About a month ago I emailed both Sainsburys and Tesco, following it up with tweets, about the gendering of magazines. It seemed wrong that New Scientist, Photography, NME, The Economist and Private Eye sat in ‘Men’s Interests’ sections while women had the 3,738 fashion and beauty mags as well as knitting and cooking mags.

Tesco were the first to respond, telling me via tweet that they were passing this up to central management:

It took a while for anything else to happen, but a week later I got an email from Sainsburys saying that where they were refurbishing or creating a new store, they would cease to gender their magazines.

Fabulous. I mean, I would prefer it if they spent the small amount of money printing new labels for the plastic holders on their magazine racks and replaced them all NOW, but that’s because they have a lot of stores, and seeing this every day still makes my head hurt and fear for young girls who go in and subconsciously learn that science and politics are not for them and that they should concentrate on being pretty while cooking.¹

But Tesco still haven’t replied properly. Nothing more except another tweet to BadRep saying management are looking at it. And now, the Everyday Sexism Project (@EverydaySexism on Twitter, and you can also check out the hashtag #everydaysexism) is really helping out – drawing attention to the gendered labels in a local store and retweeting those pressuring @UKTesco to take some form of action.

What would be even better would be for more of us to email them. And while you’re at it, email Sainsburys too and ask them to put their hand in their pocket to start making the changes now, so we don’t have to look at this sexism everyday. It’s just not good enough.

• To contact Tesco, go here. For Sainsburys, here.

1. Ed’s tiny note: Or indeed the boys who learn to compartmentalise “knitting”, for example, as “for girls” – certainly some proud male knitters have commented on this site in the past!

And if you have a guest post brewing in your brain, you know what to do: pitch us at [email protected].

Image: Flickr user Toban Black (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tobanblack/)

The Problem

Dear Tesco and Sainsburys,

Can you please cease categorising The Economist, New Scientist, Private Eye, and the Spectator as ‘Men’s Interest’ magazines? I think you’ll find all genders are interested in politics and business. You are perpetuating the myth that women only care about (because they are valued for) their beauty.

While I accept (but hate) that a large proportion of women read Cosmo and Marie Claire and Good Housekeeping, I think that a large proportion also watch the news, vote, work, and may be interested in reading The Economist from time to time. You don’t segregate papers (although papers themselves, with their Femail sections, and Style sections, also start pushing my buttons). Why the shit have you determined that certain topics are not for the eyes of women?

Women still suffer unequal pay way before they think about maternity leave, and this is part of the same problem – you are saying that business and politics (something we are all involved in, one way or another) is purely the domain of men.

Sort this out immediately, please. It’s patronising and misogynistic. Actually, can you please also remove film, photography, game, cars, nature and music mags from the same category while you are at it, as that’s also inaccurate as well? Unless you think women can’t like music, cars, photography, video games, nature and film? I mean, it’s not as if you really think only men are interested in those topics, right? You have to admit that, say, there have been some female musicians, and some women actually enjoy going to the cinema and hey, Diane Arbus existed, and gosh, there are female commuters on the roads.

I’d stick with just Men’s Health if I were you, and even that’s shaky.

Thanks,

Women in the UK

What to do?

To complain to Tesco, please go here. For Sainsburys, here. If we get enough people complaining, maybe they’ll actually listen and change their stores. I mean, if a little girl can get the name of a loaf of bread changed at Sainsbury’s, surely they’re amenable to listening to vindicated complaints by women who are tired of being told to not use our brains and instead just look pretty. I mean, bread name change by photogenic small child must have meant something rather than being innocuous PR in a time of recession, right?

Boom! Progress from Sainsburys!

From: Sainsburys
To: Lizzie

Dear Lizzie

Thank you for your email and suggestion that we reconsider the signage used to categorise magazines in our stores. I understand you feel our current method is dated and we certainly do not want to imply the magazines are gender specific.

Up until now we have used information from publishers, who identify the target demographic for their magazines. We have organised the magazines on our shelves accordingly. We appreciate the points you have made, and have undertaken a review of the signage we use in store.

I am pleased to say that going forward, our magazines will be shown by genre and they will not have a gender prefix. There will not be an immediate change to the magazine sections in all our stores as this will be a gradual roll out replacing the existing signage. This should also address the grammar issues that you kindly brought to our attention.

We appreciate you taking the time to contact us, giving us the opportunity to look into your concerns. We look forward to seeing you in store again soon.

So that just leaves Tesco, from whom, as we go to press, Lizzie is still waiting to hear. Bad form, guys. (Although what Sainsburys mean by “grammar issues” is eluding us slightly here at BR Towers. This is a SEXISM ISSUE.)

