Awful lists show no woman’s safe
David’s voice is so dreamy Beauty no bar to infidelity
WHY should children have the monopoly on irresistibly silken-voiced celebrities reading them bedtime stories?
Bridgerton’s delectable Regé-Jean Page has been doing the honours with Rain Before Rainbows on CBeebies, leaving mothers all of a dither.
Tom Hardy’s stint on CBeebies also caused grown-up eavesdroppers to confess to being hot and bothered in the most delightful way.
Many of us have suffered insoluble insomnia during the pandemic. Wouldn’t an adult version with mellow-toned personalities luring us charmingly into the Land of Nod be just the ticket?
If anyone influential is reading this may I put in a request for Sir David Attenborough lulling us gently to oblivion with Laurie Lee’s lyrical Cider With Rosie?
ASK ANY woman of any age, background, ethnicity or income bracket to reveal her list and she’ll do precisely that.The list will consist of a lifetime’s experience of men exposing themselves, sexual assaults, unwanted gropings, being inveigled into cars, pushed up against on the Tube, encircled by males, forced to flee from blokes who didn’t take “no” for an answer, being molested – usually by the boss – at work, or being raped, mugged or attacked.
These incidents often begin when the woman is still a child. Eight years old is a pretty standard start. The assaults continue long beyond our fertile years. We run the gauntlet every time we leave our homes unaccompanied. Don’t think for an instant these incidents only occur under cover of darkness. We are fair game at any time and every day, even in hospital, in labour or emerging from a loved one’s funeral.
I asked female listeners to my radio show for their lists. The response was immediate, overwhelming and heartbreaking. Not one rang to say she had no idea what I was talking about. Many shared a sense of shame at their memories. Perhaps, they wondered, had the attack somehow been their fault?
ONE woman recalled being jumped on by a choirmaster in his car. She told her parents, who said she was to blame for “looking old for her age and wearing lipstick”. Another was grabbed on her way home from school, aged 15, shoved in a car and raped by six men. She kept quiet lest people thought she hadn’t fought hard enough.
As the mother of two adult daughters it sickens me that my girls can reel off their lists just as I can itemise mine. Among my personal lowlights: being intimately touched at the age of 11 by the man who drove the water-ski boat on our family package holiday, and being mugged while walking home at 22. I can still taste my assailant’s filthy hand clamped across my mouth.
Being unsafe in public and private has nothing to do with being pert, sexy, wearing high heels or suggestive clothing or having imbibed alcohol. The only qualification for being the object of unwanted attention is being female.The response to Sarah Everard’s abduction and murder is clear. Women do not feel safe because we are not safe. I want better for my five-year-old granddaughter.
JUST after they posted glamorous pics at the Biden inauguration, J-Lo, 51, and ex-baseball star A-Rod, 45, split up. Rumour has it A-Rod has been keeping company with reality TV star Madison LeCroy, 31.
No one would wish Jenny from the Block anything except romantic bliss. But there must be a crumb of consolation here for wives who attributed their spouse’s straying to their having “let themselves go”.
Jennifer is beautiful, lithe and wrinkle-free. Not for J-Lo greying roots, fraying knickers and a lockdown spare tyre. Proof that physical perfection does not guarantee fidelity.
Shame upon the harpy who snarled at me in 1999 after my own travails: “What did you expect if you let yourself get so fat?”
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WELL done to Taylor Swift, the first female to win the album of the year Grammy three times.
How beguiling it is to learn she has spent lockdown near my neck of the woods in north-west London. She has kept a Covid-friendly low profile, first in Crouch End, said to be so hospitable that Bob Dylan once hoped to buy a property there, and latterly in rock ’n’ roll central, Primrose Hill.
Compliments to Taylor for her choice of des-res. Gwyneth Paltrow also favoured the same bohemian, elegant, multicultural, suburban stamping ground.
What’s not to love?