. Normal multiplayer doesn’t tend to require this much interaction with other humans (unless you’re a pre-formed team who know what they’re doing) and so the update has successfully added a new dimension to the experience of TF2. Needless to say, however, if you get a rubbish team with too many ill-informed egomaniacs, you won’t get far.
Unfortunately, Valve encountered some problems with this update. At times the servers die, you can’t access Multi-player or Co-op because the allocator has crashed, the store shuts and everyone gets grumpy. These issues seem to be being worked on so just have a little patience.
Other Stuff
I’ve also been playing Borderlands again, in preparation for Borderlands 2 (release date 17/09/12), but I was a bit disappointed by the ‘Girlfriend Mode’ gaffe. Borderlands is very fun, very entertaining and pretty in-yer-face; while it would be easy to criticise some of their portrayal of women in the game I think it’d also be fairly misguided. The game isn’t one to be taken seriously: it makes a mockery out of pretty much everything, so it’s a fair assumption that they’re probably poking fun when it comes to female characters too. I tell myself they’re doing it to make a point; satirise the gaming status quo, if you like.
So, with that in mind, I was disappointed to see someone from the developers being stupid enough to utter the phrase “Girlfriend Mode” in reference to the I’m New To First Person Shooters and Don’t Know What To Do mode. I admit, I take it personally when these things come up: I’ve played FPS games longer than my boyfriend (and a lot of male gamers I know) so it really does hack me off when it is assumed no female gamer ever likes FPS of their own volition. I like shooting things! What’s so weird about that?
Despite this foolishness, I haven’t cancelled my pre-order of Borderlands 2. Why? Well, there’s the reasons I’ve mentioned above, plus the fact there are more female characters – and they do look amazingly kickass. I want to get to know them. In turn, so will you, as that’s pretty much the only thing I expect to play in September – yay!
In contrast with the irritating ‘Girlfriend Mode’ story, I’d like to bring you a little Well Done story. Guild Wars 2 has gone live and ArenaNet have tried, it seems, to make the most welcoming community possible – and they’ve caught a lot of flack for it. They’ve been suspending people. Oh no! you say, why ever would they do that? Because they’re actually sticking to their own rules and upholding them for the benefit of the majority of gamers who don’t feel the need to be odious.
Let me explain. ArenaNet are upholding their Naming Policy on characters, which is pretty commendable (both the list and sticking to it), but some gamers felt the need to whine when they got banned. Admittedly, some banned-users’ names weren’t in contravention of the policy so ArenaNet took to Reddit and told them all (and in doing so shamed the perpetrators publicly) that their ban was due to their inappropriate chat, which I warn you isn’t nice. So, I say Well Done to ArenaNet for keeping horrible arsebags out of the community (even if the suspensions are only 72 hours) and trying to make Guild Wars 2 a welcoming and inclusive experience for all its gamers.
Great Rock n Roll Swindles: Rethinking Justine Frischmann
This post was mostly inspired by the complaint of my fellow BadRep member Sarah J that, when the subject of Elastica comes up, the band are frequently dismissed outright as flagrant copyists led by Britpop’s version of Lady Macbeth. In fairness, I spent most of the 90s thinking the same thing. God, I used to hate Elastica. Wilfully amateur slack-jawed rip-off merchants whose over-privileged frontwoman seemed to exist only as a drawly amalgam of her indie boyfriends (hair by Brett, boots by Damon), whose competency in snagging the catchiest bits of post-punk couldn’t disguise how irritatingly thick and bland they were in all other respects. Right? Right. Now that I’m no longer a chippy thirteen-year-old convinced that people with trust-funds can’t make good music, I’ve been reassessing Elastica.