Time to get on it, readers! To the Tesco feedback page, one and all.

• Thanks to Lizzie for making a noise and sending us her progress. Have you had a Customer Service Breakthrough or Problem lately? Get in touch and tell us all about it!

With a history spanning three centuries, Tatler is Establishment to its very core. It sells itself to advertisers as having ‘the wealthiest readership in the UK’ and accordingly peddles luxury goods and the accompanying lifestyle to Society dahlings and their postulant doppelgangers. The magazine worships the higher reaches of British class structures, fawning over those who through their money, their fame or their postcode can be considered ‘society’ and celebrating an incongruous, archaic social order.

Tatler seems an unlikely champion of diversity. The world it represents is one of deep privilege in which abide the casts of Jilly Cooper novels: men of title or profession and their charity-supporting wives; women in Jaeger gilets and and twentysomethings who order £19 martinis; the worst upper class caricatures made flesh for their own amusement and forwarded as role models for the aspirant gaggles. But editor Kate Reardon has noticed a problem: gay men, she says, are widely represented in Society but gay women are not, and she’s going to do something about it.

Her reasoning is thus: lady-lovers make people ‘either titillated or a little bit frightened’ – a conclusion I can only assume was arrived at with a sense of deep profundity at 3am and through the bottom of a cocktail glass – and claiming that parents are thrilled when their sons come out but embarrassed when their daughters do. Lesbians, she says, have never been accepted by High Society, a fact that Virginia Woolf, Natalie Clifford Barney and Betty Carstairs apparently missed the memo on. The way to address this problem, obviously, is to find some sapphic sisters and do a feature on them. Choose wisely, though. None too butch, none too… y’know… dykey, and if they’re over a size 12 then headshots only.

The fact is that she may well be right, but the issue is not one of sexuality but of gender – lesbians don’t have the status and visibility of gay men because women don’t have the status and visibility of men. A magazine which targets an overwhelmingly female audience (around 80%) is a routine place to celebrate women, and putting a handful of queer ladies in the spotlight is never going to be a bad thing.

We shouldn’t shy away from acknowledging lesbians and lesbianism, claimed Reardon in an interview on Woman’s Hour, and with this effort she’s ‘just bringing it up’; it’s up to us to talk about it. Noble enough, I suppose. The problem is that Tatler isn’t exactly bashful when it comes to creating a sensation when sales are falling (Anthea Turner naked but for a python, anyone?) and according to Janet Street-Porter in the Daily Mail that’s exactly what’s happening right now. With a drop in readership of more than 20% in the last year, and 25% within its target demographic, it’s easy to believe that Tatler is just trying to pretty up the sales figures. And why not? Vanity Fair saw a boost in audience with its infamous KD Lang/Cindy Crawford cover in 1994 just as defunct soap Brookside did with its Beth/Margaret kiss the same year. The mid-nineties may have been the height of lesbian chic, but the same trick might well work today. However easy it is to think that we’ve moved on in this post-Queer As Folk, post-Ellen world, the promise of a bit of girl-on-girl still sets the collective knees of the nation a-tremblin’.

The feature in Tatler is fluff, but what else did we expect? Seven fashion-plate photographs and an ad for a Belgravia-based lesbian and gay introduction agency make what the cover assures us is the definitive portfolio – though seven is not the definitive portfolio of anything, unless it’s colours of the rainbow – and takes up fewer pages than cover star Alice Eve. Whoever sent out the press release dubbing this ‘the lesbian issue’ was clearly overstating things a bit. Each photo is accompanied by a brief, soundbitey blurb in which such insights as favorite colour are revealed. It’s an exercise in mediocrity. I mean, they’ve managed to make Sue Perkins dull. How is that even possible?

Tatler’s website offers ‘behind the scenes at the lesbian shoot’ – a startling prospect given the physical magazine features a what to wear to a [game] shoot guide. As well as vaguely hinting that Tatler staffers get their jollies shooting wild lesbians in the Home Counties at the weekend, the dodgy syntax in this headline treats the women in the same terms that it does its fashion: the Marc Jacobs shoot; the unfathomably expensive sarong shoot; the lesbian shoot. These women are modelling an accessory, and it is lesbianism. Instead of celebrating gay women, Tatler has narrowed the playing field – as this sort of faux-diverse tokenism often does – by offering a blueprint for acceptable lesbianism, a whitewashed ideal for the rest of us to not quite live up to.

