Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism (17 page)

6: Choices

The highly sexualised culture around us is tolerated and even celebrated because it rests on the illusion of equality. Since the idea has taken hold that women and men are now equal throughout society, it is seen as unproblematic that women should be relentlessly encouraged to prioritise their sexual attractiveness. The assumption is that this is a free choice by women who are in all other ways equal to men. But if we look more clearly at the current situation, we can see how shaky this illusion of equality really is. To repeat some of the most basic facts: women still do not have the equal political power they have long sought, since only one in five MPs is a woman. They do not have economic equality, since the pay gap is still not only large but actually widening. They do not have the freedom from violence they have sought, and with the conviction rate in rape cases standing at just 6 per cent, they know that rapists enjoy an effective impunity in our society.

There is, of course, nothing intrinsically degrading or miserable about a woman pole-dancing, stripping, having sex with large numbers of partners or consuming pornography. All these
behaviours are potentially enjoyable and sexy and fun. But in the current context, in which women’s value is so relentlessly bound up with how successfully they are seen as sexually alluring, we can see that certain choices are celebrated, while others are marginalised, and this clearly has a major effect on the behaviour of many women and men.

The hypersexual culture is not only rooted in continuing inequality, it also produces more inequality. When I was talking to Carly Whiteley, the teenager in
Chapter Three
, I was struck by her view that a focus on individual choice often ignores the effects of those choices. ‘I think the thing is that even if they feel that way for themselves, don’t they realise what they are doing for other women?’ she said of women who decide to go into stripping or sex work. ‘It took us a while to get to where we are now, which is basically where men were at – to be able to insist on respect. And these women are breaking it all down. They are putting us back to where we used to be. Like, if you go to a club now it’s not unusual that, say, you’ll get your arse slapped by some stranger. Of course you can’t complain, you can’t say anything – all the media are saying that’s OK, all you are is boobs and arse.’

This reduction of women purely to their physical attributes stretches way beyond the areas of our culture that I have explored here. If you look at the treatment given to women in political life, you can see how the status of women is now frequently limited by the assumption that they should be judged – often cruelly – on how they measure up to the values not of their work, but of their sexualised appearance. For instance when Ann Widdecombe, the Conservative politician, appeared on the comedy quiz show
Have I Got News For You
in 2007, a large number of the jokes centred on her unsexy looks. The participants quipped about what it would be like to see her pole-dancing, complained that a glance from her would make them lose an erection, and commented freely and nastily on her
appearance. Or when Harriet Harman, the deputy leader of the Labour party, commented on the need for more women in power in 2009, one male commentator responded in the
Spectator
magazine, ‘So – Harriet Harman, then. Would you? I mean, after a few beers, obviously, not while you were sober … I think you wouldn’t.’
¹
The online version of his article attracted dozens of comments, many along the lines of this one: ‘Rod, I wouldn’t touch the sanctimonious trollop with yours, let alone mine.’
²

If a woman in politics does measure up to the right standards of sexiness, that does not make them immune from such bullying. For instance, Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for the American vice-presidency in 2008, attracted much justified criticism for her political views. Yet nothing justified the torrent of sexual innuendo that she faced at the same time. Manufacturers released a ‘naughty schoolgirl’ Sarah Palin doll, with a red bra showing through a school uniform blouse,
³
and even a blow-up sex doll. One female commentator in the
Sunday Times
wrote: ‘She looks like a porn star, specifically a porn star playing the “good” girl who’s about to do something very, very bad. “She’s the ultimate MILF,” said one friend.’
⁴
And eventually a porn film was made about a fantasy Palin figure –
Who’s Nailin’ Palin?
⁵
How can young women feel confident about entering public life when they know they are likely to be judged not for their competence and skills, but on how closely they resemble a porn star?

Yet the sexual bullying of women in public life now often goes almost unnoticed, it is so taken for granted. Some of this teasing harks back to a kind of 1950s sniggery nudge-nudge wink-wink, as if the commentators involved were simply amazed to see women, with women’s bodies, in public life. For instance, a bizarre furore erupted in 2007 when the then Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, revealed a little cleavage while speaking in Parliament. It encouraged the
Sun
newspaper to mark a series of
female MPs out of ten for the size of their breasts in a feature entitled ‘The best of Breastminster’.
⁶

Such bullying feels like an old-fashioned throwback, but this attitude towards women has also been taken up by comedians and performers who see themselves as ‘edgy’. When female actors and singers seek publicity by going on chat shows such as Jonathan Ross’s on the BBC, they simply have to accept comments about their size of their breasts or how much the host would like to have sex with them. When one writer, India Knight, went to interview the broadcaster Russell Brand, she felt that she was a professional doing her normal job. She later tuned into his radio show, and was ‘taken aback to find myself named on air as a prelude to Brand discussing my bosoms with, surreally, Noel Gallagher from Oasis, who insistently asked: “Did you sleep with her?”, a question that caused Brand to speculate in some detail about what sleeping with me might have been like … it was out of order and reductive: woman, ergo piece of meat, fair game, punchline, nonperson.’
⁷

This assumption that a woman should be valued primarily for her sexy appearance is having a real effect on women’s visibility in our culture. For instance, in sport, it was revealed in 2009 that in the Wimbledon tennis tournament the women selected to play on centre court were being chosen for their looks rather than their tennis rankings. In television in 2009 an older and more experienced woman, Arlene Phillips, was moved aside for a gorgeous but inexperienced young woman, Alesha Dixon, in one of the BBC’s flagship family entertainment shows,
Strictly Come Dancing
. In such instances, we can see how a focus on women’s physical attributes means that their other attributes, from their sporting prowess to their articulacy to their experience, are devalued. So the equation that is often made between the hypersexual culture and women’s empowerment is a false one. Far from being empowering, this culture is claustrophobic and limiting.

