But racism is funny, you weirdo

Presented for your consideration, a story in two small parts that has amused and depressed me in equal measure.

Part one is set in a small pub just off the centre of town. Present: your faithful blogger (the Brunette), two of her closest friends (the Blonde and the Redhead – there is a reason I refer to us in joke form), the Blonde’s partner and another couple that the Blondes are friendly with. I have met them both before but barely spoken to either of them.

After complaining about how quiet the pub is, the male half of this couple pulls out his phone and shows us a text message. It's a joke. A joke that he will not read aloud. Can you guess where this might be going? Blonde sees message and laughs. Redhead sees message and makes a small noise of "I do not wish to engage". Brunette sees message. Message turns out to be a variation on the old "Bus full of lawyers goes over a cliff, which is a shame because one of the seats was empty" joke, but invoking a charming racial epithet. Brunette shakes her head sadly. At this, the joker gets his back up.

Joker: Do you not think that's funny?
Brunette: ...no.
Joker: Do you not like jokes like that?
Brunette: ...no.
Joker: Why not?
Brunette: I’m not a big fan of racism.
Joker: Don't say that! People can hear you!
Brunette: That's what it is, though.
Joker: Don’t say it out loud.
Brunette: I can’t believe I'm actually being told off for not laughing at a racist joke.
Joker: Stop saying that word!

The Blonde, I should add, later interprets this exchange as me telling him off.

Part two takes place over MSN. I am, for reasons best known to myself, talking to my ex-boyfriend. I am going to switch names at this point, just to confuse you all.

Ex: I thought of you the other day. I got into a conversation about the feminist aspects of the film Aliens.
Jen: Oh dear, is my influence spreading?
Ex: I don't mind, I always liked your strong views.
Jen: Most don't. I got told off the other week for a) not laughing at a racist joke and b) referring to it as racist out loud.
Ex: Oh! I should have guessed that was you!
Jen: Beg pardon?
Ex: Was it [repeats joke]? My brother has been telling me this story about how his friend Joker was out with this girl and he told that joke and she didn't find it funny.

Not only am I apparently the only person in my ex's general acquaintance who isn't thrown into paroxysms of laughter by racism, but also the racism = not funny thing is so bizarre and incomprehensible that Joker is telling people the story and these people find it so strange that they, in turn, pass it on. "My mate told a random girl this joke and she didn’t laugh." I am amused that I'm so instantly recognisable by my strident attitudes (amused enough that I now want to get a T-shirt that says "Strident Bitch: Don't Tell Me Jokes" and I'm getting my own Strident Bitch tag), but seriously. There is nobody in the entire world that hasn't heard some variation on that joke, so there's no real humour potential in the joke itself. The only reason to tell it is to bond with your fellow pub-goers over how much [insert specialised group] suck, and don't you just hate them (in a totally nice way, of course, but they need to realise that this isn't their country), and wouldn't it be funny if they died? But don't you dare call it for what it is. It's not racist, remember, it's politically incorrect, which is all cool and edgy and shit, and don't call me a racist because that's not fair. You’re totally bullying me by using that word. Whiiiiine.

Oh, and he didn't like it when I put the dampers on his sisters-having-sex fantasy either. Hah.

Why Is This News?

(I wonder if this may become a depressingly regular feature.)

John Sergeant has left Strictly Come Dancing. For the international reader: a man who can't dance very well has left a show about dancing because he couldn't dance very well. And not only is this news, this is The Biggest Story In The World, Ever. We can't get away from it. John Sergeant has quit! John Sergeant has quit! I could not possibly care less! Please tell me something interesting!

This has been quietly irritating me for a couple of days, but this has just pushed me over the edge. It is filed under "Politics" because a cabinet minister has been remarking on the story on Question Time. WHY is this coming up on Question Time? Is nothing else happening in Britain at the moment? For ages you couldn't go anywhere without hearing about the whole bloody Russell Brand thing (can't stand Russell Brand, the whole incident was terrible, but please don't make me spend any more time thinking about him), and now that's all been shunted away so that thousands of people can complain that John Sergeant has quit. Hey, I hear we're entering a recession. Apparently, America has its first black president. The BNP membership list has been leaked. I want to hear more about that, if only in hopes of more gems like this one from The Times:

"Some of the information is inaccurate, whether by error or design. One possibility is that simple codes have been used to mangle numbers. For example, the mobile for a top English scientist, said to require discretion because of his job, was answered yesterday by an angry Glaswegian who launched into a four-letter torrent of abuse."

