Worth It?

Cheryl Cole, as featured in The Sunday Times' Style supplement. Photograph of magazine taken by Dora Petherbridge.

Perhaps it would be fair to say that before I write what I am about to write, I think the point of this has nothing to do with Cheryl Cole. I think that if she were not the ‘nation’s sweetheart’ another woman would be in her place. That’s the problem with this kind of thing - the women are to all intents and purposes replaceable. Dare I say it their appeal depends on a delicate bank- balancing act, one in which they are marketable for as long as they are ‘in’. This makes the comparisons between Cole and Vera Lynn all the more disturbing. For if Cole were a talented musician in so far as she wrote her own songs and composed her own music she would perhaps be in a position in culture out with a time and space continuum that begins and ends with a man called Simon Cowell. Indeed she might not need at all to have been reduced to the sum of her parts: hair, legs, face, the clothes.

As it stands fair play to the woman, she’s making an honest buck and she’s living the ubiquitous reality TV star’s dream - the one that other young people believe is only a hair-extension’s breadth away. Nope its not about Cole. My problem is with the media. For it has been a while since I’ve read anything quite as sycophantic as this interview by Edwina Ings-Chambers (from The Sunday Times’ Style supplement) prefaced with the strap-line ‘She’s Worth It’. I’m sure she is, but aren’t all women? Or are we to believe that it’s only the photogenic, cellulite free, fine-featured amongst our wretched gender that are deserving of attention?

Take this dazzling piece of prose for example:

‘She’s clad in a white T-Shirt, a striped APC blazer, stacked Stella McCartney wedges and micro blue shorts that reveal legs so toned and perfect (and, yes, cellulite free) that your eyes follow them round mesmerically while your brain registers simple disbelief.’

Well that’s just lovely, but what if anything, does it have to say about Cheryl Cole, other than, in case you didn’t get the point, she’s blooming marvellous to look at?

Is it any wonder then that Cole goes on to say this? -

‘If you could just give me one word to be, ‘inspirational’ would be the one, I think ... Like, one woman said to me, ‘I’ve got you on my fridge door to inspire me to go to the gym,’ and I felt that about Britney when she did I’m a Slave 4 You. So to think that I can be inspiring someone like that – or in any kind of way.’

While I’m not against anyone going to the gym or making the best of their appearance I do wonder whether a picture of Cheryl on my fridge door would be inspiration enough to make my life that little bit more ‘worth it’. Indeed once detached from the hyperbole, the clever marketing and the agendas, when we separate the gods from their perfectly formed legs, what exactly do cellulite free thighs actually mean? Are they the marker of success, above achievements beyond the body beautiful? Do they inspire generosity, kindness, goodwill, spirit, motivation, ingenuity, creativity and empowerment? Will I need them around if I get ill or if my heart is broken?

Nah, I don’t think so.

So in a vain bid to restore some kind of balance to the madness, I give you some women of note and inspiration.

Whether any of them have (or did have) cellulite is none of my business.

Virginia Woolf – novelist, diarist, publisher, feminist
Mary Woolstonecraft – writer, philosopher and feminist - vindicator of women
Michelle Obama
The Suffragettes
Nina Simone – Jazz artist and civil rights activist
Marie Stopes – pioneer in the field of family planning
Marie Curie – physicist and chemist, pioneer in the field of cancer research
Jane Austen - writer
The Brontes - writers
Margaret Atwood – writer and feminist
Susie Orbach – writer, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst and campaigner for body diversity
Naomi Wolf – political consultant, writer and spokesperson for the third wave feminist movement
Lionel Shriver – journalist and author
Meryl Streep - actor
Crystal Renn - plus size model and author of the memoir 'Hungry'
Susan Sarandon - actor
Melody Gardot – musician, writer, Buddhist and helping to develop a programme for music therapy and pain management
Toni Morrison – Nobel Prize winner, writer and professor
Doris Lessing – Nobel Prize winner
Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir - Prime Minister of Iceland, first openly lesbian head of government
Tori Amos – pianist, singer/songwriter
Kathryn Biglow – First woman to win an Oscar for best director

None of these women inspire me to go to the gym.

