Context Is(n't) Everything

Just found this in the Draft folder. Many moons out of date, and clearly unfinished, but I actually didn't mind my own voice in it, which is rare enough that I'm going to publish it anyway.

So, that Suzanne Moore, eh? She wrote a little article in the New Statesman, and all hell has broken loose. There are accusations of Islamophobia and language policing, there is sympathy from Caitlin Moran and Frankie Boyle, and there are defensive responses from Moore herself as well as the Julies Burchill and  Bindel (two people that everyone wants on their team). There are also a lot of responses from within the blogosphere; some are thoughtful, and some, like this one, are less so.

I think we can all agree that the attempts by Burchill and Bindel are nothing more than disgusting hate speech doubling down on Moore's own exposed hatred of transsexuality. For me, though, it's the subtler support that is the most upsetting.

I don't want to pick on Stella Duffy, but her argument seems to boil down to her feeling sad that she is now scared to say "trans", even though she ought to be exempt from criticism because 20 years ago she wrote a "lovely, loving, sympathetic trans character". She seems to be proud of the fact that she, a professional LGBT-focussed writer (by which I mean LG-focussed), wrote a trans character twenty years ago. Is this like the I-have-black-friends approach? Or its lesser-know cousin, the my-best-friend-in-nursery-school-was-black? As if the longer-ago something happened, the better your claim to progressiveness is. I see where Duffy's trying to go with this, but really she's just highlighting the vast disconnect between how much insight she has into transgender issues and how much insight she thinks she has. That in itself speaks volumes, and doesn't even take into account the fact that Duffy claims to be "the only person [she] know[s]" who has written such a character. I don't even know where to start with that. Suffice to say, Duffy is not the expert that she thinks she is. And perhaps she ought to hesitate before speaking on trans issues, particularly when "speaking on trans issues" means "coming to the defence of an unapologetic transphobe".

Now, for a more nuanced take on the issue, take a look at Pissers vs Wankers: The state of left-wing feminist debate?. I'm going to throw myself into the quoted circle jerk here, and to hell with the consequences. Here's a quote from glosswitch's worryingly relevant post:

"I wouldn’t have known the word “transsexual” alone could offend. I might have used it – I probably have – in a different context. Now I won’t. But if I were called out on it, I might have thrown a strop."

I think the point about this is that although the word 'transsexual' alone is often used in a purely descriptive (although outdated) manner, one's use of it can be something of a red flag, pointing to worrying attitudes towards trans people (almost always, and not at all coincidentally, trans women).

Partly this is because of the fact that it's outdated: generally, if one has engaged with trans issues at all over the past decade, one knows that the word "transsexual" now has a much more specific meaning and isn't used as a catch-all, having been replaced (ish) by transgender. So I generally assume that if someone uses "transsexual" as a catch-all or a punchline, they haven't bothered to engage with current trans issues and debates, which can be (although isn't always) a red flag.

Secondly, Moore's use of it ("a Brazilian transsexual") is indicative of some nasty attitudes behind the flippancy. For me, using "a transsexual" is unpleasant (like calling people "gays" or "blacks"), and the word "Brazilian" simply reinforces the idea that Moore has only one stock image of transgender people, and it just happens to be the most outdated, racist one of them all (bar perhaps going with the Thai version of the same 'joke').

And the point about context is important. The word "transsexual" is innocently descriptive in certain contexts, and is wildly offensive in others. An article about gender and feminism and the beauty myth and anger is not an innocent context for a throwaway one-liner about "a Brazilian transsexual". 

In my opinion, people's ears pricked up when they caught that usage of a word that isn't always on its own offensive, but can be when used in a certain way. Those of us who have to be alert to transphobia may have picked up on those little signals, and prodded a little, and unhappily discovered the seething pit of anger and disgust and condescension that lies beneath. That, sadly, isn't uncommon. It's like hearing the word "homosexual": inoffensive in itself, but often indicative of offensive attitudes.

Context is everything, but some words create their own context, and use of them can be a handy warning that someone is about to blow your mind with their factually inaccurate, morally indefensible "opnions". They'll probably also be quick to tell you that everyone is entitled to their opinion, and that haven't you heard of free speech?

On Choice

I have been through so many stages of Will I/Won't I on my desire to (not?) have kids. I have thought about so many potential situations of accidentally getting pregnant, and what I'd do, depending on my circumstances at the time (who, if anyone, I'd be seeing at the time, how much money I'd have, where I'd be living, if I had a decent job or a job at all. Could I do it while writing a PhD? Who knows). The variations on a theme are endless, and I almost never come up with a proper answer - a definite YES or NO. I've been through stages of thinking I would definitely have kids "one day", that being a parent is something I'd be great at, and stages of thinking "no way never, not a chance in hell". But almost all those thoughts, through all those years, have been to do with me.

I know my feminism. I know that it's all about me, and my right to choose, and anyone who puts pressure on me either way should be shown the metaphorical door (or at least, totally disregarded). I know all the stories of people whose partners or families or friends (or doctors or government or counsellors, dammit) put pressure on them to have or not have children, to get pregnant or stay pregnant, to prevent pregnancy or end it. And I know that it's my choice.

All that went flying out of the window when my mum casually(!) mentioned that if my sister or I had kids in the next five years, she'd still be at least 80 by the time they were 15.