Elastica are a band it’s probably easier to appreciate in retrospect and in isolation from their era, especially if you weren’t actually around for it. They weren’t a great fit with Britpop, their music drawing more on the punk revivalism of New Wave of New Wave, one of several burgeoning movements which Britpop left steamrollered in its wake. This 70s-rooted recycling was also ahead of its time, being more of a piece with the early-2000s bands also inspired by post-punk: like Karen O, or Jack White, Justine Frischmann now just looks like a cool-as-fuck frontperson. I mean, she was posh, of course. If she called her dad, not only could he stop it all but in 1989 he could also buy her a Kensington townhouse. Not that she ever tried to hide this, or to claim any kind of gritty authenticity. (Given that the British music press, and music in general, was and remains riddled with posh girls and boys, I do wonder how much of the media focus on this aspect was some kind of overdefensive deflection on their part, back in the insulting and appropriative days of poor-is-cool.)
Elastica’s potted biography reads like a Britpop potboiler – or, in accounts like John Harris’, an ‘indie soap opera’. Frischmann founded Suede with her fellow UCL student Brett Anderson in 1989, hawking the embryonic group around Camden as their de facto manager before leaving both Suede and Anderson for her iconic power-coupling with chancer extraordinaire, Blur’s Damon Albarn. In 1992 she formed her own group with former Suede drummer Justin Welch, adding enigmatic Brightonian bassist Annie Holland (who ended up with her own theme song) and south Welsh urchin Donna Matthews as Frischmann’s musical foil on guitar. In 1993 they released Stutter, a crushingly cool eyeroll of a single that, having something to do with male sexual dysfunction and something to do with female sexual frustration, was one of the most playfully frank songs I’d heard since Orgasm Addict. The next year, as Britpop was decisively yanked into the mainstream, Frischmann’s relationship with Blur’s lead singer gained her lasting notoriety in the music press and beyond as a kind of Britpop Dr Girlfriend.
I’ll come to the fuss made over Justine’s sex life later. The other Thing That Everyone Knows About Elastica is that they stole all their best riffs. Well, yes, Elastica settled out of court with both Wire (Line Up, a song I’m still happy to hate, rips off the chorus of Wire’s I Am the Fly; the synth in Connection rips off the guitar in Three Girl Rhumba) and the Stranglers (Waking Up rips off No More Heroes pretty much wholesale) – but let’s think about this. Britpop itself was incredibly derivative, backwards-looking, insular and self-referential, as were its exponents. The entire exercise was a cultural and aesthetic rip-off of the late 1960s, and more particularly of the Beatles-Kinks-Jam tradition of white-boy guitar rock. Musical, lyrical and sartorial rip-offs (or ‘tributes’, or ‘homages’, or ‘cheeky nods to’) abounded, as indeed they do in any period and genre. In music as in any art form, it’s what one does with it that counts. I still rate Cigarettes and Alcohol, for instance, despite its massive musical debt to T-Rex’s Get It On, and despite Oasis’ massive debt in general to, oh, let’s start with the Beatles, Status Quo, Slade and the Glitter Band.
If it were simply a case of, to misquote an unknown wit, ‘Your album is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good’, that would be one thing. But there is a reason why 1995’s Elastica became the fastest-selling debut in UK history at the time. Even in the throes of my irritation with Frischmann herself, I found the music slickly derivative, sure, but also annoyingly listenable. The songs on the debut – which it took me about three years to grudgingly buy and listen to in full – are sharp, snarky and unadorned gems strung together by that snide, campy Sprechgesang that was probably Justine’s best musical asset. The songs range from little flash-bangs of sex-positive brilliance (Stutter, All-Nighter, Blue, Vaseline), to vaguely sinister languor (S.O.F.T, 2:1, Waking Up), to the archly anthemic (Car Song, Line Up, Connection). The album’s stripped-down, angular art-punk, its odd, listless mix of sleaze and melancholy, and the band’s Last Gang In Town fronting in photographs and on record sleeves, anticipated the revival (or the ripping-off, perhaps?) of such stylings almost a decade later by the Strokes/Libertines axis of hipster. And when thinking back to the bands who came to be regarded as luminaries towards the tail-end of Britpop – The Bluetones, Shed 7, Northern Uproar, and no doubt I’ve repressed many more – you can only wish they’d ripped off something half as interesting themselves.
