stereotypes – Stefanie Moore

The only is not lonely

Have you seen The Duchess, the new Netflix comedy created by Katherine Ryan? It is very funny and her incredible school-run outfits have inspired me to put on a sparkly headband even though I am still, to all intents and purposes in ‘writing clothes’, or pyjamas to other people.

The show focuses on a single mum with a successful career who is very close to her child. There’s a scene at a body positivity conference where she is being interviewed and is asked ‘where is your child right now?’ and Ryan’s character challenges the question and the implication that single mothers don’t know how to raise their children. In this sense, the show is great at challenging stereotypes around lone parenting – like I said, the mother is fulfilled in her career, has a great support group around her and has a close bond with her daughter. But my smile started to fade a bit when she started talking about her child. The daughter decided that she would like to have sister and suddenly the narrative shifted. ‘She needs a sibling’, cried Katherine, echoing the desperation that a lot of mothers feel around providing their kids with everything they need. But it also suggests that an only child is an abnormality or in want of something. And this pisses me off. Later on in the show, a character is revealed to be an only child and describes himself as ‘smothered’ by his mother, who apparently cuts up his food for him and still kisses him on his lips as an adult. A lot of shows get applauded for their bravery at challenging stereotypes but are still get away at poking fun at a group of humans who a) cant do anything about their situation and b) maybe don’t feel like they are represented accurately at all. And that group is the only child.

In Working Mums, only children are described as ‘aliens’; in Catastrophe, the only child family of Fran, Chris and Jeffrey are cold and distant from one another, in contrast to the jumbled up chaos of Sharon and Rob’s crew. In Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Nathaniel is deemed to be spoilt and lonely because of his only child upbringing. And of course, Friends, which gets its own flack at the moment for a variety of reasons around representation, chooses to ridicule Chandler for being raised a singleton.

And yes, this is personal. After the birth of my son, I always assumed there would be more, but after many years of trying, there wasn’t. And you now what? There were several years where I felt very very sad about this, but now, I don’t. I don’t have family around me, so raising two kids would mean no time for writing outside in the garden listening to some smooth Bossa (as I am now) It would mean sweaty gym kits, after school clubs, shit and noise. I would always be tired. So, no, I’m fine, thanks. I’m not saying your experience of parenting (of two or more) is any better or worse than mine, but please respect the difference. Please stop presenting my kid as a weirdo for a cheap laugh. Stop presenting any kid as a weirdo for something that they can’t change. Go after creepy men or Holocaust deniers instead. It’s a cheap trick and a boring trope.

Perhaps I hold on to these perceived slights in the media because of my experience, granted, but I get enough little digs in real life anyway. Women telling me it’s time ‘to get one with the other one’ in passing, asking whether ‘i’m trying for one at the moment’, describing their own family of two as’ the perfect balance’. I actually feel sorrier for these kids, as they are growing up with ignorant, convention-swallowing dickheads for parents.

It feels very nice to say all this by the way. Thank you if you are still reading.

So please, world and by world I mean the media apparatus that we now experience our lives through, just leave only children alone (ha!) They are not de facto future murderers. They are not any more or less happy than kids with siblings. If you want to produce a truly original show, create it so that the single child experience is a happy and fulfilling one.

Build your beet basket! Build it high!

I’m going through a bit of a change.

No, not hot flushes (I’m always sweaty and flushed, so it will be hard to tell when they begin), nor am I coming out. Things are changing. I am undergoing change. change is upon me, etc, etc.

Like one of my chillis, this has been a bit of a slow burner. In fact, any change that I make is the result of many arduous hours of half-assed research, handwringing and procrastination interspersed with what I like to call the ‘settling process’, which involves many hours of oblivious television watching. Seriously, rocks form faster.

The most important part of any change-making I undergo is listening and subjecting myself to the stereotypes and pronouncements offered up by family, friends and media.

