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.

A Feminist's First Dinner Party

In a slight twist on a blog which to be fair is quite hard to pin down - thematically at least - for I am not solely interested in one topic, I have decided to post a few pictures of my flat warming dinner from Friday night.

There are several reasons for this exciting turn of events. The most important is this - regular readers (whoever the hell they might be) may have noticed I've been somewhat given to introspection of late. I blame this on the fact that I am getting older, and everyone knows that a direct consequence of getting older is that you become wiser and more philosophical. That's just a fact. And just in case the irony hasn't translated thus far, it is also a fact that with age comes the ability to laugh at one's self. Admittedly I'm still working on this one. But honesty is also another wonderful grown up quality.

Anyway I'm given to anxiety with regards to this blogging lark. Like all good things in life I thoroughly enjoy it when I'm on a roll. When the writing flows its like good wine, just keep pouring the bottle I say. But when your not writing it can feel like creatively speaking, at least, you are on the wagon. Translation being, 'bad times.' But the other night I was talking this through with a fellow feminist friend and I came to the unfortunate conclusion, that one of the reasons why feminism gets a bad rep is because it takes itself too seriously. Now I'm not one to extol the virtues of a happy-go-lucky existence and certainly there is a lot about equality issues which simply just isn't funny, but I am willing to concede that we could all stand to take ourselves a little less seriously. Sometimes.

One of the wonderful things about this blogging business is the amount of time and effort my fellow bloggers invest in their blogs. They really have managed to create spaces where they can explore ideas, food, fashion, frivolity in all its wonderousness. The visual blogs particularly astound me and this has made me acutely aware that I don't illustrate my points often enough. The main reason for this is the old chestnut rearing its ugly head that 'others do these things better'.

But If I continue with that attitude I'll simply never get anything done, no matter how rubbish the outcome. And like I've said before its a process. This is all a process. So in a bid to explore my creativity further I give you a feminist's first dinner party.

Turns out that despite Betty Friedan's best intentions, this feminist at least wanted to be a good hostess because I spent the best part of last week devising, concocting and creating a dinner party befitting of my fabulous friends. I blame Nigella Lawson.

These are the results:

Here's the dining table -

Image by Dora Petherbridge

And here's a close-up

Image by Dora Petherbridge

And now to the important bit - the food. Deciding that I didn't want to make things easy on myself I went with a Thai/Asian theme. Here for starters we're having Japanese carrot salad (which I would like to dedicate a blog to because it was so easy and delicious), tempura prawns (these were a real baptism of fire and I have the oil-splatter burns to prove it!) and chicken satay skewers with peanut dipping sauce.


Image by Alice Turner

And so to the main - Thai Red Prawn Curry with coconut rice. My friend Alice, who is an excellent photographer, photographed the food. But having consumed a jolly amount of red wine, she forgot half-way through the evening that this was her designated job for the night, and so this image is of her dinner half-eaten. Still, that's realism. And in some ways that's feminism.

Image by Alice Turner

I suppose I've blogged about this because I think the little things, the minor triumphs, the well-executed meals, the hilarious jokes over wine, the putting together of a lovely dinner table, which, although not earth-shattering in and of themselves, are still important. Yes there's doom and gloom around at the moment, but not enough to forget that there are good things to be done. Some of these things are worthier than others, but that's just life.

With this in mind I'm now making a concerted effort to emphasise the lighter side of life too. Indeed it will be a feminist's take on frivolity.

To that end I leave you with a foodie related quote from the sharp-witted (and tongued) Lionel Shriver;

'I'm not a subtle person, and I cook the way I write. In the kitchen or at a keyboard, I push flavour towards an absolute limit. Food, like fiction, should leave an after-burn. As a good novel should make you cry, so a good main dish should make your eyes water and your nose run.

In neither books nor cookery is Shriver nice. I would no more concoct a bland, cautious dish with half a teaspoon of rosemary and a "pinch" of cayenne than I would write a novel about a kind lady who knits and her exciting trip to the post office. Although the hands-on physicality and instant gratification of cooking provide a merciful antidote to a mere-words manuscript of two years, both projects hew to the same directives. They both benefit from the drama of the triangle. They should both lead with a dominant theme. And both food and fiction should knock your socks off.'

From an article which can be found here -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/06/recipe-swap-spicy-pork