How does a corset celebrate women?
ISN’T Lorraine Kelly brave? The other day she ‘dared to bare’, posting two pictures of herself on social media, one without make-up and one with. This has something to do with International Women’s Day, apparently or, as it should perhaps be renamed, International Virtue Signallers’ Day.
Because, my goodness, they were everywhere on Thursday. From the endless stock phrases about ‘empowerment’ and ‘celebrating womanhood’ to the queasy platitudes from politicians and celebrities, the whole thing felt like an uncomfortable exercise in one-upwomanship and showing off those sparkling feminist credentials.
Tess Holliday, a plus-size model who has made a living by posing for provocative pictures, marked the day by posting a picture of herself on Instagram in a painful-looking corset with the caption ‘How to be a strong woman’. Why? Search me.
Meanwhile, bloke-ish Scottish brewer Brew Dog created a pink label ‘beer for girls’, an apparent attempt at tackling ‘lazy marketing efforts targeting the female market’ that came off as, well, a lazy marketing effort.
Look, International Women’s Day is a great idea. It has been running in some form for over a century and there are plenty of meaningful conversations going on about real issues affecting women, from the gender pay gap to domestic violence to FGM.
The role of International Women’s Day should be to highlight those issues, to start a conversation that goes on all year long, and yet it is difficult to hear it above the inane chatter about daring to bare, vague messages along the lines of ‘Women! Aren’t they super? Here’s a snap of me looking empowered in a body-hugging leotard’, and, heaven help us, turgid references to the sisterhood.
All of which brings us, in a roundabout way, to Meghan Markle. I like Miss Markle. I think she will be good for the Royal Family. But do we really believe she will ‘inspire’ young women, as she was sent up to Birmingham to do this week on – when else – International Women’s Day?
Miss Markle is an actress and charity campaigner who has given up her country, her faith, her friends, her family, her freedom and her job for a man. If you’re looking for a modern-day feminist, I’m pretty sure this isn’t it.
THE majority of women – the ones without the millions of Twitter followers – ‘celebrated’ International Women’s Day by doing what they do every other day of the week: juggling work, family and the general drudgery that goes along with day-to-day life.
These are the women I really admire, the ones who get on with it without all the self-congratulatory preening and my-feminism-is-better-than-your-feminism twaddle along the way.
If we’re going to have a conversation, let’s make it about something meaningful.
Otherwise we risk being drowned out by sea of attention-seeking selfies, and women whose roles in life are about as empowered as a bottle of pink beer.