At a point in the 90s where the dominant female aesthetic revolved around ladette football shirts or twee tea-dresses, Elastica adopted an atypical New Wave uniform: black leather, drainpipe jeans, hair boyishly cropped or bobbed. For Frischmann at least, her androgynous aesthetic was a deliberate choice linked to self-consciousness, a protective effacing or subsuming of femininity which will make sense to anyone who’s tried to negotiate the disputed territory of being socially independent while aware of one’s relative vulnerability. In an interview with Simon Reynolds in 1995, Justine referred to her choice of look as ‘Nineties urban camouflage’, and, interestingly, associated the process of growing up with learning to step away from a conventionally feminine presentation rather than accepting it:
[JF]…When you’re in your twenties you feel more confident about what you are, you don’t feel like you necessarily have to dress up for boys. When I was a teenager I had really long hair and felt like I had to wear make-up. But now I feel a lot more comfortable with short hair. It’s something I discovered with leaving home and going to college. In a way, it’s Nineties urban camoflage. It came about when I was coming back from college really late, getting on the last tube. If you’re wearing long hair and make-up, you’re gonna feel a lot more vulnerable than if you’ve got short hair and big boots…
[SR] So there’s a sense that you sartorially avoid the things that signify vulnerability or ‘availability’?
[JF] It’s just expecting to be treated as one of the lads. You don’t want to deliberately remove yourself from being able to be a good bloke.
– Source.
NB I like Reynolds’ idea, in this interview, of women artists in the 90s ‘taking on played-out male traditions, tweaking and reinventing them’, but I’m not altogether sure how helpful it is to dub it ‘stylistic transvestism’ as he does, rather than simply problematising ‘feminine’ identity itself. (He’s on steadier ground when he mentions Buzzcocks, who Elastica remind me of especially in songs like Stutter and All-Nighter, with Justine’s nonchalantly transgressive blurring of gender norms suggesting a southern female mirror-image of Pete Shelley, but maybe that’s just me.)
On ‘stylistic transvestism’, she seemed similarly doubtful:
[SR] Drag kings rule: Polly Jean Harvey with her hoary blues-man posturings; Courtney Love as Henry Rollins if he’d only remove his ‘Iron Man’ emotional armature and let his ‘feminine side’ splurge’n’splatter; Liz Phair and her feminised/feminist take on the geeky garage punk of Paul Westerberg of the Replacements. And there’s Justine Frischmann, who’s somehow miraculously found imaginative space for herself in the Stranglers’ gruff, fake-prole belligerence and ‘who wants the world?’ cynicism. That said, Justine’s pretty phazed when I ask if she ever feels like she’s in drag onstage.
[JF] Well, I sometimes feel like Meatloaf, when I’ve got hair all over my face and I’m really sweaty. Which is a bit depressing. But no, I don’t ever feel like a woman in drag, to be honest.
[SR] So there’s no sense in which you play-act a tough-guy?
[JF] I think lots of women do that these days. And there’s always been girly girls and non-girly girls. There’s girls who have really high voices and like wearing dresses, and others who don’t. I don’t think I’m exceptional, it’s just that most of my mates haven’t been very girly. There’s lots of young women in London who look and dress like I do.
– Source.
Even when I was forcing myself to dislike her on grounds of class chippiness, one of the things I couldn’t help liking about Justine was the casual confidence, the superiority even, in so much of her lyrics and delivery, and their emphasis on female sexual agency. All-Nighter is, like Stutter, a self-assured and playful song about sexual frustration, and there’s an archly objective approach to sex in Car Song and Vaseline and many more. There’s ‘just’ sex in these songs – little sentiment and less romance – but equally there’s little angst, no judgement and no self-reproach. Never Here is a heartfelt, simple and incisive anatomy of a defunct relationship, just as well-crafted and moving as, say, Blur’s Tender, but terse and economic where the latter is overblown. Frischmann’s protagonists are thinly drawn but invariably assertive and self-possessed, frustrated or impatient with their hapless, thoughtless or less self-assured partners, sure of what they want and feeling no guilt about taking it. They never make a point of being Bad Girls, they just happen to be girls.