Consider this my Quote of the Day (rather, week). I think a lot of interesting ethical questions are thrown out by the BNP member leak, but I can't read about it because no news outlet will write about anything other than John bloody Sergeant. And I quite like John Sergeant, but for fuck's sake. He's a man who can't dance. A man who can't dance has decided to stop dancing. Please stop this now. This is DULL. For the love of God, give me some actual news, or failing that, several pun-filled jokes. Anything other than John bloody Sergeant. PLEASE.

CICA Sucks

So, as if this wasn't bad enough, we now find out that the little girl abused by paedophile Craig Sweeney will get £9,000 compensation. Yeah, you read that right. Nine grand. This child was three years old. Sweeney was on early release for another crime when he attacked her and can seek parole in 2011. Nine fucking grand.

I'd like to put this in some sort of perspective. I once broke my ankle on school property and got five grand. CICA insists that it works on some sort of tariff scheme, grading pay against injuries. I assume this must include emotional injuries, and to that I say what the FUCK? Who wrote this fucking injury list? She was three and abducted by a fucking paedophile, and nine grand is the best you can do? How much therapy is this girl going to need? How many horrendous emotional problems is she going to have thanks to this abuse? How many times is she going to wake up in the night screaming? You cannot possibly tell me this is only twice as bad as broken ankle. For fuck's sake.

You can't compensate the child, clearly. There is nothing anyone could do to truly compensate her. But come on, at least give it a shot. At least pretend like you give a shit. I sincerely hope that our justice system will keep the asswipe in prison for the rest of his life, and CICA, pull your fucking finger out. Jesus Christ.

Today in Bad Ideas...

I would just like to say that I was against the idea of a Rocky Horror remake in the first place, but if they cast Russell fucking Brand as Frank-N-Furter, it will be the most irredeemably godawful piece of shit ever produced. Jo Brand would be better than Russell Brand. Get Anthony Head! I'd watch that. Not fucking Russell fucking Brand. I'm just praying this is like the time when people were claiming that Robbie Williams was going to be the next James Bond, and that everyone will realise how shit Russell Brand is before they go and do anything stupid.

GAH!

I may not be coming back.

Blogger is demanding I switch to a Google account (which, y'know, I have, but I REALLY do not like being forced into this stuff), and demanded it AFTER I HIT PUBLISH ON THE LAST PIECE then refused to let me back in insisting that my account did not exist. I quite like using Blogger, but there are tons of sites for starting a blog and I do not appreciate attempts to gain a monopoly over what I use. If I can't keep the blog on my old Hotmail, fuck it, I'll move.

It's just a blog, it's not a house. You really have no leverage here, Google.

An Epic Rant: Tad Safran is Tosspot McGee

Tad Safran just wanted to remind me that he is a useless tosspot.

I don't know why he bothered, since my memory of this is still pretty strong in my mind (Safran argues that British women just don't spend enough money making themselves look like eighteen-year-olds, is horrified about being set up with a woman he deems insufficiently attractive and is more horrified still that this ugly beast might still need to be sold on the good qualities he insists that he has - I think I may segue on to this piece, because it reads like a self-parody), but just in case, he informs me here that equal pay for men and women is "inherently unfair". The piece, if you're link-phobic, is written as a conversation of sorts between Tosspot McGee and a "reader". On the one hand, yes, get a woman in to argue with him, but on the other, get a journalist. And if she is a journalist, why isn't she credited as such? Lord knows. It seems to be a series, too, as another link on the side says "Tad and Molly: Why Women Are Sluts and Men Are Studs." I didn't have the stomach to click on it.

So anyway, let's humour him for a minute. Why, Tad, is it unfair to pay women the same as men? Why is it unfair to men, corporations and the economy in general? Do tell.

"Well, in most industries, there is a period of training, which is at considerable expense to a company. With male employees, the expense will be amortised over the next four or so decades because men will work until they die or retire. The majority of women will choose to stop working after a decade or so and the money spent on their training will be thrown out with the dirty nappies."

