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…

Anyway, today I’ve hauled our Rhian in to talk about Fairytale of New York, the Pogues’ and Kirsty MacColl’s Christmas anthem. The following is our email discussion about the song, the 1980s, folk music, and class politics.

Grab a whiskey.

Happy Christmas Your Arse

Rhian: I think one reason the song is so popular is because it seems like an oddity – it’s highly secular, the only mention of anything to do with Christmas is the setting, and it dissects romantic sentimentalism rather than replicating it – the lyric is of a part with the rest of the Pogues’ tragicomic gutter-poetry dealing with addiction, nihilism, prostitution, police corruption and brutality. Besides making it stand out among other seasonal songs, this also makes it the choice of the Christmas refusenik. In another way, of course, its depiction of dysfunctional relationships, exhaustion, frustration, frayed tempers and failed dreams make it the perfect song for Christmas as emotional pressure-valve.

Miranda: Yeah, it manages a keen balancing act of romantic and antiromantic, if you will – it sways between “I’ve built my dreams around you” and “you’re an old slut on junk” so deftly that I can never decide whether its final notes leave me depressed or hopeful. It’s got that whole “we’re ruined, irrevocably, and yet I love you” vibe, without ever straying into ‘stand by your man’ territory.

Queen of New York City

Rhian: Kirsty’s character makes a good subversive girl-next-door, overcoming taboos around female profanity, the place of women in a relationship, and the female as uncritically supportive of and subservient to the male. (After punk, and apart from Madonna maybe, which other mainstream late-80s female singers – especially folk/pop – compare with her vocal here for casual, combative profanity that matches, if not outdoes, her partner?)

I remember watching a ‘Making of…’ documentary on this song in which one of the Pogues was describing Kirsty’s efforts to overcome her stagefright when doing the song on tour with them, and recalled that on the first night they performed it, the crowd joined in with her, rather than Shane, on the ‘I could’ve been someone’ / ‘Well, so could anyone’ rejoinder. Which made me think about her part as the one with which listeners identify, the long-suffering steadfast partner/friend who finally talks back, providing much-needed perspective, however depressing that is, and the relief and catharsis that doing so brings. It’s like she speaks for all the women slaving over Xmas dinner for ungrateful kids and husbands.

Miranda: Although Shane’s character asserts a kind of ownership of Kirsty’s dreams (he’s the one who takes, builds, attempts to reassure her that she sits at the centre of the dream it sounds like he screwed up), he starts the song imprisoned in the “drunk tank” – implying she’s a dream, this woman, a figure from times past. So maybe where she is now – free, perhaps, who knows? – is left open. And I think that’s another thing that underpins the bittersweet, shady-grey spirit of this song. It’s never clear whose story this is, and there’s a real tension between her narrations and his, which draw the song back to a romantic, but broken, conclusion even as her “I pray god it’s our last” is still sort of echoing. Maybe it was, or maybe it wasn’t.

Rhian: That’s one of my favourite aspects of the song – what did happen to this couple, in the end? Does she come and pick him up from the drunk tank and bail him out after the song’s close, or has she OD’d years previously, or is she happily settled in her own life now? And yes, it nicely dodges the expected stand-by-your-man stuff. Actually it’s very even-handed in the way they both berate each other, sounding equally foul-mouthed and irritable, presumably he’s got his drinking and she’s got her junk so they’re both in the grip of addiction – again it subverts the idea of the meek and submissive female innocent under the grubby domineering male thumb.

Miranda: I also like the way it takes the folk figure of the lonely drunkard singing about his old flame and brings her directly into the song to talk back.

Rhian: Yes, totally – she’s one of the old ballads’ idealised nebulous foils, who suddenly clears her throat and interrupts the narrative with her side of the story – making both of them more well-rounded characters by doing so.

Cheap, Lousy and… Haggard?

For the Top of the Pops appearance, the BBC insisted that MacColl’s singing of “arse” be replaced with the less offensive “ass”, although as she mimed the word MacColl slapped the relevant part of her body to make it clear what was meant… On December 18, 2007, BBC Radio 1 put a ban on the words “faggot” and “slut” from “Fairytale of New York” to “avoid offence”.