Like her fellow Stranglers aficionado Gaye Advert twenty years previously, Frischmann’s drop-dead charisma got in the way of her stated intention to be ‘one of the lads’. Her sexually confident persona and Elastica’s pleasure-centred, borderline-selfish lyrics, despite their matter-of-fact delivery, tended to be treated as ‘naughtily’ deviant departures from feminine convention rather than just another way in which women might happen to view themselves and their sex lives. That the music press and wider media insistently framed Justine in relation to the men she chose to sleep with was part of a wider sexualisation where, in the post-Britpop 90s, female sexual agency had increasingly to be presented within a Lad frame of reference. I remember, specifically, there being a weird concentration by the music press on whether she would or wouldn’t pose for Playboy. It’s tempting to conclude that Frischmann’s ostensibly aloof and independent approach, her chilled assertiveness, her androgyny, and perhaps her background, attracted a reductive emphasis on her sexuality and sex life as a way of rendering her comprehensible, less of a threat and more of a ‘regular’ girl.
Women weren’t absent from 90s indie, but as I’ve written elsewhere, there is a sense in which they were squeezed to the margins by the elevation of ‘lad bands’, the testosterone-heavy dominance (with some honourable and dishonourable exceptions) of the music press and mens’ magazines, and the focus on male key players and kingmakers, from Anderson, Albarn and the Gallaghers to Alan McGee. The received wisdom of Britpop as a male concern and male preserve obscures how highly-rated Elastica were at the time – notably, they came closer than either Oasis or Blur to cracking the lucrative US market – and it also overlooks the contribution made by Frischmann to Britpop’s originating impulse. Love or hate it, Frischmann’s influence on and creative partnerships with (or, if we’re going with the Lady Macbeth angle, her bewitching and manipulation of) Britpop’s main men was instrumental to the movement but goes more or less unsung. Instead she now gets frequently relegated to a minor player, an accessory or at best a ‘muse’ to the more famous and credible men in her life, and her band are remembered as, in Sarah J’s words, a ‘Blurgirlfriend novelty act’. Her break-up with Albarn in 1997 was partly the result of a reluctance to accept what she perceived as the restrictions of domesticity and motherhood:
“Damon was saying to me, ‘You’ve given me a run for my money, you’ve proved that you’re just as good as I am, you’ve had a hit in America – now settle down and let’s have kids.’ He wanted me to stop being in a group, stop touring and have children. I wasn’t very happy, and he kept saying, ‘The reason you’re unhappy is because you really want children but you don’t know it.’ It did throw me: I thought about it quite seriously.” – Source.
After 1996 Elastica were gradually subsumed by smack, angst and inter-band acrimony, with an endless parade of members leaving, being replaced and returning. Their second album, 2000’s The Menace, was more firmly anchored in post-punk experimentalism, but lacklustre, anticlimactic and accordingly less than commercial – although I had by this point got over myself enough to admit that I liked it, an epiphany which I’m sure was a source of extraordinary comfort for the band, who announced their amicable break-up the following year. Since then, Frischmann has been a bit of a Renaissance woman: collaborating with M.I.A. on songs including 2003’s Galang; moving to Colorado to study visual arts and psychology; dipping into abstract painting; and, as shown here, fronting a BBC series on modern architecture.
Justine Frischmann’s rise against a Britpop backdrop, and her subsequent infamy or dismissal, raises several issues relevant to feminism: the denial or marginalizing of women’s contributions to artistic and creative moments; the relegation of women to the accessory of whichever man they happen to have slept with; the idea that women in bands are automatically amateur or derivative, or just not as good at being amateur and derivative as the boys are. However short-lived Elastica’s fame and drawn-out their dissipated demise, their career remains more edifying than watching the Oasis juggernaut run slowly and embarrassingly out of steam, or indeed whatever Alex James is currently up to.
[Guest Post] “Mommy Wars” and Parenthood
Here’s a guest post from Stephanie, who has previously blogged for BadRep on feminist crafting. If you have a guest post brewing in your brain, you know what to do: pitch us at [email protected].