Serendipity

Strangely enough, and somewhat in keeping with this post, today I read Tania Kindersley’s blog about serendipity. What a strange and lovely word for the joyousness of making a new discovery via an unrelated search – to come about something serendipitously. I’ve been thinking about this concept. Years ago I thought it was simply a made-up word, chosen for a bad film about John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale sharing ice-cream sundaes. Now I understand it as something fortuitous and if not an exact interpretation - rather my own take or extension - its the way the world can sometimes lead you to something new.

Sometimes these things will be short term fixes, but others can be life-enhancing or even changing. Last year when things in my own life were in flux I was drawn for the first time seriously to the ubiquitous Youtube. It was around the time Susan Boyle was breaking records with her ‘I dreamed a dream’ video. Crazily she just wanted to sing in public and instead overnight thanks to the viral she became a global superstar. Into Youtube's search engine I started typing in the names of the artists who I’d always thought I should be listening to, but who I’d never had access to when I was growing up. They were singers like Billie Holiday and Nina Simone. Youtube - the seemingly ordinary internet phenomenon, so a part of the very make-up of 21st century life had unlocked my propensity for Jazz. It was through these searches that I discovered a new artist called Melody Gardot. There's no real definitive reason for what initially attracted me to her music or the very image itself of a young woman with an enigmatic aura. Perhaps it was because she was new and all the other singers were now fragments of history. Certainly with her music it was the element of sadness and curious wisdom for someone so young. Almost a year later my discovery led me to the journey we made earlier this week to Manchester were we saw her live in concert.

Sometimes we need things to revive our souls. This seems never more so than in our current climate of selfishness and greed, where genuine talent is eschewed for notoriousness and infamy, where the size-zero’s are celebrated and the bankers are given bonuses, whilst the unemployed youth are failed by the government. Art can’t necessarily fix these ills but it does hold up a mirror to society. And it often reflects the individual’s needs. I do believe one can be drawn to such things in the world because they have a subconscious need for revival.

On serendipity

In My Week with Marilyn Colin Clark wrote of his chance encounter with the screen goddess Marilyn Monroe.

This is from the introduction,

‘All my life I have kept diaries, but this is not one of them. This is a fairy story, an interlude, an episode outside time and space which nevertheless was real. And why not? I believe in magic. My life and most people’s lives are a series of little miracles – strange coincidences which spring from uncontrollable impulses and give rise to incomprehensible dreams. We spend a lot of time pretending that we are normal, but underneath the surface each one of us knows that he or she is unique.’

What wonderful sentiment. Perhaps we all possess aspects of serendipity ...

Some things that made last week better ...

Melody Gardot. This American Jazz/Pop singer puts all the pop tarts and pop babies in the corner. Cheryl Cole this is what a real voice sounds like. (Image from queenshall.net)

Saturday Night Fever. Coincidently I watched this on Saturday night. Gawd they don't make movies like this anymore. Awesome soundtrack - I'm not afraid to say I enjoy the Bee Gees. My flatmate said she wasn't sure John Travolta was a particularly good actor, to which I replied, 'he wasn't cast for any pretence to thespianism, damn, he was hired for the dancing!'
(Image from The Guardian).



God I was having a crap day when When Harry Met Sally came on Comedy Central. It temporarily cheered me up. Particular highlights included Sally's hair evolution from Charlie's Angel's flick, to 80's poodle perm. They don't make Rom-Coms like this anymore, its all gross out humour at the expense of a decent script. I blame There's Something About Mary. I don't want to see bodily fluids, I want dazzlingly witty words! I love 80's New York in films, Working Girl - Melanie Griffith's hair is epic - and Cocktail are particular favourites. (Image from The Guardian)




Camille O'Sullivan, Irish/French Caberet Singer. Ah, I love this woman! I saw her perform for the first time last year at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe and she literally moved me to tears. Her shows are emotionally charged heltor-skeltor rides along pain, heartache, misery, joy, laughter and miaowing ... And its fun to watch the men squirm as she delves into the audience looking for a sheepish spectator's ear to sing into. I hope I'm lucky enough to see her again this year ... (Image from The Telegraph)



Nina Simone needs no introduction. She is an emotional education. (Image from The Guardian)