Holiday hangover

Quote of the Day:

The Pussycat Dolls do not represent feminism. It’s consumerism appropriating the rhetoric of feminism to sell sexism to young women.

Courtesy of thefword.org.uk

I’m not actually hungover – the title refers to my inability to concentrate on work after my week off. I’m on my fifth coffee and it doesn’t seem to be helping. I’m also worried about my cat who is having lung tests today.

The clocks changed so we have evenings again. Like any change I am desperately hoping it will stimulate productivity. One day I will accept that only I can change my activity levels but today is not that day.

I’ve got my feminist hat on

First and foremost today, I am wearing my feminist hat. Now that I’ve said it twice I might have to get a real hat. Quote of the day: 

“Masculinity is what phallotarians do to keep women feminized. Femininity is what women do to keep from being pathologized, criminalized, ostracized, jailed, raped, and butchered”

 – curtesy of Twisty at http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com

This quote puts into words something I think I have long had an intuition about. Knowing that if I don’t display an appropriate level of culturally sanctioned feminity when out and about people could stare or make comments. If that sounds daft or extreme I agree, but that doesn’t stop it happening. And I’m lucky that that’s only one end of the scale that leads ultimately to violence.

Is it wrong that I’m looking forward to reaching an age where I will no longer be considered fuckable so that I will no longer be subject (object) of the public gaze?

In other news: I have been a total slacker with my writing. I wonder if I should start writing something else; another major project or something that exists only for me. The short stories I wrote last year were what I thought a short story should be. I want to be absurd, ridiculous, but when I sit down to do it I get blank page anxiety. I bought a book called “Gasoline” by Dame Darcy, a visually pleasing work with lots of illustrations. This is the kind of thing I love, so why am I not writing it? Because silliness is inappropriate? Because it won’t win any prizes?

I have not been wasting my time though. It has been gorgeously sunny ( I can scarcely believe winter is over, I’m sure it only snowed last week and christmas was the week before). I spent half the weekend reading in the garden amongst my swaying laundry and cats who like to poke their faces through the back of the bench.

Woe (times are changing)

I’m in a deep, dark, emo funk. It’s bad. It’s a blend of recession blues, personal dissatisfaction and general disgust for humanity.

The recession may see me joining the ranks of the boomerang generation I fought so hard to avoid (oh who am I kidding? I sat pretty and was glad of my lucky escape) and moving back to my parents house. This would only be tolerable if I could keep my job and work online.

I am personally dissatisfied with my person. The blues have been killing the delicate orchid of my motivation and every act is becoming a chore. If left to my own devices, with no watchers or responsibilities, I am certain I would be living in a pile of fetid blankets, reading book after book, eating from a can and refusing to shower so I didn’t have to go outside.

This is actually a pretty good mentality for me to start my novel redrafting. A little drop of self-loathing is good for my creative process; stops me getting too distracted.

General disgust for humanity is not something I like to feel but it’s almost always there. There always seems to be something: like the latest reports on the insanely high level of domestic violence, or overhearing people talk about the criteria they simply must have for their second car. Or their beach holiday (hmm, Mauritius or Dubai?).  And that thing about the Brazilian girl (age 9) who really shouldn’t have had an abortion (of twins) because now God won’t love her.

Anyway…

I went to see Watchmen at the weekend. My favourite part was the opening montage, soundtracked by “the Times, They are a-Changing” where they all started so young and happy and full of pride, optimism and self-belief and gradually got torn apart. Despite having read the comic and knowing all their fates I still had a tear in my eye when I saw Silhouette and her girlfriend murdered. That montage was a high-calorie viewing experience in itself.

Sometimes I look at people and think they’re hurting. It’s not true though; they’re just waiting for someone to talk to.

Politics scares me

And not because it’s complicated, or too much to understand. It scares me because of the way I look at certain politicians, see terrifying monsterbeasts, and then see loads of people loving and praising said monsterbeasts. It would be really easy to use Sarah Palin as an example here, Mrs “you can strip mine as many Alaskan national parks as you like as long as you birth that rape baby” but as I’m not American and have no voting rights in that country I’m going to leave that there.

What really concerns me, naturally, is my own country and the horrible certainty that we will see a Conservative government. I admit I see David Cameron as a monsterbeast. He’s all slippery and shiny on the outside, and uses a sneering tone of voice that implies that you’re the one saying something stupid. I have a fairly keen sense of when people are being insincere and Mr Cameron literally makes my skin crawl with how much of an act everything he does and says is. He’s just doing it for the media attention; why don’t people see that?