– Wikipedia

Rhian: Re: ‘faggot’, which admittedly I always found slightly incongruous in context, Wikipedia also sez: In his Christmas podcast, musical comedian Mitch Benn commented that “faggot” was Irish and Liverpudlian slang for a lazy person, and was unrelated to the derogatory term for homosexuals.) Also, the one word that never seems to get dubbed out is ‘punk’, despite its historical application to female prostitutes, rent-boys and prison ‘bitches’…

Miranda:And I think it’s not impossible they weren’t aware of that given that the folk canon – which the MacColl family were well into – does contain dances several hundred years old with titles like “the punk’s delight”.

Rhian: The use of ‘punk’ and ‘faggot’ – while the latter may not be used in its modern, derogatory sense, I think it undeniably carries those connotations – makes for, in terms of stereotyping, an odd kind of feminisation (that may be the wrong word, it’s been a long week) of the male protagonist. Shane Macgowan has referenced male prostitution as part of a generally chaotic/hustling lifestyle in songs like ‘The Old Main Drag’; I wonder if a similar thing is being implied here.

Miranda: I’d never considered that – but it’s Kirsty who says “punk”, isn’t it. I think it has a more general usage which is a bit like “bum”, but I like the choice of word because it doesn’t immediately imply that the only one who might have engaged in that lifestyle is automatically the woman, which a first listening of “old slut on junk” connotates.

Cars Big As Bars

Rhian: And, to be wanky, in terms of socio-political context: both MacColl and the Pogues were outspokenly left-wing. In 1987 Thatcher had just been reelected, the mass civil unrest, strikes and riots of the early 1980s had simmered down despite increasing wealth disparity and ostentatious display by those at the top of the pile, both here and in the US under Reagan. In the UK this is the era of Enfield as Loadsamoney, in New York of American Psycho and Wall Street (the latter film released the same year as this song). MacColl’s opening lines (‘They got cars big as bars, they got rivers of gold / But the wind blows right through you…’) concisely and incisively sums up the period’s glaring inconsistencies, setting the scene without allowing it to colour the rest of the song – except inasmuch as the protagonists seem likely to be nearer the bottom of the heap than the top, relying on each other with little material resources to fall back on.

You Promised Me Broadway

Miranda: So what about all these covers? Do any of them cut the mustard, or do anything that makes them worth a listen? The Ronan Keating/Maire Brennan one, I just … WHYYYY. Bowdlerised out of all hell.

Rhian: It’s been covered into cliche, and yet I can’t think of any that did anything memorable with it, or did anything other than diminish the power and energy of the original, especially with the bowing to bowdlerisation in a version like the Ronan one. It’s hard to see how it could be covered in a way that did anything other than replicate it.

Miranda: That whole Ronan recording is like some terrible Irish tourist board pantomime. The only thing worse would be Michael Flatley doing an interpretive dance version. She leaves “arse” in, and I thought it’d be like hearing the queen fart or something, but somehow it’s disappointing. She sounds like she’s still singing about the wild green mystical castle of Ireland and wee-diddly-dee in that totally Clannady way all the same.

Rhian:The number and variety of covers (including Florence Welch and Billy Bragg, wtf?) says something for the original’s quality and ‘classic’ status, but yeah, little else I can get out of it other than varying degrees of squeamishness over the language. It’s become a very safe standard though repeated covering, I think, especially with the lyrical sting drawn. I’ve just run across Dustin Kensrue’s version, which is entirely sung from the perspective of Macgowan’s character, with rewritten second and third verses, and in my opinion loses a lot for it:

Miranda:Gosh, it does, doesn’t it? Actually, this IS, this BECOMES the archetypal Lonely Drunk Folk Song I was talking about, doesn’t it? If you write Kirsty out like that, and reduce her lines to quotes (“You said so could anyone”) … she goes back in her box, really, doesn’t she. Turns back into a ghost woman, a memory of Archetypal Irish Drunk Regretful Bloke’s past. She becomes the stereotype again.That’s really interesting, because it highlights how important she is in terms of the song’s power, though. So Dustin is to be thanked for that, at least.

So, next time you hear this in the shopping centre, I don’t know, think about some of that stuff, instead of “oh God, this is overplayed”. And don’t overdo it. No BadRep reader needs to end up in the drunk tank this week, okay? Be good.