No, seriously. That's what he says. We should pay women less because some of them have babies and it's a waste of training. He makes no further points in the rest of the article, except to claim that men still "pay for" women (hence, they need more money) and then as his final line, says "I'm starting to think you get paid by the word." Oh God, yes, won't these women just shut up? And isn't he witty! I so want to shag you now, Tad.

I could make several arguments against what he's saying. So let's do that.
1. Tad is living in the 1950s. Men don't stay in the same job (and certainly not in the same company) for forty years anymore. Everyone chops and changes, quits for a better offer, decides it's not for them after all and trains to become a tennis coach instead.

2. Perhaps Tad intends to lock his imaginary wife up in the house with the dirty nappies, but most women actually, y'know, go back to work again. If we go with Tad's theory that the majority of women leave work after a decade, most of them don't stay at home with a thirty-year-old child wondering why they're still changing nappies. We go back, so as not to waste the corporations' precious time and money.

3. What, I wonder, would Tad's reaction be if women agreed to give up having kids in exchange for equal pay? If Tad wants a baby, he can grow one in a damn test tube. I sincerely hope Tad doesn't want a baby, because how fucked-up will that poor kid be?

4. Tad wants to know if it's fair that male and female docotrs are paid the same, since female doctors are more likely to go part-time. Tad, mate: Do you honestly want to be operated on by an underpaid surgeon? What if she is full-time and has been damned by your "all women are the same woman" theory? What if she is insufficiently attractive (use Tosspot McGee scale to determine) to catch herself a rich workaholic husband? What if she has to work eighty-hour weeks to keep herself afloat? Do you want to be cut open by that woman? I'm giving Tad the benefit of the doubt and assuming that he doesn't think women can't be surgeons, more for my sanity than anything else.

5. If a man opts to become a stay-at-home dad, can we ask for some of our money back? After all, he, by virtue of being male, cheated us into thinking he would work FOREVER, and now he's not.

6. Tad says men pay for women. Tad also says that the American women he knows spend about £850 a month all told on beauty and fitness, and remarks with disgust that the British women he knows don't even spend £700 a year on that stuff. Once again I am proud to be British, but Tad cites as an example the old "well, women don't pay in restaurants" schtick. If Tad is spending £850 on women's meals in a month, he's even more fucking pretentious than I thought. Also, if I went out to dinner with him, I wouldn't fucking pay either. He would a) have expected me to spend that much looking attractive enough for him to be seen with (his equivalent is "putting on a clean shirt") and b) have already cost me about half my IQ from having to listen to him all night. As we learn in the last line, Tad isn't keen on women getting chatty when he has some VITALLY IMPORTANT MAN-KNOWLEDGE to impart to the silly little women.

7. Tad is a whiny, entitled little ass who knows full well it makes no difference whatsoever to him if the woman he's arguing with in the article (whose responses I haven't copied out because she is mostly just telling him he's a useless fucker, which is fair enough) is getting paid the same amount he is. It makes no difference whatsoever to him or any of the rich idiots that he knows if everybody operates on the same scale of pay. He knows that, and he's not arguing from any objective position of fairness. He just likes having that superiority. He likes to know that he's earning more than his date, because it means his opinions are worth more and he doesn't have to listen to her. Entitled little brats like to remain entitled little brats, and he doesn't want any uppity woman coming along and reminding him that he's not that special.

As we move on to the earlier and most amusingly parodic of the two articles, I remind you that were Tad not earning more than the women he dates, were he not more so-say successful than them, he would have much less of an inbuilt 'right' to demand that women devote all their time, money and energy into being sexually attractive for him. Well, American women already do that, he notes with approval, but then they spoil it by being - gasp! - shallow. How on earth do you manage to spend £850 a month on your looks and not be shallow (or, at least, Tad's version of shallow)? Let's look at this, shall we?

We start off with: Bridget Jones is soooooo gross. And I bet all you women reckon that you're going to have Hugh Grant and Colin Firth fighting over you, right? Well, you won't, because you're all gross too. Ha! Take that!

Then we move on to: eighteen-year-olds are hot. Why don't you stay eighteen? That's what I'd like. Stupid bitches. I sense that none of this article was directed at me, because I never resembled the "sublime rose" he describes in tones that are, frankly, gross for a man twice the age of these girls. "They dressed as if there would be a prize at the end of the night for the girl wearing the least" says Tad, dreamily. Ooh, yum. Women are Tad's shiny, naked objects. Then he goes to America and comes back and horrors! The gorgeous women have been eaten by fat lager-swilling slobs! No, seriously, that's what he says.