The man is a hypocrit. He claims to care about the environment then charters a plane to visit the arctic. He claims to be against the “social engineering” of the current government then talks of his plans to encourage more people to marry. He claims it’s the public’s own stupid fault for being overweight and yet how many in his cabinet have a BMI if under 25? I don’t understand how in the face of his obvious snobbish distaste for the British public he is still so well-liked. Or is this the type of person people feel should be in power? Is a hypocritical, snobbish media tart what people expect from a Prime Minister? If it is that is a damn depressing thought…

Die Pink Patch Die

I am so sick of seeing the PinkPatch adverts, on my email, Facebook and other websites. I don’t want to look at a skinny torso in cheap underwear. It irritates me. This is a part of my body I store under an array of delightful clothing, occasionally displayed to people who know me well enough to judge me on my personal qualities. I resent being encouraged to compare my torso and find it wanting. I resent the glaring implications. Is my abdomen this flat? Can I see my hip bones? Are the only curves on my body the ones that curve inward?

No. But I don’t hate my body. Fuck off PinkPatch for implying I should.

I know this is old news but godfuckingdamnit when will the damn thing fuck off.

Superiority complex

My personal privileges as a white middle class UK citizen were brought to light this week by two very different encounters. The first was when a large group of black teenage boys wanted to get on the bus, weren’t allowed, then one of them sabotaged the bus. Although sabotaging a bus is rarely the best cause of action I sympathise with the boys. They are one of the most despised groups in our society, and one that it seems socially acceptable to despise since all the press about gangs, knife and gun crime. They were probably correct when they claimed the bus driver was being racist. I can appreciate the driver was intimidated by the number of them and only wanted to admit some to reduce the chance of rowdiness, but the fact that they could see there was space for them all to fit antagonised them. Unfortunately they did get a little rowdy then, proving in the minds of the passengers what they had suspected all along.

It’s actually that part that happened after that I had most problem with. The boys were not a gang, they were a football team on their way to practice. Despite that the disruntled passengers complained the driver should have done something sooner, they shouldn’t have been allowed onto another bus, and one of them called the police. These were all middle class white people, all very annoyed that their bus had been messed with. The guy who called the police actually shouted at the rest of us for not standing up with him when he confronted one of them (he’s obviously been reading too many opinion pieces on the Independent website). No one spoke up for the kids, but I guess there could have been some secret sympathisers.

I understand why they feel safer in large groups now, with so many suspicious glances.

Not that I understand their entire lives, obviously, though I do think hating teenagers is one of the first signs of aging.

My second encounter was with my new friend Neighbour. Neighbour lives next door (duh) and gets the same bus as me in the morning, giving us the opportunity for a five minute chat before the bus arrives. He is about 60, a working class Brummie who builds staircases for shops. I, being middle class and highly educated, assumed that I was so very much more clever than Neighbour, until we had a chat about books. He is a sci-fi fanatic and loves to read at any given opportunity, though for unspecified reasons (probably since he started living in pokey bedsits) he hasn’t read a book for 3 years. I could not allow this so I lent him A Brave New World and Oryx and Crake the next day: the only sci-fi books I could find at short notice. He was most pleased, and promised to lend me a book of his when another friend returns it, about a half-human half-martian and featuring philosophical discussion on the value of marriage. That is a book I would like to read. Which surprised me. Because I do have huge prejudices in the way I see the world, and I judged Neighbour on his appearance and class and his current main hobby of drinking Carling.

I am glad Neighbour befriended me, he has helped me see flaws in myself that I can address.

BREAKING NEWS

If you were given the opportunity to ask David Cameron a question about the housing crisis what would it be?

This post sponsored by Panorama who emailed me this morning

Let’s play a game

Last night I had a more pleasant dream; quite literally about fluffy kittens. My cat’s kitten had a kitten of her own, more of a furball than an animal, tabby and adorable. I woke up thinking “aah” and then “weird that cat looks can skip a generation” and then “my cats have been fixed and I’m clearly developing catlady variant CJD” and then when I opened my eyes “omfg there is cat arse on my face”

Yesterday was a sad day. First because I had to go to the bank. Second because I hadn’t realised my standing order for rent had expired and despite fixing it and everything being ok now I don’t like to inconvenience my landlord. Not only because I like to pretend that my finances are in order but also because he’s a genuinely nice guy and not technically a landlord at all, just a person who happens to own a house. Third because of the whole British Gas thing(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7533389.stm) I’ve had to cancel half of my charity subscriptions so that I’ll be able to pay the bill next quarter. Fourth because I got rained on on the way back to the office.

Apparently the efficiency of my office stands at 52 per cent, a statistic our lady and mistress has been ordered not to repeat (I heard it as a dirty rumour and will assume from the glumness in that area of the room that it is true). This is not to say that we are all slackers, we work when we get assignments but we’re only given projects half the time. This probably stems from our content requestors being slow, apathetic or useless. Now though our low productivity is being secretly, gossiply blamed for the summer BBQ being cancelled and the lack of a pay review. Oh well. At least I have a job and time to spam the blogosphere.