1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Such a cheat to have this on the list, but like or hate Joss Whedon, BtVS was paradigm-busting. Buffy set a standard for female heroes that has been

Buffy: not optional viewing.

endlessly copied since. Yes, her love life crowds into her slaying, but Buffy has always been a slayer first and foremost. The supporting characters are also pretty awesome, with strong female characters abounding. Buffy may have its weaknesses, but you can’t afford NOT to have watched it.

2. Xena: Warrior Princess

Speaking of paradigm-busting, Xena is a warrior, backed up by a bard/fighter/peacenik/yogi. Plus, the show featured one of the first canonical lesbian relationships on TV. Xena kicks arse, and Gabrielle writes about it. I love this show for many, many reasons. It runs the gamut from silly and hilarious to quite simply heart-breaking. It’s fun, and sexy, and strangely heart-warming at times, and whether you like the LARP swords or not, you can’t afford to ignore this one either.

3. Grey’s Anatomy

Caveat: I’ve only watched up to Season 5 of this show, as I understand that it looses its way quite badly later on. But the first three seasons, especially, are exemplars of career women trying to make it in a very masculine profession. The friendship between Cristina and Meredith is for me one of the highlights of the show.

Cristina Yang is better than you in every way.

4. Alias

Sydney! I love Sydney. And Irina, and Nadia, and Rachel, and Francie, and Emily. You may have gathered that this show is all about women. Sure, Jack and Arvin and Michael all get their turn in the limelight, but the most dangerous characters on this show are the women. They are what make the world turn and tremble.

5. Veronica Mars

This is noir in high school. Veronica Mars is one of my favourite ‘cop’ shows, and Veronica isn’t even a cop. She’s a pretty normal 17 year old girl… if by ‘normal’ we mean someone who in the last year has had her best friend murdered, her mother walk out, her father lose his job, her boyfriend leave her, oh and wake up after a party not remembering anything with her underwear missing. Yeah, Veronica is having a swell year. She joins her dad in his P.I. firm, and investigates cases in and around her school, all the while trying to find out who murdered her best friend. The second season story arc is a bit ropey, and the third season is pretty bad, but the first season (with a self-contained story arc) is some of the best TV out there. Don’t miss this.

6. Prime Suspect

Speaking of detective shows… hands down the best one out there. Is it any wonder, with Helen Mirren acting her socks off? DCI Jane Tennison is abrasive, smart, and an alcoholic. She’s investigating a series of serial killers, while dealing with sexism and hostility from her colleagues. I love this, but I can’t watch it too often; it’s too upsetting.

7. Damages

So the UK has Helen Mirren, and the US has Glenn Close. Why hasn’t this little show received more attention? A law student ends up the protégé of a successful female attorney, and it’s all fantastic until someone turns up dead…

8. Fringe

Another FBI agent-investigates-the-unusual. Olivia Dunham is, however, not your average FBI agent, and a strong supporting cast

There may have been other people in this show. I don't know, I was too distracted by Angela to notice.

make this pretty interesting. The bits that I like are how Olivia rescues herself in the manner of awesome heroes everywhere, and how the Evil Overlady is just. So. Damn. Awesome. Nina FTW!!

9. Bones

Temperance Brennan is a forensic anthropologist. Yes, I know that’s not actually a real job, but for the purposes of TV, bear with me. She works for a museum, and in her capacity as a consultant she fightssolves crime! Her partner is Seeley Booth (yes, I know, not actually a real name), and he’s a … cop? FBI agent? CIA person? I wasn’t paying attention. Anyway, there’s gross things happening all over the country, and Brennan goes around being brilliant at crime scenes and saving the day. She has a lovely team of wacky sidekicks, who are all pretty awesome actually. Angela – who is in no way shape or form any scientist I can recognise – is the best friend, and the friendship between them is real and thoughtfully handled.

10. Star Trek: Voyager

Yes, yes. Not Star Trek’s finest hour. If you want thoughtful politics, get DSN instead. But, hey, Voyager isn’t all bad. It has Star Trek’s first female captain, for starters. Janeway is pretty awesome for managing to be an older woman (40! Why, she’s practically drawing a pension) and a sexual being at the same time. When Seven of Nine came on board and Janeway started explaining This Human Thing We Call Kissing Dating, my happiness was complete. You don’t need to get all seven seasons of this, but do check out Janeway being all Die Hard in Macrocosm, and the whole of the 7/J flirting saga.

