Brexit for Women

Dear Reader,

I’m going to start this letter by pointing out the obvious, which is that Brexit affects all of us – young or old, male or female – but seeing as this is a women’s magazine I’ve quite rightly decided to focus on them today and the impact that last week’s vote will have.

Although I’m unsure as to where to start. The remain campaign lost by just over a million votes. And around a million more women than men were eligible to vote. Safe to assume that quite a few women did, in fact, vote to leave the EU last Thursday.

This surprises me and yet it shouldn’t, for the campaigns – as with an awful lot of other aspects of politics – were being run by overgrown, male school children. The elite. People who are not in touch with the inner workings of Britain or the people who reside there. Men rule and decide, women step into line and follow. That’s how it is assumed the country will work. Men who are more concerned with an unnecessary ‘political out-doing’ of each other forget to think about the very people their pathetic arguing will affect.

Dear Children…

Dear Children,

I’ve spent the last three hours looking after five of you. Five of you glorious human beings who, without even trying, light up the world you live in. You have boundless energy and optimism. Positivity hasn’t slowly been beaten out of you, yet.

And the whole time you were here laughing and running around in my garden, I wanted to apologise to you. I wanted to apologise to all children, everywhere. And why? Because decisions are being made that will have an immense impact on your future. And because they may very well be the wrong decisions. And because you have no say in the matter.

Dear Resentment…

Dear Resentment,

If only we didn’t let you take over. Take hold. Because your hold is toxic and unnecessary. You become a force so vivid and powerful we are unable to let you go or rationalise your existence. You make people feel they are owed something they are not, and make them angry with things that are irrelevant.

Let me give you an example, a political one if I may. Next week many people will turn out to vote as to whether or not we stay part of the EU. Part of something set up many, many years ago. But you, resentment, you’re making people feel negatively towards their current predicaments. You are twisting the facts and making them believe that all of their problems stem from issues and people that have no impact on them at all. You are muddling immigration and the purported issues surrounding the EU and sadly you are putting the UK in a risky situation. Because people resent the lives they have. They blame the government without looking at the facts. They blame the wrong issues and the wrong people. And they are now in a position to throw the UK back to the dark ages and show Europe and the world that we think we’re better than them. And better off without them.

See how dangerous you are?

You make people listen to nonsense and believe made up statistics. They become sponges for statements that make them feel like they can grasp the live they are owed regardless of others.

I’m not a politician and so I am not going to counteract what others have said to allow you to spread amongst the nation, but I would like to urge people in your hold that they need to do some proper research – hard I know given that politicians are no longer about the people, and just seem to enjoy arguing with the opposition for the sake of it – encourage them to look beyond their own resentment and frustrations and see the bigger picture. Because if this vote goes the wrong way then you’ll have an unprecedented power over the nation and things will get even uglier than they are now.

You’ve had your time, Resentment, and you’ve done plenty of damage. But enough is enough. It’s time to let people think without you clouding their judgement. This vote is too important, there is too much at stake.

Just take a step back, and let people think, without bias, for themselves. View things rationally.

And make the best choice they can.

Right, I am now off to write to Ignorance.

Take care,

Love, Me x

Dear World of Pop

Last week it was the Brit Awards and, even though I am approaching forty, I still quite like to watch the awards. Having a teenage daughter also means it pays for me to be ‘down with the kids’ and know what’s going on in music. And upon watching the show it became apparent that nothing much is going on in the world of pop except the over sexualisation of women.

Not long after the programme had started, and somewhat before the watershed, a partially clad model draped herself over one of the presenters with nothing but stars covering her nipples and little else covering her lady parts.

Dear David Cameron…

Your recent, and if I may say so, ridiculous decision to not make sex education compulsory has somehow not driven the headlines recently, as it should have.

In fact, anyone who doesn’t regularly delve into the world of the media and its sensationalist portrayal of the news and daily scaremongering might have missed it altogether. Which is a shame. It should’ve caused uproar, not least because it is not a wise decision, but because the women in parliament who suggested it – Nicky Morgan Secretary of State for Education being one of them – and gave such a good argument as to why sex education should indeed be compulsory, were not exactly taken seriously.

On the pink tax

Dear Reader,

Ever heard of the so-called ‘pink tax’ especially for ladies? Aren’t we, as a gender, so lucky that they’ve thought of a tax just for us? And in what is, of course, every woman’s favourite colour, right?

Um, let me think about this….no!

In case you don’t know what I am talking about, the pink tax refers to the extra costs we, as women, are subjected to. And subjected to, some would say, from the day we are born. Girls clothes often cost more than boys clothes. As do our haircuts. And beauty products. And dry cleaning.

Hat wearing cats ruined my life

by Jen Faulkner

This week I was angered by an article, partly entitled, ‘I want to drown my baby.’ Frustratingly it was an interesting and informative article about post-natal depression, and as to why more women don’t speak up and ask for help. And ironically one of the reasons they potentially don’t shout out loud for assistance is because they are afraid that people will assume they want to harm themselves or their child, exactly what the headline quoted. And so, this week’s letter was an easy one to write….

Dear Media,

This week, as well as on countless other occasions, you’ve taken a vitally important topic and completely devalued it by insisting on attaching it to sensationalist and unnecessarily brutal headlines.

Recently it was The Telegraph who potentially caused an entire generation of post-natally depressed women to burrow themselves even further away from support and reaching out with an atrocious headline that completely missed the mark.