Suddenly, I didn't think about whether or not I wanted kids, or how they would fit into my life if I had them. That stopped mattering. What mattered was that my mum is born to be a grandma. I'd never really thought about it, beyond the normal joking about that kind of thing that happens between mums and daughters (or is that just us?). But as soon as she said that, it hit me right between the eyes: the only way my mum gets to be a grandma is if my sister or I make it so. And I'm sure that's a dreadful reason to have kids, but damn I love my mum. I'd do anything for her, absolutely anything, and apparently that includes having children.

Quite possibly this is just my silly brain going "Phew! Someone else has made the decision, now I can just relax and go along with it". That sounds like something I'd do, on such an important life decision. Just go with the flow. I sometimes catch myself thinking that I'd quite like to accidentally get pregnant, just to see what I'd do if I was forced to make the decision. Obviously I am enormously privileged in being someone for whom choice is even possible. Equally obviously I'd have to do make that choice pretty fast, before the damn Coalition starts rolling back abortion rights. Otherwise someone else would be choosing for me, and that would never do! But, seriously. I think I would genuinely consider having a child solely so that my mum could be its grandma. Because she would be an even more amazing grandma than she is an amazing mum - and that is saying something.

Internet Dating Blues

This piece over at Raw Story really resonated with me. I'm sure many people who don't look like men are subjected to demands for their attention, and sulking when that attention is refused. It's not always a big deal, of course. If you have attention to spare, if you're in the mood for it, if you feel like engaging. But the problem is that you don't always have attention to spare, and you don't always feel like engaging. That's when it becomes apparent that you don't actually have a choice in these matters: if you withhold or withdraw your attention, things can get ugly fast.

Sometimes they don't even get particularly ugly, just banally irritating - like this exchange with a sweet looking fellow on OKCupid:

His profile suggested he was going to have time to kill in London and was looking to meet some new people. I thought we might get on. But then I forgot to reply to him - you know, life happened, like it does. For a start, I thought his reply, although keen, was brief enough that I shouldn't push it. Surely, I thought, if he wanted to meet up he might have said something more than that? Something encouraging, like "are you free later in the week?" or "I'd really love to check out this picnic spot!". Something which gave me something to reply to. OKCupid is not like trying to set up a job interview, you know? I'd like there to be mutual enthusiasm. It's not like I'm thinking "ok, I'm no catch on paper, but just a foot in the door: just agree to meet me and I'll blow your mind!" I'm thinking, "this guy wants to meet people, I like meeting people: let's see how it goes." I'm not doing him a favour, and he's not doing me a favour.

So time passed; I thought nothing more of it. But then I got another message from him, and not one which inspired good feelings. It sounded whiny and self-pitying. But I did feel bad about not replying, and when I checked his profile again, I discovered that he'd been the victim of a crime. He's in a strange city, he doesn't know anyone, and he's been robbed. And then this chick on the internet totally didn't reply to his message! After all, I had initiated contact with him. I owed him, right? So I responded, and prompted the charming little exchange where, somehow, I have started trying to persuade him to see me. Here's the times I'm free: pick one! I have no money. I'll pay! I'm too busy.

I didn't really do anything wrong in not responding to him. It's a dating website, right? That's how it works. But now I feel like he's doing me a favour if he agrees to meet with me. His first message back to me states that it's ok that he never heard back from me, except for how his life is a mess and his trip to London has been a fail, and now there's no time for anything good to happen ever. Now, I can see he's upset, but am I alone in also seeing this as a little manipulative? A little bit cheap? "I'm really sad and it's partly your fault. Placate me." It worked. My reply is conciliatory; rather pathetically so. I want to make things better. He is seeming to imply that meeting me would make it better, so I suggest that we meet.

It's a clever little trick, no matter how unintentional. I have apologised when there's really nothing I should be sorry for, and I've tried to fit myself to his requirements for meeting despite the fact that I'm not that desperate to meet him. I wonder now if regaining the power in this particular situation made him feel better. I really would have met up with him - I'd even have bought him a drink. But there are some little red flags going up in my mind, and they're to do with that demand for attention that Marcotte anatomises so well.

If someone doesn't respond to your attentions - be they internet dating messages, 'hello' on the tube, 'can I buy you a drink' etc - they've got reasons. You should trust them. You're not owed any response at all, and you're certainly not owed any positive response. By putting yourself out there, that's the risk you take. You might get a smile, a reply, a cup of coffee; you might not. Move on. If you make a polite request for attention, and get refused, nobody is going to think worse of you. It's when you graduate from polite requests to hammering on the metaphorical door with your fists, or resorting to underhanded methods to gain admittance that people are going to think worse of you. I don't take kindly to being manipulated into reopening contact with someone. It has made me exponentially less likely to meet this guy. Even if he'd just followed up with something like "hey, are you still up for that drink?" I would have likely replied with enthusiasm. It's the suggestion that I owe him something that has rubbed me the wrong way. My lack of response seems to be on the list of "wrongs that the world has done me". And while being a pain in the arse on a dating website is universal behaviour, treating a person as if they are an object that the world owes you is definitely gendered behaviour.

Let me be totally clear: I'm not accusing random OKCupid guy of that. I'm not labelling him a misogynist or demanding his head on a silver platter. I'm simply pointing out that there is a continuum of behaviours in which women are treated as objects on a list of things that the guy gets if he plays the game well - a good job, a nice car, a pretty wife - and that his behaviour plays into those tropes all too well. The saddest thing is that it worked on me. I played along, until I came to my senses and remembered that I don't owe anyone anything. That it's not my fault that things have gone wrong, and that I'm not merely a sweet reward in the game of life.

