Gracie’s feminist motto: I’m a woman and I love doughnuts

MY ELDEST regards me quizzically. ‘What on earth are you doing now?’ she asks. It’s 9pm and I’m ferreting around among the ominous, ever expanding pile of stuff on the kitchen table looking for a pen that works.

‘I’m filling in this form,’ I reply, holding up a poster with the words ‘I am a woman and . . .’ on it. She looks perplexed as I write ‘. . . my hair colour does not define me’ to finish the sentence.

I explain that the magazine I edit is running a feminism debate and we want people to fill in the poster and take a picture.

‘What?’ she says, in that halfinterested way I’m convinced preteens practise in front of I don’t know how I do it the mirror. ‘Feminism. Equality. It’s important, you need to know about it,’ I reply.

She sighs. ‘What’s being blonde got to do with it?’

‘Well,’ I reply, ‘Sometimes I may give a really good speech or go on telly to debate something and invariably one of the men present will refer to me by my hair colour as if that’s the most important thing about me. No one ever describes a man as blonde apart from Boris Johnson and he’s an anomaly in every way.

‘ This kind of behaviour is not cool,’ I conclude, trying to make my speech feel more modern for her but sounding about as cool as Bruce Forsyth reciting JayZ lyrics.

Although, if I try to make something appear to be cool she will clearly conclude it’s not. It’s a minefield, this parental preteen programming.

‘Is that why you just had all your hair cut off and you’re on a diet?’ she asks, eyebrow raised with a very slight but noticeable smirk.

Blimey, daughters can be so cheeky, can’t they? Every conversation is littered with potential for emotional fireworks.

‘I am NOT on a diet, there is no such thing as dieting in this house,’ I mumble through gritted teeth. ‘I’m just avoiding biscuits so my bottom isn’t as big as this pile on the table and I live longer. And I had my hair cut off because . . .’

Well, I don’t know why I had my hair cut off but it certainly wasn’t anything to do with being a feminist.

My daughter is losing interest. What’s the point anyway? How am I going to explain female empowerment to a contrary 11yearold who has Rihanna’s bum waved in her face on a daily basis?

It’s all so confusing. One minute I’m telling her about gender equality and why she should be paid the same salary as a man, the next she’s watching a submissive, s exedup Hannah Montana gyrating in a leotard three sizes too small in front of a dubious male pop star twice her age. She doesn’t really know what to think.

Perhaps 11 is too young to talk about this kind of thing. I’m confused myself and it is now nearly 10pm.

My task is made more difficult by the reappearance of the rebellious toddler, who’s taken to getting up and wandering back into the kitchen after she’s been tucked in so tight even magician David Blaine would struggle to escape.

‘Fenymism,’ Mabel says to no one in particular. ‘It’s mine.’ Her nineyearold sister wanders in, too, despite having gone to bed half an hour ago.

‘Why are you up?’ I ask number two child. All the women are now in the kitchen, which is ironic (only my sixyearold son is where he is supposed to be, asleep in bed).

With a full female audience I seize the chance to make one last point.

‘Did you know a 16yearold called Malala was shot in the head for going to school in Pakistan just because she is a girl? As long as that kind of thing is still happening I will still be talking about feminism.’ I cross my arms dramatically.

Silence. ‘I know what you should write,’ says Gracie in the middle. ‘I am a woman dot dot dot and I love doughnuts.’

‘OK, bedtime everyone.’