I found out that I was expecting a baby back in February, and since then my life has changed quite dramatically. Apart from feeling very slightly psychic (and a little bit smug) when I called early on that it was going to be a boy, I’ve become aware of lots of stories and ideas in the media that I had never really taken any notice of before.
Take, for example, the increasing need of some of the media to fan the flames of the so-called ‘Mommy Wars’, in which parents are pitched against each other in a tone that is almost ‘fight-to-the death’ in its urgency. It demands that mothers (only ever mothers- fathers are never a presence in these debates, or very rarely) pick sides: are you pro-breastfeeding or anti-breastfeeding? If you plan to breastfeed, how long for? Not long enough and you’re a failure. Too long? You’re a bit of a sicko, aren’t you? But no one ever really mentions those women who would dearly love to breastfeed, but can’t. At the end of the day, surely it’s better to have a baby who is fed and happy (perhaps on formula), than a mother and baby who are upset, wretched and hungry?
This problem was perfectly encapsulated by the issue of Time magazine that came out in May – a beautiful woman was pictured breastfeeding her toddler son with the headline “Are You Mom Enough?” Cue clutching of pearls and vicious fighting in the comments of websites that wrote about the feature. Actually, the ‘Mom’ in question, Jamie Lynne Grumet, is pretty sensible. She was quoted as saying “There seems to be a war going on between conventional parenting and attachment parenting, and that’s
what I want to avoid. I want everyone to be encouraging. We’re not on opposing teams. We all need to be encouraging to each other, and I don’t think we’re doing a very good job at that.” She acknowledges that attachment parenting, which she practices, is not for everyone.
As a feminist, these kind of arguments deflate me. It seems that some of us, in the clamour to declare our way of parenting is (or is going to be) the right one, decide that anything else is just not feminism. Cherie Booth caused an outcry when she denounced ‘yummy mummies’ who stayed at home instead of working. Again, outcry ensued across the blogosphere. But I say simply: feminism is about choice. It’s because of the work that our mothers and grandmothers put in that we can choose to go to work or stay at home, if we wish, although very often that choice is replaced by financial necessity.
I don’t know what kind of a parent I’ll be. I’m not making any hard and fast rules about what I’ll do when the baby arrives. I know, though, that I will try hard not to judge other parents’ decisions. Quite simply put, it’s none of my business. The majority of parents will choose to raise their children in the best way they know, and as long as the child isn’t being hurt or neglected, who am I to question the way someone is bringing up their baby?
- Stephanie is a teacher by day, and a writer/crafter/blogger by night. She’s a young old lady who lives by the sea, reads voraciously and drinks a heck of a lot of tea. Her website is here. Her latest project, Ladies In Monochrome, is an online archive of ‘lost’ or forgotten vintage photographs of women sourced from flea markets and antique shops.
So, the lovely Gina of For Books’ Sake stopped by earlier to populate a fantasy dinner table of funny women for this here publication. I’m a sucker for this format of post – Caryl Churchill got the whole first act of Top Girls out of it! – so this got me thinking about my own imaginary dinnering. In the fantasy world where I am remotely capable of cooking a chicken without poisoning everybody, blowing up the oven or having a shouting match with a measuring jug, here is my table.
A Toast to Glorious Awkwardness: Issa Rae
I bet she’s less awkward in real life. Either way, meeting the creative powerhouse behind the US web series Awkward Black Girl would surely make me spill the wine, partway through mumbling “If you ever need an awkward British cameo…” and accidentally spraying her with vol-au-vent crumbs1 in my enthusiasm.
You know that whole Mary Sue adorkable adoraklutz trope we have going in Hollywood at the mo as a lazy way to round out female protagonists who have almost no other flaws (hi, Bella Swan, hi New Girl)? Awkward Black Girl is not like that. Nor is it Manic Pixie Dream Girl fodder (although in terms of what that archetype tends to look like, “who is the black Zooey Deschanel?” is certainly a question you might ask. Rae is not, FYI, the black Zooey Deschanel; indeed, she is not the [adjective] anything except “the awesome”, but that Racialicious post is, tangentially, an article very much worth your time).