I have invented a new game. It’s called Daily Fail Bingo. In each day’s publishings you must look out for the following:

• A photo of a woman in a Bikini
• A photo of a woman in a Bikini with no negative references to her weight/cellulite
• A negative reference to abortion
• An article about RealMenz/how womenz are destroying teh menz
• An article about an aspect of womanhood that puts you in mind of the fifties
• A lament by a femail journalist on how feminism has betrayed her
• A positive view of motherhood and family values
• A pseudo-science article about gender

I imagine you should be able to tick these off every day, the only real challenge being the second one – helpfully covered this week by Helen Mirren.

I suppose this is actually quite a bad idea as I shouldn’t be encouraging their web traffic, I just find is fascinating that there are so many sly attacks on women in virtually every article.

The Bridget Jones post

So, having a rant about Jane Austen adaptations the other day garnered some interest from www.austenblog.com. I’d like to explain my thoughts around this but I have a feeling they will get terribly out of control and meander all over the place (my train of thought at the best of times being a wobbly shopping trolley full of impulse buys and reduced counter items). My plan is to number the sections and pretend it’s a form of organisation.

1) Jane Austen. My feelings on Austen’s novels are similar to the ones I have for Harry Potter: so many people love them already that I needn’t make too much of an effort to. Unlike Harry Potter I have read most of Austen’s books, my favourite being Persuasion, but I’m not about to have a fangasm by reading it over and over when there are many, many other books also worthy of my attention. Most of my Austen books are actually on loan to my mother at the moment in the hope of improving her taste…

2) Bridget Jones: the novel. This was not in itself a bad book though at the time it came out I was having a heavy aversion to “chick lit” (I think I’ll have to make a separate post about chick lit sometime) so I resented having to study it in school when I naively felt I should be studying “real literature”. It turns out on closer inspection that virtually every plot device in BJD was lifted from Pride and Prejudice and if I knew where that essay was I’d type it out and post it.

I found Bridget to be a stagnant character. She was always frustrated and never achieved anything. One thing she was aiming for was weight loss but even when she reached her goal weight it so happened that a few people said she looked ill that day so she gave it up and put the weight back on. I can appreciate her appeal as a character who didn’t really know what she wanted and just sort of muddled through, and that despite her screw-ups she didn’t do too badly in the balance (perhaps reflected by her tiny scratchcard profit over the year). She is essentially a mediocre person, but that’s ok because we all are. In that light I completely understand the book’s success.

3) Bridget Jones: the movie. The movie character was quite different to the book character. To make her more universally lovable they turned her into a bumbling fool. She was no longer mediocre, she was spectacular in her failure. I can’t remember a single thing that goes right for her other than having sex. If she had had one success, just one little triumph to cling to, if she’d even just been adequately good at her job, I would be able to forgive most of the rest of the movie. Sadly she didn’t, so I can’t, but that just means I don’t like the movie not that the movie itself was bad.

We all screw up, I get it. I’ve worn odd shoes to work, I thrown up in embarrassing places, dated awful men and forgotten to pay my rent. But I don’t accept that as my identity like movie Jones seems to. I’ve also got two degrees, do fairly well at work and make a mean vegetable curry. Really this leads me to my final Jones section:

4) Bridget Jones: the yardstick. This is the Bridget Jones incarnation that makes me shudder. The book was fine, the movie was blah, but the legacy genuinely distresses me. Bridget Jones has become the standard by which women are measured. The yardstick doesn’t do the character justice, not even the movie version, as it has reduced her to an even simpler form: a typical woman.

I resent that Bridget Jones has been chosen as the representative of womankind. I do not fail at everything I attempt; I do not fall over all the time; I do not go out looking like a tit without realising (mostly); I do not hear a clock in my head; I do not care about my size; I do not think that having a man is the be all and end all; I definitely don’t think it’s appropriate to start thinking about marriage 2 months after you start dating. And Bridget didn’t necessarily even do all of these things, they’ve just been added to the yardstick.

You can be a bumbling fool sometimes, but I don’t want people assuming that if they see me do it once that is all I am. The attributes above are not bad in context: Femme falls over all the time and I’m pretty certain she hears a clock in her head but she is a well-rounded capable person. In the same vein I act really childishly with my partner but it doesn’t mean I have the intellectual capacity of a five year old. If people/media were making Bridget Jones comparisons in relation to her character it wouldn’t be so bad, but it looks to me like an easy way of saying “You’re such a big dumbfuck, but we like you that way so keep doing it”.

The Bridget Jones Label is frequently abused to box women into a restricted catagory. I don’t know how easy it would be to shake that label. It especially bothered me when people (including the teacher leading my class when studying this) labelled themselves as Bridget Joneses, because love her or hate her is there anyone out there who respects her?

PS:

In case you thought the whole ‘Bridget Jones as a yardstick’ thing was kind of over:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1038427/Meet-Midget-Jones-Georgias-hailed-Hollywood-Keira-Knightley.html

Yeah I know they are stuck back in their imaginary golden age but they are widely read and perpetuate the BJ standard.