This is particularly true of women who may not have other paths towards success and status. The hypersexual culture weighs especially heavily on women with few options in life. For this reason it often seems that the middle classes can dismiss it as being of no relevance to their own lives or the lives of their daughters. It became clear to me that some of the men who create and support this culture do so in the belief that they can protect their own families from its effects. When I talked to some of the powerful people in this industry, I asked them whether they could see their own daughters going into this work. Dave Read, the director of Neon Management, which supplies models to the industry, has a daughter. What would he think if she wanted to be the next Jodie Marsh, I asked, and he was frank. ‘I would die to think that she’d try to follow in her footsteps. I want her to have other options.’ Phil Edgar-Jones, the creative director of
Big Brother
, also has a young daughter. He started with surprise when I asked how he would feel if she wanted to go into
Big Brother
and do glamour modelling. ‘I’m a middle-class parent, so I’d be—’ Then he stopped himself. ‘If that’s what she wanted to do …’ He paused again. ‘I would hope she would have different aspirations. I encourage her to read books. Other people have different backgrounds.’

But it is not the case that this change in our culture only affects women in one area or one class. The emphasis on presenting oneself as physically perfect has an impact on women throughout society. When I interviewed girls who were aiming for good degrees and careers I was constantly struck by the way that they were aware of how their boyfriends’ expectations of sex would have been formed by pornography and their expectations of women’s appearance by the airbrushed standards of current magazine and celebrity culture. These young women returned again and again, despite their academic and creative achievements, to a dissatisfaction with their looks. I have always believed that individuals can enjoy investing time and energy in
their looks and clothes without detracting from their freedom, but in our culture this interest in appearance is often more punishing than pleasurable, and tied into an over-vigilant regime of dieting and grooming.

One day I visited a college at Cambridge University, where I talked to five young women who had just received their degree results; more than one had a First, they were looking into bright futures and were full of optimism and excitement. Yet when we talked about body image, it was as though a cloud passed over the sun; smiles dropped, shoulders drooped. ‘I really never eat without feeling guilty,’ said one, and another agreed. ‘From the age of thirteen to seventeen I couldn’t put anything in my mouth without worrying,’ said another. This kind of punishing attention to their looks may have an effect on women’s ability to fulfil their potential in other ways. There has been intriguing research published recently that suggests that women who are put into situations where their attention is directed to their bodies, by the clothes they wear or the advertisements they watch, score worse on maths tests and are less likely to see themselves as decision-makers.
⁸
,
⁹
Such studies suggest that the narcissism that is being encouraged so relentlessly among young women may be affecting their ability to take up the roles that they would otherwise embrace.

There has been little questioning of this culture for many years. The tenor of so much of our society has been to exalt the role of the market. If certain magazines sell, if certain clubs make money, if certain images shift products, then dissent about their values is effectively silenced. As Phil Hilton, the ex-editor of
Nuts
, said to me, ‘I’ve given up on judging people.’ So many people would say the same. To judge any aspect of our culture or behaviour is now often seen as impossibly elitist; the market is the only arbiter. Television producers and publishers have told me the same story: that in this society they cannot make decisions based on quality or morality, they must make decisions
based on sales. Throughout our society, any attempt to complain about or change this culture is often met by fatalism: if the market is so powerful, then how can any individual stand against it?

To be sure, the current hypersexual culture does not impact equally on all women. There are young women following their dreams in anything from music to literature, campaigning to politics, and throughout their private lives, who have truly benefited from the work done by feminists before them. Yet so many women are hampered by this claustrophobic culture, and feel trapped and frustrated by what is going on around them. Through the glamour-modelling culture, through the main-streaming of pornography and the new acceptability of the sex industry, through the modishness of lap and pole-dancing, through the sexualisation of young girls, many young women are being surrounded by a culture in which they are all body and only body. In the hypersexual culture the woman who has won is the woman who foregrounds her physical perfection and silences any discomfort she may feel. This objectified woman, so often celebrated as the wife or girlfriend of the heroic male rather than the heroine of her own life, is the living doll who has replaced the liberated woman who should be making her way into the twenty-first century.

II

The New Determinism

7: Princesses

I was brought up in a family who pretty much agreed, as many families did in the 1970s, with the idea that was so clearly enunciated by Simone de Beauvoir in 1949: ‘One is not born a woman, one becomes one.’ So my mother had refused to buy Barbie dolls for her daughters and bought Lego and toy cars for my sister and me; the fight against gender stereotyping began at home. A generation on, I thought that my daughter would be growing up in an altogether freer time. I assumed that the very successes of my mother’s generation had made it possible for femininity to be seen as a choice rather than a trap for women. In the same way that I believed that adult women were now free to choose to embrace aspects of femininity that second-wave feminists had once seen as coercive, such as high heels and makeup, so I believed that little girls should now be free to be fairy princesses if they wanted.

But then I realised that, almost without my noticing, the walls have closed in. What should be the freedom to choose a bit of pink often feels more like an imperative to drown in a sea of pink. My daughter is growing up in a world predicated on
medieval values, with every girl a princess and every boy a fighter, every girl with fairy designs on her lunch box, and every boy with a superhero on his. This new traditionalism does not just affect what toys children are expected to play with, it also extends to expectations about many other aspects of children’s behaviour, from how they will dress to how they will talk, from how they will learn to how they will fight. And what seems strangest of all to me is how few questions are being asked about this return to traditional expectations.