Anyway, Issa’s hilarious, and her work is full of wryly-observed appeal.
Don’t Mention the Moles: Sally Outen
Although, since we’ve documented that I’ll have spilled everything all over the table in a fit of awkward admiration when Issa arrives, why not mention the moles to divert everybody while I’m trying to find the kitchen roll? Sally Outen’s 2011 show Non-Bio, with its simultaneously side-splitting and toe-curling exploration of what happens when your first bit of sex-ed comes from Duncton Wood, was an Edinburgh Fringe must-see which I caught in a London bar with feminist burlesquers Lashings of Ginger Beer Time, with whom Sally often also performs, on her return. She came bounding onto the stage, radiating charisma, and proceeded to destroy my diaphragm. But it’s not all randy talpidae; Sally has a razor-sharp dig, drawing on her lived experiences, at transphobia and sexist bigotry. Frankie Boyle could learn a thing or two.
Rock ‘n’ Roll Emboidery: Marjane Satrapi
I saw the animated adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis at the cinema and bawled my face off. But one reason why, by the end, I was blubbing away with such unfettered gusto and with no care for the integrity of the Barbican Centre’s upholstery was the deft, smart humour with which Satrapi introduces her memoir of growing up in Iran, deciding PUNK IS NOT DED, and dreaming of being either a prophet or the next Bruce Lee. Her art is instantly recognisable, all thick, clean, expressive lines and playful simplicity. Embroideries, her tribute to the women of her family and the stories they share, is just as beautiful and eye-opening.
Of Hurricanes and Wise Words: Grace Nichols
We’ve reached the midpoint of our dinner. This means I am probably drunk. On a thimbleful of wine. And about to begin clutching people’s sleeves, clumsily talking over them, apologising for being born, and going “YOU KNOW I LOVE YOU, RIGHT?”.
Guyanese poet Grace Nichols is probably the unfortunate recipient of the non-negotiable Soppy Speech, because I grew up reading her work in the classroom and at home (my mum taught at primary level for 40-odd years and used her as a literacy resource). Her humour in her writing for children isn’t so much punchy as it is gentle and cheering; moodygoth teenage me allowed herself a little moment of respite from body image fretting, aged 16, when my mum blu-tacked a copy of one of her children’s poems, Give Yourself A Hug, to the wall near my mirror. But I think the reason she’s so appealing has lots to do with the way she balances contemplative work like Hurricane Hits England with the sharply observed, dry indictment at the intersection of racism, sexism and sizeism of, say, The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping, in which “The fat black woman could only conclude / that when it come to fashion / the choice is lean”.(I know I’m overusing “wry” and “warm” in this post but whatever, she’s a master of both, and MY PARTY, etc.)
What I’m basically getting at here is: she’s brill.
“Take That Ironic Shit Off”: Kate Beaton
The final implosion of my party into a maelstrom of inebriation and repeated burbling of “I want to be you” into the trifle. Webcomic Hark! A Vagrant: the premier resource for anyone who wishes to see me cracking up at my desk. I love it for its heady cocktail of imaginative historical detail (what if the Bronte sisters subscribed to Brooding Hunks magazine?), affection for Nancy Drew, clever lampooning of “straw feminism” (YOU DON’T NEED A TRAINER BRA LITTLE GIRL, COME WITH US TO THE MOON) and, er, the episodes of small round ponies eating indignant ghosts. Oh, and the younger-version-of-the-author comics. BOAT!
…. and there you have it. That’s my “Funny Women” party.
I wonder what your table looks like? Maybe you have a political figures table, or a women-from-the-ancient-world table, or a musical table. MANY TABLES THERE ARE, IN THE GRAND CAFE OF FEMINIST BLOGGING. LIKE VALHALLA BUT WITHOUT ALL THAT PHALLOCENTR-
– wait, this is the phase of the evening where I yell in capslock before collapsing. I think I’m partied out. Anyone got any Anadin? See you in the morning.
