Post Feminism?

The blog has been neglected for some time. The reason for this is that my husband has been ill.  He was quite clearly feeling awful, and was cold all the time, which is so unlike him. Usually, just as I start to feel warm enough, he announces that he’s too hot, and puts the heating off. Also he has lots of aches and pains. So my imagination was running riot, and the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis  was actually a relief. However, this does not mean he’s actually any better, it’s just that we’re both less worried. Which is something.

Anyway, the carpe diem list has suffered. Not that it was ever meant to be a burden or that I intended to get all competitive over it! But I have done one thing – I’ve started to volunteer, just one afternoon a week, at a charity bookshop. The idea was that I would feel I’m contributing in a small way and it wouldn’t be at all stressful or emotionally demanding. Also I’d be doing something a little different and perhaps meeting different people. The job has met all these criteria, and so far I’ve managed to be firm and not bring any books home, which of course is the worry. The price of staying decluttered is eternal vigilance. There are some very tempting books, too. There are insane numbers of knitting books, by which I’m not in the least tempted. I’m a lousy knitter – I did crack it sufficiently to knit a few plain jumpers for the children, but usually by the time I’d finished it, it fitted the next child down to the one it had been intended for. Also, I couldn’t knit and watch TV and if you can’t do that, knitting is really boring.

So this post is really inspired by the fact that there are builders working down the road. They’ve been there for weeks and I’ve never seen them speak to a girl going past. Now, I expect them to ignore a woman of my age, but when I was young, you could never have walked past a building site without whistles and calls. Lorry drivers sounded their horn and waved as they went past. Strangers stared. Middle class ones didn’t comment, others often did. I remember a trip to pick my mother up when she arrived at King’s Cross; it was summer and I was wearing a sleeveless top, and before long my mother was getting really cross with me about the attention I was attracting! 

Life is really different now. No man would behave like that any more and no woman would accept it, as we did. I think even we saw it as “just a bit of fun”. I always disliked being called “dear” by a strange man. “Love” or “blossom” or “hinny” or “me duck” seemed fine, but there was something deeply patronising about “dear”. It used to make me furious. The only other time I remember being really cross was when a totally strange man patted my bottom at a party. I was talking to someone and he was just walking past. That time I was cross enough to pour a glass of wine over his head.  So things have really changed for the better. This is not to say there isn’t still a long way for women to go.

Actually, the modern phenomenon that makes me foam at the mouth with fury is the way mothers treat their girls. Pink, pink pink. They even go out and buy pink pushchairs. The phrase “little princess” ought to get you sent to a re-education camp for a week, where you can learn that becoming a surgeon or astrophysicist are suitable ambitions for little girls, and that dressing them from head to toe in pink, and telling them they are beautiful little princesses, will not help them succeed. 

“Pampering” – now that’s another word that makes me furious. Pampering is what happens to lap dogs who have short and unhappy lives. Grown women do not need pampering, for God’s sake. In spite of the distance we’ve come, there’s still a lot to do, and I really don’t think we need to hold ourselves back.