For example, I wore black trousers and a black polo neck consistently throughout my year at drama school. Urged on by my mother (who had never been to drama school), I was pretty much convinced that this was the uniform of all serious students of theatrical arts. I then went on to wear a mood ring during a vaguely hippy phase which culminated in me visiting a a pagan store twice in one week, feeling the relationship was becoming too intense and guilt buying a bookmark before leaving, never to return.

The black theme resurfaced when I moved to London, teamed now with Buffalo trainers and a droll expression, as my friend, who already lived in London and was therefore already always in black with drollface, assured me that this was ‘what Londoners are like’.

Well done, you noticed: my stereotypes are very image led – shallow me! And I think lots of them were formulated during childhood. Most of the time, they’re not bad prejudgements on a group of people or type of living; they mostly aim at being humorous (my family deal almost exclusively in jokes and jokes alone). Some of them are quite strange, specific and could only be deciphered if you belonged to my family (hence the title of this post).

I also feel that my keenness to adopt stereotypes and images when I was younger was because of a desperate need to afiliate (thanks Maslow). I would happily have joined any group that would have had me and if all I had to do to identify was wear a ring, bandana or shell suit, so be it. I was part of the gang – or so I thought. Sometimes the desire to fit in is stronger than the desire to be yourself, after all.

But things have started to change recently. Really change. After years of diddling about, I finally learnt how to practise Transcendental Meditation. My battles with my negative talking mind have been well documented and while my audio fast gave me some respite (as does writing), mindful meditation hasn’t suited me. After reading ‘Catching the Big Fish’ by David Lynch, I was inspired to finally give it a go. I will write more about it at length elsewhere,but suffice to say that I am enjoying the process and wonder whether my shift in perspective has led to other changes.

After one lost Saturday too many, I finally gave up alcohol. This has been miraculous – who knew being clear-headed could be this much fun? Please bear in mind, that I used to get the most God-awful hangovers, like the inside of my head and stomach lining were being peeled back simultaneously. I looked like I had been poisoned. I had been poisoned! Dumb ass that I am, it has taken me this long to realise that maybe alcohol and I didn’t get on too well.

From this point on, the floodgates have opened. I’ve stopped eating all dairy except for goats cheese and most meat as well. Naturally the stereotype dial has just shot past ten and up to eleven, but please, give me a moment of your time. I’m no fan of animals; pigeons are satan’s minions and I’ve no desire to pet a monkey. But recently, when I’ve eaten steak, I’ve heard screams. Not because I’m eating in bad neighbourhoods. I mean mental screams. And I’ve clunked down on far too many of those chewy veins that you get in chicken, the bits that make you gag then spit hurriedly into the nearest receptacle, then spend the rest of the meal wondering what sort of monster is lurking in there. So my reasons are really those of a fourteen year old girl, except I am also aware of the benefits of a plant based diet. If it’s good enough for Prince, it’s good enough for me.

It’s this final change that has led to the most stereotypes. Stereotypes extempore, as I’m about to demonstrate. When I told my mother about my swtich in diet, she responded ‘oh go and build your beet basket, then’.

Beet basket?

I’m not entirely sure what a beet basket is and neither is she, but I love her crystallization of what being a vegetarian teetotaler was. God, it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. But is eating dead flesh and poisoning oneself?

I can’t guarantee that all these changes will stay (vegan cheese ain’t fooling anyone and tempeh tastes like the devil’s drainscrapings), but they do at least feel like changes from within rather than without. They’re not a mood ring for the soul. And in the meantime I shall continue building my beet baskets with pride.

The Snake Eats Its Tail

Noises Off Day 6

My week of audiofasting has led to a lot of thinking and reading and thinking about reading and reading about thinking. Sometimes these things fall into line with events in the real world, in my world, which open up a new line of thought, or in this case a new resolve. Although not strictly following in the spirit of previous posts, I have no doubt that my thoughts wouldn’t be as clear had I not had this week of withdrawal from all extraneous noise. Enough elucidating, let me begin ….

