For those of you fortunate enough not to have heard it, it’s promoting a new mini-computer (I think) which comes in a range of pretty colours. And that’s the main angle they’re putting on it – the colour choice. So far, so inoffensive. Doesn’t seem much of a USP for a piece of technical kit, but that’s up to them. To demonstrate the different colours, they play the same song in various styles. Black is a male singer fronting a metal band. Blue is a laidback, male blues singer. Pink is…and I’m sure you guessed this… synthetic-sounding girl-fronted bubble-gum pop.

To give them their credit, it is a resourceful attempt to solve the difficult problem of how to convey colours in an audio ad.

BUT, they’ve confronted us with a whole ganglion of simplistic equations. Pink = female = in the minority = cheesy bubblegum pop = fluffy = not serious…

Maybe I read too much into this. After all, it’s just one tiny drop in the ocean of patronising gender stereotypes that constitutes modern advertising. And, in any case, I almost prefer totally blatantly sexist ads to the kind of faux feminism of adverts like that one they had on before Christmas (I completely forget what was being advertised, but I’ve a feeling it could have been a supermarket? or perhaps a stock cube?), where the man was left flummoxed, faced with the arduous task of serving dinner to his children one evening, while his partner went out to a party/evening class/some other social event, calling “You’re babysitting!” with a cheeky wink as she sashayed out of the front door. Fortunately, help was at hand, as here’s one she had prepared earlier – said partner had put a shepherd’s pie/casserole/whatsoever in the oven before she went. But the hapless chap’s troubles with assertive women aren’t over, as, when he tries to pass the dinner off as the work of his own fair hands, his primary-age daughter rolls her eyes and looks at him patronisingly. “Wow!” We’re obviously supposed to think. “Girl power! Feisty mother and kick-ass daughter shoved it to him good and proper!”

Except, hang on a minute…since when has LOOKING AFTER YOUR OWN CHILDREN constituted “babysitting”? The advert seems to posit as some kind of glorious, amusing victory for womankind the fact that they can cajole/manipulate/order their menfolk into taking on domestic responsibilities once in every blue moon. And once again, in an apparent compliment to women’s capabilities, male uselessness at domestic tasks is constructed as a basic fact of biology – flattering women into believing that unpaid domestic work will inevitably always be their job, because they possess a shepherd’s pie gene which men sadly lack.

Still, for me, the nadir of bone-headed advertising has to be the Christmas 2008 campaign for an allegedly low-calorie (=small) chocolate bar under the charming tagline “Goodwill to all women”. Right, Because ALL women are always permanently on a diet and NO men ever are? And ALL women adore chocolate? Tossers.

One expression that’s doing my head in at the moment is “girls’ band”, which seems to be routinely hurled as an insult by male fans of one group at a rival group. The principle seeming to be that if too many girls like a band, that automatically proves that it’s a rubbish band with no credibility, as girls don’t understand music and have no taste.

All too often, on music message boards and forums there appears to be a widespread assumption that if a woman keenly follows a male musician, it can’t possibly be because she understands or appreciates his music, it must be because she fancies him.

This is strange, given that most of the time women get told that only men are visually stimulated and that (if we’re heterosexual) it’s natural for us to choose a partner for his nice personality, not his looks, otherwise we’re “superficial” and “mean”. And yet, when it comes to pop musicians, we apparently become raging balls of hormones who fork out oodles of money for CDs and concert tickets, regardless of the musical content, merely because we can’t resist being swayed by a pretty face. Even if the musician concerned is the wrong side of 50 and looks like Mr Potato Head.

Of course, I’m exaggerating a bit, here. I have also interacted with male music fans on the internet who have been courteous, friendly and genuinely interested in what I and other female fans had to say. But all too often, as elsewhere on the internet, anything posted by a user with an obviously female-sounding user name gets ignored, while exactly the same point made by a male fan a few posts later gets rapturously applauded and fawned over for its wisdom and perceptiveness.

And it’s not just female fans that get patronised or ignored, it’s female artists, too. One male artist I particularly like recently collaborated with a female singer/songwriter. I wasn’t at that point familiar with her work, but I knew she was respected in the industry for her technical proficiency (she was classically trained) and had gained critical acclaim for her debut album, which had been considered daring and innovative. Which of these aspects of her work might have drawn my favourite musician to work with her? Intrigued, I logged onto a fan forum devoted to him, to see what other fans thought.

“Do you think he’s fucking her?” was one of the first suggestions posted by male fans pondering this question, followed by a lengthy discussion of her physical attributes and a debate about whether other male fans would do her, as well, had they the chance. That a male musician might wish to work with a female musician because he was genuinely excited about her work or looked up to her as a songwriter or instrumentalist apparently didn’t even occur to them.

You would think that female artists might at least be safe from sexism from their own fans. You know, fans? People that allegedly like the artist? Alas, no.

