Dawn: My shock at boozing girls’ antics
Comedian tells of worry over the ‘mimicking of men’
A GENErATION of young women are trying to mimic men by getting so drunk that they ‘have sex in a bush’ and vomit, comedian Dawn French has said.
In a forthright interview, the 59-year-old star said she was ‘shocked’ at how young women behave – and said society had ‘gone wrong’.
She claimed women acted like men by seeking endless sexual partners and ‘pre-loading on vodka’.
In a reference to the Suffragettes, she said: ‘Is that what women threw themselves in front of horses for? For this? For girls to be as low as those awful boys? What have we done?
‘How did we go wrong? They have mothers who love them.’
The actress revealed she and comedy partner Jennifer Saunders had been watching a Tv show about girls getting drunk in Ibiza.
Miss French lamented the rise of heavy drinking and being ‘sexually free’, saying that’s not what feminism was supposed to achieve.
She told the Sunday Times: ‘These girls are pre-loading on vodka, primping, helping each other get ready.
‘you reckon they want to meet someone who would love, cherish and respect them. But instead they go out and get utterly hammered and are s ****** g in a bush and coming out and going “yes” like men. Like the men we hoped we wouldn’t ever be like, and certainly not mimic as women – being champions of the s**g machine... and throwing up.’
The vicar of Dibley star recently revealed her seven-and-a-halfstone weight loss after embarking on a diet overhaul. Previously 19 stone, the comedy star took action following a cancer scare in 2014.
At the time she revealed she had surgery to remove her womb. She decided to lose weight in a bid to make keyhole surgery a success.
Having previously described feminism as the ‘freedom to be equal’ to men, she also spoke about her desire to see more women on Tv.
She said: ‘It’s not right. The other day there were two women presenting BBC Breakfast, and I thought “I like that, why don’t we get it more often?” But we don’t. And when it comes to the boys, they just negotiate in an alpha way.
‘They are kind of ruthless, and everyone expects it and women accept they are doing ever so well on much less. We need to value those women and make sure as they get older, you see them.’
The actress separated from Sir Lenny Henry, her husband of 25 years, in 2010. They struggled to conceive a child despite going through IvF, and adopted their daughter Billie, now 26.
During the interview she revealed that racists tried to burn down her family home and left excrement on the doorstep because of her mixed-race marriage.
Miss French said: ‘I fell in love with a man and he happened to be black and we adopted a mixedrace daughter. I only realised it was an issue when there was hatred from utter t **** .
‘I had to attend to it when people tried to burn our house down and left s*** on the door. But although that was hugely disappointing and shocking, you have to get past it.’
In 2012 she began dating Mark Bignell, who runs a charity helping drug and alcohol abusers. They married in Cornwall in 2013.