More Christmas recommendations to follow…

Spot the difference with this classy 'couple's costume' from onlinejokeshop.co.uk

Seriously, look at this shit.

Right, now I’ve shared my pain I feel ready to move on. Also, we’ve already covered this topic in some depth with our Halloween posts, so I won’t go over it again, but if you really want to experience some more truly awful costume fails, then by all means, do type “mrs santa costume” into Google.

Just don’t blame me for the results.

But looking at all those dresses (and bikinis, and crop tops – seriously, crop tops – you come from the NORTH POLE!), once I’d finished washing my eyeballs, made me think about the female version of that jolly Christmas avatar…

Mrs Santa Claus, step on down in all your glory.

The origin of Santa Claus himself is a (turkey) bone of contention, with some camps claiming antecendents from folklore around 4th century saint St Nicholas via Sinterklaas.

Some (including the brand itself) claim parts of the modern incarnation are entirely the creation of the Coca-Cola company, especially the red and white costume.

What we can see is that as the Christmas holidays start to move from a solemn religious event to being increasingly secular and perhaps commercial, we lose the holy charitable man and get a fat jolly gift-giving man.

Mr and Mrs Santa Claus on a greetings card, image source wikipedia

Possibly because it is not a good idea for single chaps to be portrayed as climbing into houses where small children lie sleeping, Santa gets a wife along with heteronormativity and a slew of other “traditional” family values that put the whole breaking and entering thing into a context of good, clean fun.

As a side note, I’d like to add that my father (also a fan of BadRep – hi Dad!) is currently being Santa for a local charity, so I’m not knocking the concepts of chaps who have families, fun or even enjoy climbing down chimneys. Though Dad, if you are reading, please don’t.

The closest thing I could find to a bio for our Mrs Claus online is here on Wikipedia. She arrives in what passes for the social media sphere of the mid to late 1800s, roughly the same time that we get The Night Before Christmas and the drawings of Thomas Nast, premiering as the unamed wife in Katherine Lee Bates’s poem Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride.

Wiki’s entry on Santa himself says:

The 1956 popular song by George Melachrino, Mrs. Santa Claus, and the 1963 children’s book How Mrs. Santa Claus Saved Christmas, by Phyllis McGinley, helped standardize and establish the character and role of Mrs Claus in the popular imagination.

Modern Santa is almost always presented in one way: as an old, fat white bearded man, although Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa certainly gave us at least a refreshingly dishonest take on things. Mrs Santa comes in two, perhaps three distinct forms. The two key ones are old, fat white haired woman and the attractive, buxom younger model.

Mrs Santa Claus fights repression and wraps up warm for winter. No exposed flesh for Angela Lansbury!

There’s also a rarer type. This one is neither young nor old, glamour model nor well-rounded jolly lady. You have to do a bit of digging, but she could almost be a normal woman (gasp!), albeit a bit mumsy. I am chosing to term this The Angela Lansbury Option for reasons that will become apparent (and awesome) later.

Hmmm. Three different depictions across some rather familiar age ranges – maiden, mother, crone anyone? Although looking (if we must) at those cheeky¹ Mrs Santa costumes, I’m less sure about whether advertisers had “maidens” in mind as opposed to “ho ho ho”.

So, who are these Mrs Clauses and what are they doing?

The original version is simply a female counterpart to Santa. She’s a “goodwife” and the grandmother to his grandfather role, where all the children of the world are their beloved grandkids – once a year, at least.

This is the Mrs Santa Claus you would choose to fight crime? Really? In those shoes?

It’s good to see positive depictions of old women in circulation amidst all the other negative presentations of “wicked witches”. So far, so good, but how is she used in the media? Like her husband, she seems to be a vehicle for “sell, sell, sell” especially in marketing for women. She is, however, pretty much welded to the kitchen.

Over at northpole.com and claus.com you can find her making cakes in the kitchen. Not that I’m against women in kitchens (obviously not), and those gingerbread men look tasty, but are there alternatives for festive octogenarian females?

Well, in her first appearance in Bates’s poem – which is an interesting read in and of itself with its portrayal of the feminine sphere – we find her blagging her way onto hubby’s sleigh to mend the stockings of poor children so that they too can share the presents.

But I’ll mend that sock so nearly it shall hold your gifts completely.
Take the reins and let me show you what a woman’s wit can do.