While visiting a blog devoted to a little-known, long-deleted female indie singer, I was surprised to see that one male fan had confidently, but completely wrongly, attributed the writing of all three of the artist’s (self-penned) albums to her male accompanist. The most worrying thing is that he seemed a pleasant chappy who was obviously devoted to the artist in question and clearly hadn’t meant it offensively – when corrected on his assumption by another fan, he apologised, explaining “I read somewhere that he played the keyboards on her albums and I was led to the wrong conclusion that he had written her songs”. Well, yes, easy mistake to make, he had a Y chromosome, he was somewhere on the record…a far more “obvious” conclusion, apparently, than that the woman with her name on the front of the sleeve might be capable of a little creative autonomy.

This widespread tendency of fans and journalists to underestimate the creative input of female artists to their own work has been remarked on by many well-known musicians, including Sharleen Spiteri:

“No one ever wants to give the credit. There has to be a man up there pulling the strings.”

and Bjork (thanks to my friend Yoana for pointing this quotation out to me):

“I have had this experience many, many times that the work I do on the computer gets credited to whatever male was in 10 meter radius during the job. People seem to accept that women can sing and play whatever instrument they are seen playing, but they cannot program, arrange, produce, edit or write electronic music.”

Still, if even the god-like genius that is Bjork gets subjected to this kind of crap, perhaps it’s some small comfort to the rest of us, next time our opinions and ideas are belittled because of our gender, to know we’re in such exalted company.

Friends sometimes tell me it’s pointless getting worked up over something so trivial, that there are bigger battles to be fought, that in the scheme of things it doesn’t really matter that much whether my opinion on electropop gets listened to or not. But, for me, this is symptomatic of attitudes elsewhere – just another part of the everyday process whereby women’s experience is marginalised and women’s intellect, expertise and creativity doubted in our so-called “post-feminist”, “gender-neutral” society. And that’s what makes me seethe.

“Hmm, what can I get my partner for their birthday?  Oh!  I know-  sex everyday for the next year !” When sex is gift wrapped, it is implied that it is paid for, made attractive and, ultimately,  only for the enjoyment of the recipient. Any comparisons between prostitution and the gift of sex is obvious. We all know that sex is important, but it is in fact,  a physical and emotional exchange between consenting adults and not something on a ‘to do’  list.

We all lead busy lives- there’s work , mundane day to day stuff to do and so on.  Should sex be seen as a item on a list to tick off ? I say no. On hearing experinces of couples trying to concieve they often say having sex to order, made sex just an act, a means to an end. Men and women often say they’d like more sex,  but is it because that is what the media portrays to us ?  If we aren’t having great sex and lots of it we are obvious inadequate and unattractive.  Is this why this woman decided to give her husband the gift of sex?

At first we can clearly see that it is taken at a protest . You, dear reader, may have even been there. You may even be one of the individuals in the photo. Even if you are not, in another time and place, it could be you. Your fellow protesters all around you clashing and being penned in by the police, you look forward and a police officer grabs you by the throat in order to restrain you! What have you done ? Exercised your civil and human right to protest? Or, have you identified yourself as a threat to national security, because you have chosen to exercise that precise right?

The image  speaks volumes to me about civil liberties, feminism and class struggle. It conveys to me that there are individuals that will come together in order to stand up for a cause. It also tells me that no matter how big the group is, how just the cause is, the authorities (or oppressors) will always be there to grab the idealists by the neck in order to suppress them. That said it doesn’t make me want to give up protesting , blogging , and airing my views. It makes me feel mad that protests have to be approved by the authorities, and that the same authorities, then use illegal and unjustifiable actions in the form of “kettling” and violence in order to restrain the very protest they approved.

According to Noam Chomsky, “power is illegitimate unless proof of legitimacy can be found”. In the case of the photo, the police are an institution of the state. That fact gives this institution the right to  police citizens of the state legitimately, but how far should the police be able to go in enforcing the laws of the land?  When did violence and the containment of citizens exercising their legitimate rights,   become acceptable actions the state could take against its own citizens? Pictures like this make clear that the authorities should always be questioned and observed, just as much as the authorities question and observe us.

This is my life changing photo , whats yours?

If you are interested in  signing the petition please go here and do so.

Government opensource plans.

As my guitar hero controller languishes under a film of dust, I laugh at how far the obsession could of gone courtesy of South Park.

Free lemmings like puzzle game ,designed to waste time and drive you mad!

Surface computer,coming to a snooty bar/club near you soon.

I’m just going to reccomend you go and read Louise at The F Word quite thouroughly demolishing his argument. And then I reccomend you join me and the FemAcadem team at Million Women Rise on March 7th and help ensure idiots like the above don’t get to spread their hatred to far. Opinions like that, help a culture where violence against women is acceptable, and Million Women Rise gives women and their allies a chance to have their say in a public space.