Anticipating Panto

For some reason, these last couple of weeks my mind has been turning frequently to panto. It's not quite like the season is almost upon us; when I actually think about it, I don't start this year for another three months. But I guess it's nearly autumn term, and once term has started the weeks will start to speed by faster and faster until before I know it, I'm heading home for five weeks of early mornings and late nights, scraping ice off the car twice a day, obsessive Neros visits, getting dreadful songs stuck in my head (and accidentally learning the dance moves), competitively climbing ladders, pulling ropes, choosing drill bits, taking all morning to construct an effect only to denounce it as not-good-enough, pulling it apart and starting again, spending fourteen hours at work followed by three hours at the pub and five hours in bed before it starts all over again in the morning.

It's my favourite time of year, despite how exhausting and all-consuming it is. Actually, it's because of those things. I love my friends there, both the new ones (cast and creative team) and the old ones, the crew who are usually there every year and who have at their core the same five of us who have met like this since we were teenagers, to live in each other's pockets for five weeks before we return to our normal lives for the rest of the year, occasionally managing to meet up for a meal or a show maybe once in between pantos. It's an odd kind of friendship in that way: we don't make much effort to see each other during the year, and normally that might suggest that we're not that close. But I don't see it that way, and I'm pretty sure my colleagues don't either. It's more that we are satisfied with the pattern of our closeness: we enjoy each other fully, to the exclusion of all other things, for a short, intense period over Christmas - and then we disperse, and move on, and remember other friends and other activities, and are content not to interact much over the interim. We even become somewhat emotionally dependant on each other - I hope not in an unhealthy way, but it's true that there is always a general atmosphere, and one person's grumpiness or sadness can affect the whole team. It's why we make sure there's always plenty of food available: hungry crew are grumpy crew! It's perhaps pretty weird, but panto is by its very nature pretty weird, and for better or worse, I have fallen for it hard in all its bizarre glory.

One of the things I am less keen on, however, is the proliferation of young girl dancers. We get a troop in from a local dance school, and they're always a mixed bag, because what group of humans isn't a mixed bag? But these are teen and pre-teen girls, aged from 4-18, and seriously, that comes with a whole heap of problems. Of course it is difficult, integrating a bunch of kids with a bunch of adults in a working environment. Of course we get issues every year, some serious (a group of girls bullying one rejected girl), some not so serious (overexcited children in the wings, giggling and getting in the way). Of course there are tensions sometimes with the older girls, who think they are too cool to be chaperoned around the building like the law requires that they are, and who want to hang around with the cast and crew, testing boundaries and stretching their new freedom. But there are genuine joys in working with kids as well. The littlest ones can be delightful - often we have a couple of brand new dancers, and watching a 4-year-old perform for the first time in front of a packed auditorium could warm the hardest of hearts. Seeing how dedicated some of the girls are to the art of dance itself is inspiring (although tempered by the sulky ambivalence of some of the others, inevitably). But the biggest joy, and naturally the biggest problem, is getting a glimpse into the lives of a group of girls in the wild, as it were.

Although the girls are deliberately kept as separate as possible from the adult staff (for legal reasons, the girls stay in their dressing rooms unless they are required on stage, at which point they are escorted to the stage where chaperones wait in each wing, watching until the girls are finished and they can be escorted back to the dressing rooms), there is inevitably a lot of crossover, and sometimes you can't avoid bearing witness to their behaviour. I'm not really talking here about the smaller girls, who generally are sweet and silly and annoying and obnoxious as young kids are. It's the slightly older girls who can be really concerning. That age seems like a long time ago now, but I definitely recognise a lot of the dynamics from my own adolescence. They are the ones who are keenest to dodge the chaperones, the ones who want to go out in between shows to buy chips instead of staying in the dressing room with the younger kids, the ones who are most obviously divided between dedicated dancers and those who are only in it because it's more fun than school. You can see the difference in rehearsals, where some are actually rehearsing, and some are skulking on the sidelines, giggling behind their hands and eyeing up the male dancers. Often the adolescent girls are the ones who most often have to be told "face forward! put some effort into it! for god's sake smile!"

And this attitude bleeds into the wings. It's not quite that cut and dried. I'm not saying the dedicated dancers are angels, either in behaviour or attitude, or that the girls who aren't quite as into the actual work are badly behaved. But I do see a lot of unprofessionalism from the dancers - unsurprisingly since they're not, y'know, professionals yet. However the difference is often between those who are aspring to professionalism (in behaviour if not actual career) and those who couldn't care less. And in some of those kids there is some seriously unpleasant behaviour.

A few years ago, I yelled at one of the girls for calling one of the other girls frigid. Both girls were thirteen. I can't even remember what I said, but I was absolutely enraged, and whilst it was totally not my place to get involved - we try to stay as separate as possible from the girls - I couldn't help myself. It was a year where the infighting amongst the girls was high: they were cruel to each other, they moved in packs where one false word seemed to mean instant expulsion, and the expelled girls would shuffle about awkwardly in the wings, red with misery and shame and frustration. One girl was so badly bullied that year that she hasn't been back since. And then I heard one girl accuse another of being frigid, and I lost it.

