Before we go further, have you seen the advert? If not, here you go:

Opinions vary as to whether this is offensively sexist or whether such labels are merely the result of ‘political correctness gone mad.’ However, what is being depicted is pretty unambiguous, especially thanks to the “behind every Great Christmas, there’s mum” tagline at the end: Christmas is the result of Mum working very hard and (by inference) Dad being generally useless, not up to scratch and oblivious of her efforts. It falls squarely into what The Mary Sue terms Dumb Man Commercials, whereby in order to appeal to the (presumed) female audience, the advertisers present men as foolish when compared to the power of womankind – if the power of womankind is limited to, say, cleaning an oven.

Now, lookit, there’s quite enough sexism going on at this time of year what with the pink aisle full of plastic dolls and retailers emblazoned with gender-segregated gifts without the whole of Christmas being laid firmly and squarely on the shoulders of women and negating the role of anyone else in the fulfilment of annual joy. No pressure, love.

This isn’t really a post about lambasting the ASDA advert – many people have done that, and more eloquently too. What it is about is advertisers’ perception of who we are as people, and whether that matches up to how we really are and how we think of ourselves.

Given the results of the recent census, we know that households such as the one depicted in the advert are not in the majority in the UK – far more people either live alone or are lone parents. So the assumption of “Mum” being the lynch pin for the “average” Christmas in the UK is not a reflection of reality.

There will be many families who rely on Dad, or another relative. There will be many Christmases spent amongst friends, or as a couple without children (like my own Yuletide will be). There will also be many Christmases in the UK that people spend alone – either through positive choice or sad circumstances. Lots of people don’t celebrate Christmas at all, of course. But I am absolutely not going to get into a discussion of religion as well as politics.

Well, not for this post.

Vik's Christmas Grotto

Vik sez:

“Well, I like DVDs, obviously! Also, books and comics and random toys. These are not all from this year, and they’re not all presents. I tend to get clothes for Christmas! But anyway, in no particular order:

• Agora: Hypatia writes new mathematical theorems while Alexandria burns. I love Rachel Weisz, and although this film makes me cry a lot, I think it’s ace.
• Pride and Prejudice: one of my all time favorite books, and this BBC adaptation is the best by far. The new version has all the original colours put back in, which destroyed my impression of Regency England as cloaked in pastels.
• Senna: even if you’re not a fan of F1, I defy anyone to watch this film and not be massively affected by it.
• The 49ers (Alan Moore): this is my favourite Alan Moore graphic novel. It’s sort of steampunky, I guess, with cute boy!kissing and prejudice and war and awesome female characters.
• Air(G Willow Wilson): why is this not more well known? Flight attendant Blythe is afraid of flying, but this doesn’t stop her from a magic realism tour of lands that don’t exist. Bonus: positive depictions of Islam, Amelia Earhart being awesome beyond words, and things not being quite they seem. A bit like a cross between Angela Carter and Salman Rushdie in graphic novel format.
• Fables (Bill Willingham): If you’re not reading Fables, you need to start. All fairy tales are real, and they’re living in modern-day New York, waging a war against an enemy known only as the Adversary in their homelands. Snow White is far and away my favourite character, and her relationship with (the big, bad) Bigby Wolf is lovely.
• La Reine Margot: my go-to favourite film. The Massacre of Paris, Marguerite de Valois, Catherine de Medici, what more could you ask for? This is a really lush production of a rather Dynasty-esque Dumas novel, complete with incest, buckets of blood and lots of poisonings.
• Burlesque and the Art of the Teese (Dita von Teese): lovely coffee table book with lush pictures of Dita. The book is actually split in two: one half is burlesque-focused, and covers the history of burlesque and burlesque outfits through the ages, and other half is focused on fetish-inspired outfits.
• The Women Incendiaries (Edith Thomas): a recent gift for Yule, this is a history of the female revolutionaries during the French Revolution.
• Auto Repair for Dummies (Deanna Sclar): well, obviously. A bit too American in its language, but a decent primer, I think.
• Female Agents: Gah, this film. I don’t know why it was marketed as Female Agents rather than the original Les Femmes de l’ombre. Either way, this is the story of female agents, spies and covert operatives in France during WWII. It’s gorgeous and sexy and scary, but don’t expect everyone to live happily ever after.
• Marie Antoinette: on the other end of the spectrum, this is complete fluff. This Sofia Coppola film is light and frilly, like a giant French fancy. It’s based on the book by Antonia Fraser, and focuses on Marie Antoinette’s life up until she flees Versailles. It therefore stops before the horrible execution business happens, and you are also not subjected to Marie Antoinette’s days in captivity. Instead, you get dresses, frills, cakes, parties, and elaborate hairdos. There is nothing sad or upsetting about this film and I love it like I love cotton candy.
• Deathless (Catherynne M Valente): Communism! Fairy tales! The original warrior princess! WIN. (Possibly not as easy to grab via a physical bookstore, but order it for a new year surprise?)
• My Little Pony: I blame Sarah Cook for this.
• Compass: Also Sarah Cook’s fault. She has equipped me with this to assist with navigating my way back, should I ever get lost in strange and exotic foreign locales.
• Hot Wheels: no explanation required.”

