Football. What a load of Ball-ocks

God, I hate the football.
I hate the way it gets bandied about like some you-can’t-touch-this trump card: ‘We can’t possibly (insert much better option here) because the football is on.’
I hate the potential family memories that could be in creation that instead lie, unformed: their potential trampled underfoot; alongside the spent takeaway cartons, crumpled cans of Carling and overpriced ticket stubs.
I hate that it’s used as an excuse to pretend it’s still 1952 and banish women to the kitchen.
I hate that it’s used as an excuse for xenophobia. ‘Stick a scarf on and pretend you’re a Nazi for the day. It’ll be a right laugh.’
I hate that people claim it has something – anything – to do with Patriotism, Xenophobia’s slightly less threatening younger brother (who will evolve to be the same as him in the end).
I hate the sheer milking of what is actually only 90 minutes: must be at the pub before the pre-match coverage begins, need to watch the post-match s**t spout. Oops, another game is about to start, might as well stay to watch that. Ad infinitum.
I hate the quite frankly uncomfortable sums of money that get talked about. I hate that it’s completely unjustifiable: we make millionaires of men who literally play with their balls, while their brothers are homeless and starving on the streets.
I hate the way that usually gentle, softly spoken men start imitating their Neanderthal ancestors, sitting with their legs wide – as though there sat a large, ferocious animal, and not average-sized genitals, between them. I hate they way they shout futilely, angrily, at the TV, the bass dial turned all the way up (on both the TV and on their ordinarily mid-range voices).
I hate the way it’s used to channel the anger of the working man (or the man that would be working were he not on a (The-Most-Imaginative-Title-I’ve-Ever-Heard-For-Unemployed) Zero-Hour Contract). I hate the wasted potential of this powerful testosterone and energy. I hate that it could be used to…to change things…to move things… to start a revolution. But the passion all gets peed down the drain once the game – and let’s not forget that that’s what it is, a game – is over.
I hate that we teach our little boys that its not ok to cry if they miss mammy when they’re at school. But it’s ok – no it’s expected even – to cry if that man doesn’t manage to kick that ball into the net.
I hate that some girls feel the need to pretend they’re interested in it so that they can get a boyfriend.
I hate that the girls that are genuinely into it will never really be taken seriously when playing the game. They will always be in a different tournament. Playing the same game. With much lower salaries.
But most of all, what I find most unforgivable, what nestles right under my skin, is how unbelievably boring the game is.
Yesterday the ‘stakes were high,’ they kept saying. Newcastle and Sunderland were both facing relegation so the game was ‘of primary importance’, they said. Tensions ran high on the pitch and in the stand and in the living rooms and pubs. Everywhere but on the empty streets. And then it happened. They drew. What a crippling anti-climax and devastating waste of time.
Football. What a load of ball-ocks.

‘How to Build a Girl’ by Caitlin Moran

Life is a room. And a teenage girl in a top hat and tutu just came in and switched all the lights on. Is how I feel upon reading Caitlin Moran’s ‘How to Build A Girl.’

As always, she writes in her typical style: sounding fast and flippant and off the cuff, as though she’s drunk on her own beautiful observations.

But make no bones about it, Caitlin takes as much time and care over choosing her semantics as a middle class yummy mummy might on selecting and placing the correct christmas bauble on the tree, so that the branches are balanced perfectly: sparkling and winking at you, no matter which angle you look at it from.

To describe this as a novel about teenage masturbation, is to miss the point. Yes, our heroine does – frequently and tirelessly – go at herself, with the business end of a hairbrush, or a bottle of Mum deodorant, and it is going to freak some men – and women- out, to know that women can, and do, enjoy themselves on their own.

But this is also a book about what it is to be working class, and what it is to be a girl: not a Disney princess, not an evil queen – but one of those who sits awkwardly in the middle, like the rest of us. And perhaps most painful of all: what it is to be a teenager. I’d almost forgotten what it was like to feel that you’re lips were going to grow a pair of legs of their own and run off your face to find something, ANYthing, to kiss, if someone didn’t grab you soon. No one writes the absolute blistering agony of teenage worry, or the burny-as-cystitis -adolescent-embarrassment, like Caitlin does, in this book.

And even if I didn’t like the book, I wouldn’t be able to say so. Rather ingeniously, she dedicates full pages to the sadness and futility of people who make careers as critics. So before any of us can even attempt to critique her, she’s won the argument. And that is how ridoncolously (it’s not a word, but it should be) clever Caitlin Moran is.

We Love Men

Today’s blog is about loving men 💏

Ok, if one more person tells me that being a feminist has anything to do with hating men, I am going to scream. Loudly. In their face.