If we skip a few generations along, she gets even more awesome, and we find “Mrs North”, in the film Mrs. Santa Claus, crash landing in New York in 1910 and getting involved in the women’s suffrage movement.

Don’t knock the Angela Lansbury option, bitches.

“Sexy” Mrs Santas, meanwhile (and note how that automotically means young and beautiful), are sadly confined to selling a lot of ill-advised and probably itchy costumes, including some truly dreadful underwear.

My most strange discovery is that they are also allegedly comic book heroes – this one is especially odd, given that the main image on this webpage should be of the older version. (However, I’m not that surprised at the choice of image given much of the comic industry’s ongoing campaign these days to replace all women with fembot boobtastic sexed up versions of themselves.)

But to end on two positive notes, first up are five woman who I want to see as Mrs Santa Claus:

• Helen Mirren. Let’s try and get over this idea that older can’t be sexy, please?
• Dawn French. She’d get the “jolly” vote, but she’s also pretty damn cool.
• Dame Judi Dench. Bonus points if this occurs during the next Bond film. Extra bonus points if Daniel Craig takes his top off and a Christmas related joke is uttered. We deserve this following the Bond girl whose name was Christmas.
• Tilda Swinton. I do not believe this needs any reason.
• Margaret Thatcher. Oh come on. It would be hilarious, and the MOST IRONIC THING EVER.

And finally, here’s a video of our newest, and perhaps most interestingly political heroine: Mrs Claus. Here she gives her opinion on the world and spreads a message of peace, tolerance, environmental activism and joy. Certainly an improvement on the Queen’s Speech in my opinion: Mrs Claus Speaks Up.

1. As an aside, I hate this use of word “cheeky”. It’s a ghastly conflation of “cute” and “sexy” which manages to objectify, infantilise AND sexualise women to within an inch of their lives whilst wrapping it all up into a joke that we’re all meant to laugh along to. For the record, fuck off.

   Anyway…

I have no idea how that happened so fast, but either way you can’t now enter the local shopping centre without being bombarded by Now That’s What I Call The Best Xmas… Ever! (Vol.64). In honour of the season, I thought, time allowing, that I’d do some little case studies on some of the songs currently assaulting your ears as you shop. You may hate all Christmas music, or you may love it – personally I’ve never minded it much – but pop singles are like miniature time capsules, so examining their gender politics, and what happens to these when new artists cover them, is one way to divert your brain into a state of broad feminist contemplation rather than all-out anti-consumerist rage in the queue at HMV¹.

Um. I said contemplation. But I can’t guarantee that every vid embedded in this series I’m proposing won’t have you reaching for a pretty stiff drink.

Been an Awful Good Girl

Anyway! Cast your mind, readers, back to the postwar baby boom – specifically 1953. Elizabeth II ascends the throne here in the UK! Everest is climbed and DNA discovered! And the volume of the Kinsey Reports titled Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female, an attempt to research women’s sexual appetites and desires, is published to great controversy and brouhaha. And in December, this guy called Hugh Hefner launches some magazine or other and sells over 54,000 copies. The cultural melting pot for the sexual revolution of the Sixties is neatly bubbling away.

Christmas novelty smash hits have become a Thing since the War – White Christmas came out in 1942. And into this arena slinks Santa Baby, recorded by Eartha Kitt and penned by Joan Javits (a Republican Senator’s niece). It sashays onto the airwaves with a ba-boom-ba-boom of barbershoppy backing vocals, tongue shoved firmly in its cheek.

These days it’s been heard so often and covered enough times that people seem to have forgotten that it’s witty, that it actually stands out as distinct from more earnest fare like White Christmas. White Christmas is about a generation of people longing for their loved ones during the War. It dreams of idyllic peacetime Christmases. Santa Baby, on the other hand, is a playful and sly kick in the tender area for rising peacetime consumerism, as well as a tale of a trophy wife who always wants more stuff, from yachts to platinum mines to rings (not on the phone). In 1954 Eartha re-recorded a version called This Year’s Santa Baby, the lyrics of which reveal that the yacht wasn’t all it was cracked up to be and our heroine still isn’t satisfied.