We get into what Tad considers to be "standard beauty maintenance" and a "simple and sensible investment in [a woman's] future". Here's what he lists:
haircut, highlights, manicure, pedicure, waxing, tanning, make-up, facials, teeth whitening, military fitness, spinning sessions, vikram yoga, Pilates, deep-tissue sports massage, personal training, the occasional spa day, a week-long “bikini boot camp” in Mexico at the start of every summer and seasonal splurges on personal shoppers and clothing. Apparently all his female friends in America do all this. I think that's bullshit, largely because I find it hard to believe he has any female friends at all.

Then comes my favourite bit: Tad's disastrous date with a woman not groomed to his exacting standards. "Now, I'm not saying I'm the greatest prize out there..." says Tad modestly, sort of ruining it by making clear in the rest of the article that yes, that is exactly what he's saying. Remember the list of all the things women were supposed to spending money on as he says "...at least I'd put on a clean shirt, shaved and brushed my teeth." Brushed your teeth, Tad? Brushed? Ooh, big spender. Anyway, apparently this girl (whose name he has kindly changed) used to be stunning, but now had the audacity to not be dressed like a slut, not be a gym bunny and not smell the way he would prefer. "I was hurt," says Tad, "that my friends thought I'd be remotely interested in Sophie." He was hurt! Guys, you hurt him! Setting him up with a nice woman like that! How could you! Then one of his friends attempts to show off Tad's successes to Sophie, in order, I assume, to demonstrate that they weren't just competing in a reality show called Who Can Set Up Their Friend With The Biggest Git. Tad, outraged: "I could not believe it. She was selling ME to HER!?" Yeah, I'm totally with him. I mean, obviously she was a moose (I know because Tad told me, in euphemistic language that was presumably meant to be funny), how dare she not grab on to ANY MAN who comes her way? How dare she have standards? I also think it's fairly clear that he was acting like the Biggest Git and the friends felt that some selling of this horrible tosser was needed. He informs us snottily that Americans don't touch carbs after 2pm, which is why everyone in the States is married and nobody in Britain is. It's also why the States is renowned for being the thinnest nation on earth and not at all characterised by the words "fat" and "stupid". He actually blames carbs for Sophie's single status, as opposed to the fact that her friends obviously hate her and keep setting her up with horrible people.

Tad, ever the egalitarian, does go on to blame the friends (well, the woman, as is only right)... for not "managing his expectations, whatever the fuck that means. He calls Sophie an "orc" which might be the least clever insult I've ever seen in print. He then compares Helena Bonham-Carter to Michelle Pfeiffer, calling them "equivalent". Erm, no, dear. There is no such thing as an "equivalent" to Helena Bonham-Carter. He quite hilariously implies that you never see American celebrity women looking rough. Tad lives in a very strange world.

It's all the fault of British parents, of course, for not shaming their little girls about their looks. Tad then talks about going for a manicure (HA! I'm sorry, men can get manicures if they want, etc, but HA!) and nobody wanting to talk to him. Of course they didn't, you asswipe. You were in fucking Britain and you were a creepy man trying to talk to strangers in a manicurists'. You claim to have lived here since you were three - have you learned nothing? We don't DO THAT. Who knows, they might have recognised you. "Oh, fuck, it's Tosspot McGee. Pretend you're Cantonese, quick."

It's also our friends' fault, because we're nice to each other. We don't tell our friends they look like shit, or need to lose weight, or are wearing clothes we don't like. First of all, I have very English friends who have done all three of these both to me and to other people. And no, I wasn't fucking grateful, and you know why, Tad? You know why? BECAUSE I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU THINK. I don't care if you think I'm fat, or unattractive, or dressed badly. I just couldn't give a shit. I'm terribly sorry. When you go on to say that yes, we like shoes, but men don't care about shoes, WE DON'T CARE IF YOU CARE ABOUT SHOES. I have never in my life put on a pair of shoes and thought, "Hmmm, I wonder if these will make me more attractive to that git over there." I've never even thought, "Hmmm, I wonder if my partner will like these shoes." Hear that, Tad? I have never in my life bought shoes with a man in mind, and I don't know any woman that has, unless her man is a fetishist. We may think, "I wonder if he'll like this extremely hot piece of lingerie" (answer: yes. Every time, yes. Even though I've never been to a spinning class in my life), but a lot of us don't even care what you think of our clothes, and we certainly don't care what you think of our shoes. Shoes are for us, not for you, hence all the time and money we selfish Brits spend on them.