A black tie dinner (dubbed the ‘lesbian ball’) hosted by Tatler in celebration of this barrier-smashing seven-pics-and-an-advert brought 200 women, of all sexualities, together for an evening of networking and masturbatory self-congratulation which, while undoubtedly productive for those involved, did precisely nothing for the women (generally) and lesbians and bi women (specifically) who could actually do with a leg up. This was not a benefit for LGBT charities. It was not the launch event for a campaign seeking to address actual inequality. No speeches were made about why the event was held. It was a party. Just a party. For the most privileged group of women in the UK and with a guest list so diverse that knicker obsessive Mary Portas was invited even though she’s trade. According to one nameless attendee over on themostcake, a spiffing time was had by all, and though the photos don’t show it, I like to think the evening ended with a load of drunken women kicking off their Louboutins and singing ‘I am Woman’ at high volume in the taxi queue.

Tatler had an opportunity to do some grandstanding and they nibbled on canapes instead. Radical.

• Libby earned her feminist stripes interning for the Fawcett Society where she was horrified by most of the stories she heard. An accidental activist, she is a regular contributor to BCN , the UK’s only 100% bisexual publication. Her latest project, TreasuryIslands, is the home of her other passion – children’s literature.Libby is very proud of her bad reputation.

For those for whom this blog is a First Foray into feminist websites, what is a Ladyfest? Well, they happen worldwide – here’s Wikipedia’s entry. Succinctly, they’re community-based arts and culture festivals focussed on women creating culture and campaigning for social change. The first one was in 2000 in the US; today Ladyfests go on all over the world. This one, my first, was the decade-marker!

Sarah J, Jenni and I pitched up on the Saturday afternoon with “Rest of the Fest” tix. I went for a wander in the stalls of the Lady Garden (you read that correctly). Hence, without further ado:

FIVE THINGS I FOUND AT LADYFEST

Fat Quarter: my issue 1. Glamorous brown BR Towers carpet not included. Sorry.

1. FAT QUARTER MAGAZINE

My friends, this thing is seriously badass. Give it your time. You won’t be disappointed.

• WHAT IS IT? Zines and self-produced magazines are a rich tradition in feminism, and they all come out to play for festivals. This was no exception – some doing the old school riot grrrl photocopied look, and some glossier efforts. This one, firmly in the latter category, really stood out. Only two issues in since its 2009 inception, it’s beautifully designed, full colour, and fun. I swear, if BadRep was a print magazine, we’d be aspiring to be like this.
• WHY SHOULD I PAY ATTENTION? BECAUSE. LOOK AT IT. YOU WILL SEE WHY. Someone I spotted on the BadRep Twitter feed pronounced them the rightful heirs to the gap left by Subtext, and I reckon they weren’t wrong.
• WHERE CAN I GET MORE? There’s a website here , they’re on Facebook here and editor Katie’s tweeting here.

FQ1 inside spread (I picked the comics page to show off. We're geeks.)

2. FOR BOOK’S SAKE

Like reading? Interested in feminism? You’re welcome.

• WHAT IS IT? In their own words, For Books’ Sake is an intelligent but irreverent website featuring books by and for independent women, including news, reviews, features and interviews. Focusing mainly on female authors (both upcoming and established), we review classic and modern books across both fiction and non-fiction. What really brought the coolness of this project home to me, though, was the moment I rounded a corner at Ladyfest and found myself standing smack bang in front of FBS writer Jess Haigh’s Travelling Suitcase Library, which is, essentially, a kind of Sisterhood of the Travelling Books – she hosts pop-up library sessions where the curious, interested and bookloving can meet, swap books, simply take books away (no membership necessary – it’s all done on trust), or talk books.
• WHY SHOULD I PAY ATTENTION? Because it’s a heartwarming project with serious soul, an open-arms approach to all sorts of writing from Penguin Classics to teen fiction, and an ethos of bonding people through books. Over the desk, Jess spotted me covertly eyeing Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room in a “man, I really should read that at some point” way, smiled, and said, “That book right there? The reason I became a feminist”. That caught my attention. Before long, Women’s Room and I were heading home together. Cheers!
• WHERE CAN I GET MORE? See above, or catch them on Twitter.

3. PAMFLET

So what if everybody’s already heard of this zine. I am fashionably late to the party and you can all deal with it.