Come And Trim My Christmas Tree / With Erotic Capital From Tiffany

For the feminists in the queue at HMV, especially those being subjected to the Pussycat Dolls version, this is naturally not unproblematic, not least because the kind of woman the song portrays appears to be exactly what Catherine Hakim, in her book Honey Money, wants women to aspire to be like. Without any tongue in cheek about it. And Honey Money only came out this year, despite the fact that it appears to be the product of what happens when you take Eartha Kitt completely literally. The gold digger the song portrays is a popular stereotype, and the song’s contemporary with the postwar rise in popularity of the “male breadwinner” family model, which wasn’t economically feasible across all social classes. More generally, of course, it’s a riff on a whole social trope around women’s bodies and feminine sexual allure as a source of transactional power.

I think for a lot of people, being exposed to the versions Kylie, the ‘Dolls et al have come out with has somehow managed to dampen our sense of the irony within the original – which makes more sense within the context of more ‘wholesome’ Fifties Christmas music, which it does snerk at, and class politics of the time – perhaps because newer versions are contemporary with many songs that aren’t particularly ironic in their appreciation of Worldly Stuff?

Shame, really, because Eartha had this sending up the golddigger stereotype thing pretty down. Check out her recording of Old Fashioned Millionaire, which is similar to Santa Baby but ever so slightly more acerbic, ably sending up cliches of postwar consumerism, patronising Empire-era South Pacific-style racism (which as a mixed race performer she was certainly no stranger to) and middle class pretensions around social properness and upward mobility with lines like “I want an old fashioned house with an old fashioned fence / and an old fashioned millionaire” and “I like Chopin and Bizet / and the songs of yesterday / String quartets and Polynesian carols / But the music that excels / is the sound of oil wells / as they slurp-slurp-slurp into the barrels…”

Some Very Different Covers

There are a lot of other covers of the song out there, like the bratty pop-punk stylings of the Dollyrots – Wikipedia lists loads. Most notable for me, in very different ways, are these two.

RuPaul’s 1997 cover takes precisely no prisoners, announcing “Been an awful good queen”, and adding in caustic asides like “Now honey, Miss RuPaul has been so good, it just hurts, and now I want you to reciprocate… by givin’ me a few ITEMS, you know…” and the wink-nudge reply to “come and trim my Christmas tree…” of “Honey, you ain’t trimmin’ nothin’.”

Surely after that glorious effort there was nowhere else the song could really go, right?

Wrong!

Santa Buddy

From the sublime, dear readers, to the ever so slightly ridiculous.

For lo, Santa Baby has just this year been covered again by – wait for it – Michael Bublé, god-emperor of bland, whose official site bio at the time of writing boasted frankly awesomely reality-disconnected statements like “his essence remains solid as a rock”, and “like Elvis”. But let’s not stare into that particular abyss too long – back to Santa Baby, for which Bublé’s version has completely rewritten the lyrics to recast the entire song as being about… um… a straight dude who likes presents.

That’s it.

No erotic funny business round here; Michael’s after CARS and FOOTBALL TICKETS and he’s going to MAKE PLATONIC MANLY BRO-FRIENDS with Santa until he gets them. Clearing all that flirting out the way – presumably to make room for all the “decorations bought from … Mercedes”, because I have NO idea how you hang a car bonnet on a Christmas tree, after all – he cracks out “Santa, buddy” at one point, and makes sure to stipulate that the convertible needs to be “steel blue”, since presumably “light blue” wasn’t quite macho enough. Though I’m not sure it really works, it’s fascinating – and the complete opposite of what RuPaul does with it. He even throws in a fastidiously heteromanly “I’ll wait up for you, dude“, to avoid looking too camp.

Of course, in this, as with nearly everything else Michael Bublé attempts to accomplish that isn’t looking like every photo of him would be marvellously improved by the addition of hungry velociraptors, he fails hilariously.

Mind you, to be fair to Michael, for every alteration he makes to keep the conversation with Santa strictly platonic – “Santa pally” (?!) – he also adds in “been a sweetie all year” rather than Eartha Kitt’s original “been an angel”, and where Eartha has “think of all the fellas that I haven’t kissed”, Michael’s got “hotties”, which is pretty gender neutral, the writers clearly being aware that in the marketing niche he belongs in, squarely between Ronan Keating and Will Young, for every five straight middle aged women buying his records, there’s also a pretty significant gay following – he mentioned it himself with some enthusiasm in an interview.