It's also just as off-putting if you're absolutely perfect except for one minor flaw. So, Tad, if that's just as off-putting, why should we bother at all? We obviously can't bring ourselves up to your level.

Tosspot McGee concludes by reassuring us British girls that we're miles ahead in the personality stakes, and devotes several misogynistic paragraphs to talking shit about the American women he was praising to the skies at the beginning of the article (remember that? All the way up there? I am pissed off today, I tell you). They're vapid, they have no social skills, they ask too many questions, they're annoying and confrontational and think sleeping with men makes the sexes equal (Tad sniggers a little, because of course nothing could make a woman equal to him), they're grasping, they're shallow, they've all got new faces from the plastic surgeon that they lie about. Ew.

He assures us that we're wonderful, we really are, "[b]ut when it comes to making the all-important first impression, do you really want it to be, “I’ll bet she was really hot ten years ago”? I couldn't give a fuck, Tad. I couldn't give a fuck if your first impression of me was "Ugh, fucking hell, that's a moose and a half." I'll say it one last time: WE AREN'T DOING IT FOR YOU, YOU ODIOUS PIECE OF CRAP. I don't wear make-up in the hope that some loser will think I'm hot. I am not going to starve myself so that some man who thinks he's entitled to a hot girl will think he's entitled to me. Also, your standards are YOUR fucking standards. Most men (I can generalise too) can't think of anything worse than a woman who spends a grand a month on her looks. No woman has to spend a grand a month on her looks to be thought of as hot. Poisonous people like you (and you are poisonous, Tad) try to convince us that we have to do it, no man will want us if we don't do it, but I've discovered the big secret: It's a huge fucking lie. My partner doesn't care if I've waxed or not. He doesn't notice if I put on a few pounds. He doesn't care how nicely-shaped my nails are. Unwaxed, period-bloat, straggly-haired, naked-faced me doesn't repulse him at all; he seems to quite like it. None of this stuff matters to most men. And frankly, if he did tell me to wax, I'd tell him to go first. It's taken a long time learning, and maybe I'm not quite there emotionally, but the logic stands, Tad, that I don't have to do squat to be attractive to men. Nor does this Sophie you were so scornful of. I can guarantee you that out there somewhere are several men who know her and think you're absolutely nuts. WE DON'T HAVE TO TRY. And when we do try, it ain't for you. We buy nice shoes because they make us feel good. We're more likely to put on a face full of make-up for other women than for you.

It upsets me that Tosspot McGee wrote all this, snark potential aside, because I remember being in a place where his words would have stung me, and perhaps he would have been successful in convincing me that I should "take better care of myself" and try to mould myself into his vision of attractiveness, and I am so grateful that I didn't see this then. It upsets me now because so many women still are. And he knows it, the nasty little tosspot. He knows he can convince women to change for him if he can get them to believe that he deserves to get what he wants. If he can pass himself off as someone so utterly wonderful that all women are throwing themselves at his feet - and thereby stand in for all men, who all expect this kind of care and attention to looking the way you're told to look - he can make us believe that he has all the power and we have none. Men like Tad look at the world as if there's only one bachelor left and all the hot women must compete for him. Women like me must stand atop Tad's roof and scream, "IT'S A LIE!"

And I have. My fingers are bloody exhausted.

In The Stocks: Self-Destructives and Uppity Bitches

The BBC posts an interesting article about the disproportionate hatred for celebrity women. In a poll, four out of the five most hated celebrities were female, and the man was Simon Cowell, who also appears on the "Most Loved" list, along with four other men. Just as an aside, Gary Lineker? Really?

