OOO Look at my Bum, It's Not Sexist At All.

This week I've been incensed. I'm absolutely furious. In other blog posts I've mentioned that I like to pick up a free copy of Stylist magazine on Tuesday evenings/Wednesday mornings. I used to really enjoy it as a magazine although recently I've thought less and less of it.


It’s a magazine for WOMEN. It goes on about this a bit too much tbh. It holds networking events for women in business to meet each other; it had an article about how Maggie Thatcher was a feminist. It loves WOMEN OK? It’ll make any old article about nothing into something about “the sisterhood”.


This week, in one issue, we have an article about how modern women feel guilty for too much, working too hard, drinking too much, not calling granny cos too busy with work (oh yeah I forgot to mention that it also assumes all readers work from 7am to 9pm everyday and wear high heels and power suits and do yoga and earn really good money. It’s like they decided who they want to target so they just nah nah nah I'm not listening assume all readers are that target audience). Another article was about a lady fire fighter “she's the only one in her fire station!”, who does outreach work to get women to sign up and fights the fight for the ladies, subverting people’s expectations. Further on we come across an article about the “Coronation Queens”; the strong, gutsy women who have MADE Coronation Street over the years.


So yeah, it rams it down your throat. I've pretty much decided I hate it recently, but I still thought it probably was just trying too hard and had a good heart.


UNTIL NOW


Until I became incandescent with RAGE.


Every week they have a column by a guest lady writer who writes about anything they like. I still thought maybe the editor would read it and not allow it in if it was A. shit or B. Didn’t fit the “agenda” of the mag. I was wrong.


This week we have an article by this person:

She looks harmless enough. Until you find out she's a sexist bitch who would like to forget about suffrage and feminism and go back to the good old days where men could objectify women in the workplace and women could suck cock to get ahead. Now I notice that her eyes look particularly evil.


She wants good old office flirting back! What’s a little harmless flirting right? But that’s not what she means . what SHE wants are “the halcyon days” when “you could hear whooping from the lifts as you made your way to your desk in the morning” and “no item of female clothing would escape comment (leather eh? After a bit of dominatrix action, are we?”).”


This is all in the first 2 paragraphs.
So.
She liked it that women would actually shouted at. Intimidated. Made to feel like they weren’t part of the team, but just something to ogle. She obviously has massive self confidence issues that she needs validation from rank sweaty journos.


That’s another thing. She says “When I started in journalism- one of the last places to succumb to PC demnds”. What she's saying here is that journos are racist sexist ageist; everything under the sun, but that it’s a good thing, cos who wants to be PC gone mad? I heard a comedienne say once that objecting to Political Correctness is like objecting to “being nice to people”. Quite.

So whateverhernameis wanted to sleep her way round the offices of fleet street and wear sexy clothes and oh yeah she liked it the most when “the boys on the TV desk would get me to stand on a chair and swivel their mounted widescreen this way and that”. Oh right so you’re just a massive slag then? I couldn’t believe this drivel could get published, let alone that any woman would think it. let alone that any would would think it and write it down. Who is this ranko probably tory scum?


Then I found out she's Piers Morgan’s wife.


That bloke who was a national baddy and everyone hated him and published fake photos of British soldiers abusing Iraqi soldiers and ran disgusting tabloids and everyone hated him. And then everyone forgot about him for a bit and now he’s the goody judge on Britain’s Got Talent and no one cares that she's scum and has a face that screams to be punched and a nasal whine that sounds like a cat farting.


Well, someone had to love him and that someone is his wife. Although she probably doesn’t love him at all, he just made a comment once about her leather skirt while she was bent over picking up his pen so she shagged him and so on.


Anyways, back to the article. She goes on and on about how HR bores have spoiled all the fun by asking staff not to be rude to each other and intimidate the women and also do you mind not emailing pictures of Lizzie in accounts round? We know she slept with Karl consensually and let him take the pictures of her legs akimbo but she didn’t know he’d dump her and scan them into the computers. Sorry to ruin your fun but we are the bores in HR.


So she goes on and on about that but now, it’s great cos it can all go back to the way it was cos of Mad Men! The new scandalous programme on the telly that tells women to wear tight clothes to work and says men should get drunk in the office and leer at their secretaries.


Umm, excuse me have you actually seen mad men or did you just see a picture of Christina Hendricks and let your imagination do the rest? THAT ISNT WHAT THE PROGRAMME IS ABOUT!!!!!!! Yeah the men do those things and the women are perved on and treated like shit BUT THAT ISNT GOOD AND THE MEN LOOK BAD COS OF IT AND THE MAIN CHARACTER GETS HIS COMEUPPANCE*. And the girl who does best in her career is the one who doesn’t sleep with the boss and actually works for it. There's nothing right with this article and it’s offensive to me as a human being.


I’ll leave you with this extract on why she loves Mad Men.