• WHAT IS IT? I didn’t want to write a post about the stalls of Ladyfest without including one full-on, photocopied, more old school-stylin’ zine. That zine – and choosing was hard – is Pamflet, who are a “post-everything london girl-zine made by anna-marie, phoebe & nick // photocopied pink n black since 2005“.
• WHY SHOULD I PAY ATTENTION? Because it’s good to have zines in your life. It’s good to put heart into your causes, hobbies, fandoms, to make your own soapboxes out of sticky tape, photocopier drums and internet. It’s the same vein of creativity-meets-sharing that leads people to make mixtapes (and if there’s not a post by me on the sheer joy of mixtaping at some point in the life of this blog, I’m Anne Widdecombe).
• WHERE CAN I GET MORE? Here (blog), here (facebook) and here (Twitter).

4. SHE MAKES WAR

Well, this one’s a bit of a cheat. You’ll have noted that we didn’t actually have tickets to the musical side of Ladyfest, BUT CONSIDER THIS PLUG MY ATONEMENT, for She Makes War, one of the acts that played, is awesome. And I’m making some noise about her here because while she wasn’t on a stall, I was blurting about her to Jenni while we were browsing the stalls, and besides, the Ladyfest buzz has since pushed me to buy her album, and that is what we blog editors call A TENUOUS LINK AND THEREFORE VIABLE. Yes.

• WHAT IS IT? Great music.
• WHY SHOULD I PAY ATTENTION? She’s already sailing a soupstream of soundbites like “special brand of gloom punk-pop”, “grimy angst-pop”, and so on, and you know why that is, guys? It’s because she’s REALLY GOOD. Fans of PJ Harvey, Melissa Auf der Maur et al should particularly consider applying, but I’ll just leave this taster-trailer-thinger here.
• WHERE CAN I GET MORE? Official site! Minisite for album Disarm here! Twitter! Interviewy chat with Wears The Trousers online mag!

5. EDUCATION FOR CHOICE

One of the few talks all three of us made it to, so I’m rounding this off with their call to action.

• WHAT IS IT? “The only UK-based educational charity dedicated to enabling young people to make informed choices about pregnancy and abortion.“
• WHY SHOULD I PAY ATTENTION? Because the amount of bogus “unbiased information on abortion” services out there is growing like mould in a petri, along with that worrying US trend for aggressive pickets like this. Sarah C tweeted just as we left the talk to say that she’d passed one herself whilst out in central London. Do not want.
• WHERE CAN I GET MORE? Find out more here (or read yesterday’s post by Sarah J here).

It’s buried beneath a ton of heteronormative guff of course, and qualified with asides that stab at your gendersense, but I believe it is possible to extract nuggets of common sense from the pages of glossy fashion shoots and ‘What is your spirit handbag?’ quizzes.

So, here is my attempt to rework “12 Things I Wish I’d Known About Love A Decade Ago”, which featured in a recent issue of a popular women’s mag.

They're hearts.

1) Never underestimate the importance of being ‘interesting’.

You owe it to yourself (and the men you date) to have a life of your own. So find some hobbies. In my mid-twenties, I made a guy my hobby. When he dumped me, partly because he felt smothered, I had to get a life… Now, when I’m on a date and I read the menu in an Italian accent, or I smile when I talk about my ballet class, guys really eat it up.

I say:

Never underestimate the importance of being interesting.

Sigh. Where do I even start with this one? Don’t be interesting for ‘the men you date’, be interesting for the sake of the rest of humanity. It’ll be better for you too, I promise – it irritates me when I think of all the hours I spent a decade ago trying to look beautiful when I could have been doing things I actually enjoyed instead. Being interesting lasts longer than beauty and it will win you friends as well as lovers.

2) There’s a fine line between teasing a man and criticising him.

I used to fall into this bad habit of extreme flirting by teasing. One time, I told an older guy who’d had a skiing accident that he was ‘damaged goods’, and I’d need to trade him in for a ‘younger model’. He looked at me like I’d just kicked his puppy…

I say:

There’s a fine line between teasing someone and criticising them.

I can see the sense of this one, I’ve fallen into a similar habit myself. The right kind of teasing is plenty fun of course, but if you’re in any kind of relationship with someone then the very least you can do is be careful with their feelings.

3) You will probably never fully understand men. So just try to understand yourself.

I say:

You will probably never fully understand people. But try to understand yourself.

If you’re feeling up to it you can try and imagine what someone may be thinking or feeling. And if you’re ready for Advanced Interpersonal Skills you can even ask them.

4) Knowing how to cook: helpful.

I see now that it would have won me points. When I was 21, I said to my flatmate, “I’ve bought a bag of tortellini. How do I boil water?” She told me “Make it bubble.” And, for years, that was all I knew how to do. If I’d had any idea how much men savour a woman who cooks – even if they’re great cooks themselves – I would’ve asked for more tips.

