MeToo backlash risks killing off romance warns author Barbara
MEN are no longer able to compliment women on what they are wearing without “fear of being branded a predator”, author Barbara Taylor Bradford has said.
The best-selling novelist claimed that the MeToo movement against sexual harassment had been a positive thing but she was now “getting slightly cynical about it”.
Barbara said she feared that the movement may now be putting a damper on romance.
Speaking to The Lady magazine, the 86-year-old Briton said her late husband, Bob, had worked in film and that she understood “the world of casting couches”.
And she revealed she had met movie mogul Harvey Weinstein who is at the centre of Hollywood sexual assault allegations which sparked the Me Too movement.
She explained: “For many years, it was an open secret that that sort of thing went on.
“I met Harvey Weinstein once. I had heard whispers about his predatory behaviour, but I didn’t pay it much attention. should have.
“I was pleased when it all came out because I can imagine what it must be like for a young girl feeling she had to sacrifice something if she was to land a role she desperately wanted.
“So I think Me Too has been a positive movement, although I’m getting slightly cynical about it.”
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IThe French actress Catherine Deneuve “said not too long ago that she thought the pendulum may have swung too far in the opposite direction”, she added.
“Now a nice man can’t even compliment you on what you’re wearing without fear of being branded a predator.”
The author recalled her youth working as a journalist on a newspaper. She said when a man tried to chat her up, she would often “deflate him” by laughing at him as “men hate being made to look ridiculous”.
Barbara’s debut novel, A Woman Of Substance, was published in 1979 and has sold more than 30 million copies.
To date, she has written 35 novels – all bestsellers on both sides of the Atlantic.
The author also spoke about how Robert Bradford, her husband of 55 years, died earlier this year after a stroke.
“I knew that he wasn’t going to live and how would I cope with all that was going to happen?” she said.
She told how she sat by his bed, in shock, for the week he was in hospital and worked out the storyline of her prequel to A Woman Of Substance.
She revealed the last words he ever said was: “I love you”.
She previously said she can still tell he is “everywhere in the apartment” and she “speaks to him all the time”.
I AGREE that the MeToo movement’s pendulum has now swung too far in the opposite direction.
I began my career as a singer and actress in the late Sixties and “the world of casting couches” was definitely around.
However we all had a choice.
You could say “yes” or “no” and I personally always found that, if the producer or director really wanted you for a part, it made no difference which answer you gave because I still landed the role.
In the late Eighties I founded my company Dinner Dates – a social events club
THE Me Too movement’s purpose was not to belittle men but give voice to the victims and raise awareness.
Has it led to the death of romance?
Without having evidential proof of this statement, I believe it has created a much-needed boundary indicating our limits.
And if this makes men slightly hesitant before complimenting a woman, then this might be the price we need to pay.
In exchange, we leave a great legacy to the generations of women who will grow up knowing they don’t have to tolerate what’s unacceptable. To encourage for singles – and over the years I noticed a distinct change in the way women treated men.
So much so that by 2011 when I sold the company, I felt sorry for men and thought that the women were emasculating them.
I saw that men had no idea how to behave because their compliments and behaviour were all too often taken the wrong way and criticised. a culture of silence is to dismiss all those women who fought hard to vote, be part of the democratic process and show that they matter.
We need to empower the next generation of women to speak up and express without shame tainting their existence.
If the MeToo movement is the channel by which this is done, then all the better.