We’re making a meal out of the feminism debate
Twitter hate campaigns against celebs prove that no matter where you stand you are in the wrong, writes Julia Molony
IT’S NOT a neutral question, Are you A Feminist? Not like, say, are you a vegetarian, or do you like bowling? If you are a well-known person of the female gender, this question is the PR equivalent of a game of ‘I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’. Except instead of choosing between eating either maggots or a kangaroo’s rectum, you have to choose whether you would like to be attacked by a conservative horde of pitchfork-wielding twitterarti, or a feminist one.
Answer in the affirmative, and you can expect editorials from the Daily Mail twisting your words. For extra seasoning, you might even be the subject of the odd anonymous rape or bomb threat thrown in via Twitter, or just a vicious dismantling of your appearance. These are the everyday hurdles faced by vocal feminists online. Admit you are not a feminist, however, and the fallout is almost as bad. Just ask Mary Berry, who was the subject of exhaustive and sometimes vicious editorialising after she made the mistake of answering no when the question was sprung on her in an interview.
Possibly because it’s 95 per cent likely to cause a Twitter storm, the feminist question has become a firm staple of the contemporary celeb interview. Although only, it seems if the interview subject is a woman. And especially if that woman is a chef. Men tend not to be asked, even though it’s an issue that presumably affects them too. Even men who are also chefs don’t get asked. You don’t get Gordon Ramsay grilled about where he stands on the woman’s movement. Or Marco Pierre White. Is he a feminist? Has he ever even thought about it? That is not a rhetorical question. I’d genuinely like to know.
Not only that, but as the 21st-Century creeps on, and the women’s movement collides full force with Cath Kidson-style retro-consumerism, modern ladies are faced with all sorts of new dilemmas, such as are feminism and a love of baking decorative cup-cakes mutually exclusive? Can one be a feminist and also a domestic goddess at the same time?
There's no simple answer. And plenty of people ready to jump in and attack perceived “unfeminist” behaviour, with almost as much vitriol as open misogynists. These are the feminist index scorekeepers; an innumerable number of commentators who keep a beady eye on the public behaviour of any woman, and deliver a stern ticking off to those who could be accused of Letting Women Down. Examples are legion, and include the aforementioned Mary Berry, Page 3 girls, french minister Rachida Dati, who went back to work too early after having her baby, and Katie Price, because of everything she does.
Who better to throw the question at, in light of all of this, then, than the domestic goddess herself, Nigella Lawson. Especially since she was giving, in last weekend’s Observer Food magazine, one of her first interviews since the very public break-up with her husband. The question was pretty inevitable. After all, enquiries about her divorce were clearly off the menu, so there had to be something to ask that got to the essence of her femininity, and standing in the world, to the contradiction at the heart of the Nigella Brand — the very modern sort of social and fiscal power she’s accumulated by playing with traditional roles.
‘Can one be a feminist and also a domestic goddess at the same time?’
After all, this is a woman who has been pictured posing in a T-Shirt with the slogan “English Muffin”, so if anyone knows how to square the contradiction, it is she. Previous Nigella scores on this feminism index include the following:
Marks against: Bakes cakes for a living, lived for many years with a powerful husband who may or may not have been physically aggressive towards her. Trades on her sexuality. Regularly admits to neurosis and vulnerability. Oh, and there’s the muffin T-shirt.
Marks For: Is a successful woman with a voice and a lucrative career. Left husband and promptly divorced him when he was seen to possibly be being physically aggressive towards her. Successfully trades on her sexuality. Seems generally to be a figure of towering emotional strength, despite all her confessions of neurosis and vulnerability.
See how difficult this game is? It’s enough to make you think a bush-tucker trial might be preferable.
Still. At least Nigella seems to have it pretty sorted in her own mind, which one presumes is the main thing.
“I feel the answer to be selfevidently a ‘yes’, I am almost baffled by the question,” she said, when asked the question. “Feeling comfortable in the kitchen is essential for everyone, male or female. . . Women of my generation were keen — rightly — not to be tied to the stove, but the ramifications of this were that they felt a sense of dread in the kitchen. How can that be good for anyone?”