I wonder if I'm doing these girls a disservice by suggesting that they don't know how dangerous and damaging a word like "frigid" is? In a way, I hope that they don't. I know they've picked up from somewhere that it's an insult, that to be frigid is to be wrong in some way. I'm not naive enough to say that these girls can't know what sexuality even is yet - they are thirteen, and have probably been learning about sex in one form or another (and one form in particular) for some years. They're almost certainly old enough to have begun exploring their own sexuality, or at least to have begun thinking about it - as these girls obviously had. I'm willing to bet that while their knowledge may not be particularly honed or nuanced yet, certainly it's honed enough to know that being sexual is good and being frigid is bad. Certainly it's nuanced enough to perceive that there is no better way to bring down a peer than to go after their sexuality. I wonder if they've learnt yet that boxing other people into corners and holes only deepens their own isolation, even whilst they put themselves firmly on the side of the ones who are cool and knowledgeable and fun and sexy - the ones who are doing it right. Can any of those girls truly confide in each other? Did someone else - not the target of the hateful word, but one of the ubiquitous bystanders - overhear that and laugh along, all the while worrying that they themselves might be frigid, and knowing now even more than before that they could never tell their friends?

It's said that girls and women police gendered behaviour (in girls and women) more forcefully than men  and boys do, because they are more aware of what's at stake for the transgressors. Those girls are learning that early, too. They are learning what's acceptable, and what isn't, and who they can be honest with, and who they can't. They learnt not to say that stuff in front of me, but I doubt my little rant had any effect on their behaviour away from me. They laughed at me, as teenage girls will do, and rolled their eyes. No doubt they made judgements about my appearance, my sexuality, my life. I can't say it bothered me too much, to be sneered at by a group of thirteen-year-olds. But those thirteen-year-olds will be around seventeen now, and who knows what toxic beliefs they are carrying into adulthood? Who knows what dangerous knowledge and anti-knowledge they are taking away to university and drama school and first jobs? Who knows how many other, similarly isolated girls and women they will find, and bond with, and discover the same things over and over again with until it's fixed so deep that it can't be purged?

This is all a lot of handwringing and think of the children!-ing, I know. It's rather predictable, and very boring. But I can't help but feel its importance, as I look ahead to another year of panto, another year of cute children and awkward teenagers and all the things in between, another year of cliques and friends and excitement, of learning and policing, honing the edges, knocking each other into shape with each word, each look. The thing that I love about panto, that feeling of closeness and community, of living in  each other's pockets for a month before returning to regular life, will be if anything more intense for the younger members of that community, with all the positives and negatives that that intensity entails. Highs will be higher, lows will be lower, cliques will be cliquier and the girls who are rejected will be rejected totally, with no time to heal the wounds and allow other potential friends to come out of the woodwork to show that yes, there are other people, it's not the end of the world. I remember that very well from school, that feeling of devastation and desperation when it was my turn to be left out in the cold by a group of friends who had decided that, this week, I wasn't good enough. Next week it was ok, I was back in, and somebody else was out, or I had found somebody else to share my lunchtimes and conspiratorial looks. That freedom of time just isn't there in the condensed world of pro-panto, and for adolescent girls I imagine it's something like all the emotion and intensity of senior school packed into five weeks. Don't get me wrong, it can be a wonderful experience, and for adult me, it has been. But I don't think teenage me would have enjoyed it. And I just hope that those teenagers aren't learning all the wrong lessons.

Rape Jokes

Of course you're all aware of the explosion of interest in rape, rape culture, rape legislation and rape jokes in the media recently. I have read so much commentary on rape jokes, particularly after the Daniel Tosh incident in which he put down a heckler at his show by suggesting that it would be funny if she was raped by members of the audience. One of the most pertinent responses to the whole sorry tale came from Jessica Valenti, whose piece Anatomy of a Successful Rape Joke explains why some rape jokes can be funny. There are also plenty of lists of funny rape jokes - or rather, lists of jokes that the writer feels are funny, and the reasons that they are funny rather than horrible, as are many rape jokes.

My family just told me a couple of jokes which illustrated the point perfectly, whilst having nothing to do with rape at all. My dad began it, with this gem:

So a young mother was pushing her baby along a street in Manchester when a huge rottweiler leapt towards the pram, snarling. The mother was terrified but a suddenly a man appeared from nowhere, rushed into the fray, wrestled with the enormous dog and broke its neck. Another man, seeing everything that had happened, rushed over and said to the first man, "Wow, that was incredible, you're a hero! I can see the headline now: United fan saves baby from savage beast!"
"That's great" replied the first man, "but I'm not a United fan."
"Oh, ok: City fan saves baby from savage beast!"
"I'm not a City fan either, I'm a Liverpool fan."
"Oh, right! I can see the headline now: Scouser brutally murders family pet!" 

I laughed. My sister laughed too, and then she said hey, have you heard this one?

Wow, those new 3D TVs are so realistic! I fell asleep watching the Liverpool match last night, and when I woke up my wallet was gone!

I did not laugh. But I did realise, in a blinding flash, how perfectly this illustrates the argument about good rape jokes and bad rape jokes. In the first one, you're laughing at the media's treatment of a certain group of people. In the second one, you're laughing at that group of people. That's the difference, and it's a good measure of how jokes on any subject can work: jokes about racism rather than racist jokes, jokes about sexism rather than sexist jokes - the list is probably endless.

