Caitlin Moran in the Guardian today

Are any of you in the grunge thread? There's some interesting discussions about women in that scene and female musicians. I did wonder if Britpop/lad culture was a backlash against that, but then you had Sleeper, Echobelly, Elastica, and later Catatonia and Kenickie as well (and Skunk Anansie, who aren't Britpop but were around at the same time).

[quote DonnaQuixotedelaManchester]@lucys

best things ever. I lived in a house where I think at least 5 of us were size 4 Dm wearers. Never had anything so comfy in my life and good for your feet.[/quote]
My only DMs are the most cripplingly painful footwear I've ever owned. A complete waste of a lot of money. I have persevered and persevered but they are awful. And unwearable.

Where exactly would she ever be exposed to different ideas, have discussions about books, or meet people with different life experiences?

Oh come off it- she moved to London when she was 18 and got a career in journalism. Why are you making excuses for her?

@lucys

best things ever. I lived in a house where I think at least 5 of us were size 4 Dm wearers. Never had anything so comfy in my life and good for your feet.

[quote serenada]@lucylocketspockets

Well, I guess it was progress of a sort . I remember my mum complaining about us wearing DMs as they weren't feminine and my grandmother astutely pointing out that my mother's feet were ruined from wearing stilettos as an adult and that we had more sense![/quote]
Ladettes were much maligned in the media though whereas the 'butch lesbians' of my day weren't mentioned in the mainstream media.

I still wear DMs now, I've got about 5 or 6 pairs of the shoes.

I was definitely reading feminist writers in the 1970s as a teenager. If CM is saying that did not exist then she needs to do more research.

And I would have been back sooner only earlier on today I decided to make homemade soup. I wandered downstairs about an hour ago to see a kitchen covered in soup splatters. the whole thing exploded in the pan - all over the walls, floor, fridge, tiles the lot.

It's minestrone in a tin from now on.

@pawpawpawpaw

I'm not quite sure how to articulate this but there has been a shift from thinking of feminism as good for women to using the word feminism for virtue signalling and making yourself look better and cleverer than other women.

Knowledge as power (without the responsibilty bit). It's alongside a lot of stuff now where it plays to many crowds (or is meant to). Like a lot of this stuff it is self limiting and works only with an audience who have already bought into the narrative and can't see beyond it. It is not about knowledge sharing any more - rather competitiveness in a world where we are all equal therefore all fair game, supposedly.

Has anyone said Sue Townsend yet?
If they have I'll say it again.
She was a single mum with no money and she started writing plays, and of course, the Adrian Mole series among other things.
One of the funniest, smartest women ever (RIP)

She really irritates me- she was never a feminist, She was concerned mainly with writing about her favourite indy bands ( which in her usual myopic way were absolutely the only ones worth listening to). Also she fucked me off with her I'm cool because I wear Dr Martens and listen to this sad indy band but of course I'm absolutely working class, whilst simultaneously mocking white working class women who perhaps happened to like pop music but were out there heroically doing there bit in a man's world. She judges people on the music they listened to, that is the measure of the woman. Feminist my arse

I do think we had lots of messages about how sex wasn't just for men and that women should get off on.it too. I read all jean m auel's sex sagas, sorry, prehistoric novels, so I knew exactly how it was supposed to go.

I'm not sure girls now get that sex should be good for them too. I do worry about Dd growing up in a world where porn is the norm.for boys.

I haven't read the full thread as this is 12 pages long! I'm her age and can remember reading Cosmo and More! Judy Blume, Jackie Collins, Shirley Conran, Jilly Cooper and Judith Krantz to name but a few.
Plus we were the generation of ladettes, Sex in the City and the Rampant Rabbit! Oh and Chippendales were not rodents in the 80s either .

If she only discovered masturbation in 2011 she must have been sleeping for 35 years.

Christmas yes, was there not one person in that chain of publishing professionals who thought, hmm, I didn't think CM was the very first feminist? I'm only 8 years older than her and I read Ms and Spare Rib and went to the Silver Moon bookshop, had women's studies classes at uni etc etc.
I'm not quite sure how to articulate this but there has been a shift from thinking of feminism as good for women to using the word feminism for virtue signalling and making yourself look better and cleverer than other women.

@ArabellaScott

Yes, very true.

She irritates me. But if you look at her life (even just reading Wikipedia) it is very obvious why she comes across as so blinkered.

No formal education. In work, in an industry famous at the time for being very male-dominated and aggressively anti-intellectual (90s music journalism). Married to another music journalist with kids by her mid 20s. Columnist working from home since then.

Where exactly would she ever be exposed to different ideas, have discussions about books, or meet people with different life experiences? She wouldn’t even have had the chance to pass around J17 or Mizz, because she didn’t have friends her own age. She seems to have led an extraordinarily sheltered life, and that is reflected in the fact she things “you look older at 45 than at 25” is a shocking revelation.

Doesn’t make me want to read her crappy books, but the culpability lies with the editors/publishers for printing such derivative shit, and not with her.

The more I look at it the more I think the TRA trend of performing womanhood got such a tight hold because we didn't bother so much with feminism in the noughties. There's a whole generation of dolts that don't realise how important it is.
I used to yawn about endless "women in rock" articles in the 80s covering Debbie Harry and Chrissie Hynde [write about the music, ffs]. Those tedious articles seem to be on repeat even now and we are all supposed to think it's cutting edge when a woman demonstrates sexuality by performing the way men think we all do.

serenada, one sometimes get stuck in a persona when one is strenuously trying to deny something staring one straight in one's face. I think.

@queenofknives

Hahaha yeah probably! I felt a bit mean after posting that but it seems like every time I see her photo she is being 'zany'. It would be nice to see her at ease with herself and not putting on a show. But I guess that sums up her whole deal - her feminism is superficial, her career is all about her zany personality, so she can never let herself relax and be actually honest with herself and the world.

That what I mean - she is stuck in a persona that a teenage girl can carry off but an adult woman can't, but as she came through on that one dimensional shtick she hasn't built in any space to grow and is stuck in that persona. She has shown that if you are not in control of your grasp on the media than it is in control of you and she focused on being the immortalisation of a zeitgeist rather than letting the writing do that for her. It's an easy thing to do as a young teen but you don't want to get stuck there.

I don't believe the wanking thing with the teenage girls and their gratitude to her for informing them about it for one fucking second. I actually feel furious that she's insulting our intelligence by expecting us to believe such shit.

I think Julie Burchill (original enfant terrible of pop journalism?) has a lot to say about her.

@TowandaForever

Cagney and Lacey. So, so good. Mary beth & Harvey. Harvey jnr. Christine's alcoholic father. Top cops in NYC at its dirtiest. And a great intro tune.

On Amazon prime www.amazon.com/Cagney-Lacey/dp/B07KNBT82K?tag=mumsnetforu03-21

Also, Hil St Blues had a woman cop who was pretty ballsy if I remember correctly. You had to be in NYC in those days.

I grew up in.the 90s. It was a strange time. My mates and me were wc, 1st generation a level rock/indie kids and felt equal. We drank pints, had no lids on our aspirations and thought anything a boy could do, we could do.
But.
It was still considered a compliment to be as good as a boy and we definitely tried to emukate male behaviour, whilst channelling Courtney love. I still used my tits for tips as a barmaid.

It was my early 20s that I really embraced feminism- while working with women who'd been feminists since the 70s.