- I can apparently make vol-au-vents in this little fantasia. In real life, these are in fact Ryvitas. [↩]
Here’s a guest post from For Books’ Sake‘s Gina Kershaw who sent us her fantasy dinner table of five funny women. If you have a guest post brewing in your brain, you know what to do: pitch us at [email protected].
Y’know how some people claim music makes their world go around/ they couldn’t survive without music/etc etc? Well, I’m like that with comedy, especially comedy by women, especially comedy by women that knocks the tired, old stereotype that “women just aren’t funny” straight out of the patriarchal pool of life.
Well, I’ve got my chicken sizzling in the oven, I’ve applied the final fudge flourish to the chocolate cake, and the 70’s throw back prawn cocktail is ready and waiting on the table. All I need now is a prime comedy guestlist of my favourite funny women to turn this evening into my ultimate fantasy night…
Jennifer Saunders
I try and live my life without putting a load of over-glorified idolisation on any one person (or thing) – but my rule just seems to break whenever I come across Jennifer Saunders. Since my table is limited, I had to choose between French and Saunders, but Jen made the cut for a few reasons.
I can’t talk about Saunders without talking about Absolutely Fabulous. Beyond the fact that it’s just genuinely funny, I think there are several important messages to be found in the programme. Joanna Lumley stated in an interview for French television that she accepted the role of Patsy because she had finally been offered a role where she didn’t have to be the soulless goody two shoes. Saunders has created characters that reflect real life – albeit a twisted form of it – much more closely than many other roles created for women. Because she has a ‘posh’ accent, Lumley is often cast in roles that reflect the character society wishes her to have, but in AbFab she fits perfectly as botoxed, pilled up, fashion obsessed Patsy, far better than anyone could imagine. At a human level, Saunders reminds her audience not to judge a book by its clipped accent or laughter lines; it’s a reversal of the stereotypes that just won’t go away – oh you’re old, so you can’t enjoy a drink, oh you’re a mother so you can’t have a personality away from the child. Then there’s the whole exposure of the fashion scene as the temperamental, judgemental, fat-shaming sham of an industry that it is.
She was amazing on Bad News and More Bad News, the music spoof by the people behind The Young Ones, in which she played a punk journalist that I ignorantly hoped to replicate “when I’m all grown up” (and still kinda secretly do). She’s written a Spice Girls musical which, as a 90s child, I couldn’t be happier about, and of course, I can’t round off this section without mentioning her stint as the fairy godmother on Shrek 2 and her a-maz-ing cover of Holding Out For A Hero.
Tina Fey
Tina Fey changed the face of high school comedy with Mean Girls. High school-based comedy was always full of what I’d call ‘lad-laugh’ humour; the hunt for beer, the quest for tits, the montage of vomit. Very little high school comedy ever actually showed anything within the actual school, until Mean Girls. Adapting material from the sociological study-fuelled Queen-Bees and Wannabes, Fey produced a film that wasn’t only funny, but provided an actual critique of many people’s experiences and perceptions of high school. An unflinchingly look at bitching, cliques and passive aggressive bullying that can relentlessly curse students on a daily basis, the film provided insight for those that had already left school, and a beam of hope for those currently in school. Plus it made a legend of Glen Coco and gave me one of my all time favourite lines involving wide set vaginas and heavy flows.
Fey is an unashamed feminist, which I love, and she’s effin’ hilarious about it. I have always maintained that you should use humour to show the bastards that they can’t get you down, and Fey mixes important feminist messages without ever sounding preachy or obtuse. Bossypants is an amazing autobiography where she talks not just about her infinitely interesting life but discusses truly interesting topics. The Time I Was a Bit Skinny and The Time I Was a Bit Fat are two short chapters that discuss body image; her responses to anonymous online commentators are hilarious and powerful; and her discussion of Photoshopped images of women is refreshing, honest, and completely different from anything you’ll find elsewhere on the subject.