• The stocking was made by my mum in timeless 1980s acid brights. Some things basically NEVER go out of fashion, and let me tell you, a turquoise, pink, yellow and orange felt medley is one of those things. Talking of classic, yes, that is an original My Little Pony guarding the stocking.

• Immediately behind her is a pretty swish-packaged edition of Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Cole Porter Songbook, which was originally released in 1956 and went into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2000. I love the image of her on the front. She looks like she’s taking precisely no crap from anybody. In a similar vein, to the left of that we’ve got The Essential Billie Holiday, which is a three-disc gateway to the sublime.
• Jon Klassen’s I Want My Hat Back was our Markgraf’s Christmas present to me this year. So beloved of the internet has it become, it has an entry on KnowYourMeme, and I’m including it because throughout the entire text of the book only one animal is gendered as “he” and the rest are up to the reader to gender – if they need gendering at all. After the Dogs and Smurfs debate, I reckon that’s a good thing. It’s hardly stridently feminist, but it’s very good at not prescribing anything but a story. The second reason I’m including it is the general sense of righteous fury in the I HAVE SEEN MY HAT moment. I’ve had a dozen political click-moments which definitely come under the heading I HAVE SEEN MY HAT. If you get what I mean.
• From bears to kangaroos, next to that is Tank Girl: The Odyssey. I’m actually (SHOCK) quite new to actually reading TG but here’s Sarah J persuading me.
• And next to that we’ve got Serious Concerns by poet Wendy Cope, which contains important lines such as Bloody Christmas, here again. / Let us raise a loving cup. / Peace on earth, goodwill to men / And let them do the washing-up. and My cat is dead / But I have decided not to make a big / tragedy out of it – but also some really touching poems. You can read some of them here – I remember Flowers and Defining The Problem really struck chords with me.
• WEIGHTIER TOMES: Dreamers of a New Day: Women Who Invented the 20th Century by Sheila Rowbotham, which came out this year. And William Golding: not an obvious choice for a feminist blog, perhaps, but The Double Tongue, his last novel, retrieved in draft form from a drawer and published posthumously, is told entirely from the point of view of the Delphic Oracle, and I loved it. (It’s much more enjoyable than Lord of the Flies.)