For some unknown reason I bought ‘That’s life!’  magazine, maybe because of the sensationalist headline “Mum sold me for a bottle of Gin!”, but mostly because that’s the sort of magazine that were knocking around my Grans house when I was growing up. For 78p I had fifteen minutes of other peoples lives, saw photos of cute kids dressed up, read how daft ‘Men’ are, fashion on a budget, health/relationship problem pages and survival stories. What I took from the magazine was that maybe this cut-price magazine and the others of its ilk, are  a space for working class women to express their lives. OK they were paid for their stories and the stories were polished up by proof readers,but the kernel of the stories were issues affecting women.

During a particularly boring lecture  I asked Suzi what she thought of these particular magazines and  the conversation went like this:

(A) ” Do working class women’s magazines such as ‘That’s Life!’ empower or keep working class women in their place?”

(S) “They keep them in their place. Also the mags reinforce dominant social discourse- weight loss, cookery and cosmetic surgery”.

(A)” On balance though,do you think these magazines are better than , Marie Claire, Grazia and the like?”.

(S) ” All the women’s magazines are exactly the same just aimed at different classes of women, however, Marie Claire magazine runs many feminist stories . All in all the women’s mag market is generally designed to re-inforce gendered roles and dominant discourse”.

I decided to buy Marie Claire (for the first time) and see for myself . For the sum of £3.30 and a reassuring glossy heavy magazine with non-descript headliners ‘Perfect trousers to suit your shape’. Seven adverts for the top end fashion and cosmetic industry and then onto the contents page, more adverts, editors blurb, rundown of contributors and then at last first articles which were the letters page. More adverts then an article by Katherine Fleet (ala The Observer). I’ll confess now, I do read The Observer but tend not to read the columns about ‘nothing’ . Fleets piece was entitled ‘Superwoman:who needs her?` Who indeed I thought to myself.

More adverts , fashion news, eco news, adverts, fashion news, adverts, Celeb interview more adverts, wheres the feminism? I think to myself.

An article on women sex professionals was sort of on the right track,women’s attitude to drinking,child bride divorce in Afghanistan (why wasn`t this the front cover?) and then the life changing experience story or as I like to call it the  ‘I went to a poor country and talked to poor hungry black children and now I realise how lucky I am, my life is going to change for the better,hurray!’ story.

So , like ‘That’s Life’ the kernel was there, but for me there was more sharing of female stories in ‘That’s life!’. The survival of domestic violence, birth stories , rape, betrayal, consumer rights. But hold up, I thought to myself, aren’t these stories used for fodder on shows such as Jeremy Kyle,Trisha and like? Women and men being paid to tell their story on national t.v, shows such as This Morning dispensing consumer advice and how to make the most of yourself cosmetically wise.

Where is the Marie Claire T.V crossover? It’s with programmes like Ten years younger, Come Dine with me and Location, Location, Location. OK its easy to see the class differences even if you just took at look at the advertising in both magazines, when you look at the barriers of price and style of magazine it brazenly states that the working class are cheap, throw away and a bit tatty, whilst the middle classes are aesthetically pleasing, substantial and seemingly valuable.

Whats does this tell me about feminism in the mass printed media? Everyday survival stories of the working class woman is a readily available commodity, because lets face it ,whatever the world throws at the working class woman she can handle it as long as she can get a few quid for the retelling of said horrid event. Pretty clothes, cosmetics and lifestyle aspirations , ohh! and with the odd ‘lets find oppressed women /girls abroad’  stories to show us how good our lives really are,  are the fodder of Marie Claire.

These magazines have sat on the newsagents shelves for nearly fifty years now.  Have you ever noticed that you never see Marie Claire magazine on the same shelf as That’s Life? If we live in a meritocracy why isn’t the mass media portraying the fact,  instead of keeping us all in our boxes?

I love to end this article with a statement about what I’d put in a magazine if I had the chance, but I don’t have a clue. I can’t believe in either magazine though. One tells me how I should look , what clothes I should buy and that I’ll just never find shoes fabulous enough, punctuated by adverts from luxury brands (which I find contradictory to the post materialistic statements of the sustainability of the making of the magazine). The other tells me that shit happens, the adverts tell me that the government is watching and that I need to be reminded not to feed my kids whisky and deep fried mars-bars and that post-materialism is just a posh word for sharing money saving tips.

I’ve said before that everyone on the planet should read  Shapely Prose, and now I’m going to say it again. You shouldn’t just read it for the awesome posts those guys do, or for the fact it’s a brilliant Fat Acceptance blog. You should also read it, because the Shapelings are the loveliest commenters ever, and here is the best comments thread I’ve ever read. Go, read it, snort, agree with everything A Sarah said and remember – the obesity epidemic is a lie, and we are all beautiful whether we weigh 7 stone or 20.