And really, for all the “women like jewellery and men like… CARS” binary implications in there… there’s something about the way he goes “forgot to mention one little thing / cha-ching!” that just isn’t really all that macho after all. It’s almost rather sweet. Or maybe I’ve been looking at all those images of him being stalked by raptors just a bit too much and started feeling sorry for him.

It only seems right to end such a string of different treatments of a song about femininity and consumerism with the ultimate scion of both: Miss Piggy. I truly believe that she is perhaps the only one who’s almost on a par with Eartha herself. Think of all the froggies she hasn’t kissed!

Enjoy your Christmas shopping as far as possible. I’m contemplating tackling Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses next. AREN’T YOU EXCITED. I BET YOU CANNOT WAIT.

1. NB: for the record I’m inclined to think said rage quite justified, but at the same time, you probably can’t afford a criminal damages bill in these pressing times of recession and tinsel.

I’d say “what a year”, but we’re not old enough, so … what a quarter.

Thank you to the sites that have plugged us, to the twitter users who’ve RT’d and Follow Friday’d us, to the people who met us at Ladyfest and emailed their support, and to our guest bloggers.

We’re turning out the lights for what we reckon’s a much-earned Christmas break now, but never fear, we’ll be back in 2011.

A tea break in the snow. We're just that hardcore.

In the three months since our launch in October:

• we’ve gone from a team of six permanent writers to nine – please welcome our newest permanent member Rhian Jones, of Velvet Coalmine fame, as seen recently in Marie Claire magazine!
• we’ve overshot the little goal we set ourselves of “200 twitter followers by Christmas!” by some way – woo!

This is all thanks to you guys, so like we said: THANK YOU, and don’t stop now! We’ve just gotten started.

What you can look forward to next year:

• We’re working out a way to make the artwork from The Alphabet of Feminism available for sale as a selection of prints, so if you dig Hodge’s artwork for this feature, watch this space! We’re also considering releasing the full Alphabet as a little hard copy book – let us know if that’s something you’d be interested in buying, perhaps as a springtime gift for friends of a bibliophilic bent.
• Found Feminism is set to continue – help us out and send us your snapshots of things you’ve seen that made you feel just that little bit better about life as a feminist today.
• We, er, carry on soapboxing, blurting with violent enthusiasm about things we like, and general tomfoolery ensues, or whatever. Yeah!

Merry Christmas! Have a great new year, too.

Rock on,

Team BadRep

Picture this.

It’s Friday night.

I’m a young woman of 25.  I have several friends. I celebrate Christmas. These two facts have combined to create FESTIVE OPPORTUNITY! So I’m going to a house party in East London. I’ve dressed up a bit and everything.

It is snowing heavily. I’ve wrapped up warm, but it’s obvious I’m a bit dressed up; mini skirt, tights, thigh high socks over the tights, stompy boots (OK, I’m a bit of a goth). I feel good about the way I look.

BE CABWISE! Text this number, and find out where you can be overcharged for being out of the house! You hussy! (Image: Transport For London, 2010)

The party goes great. I leave at about midnight, and am juuust too late to make the last Tube home. On the way out, I catch sight of the new poster encouraging me to take a licensed minicab. It says, IF YOUR MINICAB’S NOT BOOKED, IT’S JUST A STRANGER’S CAR. It seems to have replaced the triggertastic, victim-blame-loaded images from a couple of years ago, which showed a woman’s screaming, tearslicked face and bore the headline “STOP, PLEASE, NO, PLEASE, STOP… taking unlicensed minicabs.” I was not a fan of that campaign, well-meaning though it was. It was a giant neon cultural signpost as far as I was concerned: ladies, rape is your problem, sort it.

The streets are covered in thick ice. I have to pick my way very slowly through it, even in my stompy-but-relatively-practical boots, to avoid falling.  A couple of guys outside a pub have things to say about the delectability of my arse as I do this. Their commentary isn’t particularly appreciated.

There are barely any nightbuses running. I realise, shivering and fumbling for my wallet, that I want a minicab. A licensed one.

The rest of my night is an expensive nightmare which opens my eyes to just how much quite a lot of people are happy to exploit my need to get home safely. And how many people out there think that if I want to be safe without paying through the nose, I shouldn’t be out at all.

Leytonstone’s not the life and soul of London on a Friday night, but there are quite a lot of people out, so there must be a few house parties going down. There are several women, at varying levels of party-dressed, in varying states of sobriety. It just so happens that tonight I’m sober. All of us are looking for a way home. A fair number of us are travelling alone.