Review: Legally Blonde

In my current mood I am rampaging through all the happy girly films I can think of, decimating my collection within days and making regular pilgrimages to a second hand store to pick up classics for £1-2.

Some people I know disparage my taste for happy girly films, especially the ones which are often written off as chick flicks or rom coms. For some reason (many reasons, which I won't get into now) those kinds of films are routinely disparaged, and my liking for them is met with incredulity. In addition to their obvious trashiness, my presentation, some seem to think, suggests that I would be into boyish trashy films rather than girly trashy films. (That connotative gap between "boyish" and "girly", by the way, could make a whole other post.) But while I enjoy a silly action movie with muscles and explosions as much as the next person (and I really do, I'm not being sarcastic), chick flicks have a special place in my heart, and when I need comfort, nurturing and joy, that's where I go.

I'm not saying that they're shining beacons of perfect filmmaking, although some of them are. I'm not even arguing that any of them are any good, in a technical sense. I wouldn't know a 'good' film if I saw it. But, like many a derided art consumer, I know what I like.

Last night, whilst eating my lonely supper and filing and painting my nails (in my newest shade, a pretty opalescent pink called, gloriously, "ethereal"), I watched an old favourite: Legally Blonde, starring the delightful Reese Witherspoon, the gorgeous Selma Blair and the teen-movie staple Luke Wilson.

Legally Blonde is gratifyingly silly. A 'dumb blonde' from California is dumped by her boyfriend, who wants somebody "serious", and when she discovers that one of his brothers is engaged to a first year student at Yale law school, she decides to follow Warner to Harvard and prove to him that she is worth his attentions. Shenanigans ensue. I'm not going to recount the whole plot, but there will be spoilers ahead.

There's plenty not to like about Legally Blonde. It has moments of awful homophobia and horrifying racism / xenophobia, some pretty fucked-up narratives about sexuality/prudishness, and more sexism and gender essentialism than you can shake a stick at. This is not about being blind to the faults in the thing that you love. As someone who's into social justice issues, and dislikes jokes that punch down at any marginalised community, there's really very little media that I can consume completely happily. Nothing's perfect, is what I'm saying, and if I wrote off everything that had an offensive joke or a problematic message, I would never get to consume anything, and that would make me sad. The trick, for me anyway, is to tread the line between 'perfect' (ie. nothing = sadness) and 'so offensive it ruins the whole thing' (many things = sadness). In between there is a wealth of stuff which makes me laugh, makes me think, makes me reflect, makes me happy.

Incidentally, there's something weird going on with feminism in Legally Blonde. There is only one openly feminist character - not that she calls herself a feminist or anything, but we are intended to understand that she is one of those militants because she has a degree in women's studies from Berkeley, including a specialism in the history of combat, is probably a lesbian (she suggests to Elle that Elle would have called her a dyke, although this doesn't necessarily mean that she is a lesbian, only that she imagines that Elle would assume that she is one), and argues with Warner about the subliminal domination of the English language, telling him that she is petitioning to have the Winter semester referred to as the Winter ovester in an attempt to combat the school's discriminatory preference of semen to ovaries. A straw-feminist if ever there was one. On the other hand, this little exchange is immediately followed by Elle, wearing the traditional sexy bunny girl costume, approaching Warner and being told "Wow! Don't you look like a walking felony?!" to which she replies "Thank you. You're so sweet" and Enid, our feminist friend, rolls her eyes incredulously and stalks off. Now it looks to me as if we're meant to empathise with Enid here, despite the fact that she has just been dismissed as a ludicrous feminist harpy. What's interesting is that this scene seems to disparage feminism by setting up a "god, feminists are just so ridiculous" moment using a trivial argument that I've never seen any feminist espouse, but follows it up with an actual feminist position (rape is not a compliment, one's attire does not invite rape, etc) with which we are intended to sympathise. Warner is an arse: he doesn't have one redeeming feature, and everything he says, from "I need a Jackie, not a Marilyn" to "You're just not smart enough, sweetie" to "If you tell him [the alibi] he'll probably hire you as a summer associate. Who cares about Brooke? Think about yourself" is intended to show us what an awful, vacuous person he is. By using him here to oppose a feminist position, the film sets up the position as something we can agree with, all the while openly deriding feminists and their positions. Stealth feminism indeed.

I could go on for hours about the weird back-and-forth of feminism in this film, but that's not actually what I was going to talk about. During last night's screening of Legally Blonde, I realised just what it is that is so great about the film. Femme-bonding. Although the whole premise of the film is that feminine grooming is frivolous and somewhat contemptible, its joyful moments come, again and again, from rituals of grooming and bonding. When Elle is dumped by Warner, her friends take her to a beauty salon, where she has the epiphanic realisation that she must follow him to Harvard. When she discovers that he is engaged to Vivian, she is driving at random when she spots another salon, which she makes a desperate beeline for, and plants herself in front of an employee, saying tearfully "Are you free? It's an emergency." The employee, Paulette, asks "Bad day?" and then, as she puts aside her sandwich, "Spill." Elle recounts her tale one miserable exhalation of breath, and Paulette sympathises, empathises, and advises, culminating in her counseling Elle to "Steal the bastard back!" OK, so it's not brilliant advice, but the point is the ritual of grooming that provides the environment for the counseling, the regrouping, the finding of common ground and the regaining of strength. Later, the whole contingent of  customers and staff bond over Elle's famous technique for getting the attention of a man when she advises Paulette on how to flirt with the UPS guy. Later again, when Elle tells Paulette that she is quitting after her professor hits on her in his office, the salon again provides the backdrop for fortification and resistance, as Elle's other (female) professor is revealed behind a hairdryer and tells her "If you're going to let one stupid prick ruin your life, you're not the girl I thought you were." This professor, who is "tough", who smirks at Elle's 'fluffy' demeanour and kicks her out of her first class, becomes Elle's ally when relocated in that centre of female-bonding, the beauty salon.

