Looking for Inspiration?

Re-posted from The F-Word where I am guest-blogging at the moment.

Great news - on Monday night the award ceremony was held for the Inspirational Women of the Year Awards. Like any keen-to-be-inspired young woman I rushed straight to the media to soak up the positive vibes.

The first thing I found was that The Daily Telegraph had a feature encouragingly titled "Inspirational Women of the year awards". I've put the link there as exhibit A but if you'd like to save the bother here's what the article holds, this is the full list:

A picture of Sarah Brown in a large necklace.
Three paragraphs about Helen Mirren's hair.
One paragraph about Helen Mirren's outfit.
Two paragraphs about Sarah Brown's outfit.
A paragraph describing the event, it's location and sponsor.
A list of other female celebrities who attended.

And that's it. No mention is made or photograph shown of the women nominated for or winning the awards. In fact to the untrained eye it appears Helen Mirren won after the judges ruled she had better hair than Gordon Brown's wife!

Some more digging turned up a second article. No, not in The Times or The Guardian, in Hello Magazine. And they actually (not that it was hard) did a better job than The Telegraph.

The photos were of Helen Mirren and Rachel Stevens in glamourous outfits but the article's five paragraphs included only one about the outfits worn by the various celebs in attendance and a whole paragraph and a half naming the winner and describing her achievements.

The Daily Mail also ran a piece, which they really had to given that their readers were the ones who had been voting for the winners (before you ask - yes all the candidates were predictably white and able-bodied). They provided a very long piece which described in depth the achievements of the winner interspersed with a huge number of photos of the celebrity attendees in glamorous outfits.

I really fail to see how this is going to inspire young women to do anything other than buy fancy shoes.

But in case you were wondering... the winner was Sylvie Silver whose achievements we are told include:

"Serving as a wing commander in charge of 1,300 teen air cadets in the London Air Training Corps, working with children and adults with learning difficulties, helping in a nursing home and acting as a director of a charity for older people."

Well done Sylvie.

What Were We Expecting?

Very interesting article on Alternet about the parrallels between the octuplet-mum in the news recently and Angelina Jolie. Caught my eye because I'm currently on my hols in China and observing the one child policy in action. Aside from the use of resources issue* I have to say the one-child family does seem kind of peaceful. There is none of the focussing on one child to turn round and realise the other one has just broken some valuable porcelain and with two parents (assuming both are involved parents) both focussed on one child seems that the child soon realises it doesn't have to scream to get a bit of attention. I think in the past - gatherer/hunters time - women would most likely have had their children spaced out, the career-focussed trend for having two or three in quick succession seems to have obvious flaws. A modern solution is to just have one I think. Of course there are issues with running such a policy in a place where girls are widely not wanted. But then there's a straight-up problem with any place where girls are not wanted anyway. I'm up for a global programme of one-child incentives, there are too many people - especially on the Great Wall today, I could hardly move!

*And yes I know the smell of my carbon footprint coming out here to China is a resources issue in itself. In my defence I had work in Hong Kong last week. I got the train up to Beijing from there. Also in my defence I am, like Angelina Jolie and Nadya Suleman "33 years old, having been born in 1975", and I have NO children farting out greenhouse gases...

What Kind Of Tart Are You?

I've just seen Gordon Ramsay on his "Kitchen Nightmare's" show - promoting a vegetarian restaurant in France, putting a sticker on a girl of about three that read "I'm a vegetarian tart". Now admittedly I don't think that "tart" has the same double meaning in French that it does in English, but in case the implication wasn't clear - he was surrounded by women dressed as can-can dancers (similar to the image shown here). He also previewed the promotional exercise by taking the owner of the restaurant to a topless burlesque show and harping on about how "Paris is sexy". Still eh? If it gets people to buy his over-priced food I guess sexualising infants is just fine...

Hands Off Heather

Well apologies for the recent radio silence on here and on the podcast too - we were supposed to be going to the Glasgow Comedy Festival, then we weren't, then we were and between that and the Stop The Strip Pub campaign I've not had a minute to myself.

Back to "normal" now. Whatever that is. And I keep looking at the papers and thinking that now it's all over maybe people will leave Heather Mills alone. I really don't understand why she's so hated. What "crimes" is she supposed to have committed? Who has she murdered? As far as I can see what she's done is:

1) Said that Paul MacCartney drinks too much and takes drugs. Of course he does, he's a pop star. No-one complains when Amy Winehouse's Dad says she's on crack, people tut tut about her for taking drugs. Isn't it taking drugs that's against the law - not talking about it?

2) Said that Paul hit her. Is that so hard to believe? That a guy high on booze and drugs might hit his wife? Don't we know that that happens all the time?

3) Poured water on a lawyer. Since when did lawyers become the good guys? It's only water, not water-boarding.

4) Described their relationship differently to the way Paul described it. Because normally ex partners agree completely on these things... She's not employed half her own family on expenses while they trot round Eton on a polo pony!

5) Asked for money after her marriage broke down. Initially we were told she would ask for £100m or more. Later it turned out that she wasn't actually asking for that much. Plus - lest we forget - she has a child to raise. A child whose father is worth at least £400m. A child that needs protection growing up (especially after the way the media has covered the story) and a child that is already accustomed to good care, nannies and expensive schools. So when the news emerged that she had settled for £25.4m, why did the papers not cheer her accepting the much lower figure?

6) Appeared in a topless photo-shoot. You know like the ones The Sun publishes EVERY DAY.

But really, really, the very worst you could say she did was cynically married a pop star for money. So what? How many of us can honestly say we are 100% certain we wouldn't?

And remember there were days when I looked at the papers and found four of the first five pages dedicated to hate-journalism about her. Where is the sense of perspective? What about the murderers, rapists and violent attackers? Where are the victims of corporate-run third world sweat shops? The prisoners of conscience? The victims of NHS cut backs, knife crime and the lack of adequate drug rehabilitation facilities? The women of Darfur facing rape and starvation daily while newspapers in the UK whine about a disabled woman who had the nerve to marry someone famous and it didn't work out.

Quick Funny

I'm sure they'll fix this but right now the Times Online says "Veteran British television entertainer Bruce Forsyth celebrates his 80th birthday with Miss Puerto Rico and Miss England" underneath a photo of an Orang-Utan eating leaves!!