I say:

Knowing how to cook more than the author of this article did at 21: essential.

OK, EVERYONE who is physically and mentally capable of doing so should know how to boil water. Not so men can ‘savour’ it, but so you have some basic life skills. Jeez.

5) Your wants and needs are just as important as his.

And if you don’t express them because you think that doing so will scare him away, then you’re saying you don’t count as much as he does.

I say:

Your wants and needs are just as important as your partner’s (or partners’)

And if you don’t express them because you think that doing so will scare them away, then you’re saying you don’t count as much as they do.

(See what I did there? Fun with pronouns!)

6) We see what we want to see (and ignore the bad signs)

It’s… possible to convince yourself that a guy who is acting distant and cold is doing so because he’s overwhelmed by love. But he isn’t; he’s acting distant and cold because he is distant and cold. Wish I’d known that.

I say:

We see what we want to see (and ignore the bad signs)

True, I think. You can convince yourself of virtually anything if you want it badly enough, or the truth is too painful to admit. In my experience you will go on believing it until something shakes you out of it but that’s not very advice-y. So, um: try and be honest with yourself and get a second opinion from someone you trust. And eat lots of fruit and veg.

7) Things change once you’re naked.

This one truly would have changed my life if I’d known it back when I started having sex: sleeping with him doesn’t give you power. It’s not sleeping with him that does. Power to decide how quickly things happen; power to make him want you desperately; power to keep your clothes on if you so choose.

I say:

Have sex when everyone involved is ready.

… whether that’s after you’ve been married for 20 years or 30 seconds after you lock eyes across a crowded bus stop. And if you don’t feel you have a say in how quickly things happen, or that you can choose to keep your clothes on, then dear god don’t sleep with this person (unless it’s in that ‘ooh I fancy you so much I’ve lost control but actually I haven’t really’ way). Those things are up to you anyway, you don’t need to bargain for them.

8) Being worshipped isn’t all that.

You’ll go nuts if he’s absolutely devoted. So let him have a boys’ night or throw himself into work.

I say:

Being worshipped can get pretty boring. Unless that’s your thing.

Once all your insecurities have been soothed by someone who adores your every atom you’ll probably find it gets dull having someone who will never challenge you. Though of course if you’re looking for a slave then hey, have fun.

9) How much men will talk about marriage.

I’ve heard hypothetical wedding plans from several men I’ve been involved with – sometimes on the first date! Yet I’ve never been married. Why do guys tease so? Simple: even honest men like to tell you what they think you want to hear… So don’t indulge in wedding daydreams; it’s not worth the clouded perspective.

I say:

If you want to get married then wait til you find someone you actually want to marry and ask them. If they say yes they probably want to marry you as well. If you can’t find anyone you want to marry that wants to marry you then I would recommend not getting married.

Got that? Can we stop discussing it now?

10) Don’t be cynical.

These days, I try not to roll my eyes at Public Displays of Affection, or join ‘all men are crap’ conversations. Bitterness is unattractive.

I say:

Be realistic. Don’t be sexist.

Don’t join ‘all men are crap’ conversations. They’re as stupid as ‘all women are crap’ conversations and they won’t fix anything. And I wouldn’t worry about faking mindless cheery optimism all the time lest eligible men think you’re a poisonous old hag – turns out plenty of people don’t mind bitterness and in fact it can become a satisfying shared hobby.

11) Sometimes, guys flirt with you because it makes them feel good about themselves.

(Hey, we do it too.) This is also the ‘aha!’ explanation for the men who asked for your number but didn’t call. Idiots.

I say:

Sometimes people flirt because it makes them feel good about themselves.

In other news: sometimes people don’t mean what they say. If they are wearing a Slytherin scarf or an eye-patch you should be particularly careful.

12) Don’t compare yourself to your friends.

Some of them will settle down before you. Mine have been getting married steadily for the past decade. At some point, I started to feel different, and that was a new and uncomfortable feeling for me. Rather than get anxious about it, I’ve tried to remind myself that it’s not a race. Even if you’ve always been first in buying a flat or landing your dream career, you could be the last in marrying.

I say:

Don’t compare yourself to your friends, or to people on TV, in Tesco or in women’s magazines.

Because you’re different people, remember? They have this habit of doing different things, at different times and for different reasons. And more importantly, beware of women’s magazine articles that insinuate that marriage is the goal of everyone’s life, and that if there are no nuptial omens in your tea leaves then you should feel anxious. Bullshit.