Feminism has nothing to do with hating men. There ARE feminists that hate men, and that is a shame as they do the rest of us a massive disservice, but hating men is not what feminism is.

We LOVE men! So much so that we want them to have happy, intelligent, respected and respectable, educated, wealthy, EQUAL female life-partners.

Feminism is simply about wanting men and women to be treated equally. Not the same. We know we’re different. But equally. And that can only be a good thing for men. Who wants to spend their time with somebody who is LESS than them? You have more respect for yourselves than that, don’t you, boys?

It is not about getting angry if a man opens a door for us. I am more than happy to have a door held open for me. Just as I am happy to hold a door open for a man. Why wouldn’t I be? My arms work just fine. Why wouldn’t I use them?

It is not about being annoyed if a man foots the bill. That can be lovely sometimes. But it is about being able to proudly declare, ‘actually I’ll get this.’ Because I am a self-respecting woman with a job and a wage that I’m proud of. Why shouldn’t men be treated sometimes? (See, us feminists are thinking of you too)

It is not about burning our bras. We love those little ergonomic wonders of metal and lace that help us defy gravity on a daily basis (although taking them off at the end of the day is pretty luscious too…)

It is not about being a lesbian. Although some feminists are.

It is not about being a ‘ladette,’ that early 90s breed, that saw women emulating ‘lads’ by drinking beer and burping and pretending to like football in an attempt to gain respect.

It is not about being Margaret Thatcher, who had voice lessons so that she could lower her larynx to sound like a man.

On the flipside, neither is it about being a caricature of female sexuality. It is not getting naked in a music video and simulating sex and saying, ‘hey, it’s ok cos I CHOSE to do this.’ (Trust me, girl, you didn’t. You just think you did. But that’s a whole other blog.)

It is not about being offended if you compliment us on how we look. Of course you’re going to like the way we look. Our bodies are bloody amazing! With all of their undulations and twiddly bits and fleshy corners. I mean, babies come out of us. Of course you’re going to be impressed with a machine like that!

We love that when girls’ magazines were showing photos of Kelly Brook and calling her ‘fat’, your lads’ mags were showing the same photos with the word ‘sensational’ emblazoned across her.

So go ahead, take a long hard look. Just so long as you can hear what we’re saying to you at the same time…

What it is about is this. It is about wanting the same pay for the same job, the same rights to education and independence. The ability to go to all the places that men may go, to wear what we want, say what we want, drive, drink, have sex, do all the things that men can do without being punished or judged.

We want to be your friend. To talk to you on a level and share our ideas with you and impress you and tell you our (actually really flipping funny) jokes and have you laugh your head off like you would if we were male.

Men, you cannot have a mother, a sister, a daughter, a niece and love them properly and NOT be a feminist.

So I will forever champion women. And what it is to be a woman. And at the very heart of being a woman is loving a man.

So, do you get it now? Feminists don’t hate men. We love them.

(And if you’re a woman reading this who isn’t a feminist: shame on you, you poor, ignorant soul. Go have a long, serious talk with yourself in the mirror)

For to declare yourself anti-feminist, is to declare yourself anti-human.

Copyright Kelly Rickard Dec 20th 2013

50 Shades

50 Shades

I gave in to the social pressure. I read it. I had to – just to be able to join in conversations again. What hype there has been. If claims are to be believed it’s set sales of sex toys soaring, ordinary women are investing in extravagant pieces of lingerie, it’s even caused a baby boom. Not since Harry Potter has a man with props caused such excitement. Facebook statuses and tweets across class divides and generation gaps seem to concur that this book is something very new and something very exciting. So much so that within weeks of publication just calling the book by the first two words of its full title was enough to raise a wink or a cheeky smile between women. On public transport, around hotel pools, in staff rooms, women everywhere carry their copies, wearing them as a badge of honour. I suggest that they see it as their two fingers up to their husband/boss/father/miscellaneous male, a way of saying ‘We’re in a secret sexy women-only club that you can’t join. Nah nah nah nah nah’. So I’m taking a risk in what I’m about to say now, risking the fact that I won’t be allowed to join this Club, potentially alienating myself from the rest of womankind, but here goes: I don’t get it. It didn’t excite me. It bored me. And here’s why.