There is one minicab office in the area I’m trying to navigate. It’s the only one I can see. I’ve used it before and it’s usually been fine. The office has several women milling about outside it. Encouraged, I go in.

The man behind the counter studies me with a faintly critical eye. I tell him I want to go to South London – a long journey, so I’m prepared for some outlay.

“Normally,” says Counter Dude, a little nervously, “that’d be £35.”

Okay.

There is some nudging and muttering going on behind the glass. I wonder if my skirt is rucked up or something. It all looks okay.

“Tonight is fare-and-a-half night.”

Ah. Fare-and-a-half-night. That famous British institution WAIT WHAT.

“It’ll be £53.”

What the shit.

“We’re charging extra,” says Counter Dude, “just for tonight.”

I look out the window at the snow, and the shivering lone women. Is it just the snow that’s suddenly made the petrol so expensive? Or is it more the crowd of women the snow has delivered into the arms of the minicab company that’s occasioned this spontaneous jolly price-hike? I look back at Counter Dude.

“Just tonight,” I say pointedly.

“Yeah.”

There’s an awkward silence.

“Unlucky,” he proffers, after a brief conversational abyss while he searches for a word with which to label my predicament. “You’re unlucky being out tonight.”

What follows is essentially a Paddington Bear-style stare-out, which I win. My prize? A “discount” taking my fare down by a fiver. Still £££ more than I’d usually be charged. You’re damn right I’m unlucky. I’m already drafting a My Fault I’m Female submission as we speak.

The previous safety poster, with bonus feminist stickering. Image via Flickr user jonanamary.

Here’s the deal, guys: I know it’s snowing this week, GUYS, EVERYBODY CAN SEE IT IS SNOWING THIS WEEK. I know that in all likelihood, you’re charging dudes the same amount.

But here it is, right, here’s the thing: hardly any dudes are in this cab office. More women are taking your cabs, because (cis, at least) men do not have the same sense of personal risk going home alone at night after a thing like a party. Most of my male friends rolled home. My boyfriend regularly rolls home when he’s had a few at a party! I’d love to be able to roll home in the same way! But often I don’t feel able to. Especially not since a female acquaintance of mine from the same area was sexually assaulted on public transport less than a year ago. I went past a yellow police SEXUAL ASSAULT poster for weeks after that knowing precisely who it related to.

ALL OF WHICH IS TO SAY THAT when you notice a predominantly female bunch of customers need cabs, and rack up your prices in kneejerk response, on a night when it’s particularly difficult to do anything but take a minicab, and not doing so may result in Judgement and Scrutiny if something goes wrong…  well, guys, what you are doing there is helping create a LONE LADIES: STAY HOME kinda vibe.

I’m not saying that women are more likely to be attacked than men; this would not be true. But there is an atmosphere, a culture that we live in, that frequently suggests that women walking alone at night, especially if they are dressed for a party, are at least partly asking to be attacked and that if they do not take appropriate measures, it is their fault if such a thing should occur. That is the difference. And minicab companies, it seems, who provide Said Measures, rather like to capitalise on that.

As I wait for my cab – which presumably runs on petrol of molten gold! – I’m curbcrawled, basically, by unlicensed cabs, twice. They offer me a cheap way home. £20! £15! No dice.

But the majestic fee for my licensed cab is coming right out of my Christmas overdraft. I wonder how many women are tempted by the riskier option.

Probably quite a few.

In the cab, which is not, ALAS, plated with gold and drawn by a unicorn, my driver’s so annoyed I’ve argued the fare down further to a “really very reasonable” £42, he spends our journey informing me that I should be “grateful” his boss “felt like being nice” to me. Eventually I just slip my headphones into my ears and overlay his voice with a nice Christmassy choir. Much better.

What I really want to do here is offer some positive advice at the end of this post – it’s one of BadRep’s policies to try and go beyond ranting as far as we can, and recommend what you can do with your voice, your money and your time to change things.

I’m a bit stumped here, though.  Maybe there’s a Minicabs Ombudsman Person, or a Price Regulating Committee I can give a shout? I dunno. I’ll have to try to find out.

But don’t hesitate to argue your corner if the little voice in your head reckons you’re being supremely bloody fleeced.

Have a safe Christmas.