A Feminist Watches: Miranda

I’m watching so much film and TV atm, now that my exams are out the way and so I thought, why not put all those hours to good use in a new blogging series I’m calling ‘A Feminist Watches’ because if I’m honest, sometimes I find it really hard to just enjoy the film without focusing on all the inequalities. I’m not trying to appeal to the stereotype feminism takes the fun out of everything but also… well…

I thought I’d start with my all time favourite female comedian Miranda Hart- and it’s spoiler free. Her show Miranda capital STOLE my heart when I was 10 (sorry, did that make you feel really old) but when I recently re-watched it I realised it wasn’t all such fun. See what I did there? (If the answer is no then you’re probably really going to struggle with the rest of this post so I recommend you phone into work, say you’ve caught a terrible case of existentialist crisis, pop to HMV if it still exists, buy the boxset and spend the rest of the day watching it before returning back to yours truly to understand what I’m actually on about.) On with the post.

Hypermasculinity: Miranda, I love you, but sometimes the way you treat Gary is reallllllly bad. (Why did I address that to Miranda, she is famous, she is busy, Jess she is not I repeat not going to read this.) There’s literally a whole episode where she mocks him for being scared of geese when geese are actually pretty creepy- I learnt the hard way after eating a bread roll in front of a body of water in 2003 and having to retaliate to the car bonnet to prevent being eaten alive by one of the hundred birds that emerged from it. Don’t underestimate the quack, it’s lethal. So, not only is this phobia pretty natural- newsflash: men are scared of things too!- but then there’s another episode (or maybe it’s the same one, I’m such a fake fan) where Gary feels the need to turn into a ‘Geezer’ to stop everyone calling him ‘sweet’. All this does is suggest that men have to wear a string vest and own a power drill to be proper men, which is such BS. I’d way rather have someone affectionate that can cry at Captain Phillips with me, than someone that thinks they need a Cher Lloyd style swagger in order to fit in, so stop scaring all the emotionally vulnerable guys into the gym please! Send them my way instead!

Women. Swoon. At. Everyone: I swear these ladies could come into contact with Donald Trump holding his Muslim Ban in one hand and wotsit wig in the other and still swoon. It presents women as such drippy drips. Plus, no one swoons anymore, the game has changed. If you like them you just snapchat them nudes with the dog filter or something. 

Read Me: Kiloran Magazine

Something a lil bit different this week Teamales, I’ve tried my hand at interviewing (hopefully I’ll be better at this than am I at choosing the right foundation shade). I caught up with the ultimate girl boss Lucy Harbron to talk about the latest edition of Kiloran, an online magazine which she created last year. As well as running a blog. And being the perfect feminist friend. Oh and btw she’s only 18. #GOALS. 

For anyone who isn’t familiar with your magazine, how would you describe it?

Kiloran is hard to describe as it’s just things created by people all across the world. I guess you could say it’s an arts/culture mag but it’s really just the product of amazing creative brains! We release twice a year (hopefully more soon) and give as little direction as possible so contributors are free to input whatever they want. I’d hope that Kiloran is a very open space- like a haven for young creators.

Tell me about the new issue! When’s it out? What’s it about? (cheeky rhyme) Favourite pieces? 

Child Marriage is a Thing

TW: Child marriage, assault and some pretty sad statistics

In the Western world ‘white feminism’ is the norm. In the media and equality movements in our society, issues surrounding already very privileged women are prioritised over issues affecting women of colour, transgender women, women outside of the United States of Great Britain, etc. This isn’t to say that Free The Nipple or catcalling aren’t important, neither is anyone suggesting that if you’re a white feminist you might as well go buy a Meninist hoodie and sell FHM subscriptions outside the Playboy mansion instead: for me, I simply want to strive to be as inclusive and intersectional as I can.

After all, my blog is very ‘white’. Most people have the tendency to focus on issues closer to home aka everything I’ve been blogging about for the past 18 months. I love people being able to laugh and relate to my posts, but at some point we have to look at the global picture again, with our serious hot-doctor-from-Holby-City-about-to-break-some-sad-news-to-the-family faces on and remember that for many women in the world life is shit.