The British, the poll concludes, love Paul McCartney and hate Heather Mills. We love David Beckham and hate Victoria Beckham. The article doesn't comment on this, but it seems a little weird to me. It's almost as though we pick our national treasures and then unleash hate on their wives. It never seems to happen the other way round - the only times we've come close, oddly enough, are with the other two women on the list. When Brian McFadden of awful Irish boyband Westlife left Kerry Katona of awful English girl band Atomic Kitten, we hated him. Boy, did we hate him, and his new girlfriend too. We hated him so much that he's buggered off out of the country. We were right to hate him, too, I think. I don't trust any man who compares having children with his ex to "having a dog we weren't ready for" (they'll read it, you asshole!), or who bashes the mother of his children to journalists and threatens in the national press to sue for custody then does jack shit about it. I think Brian McFadden is an odious piece of crap. But now that he's off in Australia or America or wherever and most people have forgotten about him, we've decided to hate her instead. We claim it's because she's behaving like an unfit mother, smoking and drinking, taking drugs (or so the delightful Mr McFadden informs us), and generally behaving like - hmmmm - someone who's not very well. Kerry Katona, back in the dark ages, was one of the most popular women in the country. She'd just split up from a man who slept with a lap dancer on his stag night, she'd just won an appalling but highly-rated reality show, and she was down-to-earth and Northern and smiley. We just loved her. She won Mother of the Year twice, and got the Iceland ads on the strength of her being a recognisable symbol for good parenting. My unofficial theory is that when she began to break down, we felt betrayed. How dare she not be the perfect mother? We gave her an award! We were proud of her for moving on from her nasty ex, and we expected to see a marked improvement in her future choice of partner. When she yet again opted for a loser - or someone represented to us by the press as a loser - we got impatient. When we heard that she was smoking while pregnant, we got mad. We're not having that, Kerry! We don't care what your problems are, you're a damn role model! Act like one!

Everything she does is now fair game for bile and ridicule. I can't imagine that she's still working with Iceland, but nevertheless she's still attacked for it. She is, or was, advertising insufficiently healthy food to the nation. How dare she? Whether you choose to attack her on a serious level or just make eight hundred jokes about lard, you're perfectly entitled to do so. I mean, it's her fault, isn't it? When she was subject to robbery at knifepoint in her own house, we took the piss. Relentlessly. Not a word of sympathy for her. And it's her fault, of course, because she let us down.

Amy Winehouse follows a similar pattern. When she really came to our attention with the release of her second album, we fell in love with her, bonkers beehive hair and all. So talented! Such a songwriter! Such a voice! Gather round, boys and girls, this is real music. We thought Simon Cowell had done away with actual musical talent. We were impressed. And then Amy, too, turned out not be perfect. A lot of pop stars like a drink, but Amy was old school and turned up drunk on Never Mind the Buzzcocks. I know people who went off her then, because her speaking voice was annoying and she was all uncouth and spat. Spat! On TV! Then she picked her unsuitable man, and all the drug-taking palaver unleashed itself upon us. And we blamed him. He was a useless smug little man who didn't appear to have a job of any description. Ditch him, Amy, we urged, but instead, she married him. And I think that's when the backlash started. Amy Winehouse's husband is currently awaiting trial for GBH or perverting the course of justice or both, depending on which reports you believe. Her parents blame him for getting her onto hard drugs. He has reportedly refused to go to rehab with her, saying instead, "You can go if you want to," which is classic manipulator's language if I ever heard it. Maybe it was never right to put all the blame on him, but no way in hell can it be right to put all the blame on her. She's self-destructing and needs help, which is NOT a hanging offence, but we blame her because she let us down too. She was our great white hope of British music and shouldn't expect to be allowed flaws and issues too. The day after Heath Ledger's death, I read five separate blogs (all male authors, incidentally) who screeched, "If someone was going to die, why not Amy Winehouse?" That, my friends, is not normal.

A commenter on that article claimed he could understand the hatred for all of them except Winehouse, who is talented. But we don't hate people for being untalented. As I said, we used to love Kerry Katona, and even when she had a singing career we all knew she wasn't any good. We used to love Posh too, and her singing ability hasn't deteriorated to any great extent. I've felt stung into becoming a Posh fan. She may look like Self-Tan Barbie but so fucking what? The reason people hate her and Heather Mills is because they married people the public have decided are too good for them. These women are up themselves. We can't have that. Amy and Kerry married below them and allowed themselves to get screwed up, we hate them for that. Victoria and Heather married above them and made a lot of money, and we hate them for that.