Sophie Kinsella
You might not necessarily associate Kinsella straight away as a woman of comedy since she’s best known as a chick-lit author. On For Books’ Sake you’ll often find me arguing the merits of chick-lit as comedy aimed at women and the importance of not being put off by ridiculous flowery covers and storylines about heterosexual thirtysomething romances. I often cite Kinsella’s Shopaholic series when discussing chick-lit as comedy for women for more than the fact that I just find them funny. The subject matter of the novel could easily turn a light story into a gritty social warning – the curse of debt and addiction, the crushing demoralisation of being stuck in a career you hate in order to pay the bills, the social anguish of being judged and criticised by those you can’t help but think are better than you. However, Kinsella approaches these subjects with the character of Becky Bloomwood/Brandon and makes them funny, and while I acknowledge that it’s a tired old trope that all women like shopping, there’s plenty of subject matter to relate to.
I also love her quiet acknowledgement of the ridiculous suggestion that to read or write chick-lit you must be stupid. In an interview with the Guardian Kinsella wryly brushes off the hideous suggestion by the interviewer that somewhere her life must have gone wrong if she has an Oxbridge degree in business and finance yet chooses to write chick-lit. Her calm attitude towards suggestions that would leave me chucking plates against the wall shows professionalism and class that many would not associate with the genre.
Caitlin Moran
On a basic level, Caitlin Moran is on my list because I want so desperately to get her in a room and demand that she tells me how I can become just like her. When someone asks me what I want to do with my life, my response is always “to become a combination of Charlie Brooker and Caitlin Moran”.
I became aware of her work with How to Be a Woman. The fact that such an overtly feminist book became a bestseller is fabulously encouraging for all modern feminists, and the manner in which she writes her personal feminist agendas is inspiring. While I’m not a huge fan OF WRITING IN CAPITALS TO EMPHASISE EVERY POINT I MAKE, I am a fan of the messages she writes so simply and beautifully. Encouraging every woman to stand on a chair and shout “I AM A FEMINIST” without ever patronising those who may not automatically associate themselves with feminism is an attitude that I feel is necessary if we’re to get more young people to identify as feminists. Her statement that “you’re not fat if you can find a dress you look nice in and run up three flights of stairs” has become something of a mantra for me when I’m having a down day/week/month, and her unflinchingly honest approach to unfortunately controversial issues such as female masturbation and abortion is helping many women to finally be able to talk about them without any false shame or embarrassment. Plus, y’know, she’s piss funny and she went out drinking with Lady Gaga. Caitlin, on the off-chance that you’re reading this, STOP TELLING ME HOW TO BE A WOMAN AND JUST TELL ME HOW TO BE YOU. (End unnecessary capitals.)
Angela Carter
Okay, so this is maybe the least obvious choice for my guestlist, but let me explain. While the early works of Carter may be the epitome of darkness, towards the end of her writing career and her life, her work began to pick up elements of obscure, magical humour. Wise Children, her final novel, brings together her developing interest in the lightness of human behaviour with the eye-popping spectacle of magic realism, all of which results in a beautifully hilarious final novel with heartbreaking undertones.
I don’t just want to invite Carter because she’s funny, though. I want to invite her because she is my ultimate feminist icon. Her (at the time) unique approach to feminism and sexuality, constant refusal to change her opinions and beliefs just because she didn’t fit in with current trends, and her skills as a writer (not only of fiction, but of intelligent and
persuasive feminist essays and arguments) make her one of my all time heroines. From what I’ve read from biographies she was really, really funny in real life too, making her the perfect final addition to my table.
So there it is, my funny women party guestlist. But which women of comedy would you invite? Do you love my choices, or is my sense of humour enough to make you laugh in disgust?
- Gina Kershaw is the Features Editor on literary website For Books’ Sake. She has a fortnightly column there, Gina Goes Pop, where she rants about all things pop culture. She has a degree in English Literature and hopes one day to turn her penchant for sitting around the house in her pajamas eating custard creams and writing into a career. You can follow her on twitter – @gmkershaw91 – or check out her blog.