‘New Beginnings’ writing competition

 

Beauty Magazines Never Taught me how to be a Wolf

When I forget I’m worth more
than the rumples of my belly,
I strip off my clothes,
let others draw me.
Here, my thighs – the trunks of trees,
The fur of my pits,
the fur of other places…
My hips: expansive brackets.
My mouth: a red-hot
pocket for my fangs.

Roberta Verdant is a Bristol-based freelance writer. She blogs for the Huffiington Post. She loves wild swimming and dancing barefoot. Read more about her and what she offers at: therapeutic-creativity.com

Letter from intrusive thoughts

This week’s letter is very different from what I had envisaged people writing about in this column, but it focuses on something very personal to me and is very powerful, and so had to be published.

Intrusive thoughts are unwanted and dangerous, and this week’s letter is written from a voice in one reader’s head. Thankfully its writer did beat this voice, and is now well again.

If you are at all vulnerable then please read carefully as this may be a trigger for some.

—

Dear Me,

Seeing as you are not listening to me I have no choice but to scream a little louder.

I am always here you know. I am a part of you and am inside your head and controlling your thoughts. But you know that already and you can challenge me all you want, but I won’t ever go away.

And the thing is, you know I’m right, don’t you? I make perfect sense. In fact, nothing has ever been clearer than my voice right now. I love sucking you in before going quiet for a couple of days and making you think you’ve won. But you’ll never win. Want to know why? It’s because you are pathetic and weak. Not strong enough to even control your own mind.

FEMINISM IN POP CULTURE – A YOUNG FEMINIST’S VIEW

Bristol Woman is delighted to publish the second part of the ‘Young Feminist’ series from young blogger, Mollie Semple. Probably, our youngest guest blog contributor to date. In this blog, Mollie tells us her hopes and fears in terms of the evolution and expansion of today’s Third Wave feminism. Definitely worth a read!

It used to be, in recent years, that there was only a very subtle undertone of feminism in any kind of pop culture most likely due to the fact the ‘Angry Feminist’ was the only stereotype thought of to refer to. And an angry woman just does not sell to the masses.

After the popularity of the full on 90s feminist movement Riot Grrrl, the whereabouts of feminists in the limelight, to me as a young person, appear to have dwindled away.

Only a few years ago I found it hard to find celebrities, songs and films right in the middle of popular culture to resonate with my growing feminist beliefs but now it’s increasingly hard to find an area that isn’t slathered in a new Third Wave feminist tint.

Obviously this feminism has always been around, but there wasn’t the same platform there is now to shout out to the world about one’s beliefs on equality. There wasn’t the same number of actresses questioning the press why it was only them who were asked about their family life or their skincare routine instead of their impressive careers. There was no Emma Watson to appeal to UN delegates on the importance of equality for women. Feminism was a dirty word, but I can see more and more of us embrace it as a powerful one. It is within this explosion onto the Hollywood scene, the music scene, the celebrity scene that one can see, mixed in with the added bonus of the Internet, the power of the media to share a message with the people.

This sudden surge of Third Wave feminism in the Western world, which has been building up, right from the first surge of Riot Grrrl, is completely exhilarating. Twitter is littered with it, Facebook is swimming in it and the celebrities are more and more becoming advocates for it. The Angry Feminist, for most, is now just a ‘Taming of the Shrew’ type exaggeration because a huge number of people are now fitting comfortably into a new “acceptable” egalitarian category. We are of course still angry, because you can’t see the gaps in equality and not become deeply impassioned in a desire for change, but it is now an accepted feature to be commended and not frowned upon.

Staggeringly, huge numbers of female celebrities are no longer afraid to open their mouth and express an important opinion in case of a drop in popularity. There has finally been created a safe space for feminism within pop culture where women and men can properly express their thoughts on it. The obvious inequality in this culture is no longer happily ignored, Third Wave feminism has broken through and started to dominate. Perhaps this is the beginning of the end.

However, I do just have one issue with this mostly brilliant popular movement. I worry that in between Emma Watson’s work for the UN, or frequent call outs on the Hollywood pay gap meant to ripple into the world wide pay gap, or the highlighting of the blatant racism in the film industry, there isn’t just a small element of inactivity with this newfound prestige. I wonder if there is too much focus on Western inequality and a lack of intrigue for the disastrous inequality on the other side of the world. Malala Yousafzai has been voicing her feminist views for her culture all over the world, but I wonder if she reaches the level of pop culture that, say, Ryan Gosling does. Western inequality is not unimportant or negligible in any way, but we mustn’t again fall into the trap of forgetting that the rest of the world exists. I also worry that this popularity might be detrimental to feminism in the way that it could exhaust its meaning without a sufficient achievement.

I am so excited by the fact that celebrities are using their platform to spread the word of feminism, but are they truly aiding us or telling us to actively do something?

Perhaps my criticisms are unfair here, perhaps I should just let feminism with its new fame find its steps and see where it goes. I just don’t want its power to become trivial, and for the feminist stereotype to be cyclical and in a few years time we fall into the unattractive label of the “Angry Feminist” once more. I just don’t want this fantastic opportunity to be squandered and lost in this fast moving pace of the pop culture world.

BIO
Mollie is a 17 year old student in the midst of her A Levels. She’s a passionate blogger at The Fully Intended, and all she really wants to do in life is write. She has been raised by her parents to want nothing more for the world than equality, and so intends to spend a lot of her time making sure her generation gets a little bit closer to just that.