It's a terrible mistake to marry a Beatle. The press and public will hate you for it. They hate Heather now the way they hated Yoko then, and the way they've conveniently forgotten they treated Linda. Oh, she may be a veggie-burger-making saint now, but back then she was a damn outrage. How can she have the nerve, we asked. She must be a gold-digger. Only by being silent and supportive and staying at home and finally dying of breast cancer did she win our love, and turn into what might as well be a fictional character. Carole Malone in the Sunday Mirror wrote, in a short article that Google is currently refusing to turn up, that it's understandable that we hate Heather when we've been used to the wonderful Linda. She then went on to say (in what I was convinced would turn out to be a parody) that Linda stayed at home like a good wife and mother, supported Sir Paul and raised children. Bless her. Not like this bitch, with ambitions and other such shit that has no place in a woman's brain. This is a charming piece of revisionist history that beyond the appalling misogyny the woman is spewing, shows that we think we get to decide who is good enough for our heroes. If a man picks a woman we think is beneath him, we turn on that woman. If a woman picks a man who is beneath her, we wait five minutes then turn on the woman. Again.

Notice, if you will, that the McCartney divorce is perceived to be entirely, 100% Heather's fault. If Paul gets any flack, it's for being "a naive old man", caught by the surreptitious and scheming wiles of a predator. Notice, if you will, that when the story of Beckham's affair broke, he was the only one who got no flack at all. The mistress got a decent dose, and Posh got the rest. Ian Hislop, who is not normally my first point of reference on feminist issues, remarked on how weird it was: "God, her husband's cheated on her! What a cow! She's been humiliated publicly! Bitch!" If he cheated it was her damn fault and there's no use her crying about it now. The press waits breathlessly to this day for them to split up, even though they seem to have put it behind them and are moving on quite happily. Neither of these women get any points for being a mother, though there has been nothing to suggest that either are anything less than highly devoted and attentive parents, certainly more so than either jet-setting father. Heather Mills has made it acceptable to make horrendous jokes about artificial limbs ("no, it's OK, 'cause she's an evil bitch"), and gets villified daily for apparently being a compulsive liar. People don't take kindly to me when they make a nasty remark about that and I suggest that if that is the case, then she's ILL and shouldn't be subject to your judgement.

I think anyone would be surprised to see me defending these women. They're "offensive" and "talentless" and "selfish" after all. Some of the commenters on the article would be astonished to see a woman defending other women because they've decided we don't do that. One even manages to get in a "poor little white boy" whine, amusingly. Those people especially would tell me I'm wasting my time on these women. Why don't I defend someone who's worth it? It makes no odds that I like Beckham and Winehouse, or that I have no strong feelings either way on Katona and Mills. It would make no odds if I hated the lot of them. They are human beings. Human beings who have made choices that we think are inappropriate. They are women who happened to fall in love, or woman who happened to fall ill. They are women with problems that we'd rather pretend weren't real. They are women whose wretched humanity got in the way of our comfortable assumptions, and we're punishing them for it (some of those comments make me believe that we're punishing all women for it). We laugh at, or condemn them for, their misfortunes. We villify them for their mistakes, and for mistakes we asume or believe that they made. Basically, we're hating them for being women who behave in ways we consider "unfeminine". You married up? You must have chased him. You must be ambitious. Ambition is unfeminine, bitch. Drugs are unfeminine, bitch. Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch. We know how you should behave and YOU'RE NOT DOING IT. You deserve everything you get.

This has been a rant from a pissed-off woman. Thank you.

Hey, Tesco, Leave Our Kids Alone

Tesco is selling padded bras to eight-year-olds.

Tesco says the bra is "designed to cover up, not flatter", but that sure as hell looks like a plunge bra to me. If it was designed to cover up, it would be a crop top. This is obviously meant for eight-year-olds developing slightly faster than normal (as in, A cup), and at that size you don't need a bra. Really. Making it into a bra, as opposed to a crop top or sportswear, does nothing but draw attention to the fact that the girl is developing. This is what early developers complain about - a bra is a stigma. YOU DON'T FUCKING NEED IT. Eight-year-olds sure as hell don't need an underwire. And if they do? Don't buy a £4 Tesco bra. Jesus.