• Pre-Raphaelite Women Artists: because the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was not the whole hood. Tired of women being erased from mainstream art history (for more on which, read this), Jan Marsh and Pamela Gerrish-Nunn’s glossy book puts the Sisterhood back on record, with wonderful illustrations.
• Who’s Queen? Nurse your Boxing Day hangover with Miranda Richardson’s finest moments on Blackadder: The Complete Collection. (I recently rewatched Blackadder the Third and apart from her turn as a squirrel-shooting highwaywoman, I also loved Helen Atkinson-Wood’s supreme comic timing as housekeeper Mrs Miggins.
• Forgive the big beardy patriarch figure looming in the background, but in these days of strikes and kettles, Karl Marx is looking good on everything. And in the absence of a Rosa Luxemburg shirt, he’s looking best of all on this tee. LOOK AT HIS FACE. HE IS UNIMPRESSED. Let’s not have the whole Commodification of Marxism debate now – the shirt’s ethically sourced by Fair Wear Foundation (a thing to look out for, or you’ll defeat the point somewhat) and you can purchase one from Savage London who have a shop in London’s Covent Garden. And you could do worse than wrap it around Terry Eagleton’s latest book on the topic, Why Marx Was Right, an accessible and funny primer for lefty political activists of any stripe (and much easier to read with aforementioned Yule Hangover than Das Kapital, eh).
• Oh, and TEA. Everybody needs tea. Twinings are doing some cute tins which I kind of wanted to graffiti when I saw them in the shop with “Psst! Riots, not diets!” and “Priscilla! Are we fair trade, do you know?” so the ladies could chat to each other. But otherwise, any tea will do.

Merry Christmas!

She sez:

• “‘Twas a few days before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring… except some fabulous feminist finger puppets. What are they up to now, the little scallywags? (Left to right: Good Queen Bess, Sojourner Truth, Virginia Woolf and Frida Kahlo) I got them as a gift, but they’re available from The Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild!
• On the floor beside my stocking (which was made for me by one of my mum’s friends I believe, when I was a tiny one) is the second volume of Linda Medley‘s Castle Waiting, a graphic novel series I urgently commend to any feminist fairytale enthusiasts. It’s explicitly feminist, gentle and genuinely original, with some affectionate jokes at the expense of the fantasy genre, and cracking female characters. Don’t come expecting Angela Carter style sex ‘n’ death fairytale reclamation though. While there is danger lurking, the eponymous castle is a safe haven for the misfit characters.
• In the stocking itself is another extremely well-judged gift, a copy of Love of Worker Bees by Alexandra Kollontai, published in Russia in 1923. One of the Party faithful, Kollontai explores the tensions between her protagonist’s dedication to the cause of Socialism and her need for personal autonomy, love and sexual fulfilment. One of the most interesting (and moving) aspects of it is her struggle to reconcile the vision of freedom she passionately believes in with the realities of being a woman after the October Revolution. You’ll be unsurprised to hear that some are more equal than others.
• Next is my trusty copy of Misogynies by Joan Smith, a collection of superb essays on cultural texts which expose the thread of misogyny which runs through the fabric of western culture. A kind of response to Roland Barthes’ famed Mythologies, Smith’s book still has the power to shock, and serves as an excellent eye-opener for those who think it probably isn’t that bad really. The texts in question may be getting on a bit, but sadly things haven’t changed all that much.”

Not long now ’til Christmas! Feel free to share what would be in your own feminist Christmas stocking, and have a very BadRep Christmas…

She sez:

• “Christina Rossetti for In the Bleak Midwinter, one of the only Christmas carols I can stand ’cause the lyrics rhyme and scan and crazy shit like that.
• Patti Smith ’cause she’s the village wise-woman of my head and I love her.
• Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender is one of the best books I’ve read and should be required reading for, y’know, everyone.
• I love Margaret Atwood. That is all.
• Angela Carter invokes lots of pastoral snowscapes in The Bloody Chamber. That’s kind of Christmassy, right?
• The Second Sex is on my good intentions list. I absolutely will read it next year.
• Introducing Post-Feminism is, I think, pretty flawed in its definitions, but it does do a good run-through of a lot of history.
• And Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a book I initially loved, which gets creepier on every re-read, but hey – it’s a 1915 SF pacifist gynotopia.”

Hopefully we’ll have some more Team Christmas Trees up before we close for the holiday season, but either way have a great week!