Have You Heard The Breaking News?

Anyone who knows me will know I hate the Daily Mail and anyone who’s stalked my blog will know that my favourite type of post to write are those in which I take my feminist leafblower and rid ‘sidebar of shame’ articles of their misogyny. Because this isn’t journalism, if anything, this is the work of a thesaurus and a review of Milan fashion week who’ve met over fondue in the First Dates restaurant and decided to give the whole ‘news’ thing a go. We can use last week’s headlines for evidence: Now you see, I don’t know who Jess Impazzi is (although after a quick Google it’s actually Impiazzi, which shows that the DM’s priorities are clearly not with the poor girl’s identity) however it sounds a little bit like my porn star alter ego. What amazes me most about this headline- other than ‘why have they written about this?’ but that doesn’t count because that’s my reaction to all these articles- is where can you buy a bikini that isn’t ‘barely there’? Like, surely that’s the point. You’re not going to hit the beach in an argyle jumper and bell bottom jeans (unless it’s Blackpool, or the 70s). When it comes to swimwear the point is usually the less tanlines the better so what I think DM meant to say is: 

The Piers Morgan Problemo

After all the Friday nights we dedicated to listening to him unwind celebrity life stories and equally committed Saturday viewings as he buzzed Britain’s most talented acts, Piers Morgan has gone and become an utter cock. Which says a lot. Because I really don’t like gendered insults. Now I have a feeling that, especially as a journalist, he’s done some controversial things before but as I’ve only just mentally matured his lack of intelligence has only recently become apparent. I apologise to all the people that noticed it before because if they told me I’d probably responded along the lines of: *spits out Starbucks Grande Venti Latté Caramel Macchiato (equally out of shock and the fact it’s vile)* ‘Piers? He interviewed MARY BERRY- Mary wouldn’t stand for that shit, she can’t even stomach a soggy bottom. Darling you must be mistaken, Piers is one of the good guys. His name is French. You just don’t understand him.’ Oh, how times have changed. Oh how toxic his Twitter has become (it’s like a blady Britney Spears song). Seatbelts on Teamales- unless you’re on a train, which might be a little problematic and I’d request you move for the sake of this metaphor- let’s find out why I’m auto-correcting his name to ‘irrational, anti-feminist swine.’

Obviously, I’m referring to his recent comments about feminism. Mainly triggered by the tweet to the right which has so many flaws (people think philosophy is a boring subject and maybe sometimes, when you’re trying to translate Plato’s Republic from ancient Greek using nothing but the Rosetta Stone as guidance, it is but other times it teaches you amazing things like how to pick holes in every argument aka debate goals). Firstly, since when was feminism limited to merely two examples? Gender equality is happening in thousands of baby steps across the world all the time and it’s a movement that these three women are a

Go Burn Your Bridge

A post titled so perfectly that in a single pun it can summarise how I’m about to simultaneously talk about feminism and never get a job at any newspaper. Ever. In fact tbh I might as well forget a career in journalism because I seem to have slagged off everything that’s ever been printed- apart from Elizabeth Wurtzel- and soon I’ll have no other option but to apply for work at Poundland where I can give all my friends a staff discount on the Fruitella and then confuse everyone when I say “that’s 50p please” because darling decimals don’t belong in Poundland. I mean, that’s just like, the rules of feminism.

This past month I’ve been trying to write a 2,000 word essay about the F-word for Newnham College which sounded really easy until I realised Newnham is in Cambridge, as in the Cambridge. Cambridge Cambridge. Upon this realisation I had to cross out all the inappropriate vagina jokes and Fetty Wap references, so now all I’m left with are a few ideas being pushed around my plate like broccoli stems (because realistically no one eats the stems) (except the vegans), however it’s not all bad. In the absence of words, I’ve done lots of research, read plenty of articles and painfully scrolled through thousands of comments, until I realised: newspapers hate feminists. I wrote a post similar to this before about the general public but I didn’t realise the people bringing up factual news would fall the same way.