Reading Susan Sontag’s essay on style in bed this morning and feeling a range of emotions as I plough and ponder the words. I fluctuate between envy and admiration, because she is an incredibly vigorous thinker and writer and engaging with her discourse is it’s own challenge and reward. The envy is because she is so damn succinct and brilliant and better than me and I allow myself this bitter comparison for a second before I get over myself.

So I’m enjoying my read,shifting between tiny eurekas and huh? moments, when a phrase hits me with its relevance. In her essay Against Interpretation, she describes pornography as a “substitute for life”. My initial reading of this phrase is that of a snark, that men who use porn are losers who evidently can’t get a girlfriend. This is a party line that I have held for such a long time that it has calcified, my long rehearsed ‘rant’ against Page 3 forming a strong part of my teaching repertoire for dealing with year 11 boys. And this has been a momentous week for the brilliant-but-I-can’t-believe-this-is-still-prescient-in-the-21st Century Campaign against print-based porn, No More Page 3.

The campaign, which is petitioning to have Page 3 removed from The Sun and associated newspapers as well as pressurising supposedly family friendly companies against advertising in their pages, received a timely spike of publicity. Caroline Lucas, MP for Brighton, lanced a big parliamentary boil during a debate on media sexism. In a brave and lucid speech against Page 3 culture and portrayals of women in the media, she wore a No More Page 3 T-shirt – and was promptly rebuked for inappropriate dress! Here’s a better summary of events,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/jun/12/caroline-lucas-page-3-t-shirt

This, and the Sontag, and my week of contemplation has made me re-think my position. And it goes a little something like this…

My traditional standpoint of vilifying men who enjoy Page 3 has been missing the point enitrely. Sorry. Page 3 and its counterparts mayin fact provide a convenient barrier for otherwise sound adult men against the reality of forging strong personal relationships with women, whether erotic, romantic, platonic or all three. Obviously, there are men who may use these images as a springboard for abuse or denigration, but I believe that there are more who have had their images of women so screwed up by concomitant 1D stereotypes in the press and on film, that confronting a real lady is a hair-raising experience. So what happens? A whole load of men stay in their shells and, along with a whole load of women, miss out on truly generous, loving relationships, which means a whole load of miserable where it could be a whole load of happy.

So am I beginning to feel pity for Page 3 readers? Maybe yes, because my attention has been misdirected for some time. So what of the women? In this spirit, I changed my focus to my year 10 girls and shared with them the debate and footage of Lucas’ speech. They feature spotted brilliantly (we’ve been looking at persuasive language techniques) but didn’t really engage with the matter at hand. When I showed them some recent copies of the Sun, however, the response was electric. The majority were quick to label the models as ‘whores’ and ‘not even that fit’, but when I probed them about who made the decisions and controlled this women’s image, they disengaged again. Before this week I would have faceplanted onto my planner in frustration, but I think my audio fast is making me empathetic….

15 year old girls are hormonal, vulnerable and desperate to find stereotypes and images of women to identify either against or with. I would say that the former is more prevalent than the latter; I would put the ratio at 3:1. It seems easier to confess to hating goths or thinking Katy Perry gross, than it is to love Beyonce or pronounce oneself a skater.

As such, the Page 3 girl is not providing an aspirant model for teenage girls; more often it is an image for them to kick against; whether because they think its a model of beauty that genuinely appeals to men, but one that they can never achieve; or because they are conditioned to think of these women as cheap, worthless and “easy to define themselves against”? Either reason is equally toxic, as both involve women-hating and self-loathing in equal measure, feeding the monster of poor self esteem that most of us, as women, have had to live with as teenagers. And who is responsible for fostering poor self esteem? I don’t really need to answer that question; the snake eats its tail.

My thoughts may be simplistic, silly, hardly revelatory, but my personal realisation that Page 3 makes no-one happier, male or female, makes me more determined to contribute to its removal. No More Page 3 is not a feminist campaign, it’s humanist.