The men, meanwhile,
engage in a series of laughably
inappropriate, crude and chauvinistic
interchanges: “Joan’s on the desk with
boobs on the blotter,” laughs one
about Christina Hendricks’ character


Stylist….you’re dead to me.


*I couldn’t spell comeuppance and it took quite a few tries.

Excuse me miss, you were saying "Kill Bella" in your sleep, Can you get off the bus now?

I’ve always been one to see a bandwagon, scorn the bandwagon and then when it’s going over the hill and almost out of sight, I run after it screaming WAIT!!! PLEASE WAIT!!! And waving and get a red face and jump on the back bit that looks a bit like the back of old route master busses. That’s what bandwagons look like in my head. I imagine the back of an old route master bus and also a wagon wheel.



So anyhoo, about a year ago I thought I might start getting into twilight. My friend Janey liked it. She said it was a good laugh. So I got the DVD for Christmas and 6 months later Janey and I settled down to watch it. I chatted the whole way through and I think I was quite drunk as well so all I remember really is Janey explaining everything to me cos I was talking over the important bits. What I gleaned from her was that the film didn’t explain things properly so you needed to have read the books for it all to make sense. Show me a person who says a film adaptation is good and I’ll eat my hat. NOONE likes the film adaptations EVER…actually, apart from Godfather I think. Were they books first? I don’t know. I guess Clueless was good. But I haven’t read Emma so what do I know?


So I watched the film and then I forgot about it and then about 3 weeks ago I started reading the first book. I was hooked. Now the film made sense. They're written for teenage girls and I was one once. When I bought the books I had to get them form the “dark romance” section of Waterstones in the teen department. That section didn’t exist when I was a teen. I guess there was a point horror section.


So I read the whole saga in about 2 weeks.


I would stay up late, read it instead of watching telly with my boyfriend, walk down the street and work corridors reading it. EVERYWHERE I WENT AND WHATEVER I DID I WAS READING.


You’d think that I really liked them to read so much of them so fast and so obsessively.


But I didn’t. I thought the main character Bella was a self sacrificing goody goody and her boyfriend was a wet blanket. I thought the chemistry between her and her bezzzy mate Jacob was forced and pathetic. I thought the word “pain” was used too many times. She always thinks she's causing people pain and people have pain in their eyes etc.


And the novel starts out with her moving to this town that she hates cos her mum has a new fella and she doesn’t wanna be in the way. Oh get over it you moany bitch.


and she falls in love with this vampire fella but she's fiercely independent and when everyone’s life is in danger she has to save everyone else first and doesn’t care that she's going to die. Yeah right. And she's so stupid cos vampires don’t sleep or feel cold but she's always going, oh you must be so tired, don’t give me your coat what if you get cold…ERRR YOU MORON DON’T YOU REALISE THAT THEY DON’T GET COLD OR GET TIRED? And then she's bezzy mates with that Jacob boy and STOP READING IF YOU DON’T WANT MASSIVE PLOT POINTS REVEALED he becomes a werewolf and he stops feeling cold too and he can tear people’s heads off but yet she's always going oh no be careful, what if a dog chases you and oh no don’t give me your coat what if you get cold….ERRRR FOR EFFING SAKE CAN'T YOU REMEMEBR THAT HE CAN'T FEEL COLD AND ALSO GET YOUR OWN JACKET. And everyone’s always trying to protect her and then in the last book LOTS OF MASSIVE PLOT POINTS REVEALED she gets pregnant by her Vampire husband. Oh yeah cos they got married and its cos the author is a Mormon and all the way through the books Bella wants to have sex with the vampire but he never lets her in case he eats her and he says OK I'll do it with you if you marry me. It’s so preachy. But anyways so they get married and go to this island and have loads of sex and she gets up the duff and gives birth within about 2 weeks cos it’s a super baby but the baby will kill her when it’s born cos it’s so strong and so they decide that when the baby kills her they’ll make her a vampire and for the rest of the book she's a vampire. And she changes personality.


I had a lot of problemos with her becoming a vampire and I've realised it’s cos in Buffy vampires are bad and you assume they’ll go to this hellish place when they’re destroyed with a stake but the vampires in twilight are really self righteous and boring so she fits right in. and I got SO bored of everything going right and everything being perfect. Probably half of the fourth book (which is massive) is ONE DAY IN TIME. It’s so boring. SO BORING.


And when I was reading the books I kept having obsessive dreams about it all and then when I finished when I was so relieved but I missed them so now I'm watching Vampire Diaries (same storyline but with fitter blokes although the main character vampire is the EXACT SPITTING IMAGE OF JACK OFF OF EASTENDERS) and I've ordered all the twilight films off of Amazon.


It’s like the bandwagon pulled into the bus depot but I won’t get off and the driver has got off and turned off the lights but he left the door open for me so I can get off when I'm ready*.


*That did happen to me once when I was drunk.