There are some less joyful moments related to female grooming. Elle discredits a witness by proving that he is gay after he correctly identifies her shoes as Prada, which is apparently all the evidence that she needs. And she finally wins the trial by using her knowledge of perm technicalities, which doesn't really say much for her abilities as a lawyer. Female grooming isn't only a force for good in this film. But what's important about it to me - what keeps me coming back to this film - is its status as a source of power and comfort for the women involved, particularly Elle who is trying to prove herself in the face of crushing contempt which is mostly based on her high-femme appearance. The salon and what it represents is a safe space for Elle to be honest about her emotions and her drives (personal and professional). Although there are plenty of unpleasant messages to be picked up from Legally Blonde, (and even this one - that grooming rituals are powerful - is balancing on a fine line and could easily be used for evil rather than good), the central theme of female friendship and support that is grounded in the often-disparaged pastime of female-grooming is something I can really get behind.

I also find it refreshing, if I'm honest, to see a film which celebrates the the joy the main character takes in grooming, rather than celebrating the endearing ignorance of the 'plain' girl who is in fact a natural beauty, who doesn't own any makeup or use straighteners, who doesn't know what an eyelash curler is, who wins the guy in the end, and who is throughout pitted against the mean girl who is perfectly coiffed, depilated, made-up - in short, groomed to within an inch of her life. That girl is always mean and vacuous, contemptuous of the 'plain' girl who doesn't subscribe to these silly, frivolous notions of beauty, and she is always, always, taught a lesson by the end. She loses the guy. She is exposed as a fraud. Her friends discover she is two-faced and ditch her. The beauty rituals are revealed to be inadequate to mask the ugliness of the person beneath them, and it is the plain girl who is kind and sweet and, above all, smart. Elle gets to be all of these things, which may not seem revolutionary, but which feels to me like a small victory won over the mechanics of competitive femininity, which insists that you can be beautiful or you can be smart/nice, but you can't be both.

This brings me back to my opening suggestion that films like this are routinely disparaged. As I said, there are many reasons for this disparagement, but I think that what I have described in this post is in fact central to their reputation as frivolous bits of fluff. Women, talking to each other about their lives, bonding over things that women are taught to find important, and taking strength and joy from those very things which are routinely used to dismiss and belittle them. That's what I want from my happy girly films, and it crops up again and again in my lists of favourites. And I won't apologise for it, and I will, as I've just demonstrated, talk your ear off about their qualities if given half a chance.

Musings on 'Scott and Bailey'

I so enjoyed writing about gender in Dirk Gently that I thought I'd have a go at ITV's Scott and Bailey too. This will be slightly different, since a whole series has already aired, and although I know I had a lot of thoughts about it at the time, I can't remember too many details! I've watched the last three on ITV Player to remind myself, but unfortunately missed the first three, so I missed my most growled-at storyline, in which one of the title characters accidentally gets pregnant, schedules an abortion, can't go through with it, and then conveniently miscarries so that she doesn't have the inconvenience of pregnancy/parenthood, but doesn't have to make any evil baby-killing decisions. I saw it coming, of course, but I still snarled a lot.

There's a whole lot of gender stuff going on in Scott and Bailey. The three main characters are women, almost the entire creative team are women, and the whole idea for the programme was conceived by women. This is obviously good news for us women-friendly folks - we (ok, I) like things that have a lot of women involved in them. On the other hand, it does heighten the stakes for Scott and Bailey to be "feminist". We (ok, I) want to see a woman-heavy show with 'good representations' of women; I want to see lots of women in lots of different roles, with lots of different skills/characteristics/flaws/voices etc. I don't want to see six different stereotypes of women, although that would certainly be an improvement on the two different stereotypes of women that you get in much mainstream media.

Thankfully, Scott and Bailey doesn't fall into this trap (I suspect the woman-heavy creative team may have had something to do with this). The two title characters, Janet Scott and Rachel Bailey, are very different women. Neither are perfect, which is a good start. Janet Scott is 'older', married with kids, a fixture in the MIT in which they both work. She is stolid, calm, dependable and determined. Rachel Bailey is 'younger', a new addition to the team. She is called "Sherlock" by the rest of the team, due to her intuitive style of detective work, and she is often talked up as being brilliant. She is also flighty and impatient, and given to making questionable choices about both her personal and her professional life. The third main character is DCI Gill Murray, a fast-talking, no-nonsense boss who demands the highest level of achievement from her team.

