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Girls behaving badly
The Women’s Liberation movement began, arguably, 40 years ago when activists staged their Miss America protest. Here, Jenni Murray, Woman’s Hour presenter and lifelong feminist, is in despair over today’s ‘ladette’ culture and asks ‘Was it all our fault?’
It’s a warm summer day – the kind that generally breeds optimism after a long, grey winter, but there’s not much to feel cheery about as I read the morning’s newspapers. Gwyneth Paltrow teeters on heels vertiginously high, wearing a skirt even shorter than the extended belts we wore as teenagers in the Sixties.
Good lord, I hear myself muttering, it won’t be long before her back’s shot and, for goodness sake, she’s in her thirties and a mother. It’s clear she’s desperate to revive her career after a long absence being a full-time mum. How sad that she feels she can only attract attention by playing a pubescent girl out on the pull.
There’s nothing to applaud in the crime figures either. There’s a marked rise in violent behaviour among girls and young women. Thoroughly depressed, a colleague and I decide to have lunch at a nearby restaurant where we can sit in the sun on the pavement and cheer ourselves up. Nothing doing, I’m afraid.
From a distance, rising above the din of London traffic, we hear the unmistakable sounds of good-time girls behaving badly. Squealing, giggling, cat-calling, swearing of the kind you would never want your mother to hear. A stretch limo pulls up in front of the restaurant at the lights. There’s a gaggle of them, metaphorically hanging their knickers out of the windows and literally displaying their no doubt augmented breasts via the sunroof. Glasses of champagne are waved at the passing crowds and obscene suggestions made to young men who stop, amazed, jaws dropping in delight.
My friend and I are ashamed on their behalf and on our own. Ours was the generation that took feminism by the horns and vowed to make equality of the sexes work. It’s 40 years since we were galvanised into action by the demonstration at the Miss America pageant, where a sheep was crowned the winner and bras and stiletto heels were dumped. (Contrary to press reporting of the time, no bra was ever burnt!)
I was 18 in 1968 and determined I would not follow the flock. I and thousands like me would flaunt our brains, not our beauty and our sexual allure. We would take our place alongside men in the workplace and not be confined to the rigours of the domestic environment or the trappings of femininity. We would stride out in our minis and comfy shoes – ready for anything.
I never quite abandoned the bra or the high heels. The stilettos of the Seventies went as age progressed. The bra returned over much the same timescale – needs must. But the Miss America event, publicised all over the world, seemed to herald a new time for women – a sisterhood was born and we were filled with a fighting spirit. So, we wondered, as we watched those girls disgrace themselves, where had it all gone wrong?
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