These characters form the backbone of the programme, and they are constantly interacting with each other about their professional and personal lives. Both Murray and Scott act as 'mentors' to Bailey in different ways, with Scott keeping Bailey on the "more traditional" lines of investigation whilst also giving her space to let her personal detecting style blossom, and Murray giving Bailey multiple opportunities to experience different sides of police work within the team, often talking her through new things. This is one facet of the show that I like very much. It's great to see the different levels of knowledge being treated as significant but not laughable - Bailey is not a silly kid, but she has less experience than the other two and they are keen to help her progress as a detective, encouraging her development and being patient with her inexperience. They recognise her potential and want to enhance it, even when her inexperience and impatience leads her down the wrong paths. The three women are supportive of each other both professionally and personally - there is little evidence of the jealousy, competitiveness and cattiness that is the mainstay of many TV relationships between women.

The personal storylines of the women are interesting. Janet's marriage and potential affair form the main drive of her personal plot, whilst for Rachel it is her relationship with a man who, unknown to her, has a wife and children living elsewhere. Gill Murray's storyline is less prominent, but what there is of it is centres around her life as a single mother of a teenage son. Rachel also has that unintended pregnancy to contend with. One part of me is disappointed that these plot-lines are so dependent on the womanhood of the characters. Having female protagonists be driven by their relationship- (and (potential) parenting-) concerns is not exactly ground-breaking. On the other hand, the programme is mainly about their detective work, where they are Scott and Bailey rather than Janet and Rachel after all, so I think I give this a pass. Being concerned about their relationships alongside their jobs is progressive, in comparison with so many portrayals of women on TV, who are only concerned about their relationships, or who exist as extensions of the male protagonists (who are usually concerned about their jobs). On the other hand, perhaps it is telling that so much of this programme, which is titled Scott and Bailey, is devoted to the personal lives of Janet and Rachel. The last episode of the first series, for example, is barely about solving the 'main crime' of the episode at all - their only witness gives it up in his second interview after cursory questioning by Scott. The meat of the episode is concerned with Rachel's entanglement with slimy barrister Nick Savage (about whom more in a moment).

On the other side of binary gender representation, the treatment of recurring male characters on the show is somewhat less progressive. Nick Savage is probably the biggest male role, and he is essentially a villain. After a 2-year relationship with Rachel, it is revealed in the first episode that he is married with children. When she later discovers that he had an affair with a jury member whilst defending a client in court, he threatens her with the retribution of the client that he successfully defended if she gives him away, and in the final episode is charged with Rachel's attempted murder. Nick Savage (whose name is obviously significant) starts off suave and manipulative and ends up vicious and murderous. Not exactly a fully realised character. DC Kevin Lumb (whose name also seems significant) is a bit of a buffoon - he is sexist, arrogant, lazy and seems to exist as an 'intelligence' comparison to Bailey (at one point, Murray says to Bailey "you're not Kevin" (Series 1, episode 4)). DS Andy Roper, who is in love with Scott, is really nothing but a means of character-development for Scott - after their one-night-stand prior to the shows beginning, he tries to persuade her to leave her husband, prompting her to reevaluate her relationship and her priorities. Ade is Janet's patient, loyal husband, and DCS Dave Murray, Gill Murray's ex-husband, had a string of affairs and left her when he "got a 23-year-old uniform pregnant" (Series 1, episode 5). His biggest scene so far is when he suggests to Gill that she shouldn't be "taking up with another man" right in the middle of their son's A-levels (Series 1, episode 6):

Dave: It's Sammy. It's fine, it's his A-levels. I don't want you to take this the wrong way. Don't you think - right in the middle of his exams - is the wrong time for you to be taking up with another man?
Gill: How dare you? After all the turmoil and upheaval and disruption you caused that boy? How dare you.
Dave: He's not happy.
Gill: That's rubbish. This is about you, not him. Despite the fact you walked out on me and him, despite the fact you were at it with all and sundry for God knows how long, you can't stand the idea I could possibly get into bed with someone else, can you? Hypocrite.
Dave: I knew you'd take it the wrong way.
Gill: (walking away) On your bike, mush.
Dave: I've told him if he wants to move in with me and Emma for a little while he's more than welcome. He seemed quite keen.
Gill: How've you managed that then? Promised to buy him a car? 
(he makes a face)
Gill: No - Dave - you can't do that, I told him I would buy him a car when he got his A-level results, if they were good enough, so you'd better retract that promise.
Dave: I'm not retracting a thing.
Gill: You fucking arsehole.
(he nods)
Dave: Cheerio.

Dave is clearly the bad guy here - we're not asked to sympathise with his (entirely unreasonable) behaviour, and Gill is set up as the victim. What's interesting to me about this exchange is the way the characters say the things they say. Gill's words are the ones we are to agree with, and Dave's words are not. But Gill raises her voice, she swears at him, she gets passionate. She shows emotion. Dave, on the other hand, speaks quietly and calmly, and doesn't respond to Gill's emotion. When she calls him a "fucking arsehole" he just nods slightly, says "cheerio" and leaves. This is a nice subversion of gender norms: the man is calm and collected while the woman is emotional and 'sensitive', yet we are clearly to side with the woman, despite being conditioned to approve more of the communication style of the man.

Compare that with this scene from earlier in the episode, after Bailey has told Scott that she's seeing Nick again, and Scott has been brutally honest about her concerns:

Rachel: (coming in) Hey. You know I spent ages organising the balloons, the helium, the other - well it's shit - and all anyone else had to do was go pick stuff up, and she talks to me like bollocks and everyone else is fucking wonderful!
Nick: Well - why?
Rachel: (turns tv off) D'you wanna marry me? I'm proposing to you. D'you wanna marry me.
Nick: (amazed) Well - um - I can't - I -
Rachel: After the divorce goes through. (Nick is making faces and laughing in disbelief) I didn't think so. (she walks away)
Nick: Have you - 
Rachel: What, been at the bottle? Yeah. You know, she implied - no she didn't, she didn't imply, she said it, she said that the only reason you're going out with me is because you're frightened I'll wreck your life for you, if I don't stay on the right side of you. Are you?
Nick: No.
Rachel: But you don't want to marry me.
Nick: I wish you wouldn't talk to your colleagues - 
Rachel: Am I just kidding myself?
Nick: About what?
Rachel: About this, about us.
Nick: I wish you wouldn't drink.
Rachel: Pff, you drink.
Nick: Well, to that extent, before you even get here.
Rachel: Did Caroline [his wife] not like a little drink?
Nick: Can we not talk about Caroline?
Rachel: Or Martina [the juror], what about her? (he rolls his eyes) You know I said to her, I said he's changed. But you know, she's amazing Janet, 'cos she just cuts to the chase, she goes right for the jugular. 
Nick: Rachel, I have changed, and I don't give a damn what Janet thinks or says, I just think getting married is ... it's a big step! 
Rachel: She's right though, isn't she?
Nick: (exasperated) Well I don't know because you haven't told me what she said yet - 
Rachel: You're just protecting your own paltry little carcass.
Nick: That's just rubbish!
Rachel: First thing in the morning I'm gonna go to Godzilla's office, and I'll tell her all about you and your little juror friend or I might just do it right now. (gets out her phone)
Nick: Rachel ...
Rachel: What, don't make calls when you're pissed? Or, only in emergencies - (he tries to snatch the phone from her and she fights him off. There's a pause)
Nick: Alright look, we'll get married.
Rachel: (laughs) What?
Nick: We'll get married, if this is what it takes to prove to you that I love you, we'll get married, I just wish you wouldn't GET like this! (he puts his face in his hands and she looks stricken)
Rachel: I'm sorry. 
Nick: It's alright.
Rachel: Is it?
Nick: Yeah.
Rachel: I  had a really shit day, after she had a go at me - I've never fallen out with her, not for more than 10 minutes, and then I started to think things, so I - I'm sorry. (they kiss)
Nick: Smoking.
Rachel: Yeah. Sorry. I'll go and brush my teeth. (she walks out and he shakes his head, looking worried)

This is, in some ways, quite similar to the exchange between Gill and Dave. There is some question as to the moral 'truth' of what's going on (is Nick just keeping Rachel sweet? is Dave acting out of concern for his son) and in both cases, I think the audience is intended to side with the women in their interpretation. The difference is in the attitudes of the characters. While Dave stays very calm in contrast to Gill's rising emotion, the emotional temperature of the conversation between Nick and Rachel starts off high and gets higher, with both of them speaking loudly and quickly. We think we know that Rachel is right in her suspicions (we trust the judgement of Scott, for a start, and we already know how manipulative and slippery Nick is) and that allows us to see more clearly the insidious nature of his machinations here. His continual evading of the issue (bringing up her drinking, and her talking to her colleagues) looks more suspicious than it might if we hadn't previously been persuaded that he's manipulating her. As it is, his implication that she's only accusing him of this because she's drunk looks desperate and rather pathetic. It's also very telling that she manages to brush this evasive behaviour off until the end of the conversation, after he has convinced her that she is the one in the wrong by insisting that it's her behaviour that is unreasonable rather than his. When she capitulates and they kiss, that innocuous little exchange about her smoking highlights perfectly the insidious nature of his controlling behaviour. Whereas earlier his comments about her behaviours that he finds unacceptable are brushed off, now she quickly apologises and goes to make herself more acceptable to him.

This scene, for me, is a perfect illustration of a potentially abusive relationship. Nick's focus on Rachel's unacceptable habits, his complaints about her talking to other people about him, his attempt to make her believe that things are different from how she perceives them - this is classic emotional manipulation and it's one of the things that, for me, clearly marks this show out as progressive. We know that Rachel is right (and it is proved later in the episode), we know that Nick is lying and this is therefore a chilling portrayal of a man manipulating a woman in order to control her behaviour for his own benefit. The fact that both Murray and Scott can see this where Bailey can't, and try to make her "open her eyes" is also significant. Bailey is far from perfect - she is impetuous and stubborn and has made any number of foolish decisions, both professional and personal. Her professional misjudgement often stems from her poor personal judgement, as when she uses her role as a DC to find out Nick's home address from his car registration after she discovers that he is married. She also tells Nick confidential information about her job.

Is Rachel sadly un-feminist, for being potentially brilliant professionally but a complete mess personally, and allowing her personal life to cloud her professional judgement? Well, it may not be ideal, but it has enabled some wonderful interaction between three extremely strong women characters. Scott and Murray have Bailey's back throughout, and although they chastise her for her poor judgement, they ultimately support her, whilst making it clear that her behaviour is both stupid and unacceptable. In the next series, presumably the Nick Savage storyline will be finished with, and we'll get to see Bailey in other contexts. Something else to look forward to is a new character to be introduced, described in the blurb as "the formidable DCI Julie Dobson". I am keeping my fingers crossed for another intriguing, imperfect, highly-watchable character.