In order to be turned on by what two characters get up to in the bedroom (or as is the case with this book, the ‘Red Room’) I the reader need to fall a little bit in love with the both of them. I don’t even LIKE these two. I’m assuming ‘Grey’ and ‘Steel’ were intended to make us think of hard, shiny, phallic things – gun metal maybe, or money and excess. Unfortunately their specific brand of greyness is, for me, more the type associated with bland old underwear or cheap prison porridge. Our female protagonist is traditionally a better version of ourselves, someone we can relate to or aspire to become. This one is a wet (no pun intended) blanket with no ideas or opinions of her own, no spunk(!) if you like, who cries continually and constantly forgets to eat lunch! What sort of woman forgets to eat lunch? How can I relate to THAT?!!! And him?! I was expecting to read a character who re-defined masculinity, stretched the boundaries of our imaginations, made all of us women want to hold out for a better, newer version of what it is to be male. Instead, he’s a grumpy, selfish, ginger, 26 year old bully with long thing fingers. And he’s a pianist! Was there ever a less sexy instrument for our fantasy man – our ‘Mantasy’ if you will- to play? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not magically immune to ‘the musician thing’. So a guitarist is apparently good with his hands, a drummer has excellent rhythm and brass players are rumoured to be clever with their mouths. I get it. But a pianist?! It just makes me think of Art Garfunkel or Barry Manilow – privileged, sensitive types who were bullied at school so their wealthy parents paid for lots of extra-curriculur lessons for fear that otherwise THEY should have to spend time with their odd little son.

And as for his penchant for sadism, I have no issue with consenting adults indulging in dominant/submissive role-play. But let's not pretend its NEW. What's new about a man who will dominate a weak-willed woman? It's been happening since time began. So he's got a dark room with lots of gadgets in it? His 'Red Room of Pain' just conjures up images of the average teenaged boy's bedroom for me. Step inside one of those and you'll find things a hundred times scarier than a pair of love eggs and a leather flogger. As for the way the mild sado-madochism makes our 'leading' (as if) lady feel, she's degraded, confused, she's emotionally at his beck and call – and this is sexually liberating for women?! How? Far from doing something new, he's actually a bit behind the times with his props too. He doesn't need a whip to make her feel degraded. Just a few ignored texts and unanswered calls will do that.

I feel genuinely sorry for the generation of girls growing up after ours. We gave them the ‘Twilight Saga’ first, which taught them to abstain from their sexual desires for fear that, should they succumb, they A) would have the blood sucked out of them by a vampire and thus become bloodsucking murderers themselves or B) be mauled to death by a wolf (albeit a wolf with waxed pecs). And now, we’ve given these young women Christian Grey: a controlling half-arsed-pervert whose only defence is the Jeremy Kyle justification – that he had a messed up childhood. Uh…it’s 2012. If something dysfunctional DIDN’T happen in your childhood then you haven’t lived. The book suggests to these post-Twilight girls that if they hang on in there and just bite the pillow during the odd bit of abuse then they might just get rewarded with everlasting love. They might, in fact, just be the one that this man changes for. Oh dear God.

Now I know that there is a recession on. I can see the appeal of a man with money. As a girl who has suffered on public transport for years, the thought of being taken everywhere on a private jet is quite nice. Plus, I like to make an entrance. But my issue is, he didn’t MAKE this money. It was handed to him on a silver platter at about the same time that his new Mummy shoved the silver spoon into his miserable little mouth. Yes, success can be sexy, money can be moreish, power can be well, powerful. But a little rich boy that didn’t work for a penny of his money, success or power? Hmmm, not so much. And let’s say he was to spoil you with his Mummy’s money – if he took you out for a posh meal, for example, you couldn’t choose what you wanted from the menu. He’d do that for you. How crap is that?!

Perhaps the one element of his portrayal that I agree is appealing is this: he constantly keeps in touch with her. The older generation would say that he ‘chases’ her. In the age of the passive aggressive male trying desperately hard to claw back some semblance of control over women by ignoring their texts and phone calls, playing boring, predictable mind games and dragging their feet over commitment, I can see the attraction of a man who constantly calls, emails and follows you around in his helicopter. But let’s get real here. He’s contacting you to get you to sign a contract. A contract. Form filling is mind-numbingly boring at the best of times but in the beginning of a relationship?! He’s like an annoying, overbearing estate agent – not a lover.

To be fair to the lad I can understand why he wants to cause her pain. If I had to cope with her constant simpering and blushing and unfathomable indifference to food, not to mention her inability to understand what a SUBconscious is despite being an English Graduate, I’d want to whip her into next week as well. I’m guessing that the reason he wants her to eat all the time is because she can’t harp on about her inner goddess when her mouth is full.

Just to be clear I’m not trying to be mean to E L James, she obviously understands a great deal more about female sexuality than I do. Hats off to her success. And I’m not judging ANY woman who enjoyed reading it. I’m just sad that the book that finally made it ok for women to openly talk about their desires and fantasies is this one. A story where our main man laughs at our leading lady instead of listens to her, dreams of causing her pain instead of pleasure, wants to gag her instead of hearing her speak, and wants to blindfold her rather than showing her the world – a story where the man wants to keep her tied up rather than setting her free.

Copyright Kelly Rickard September 3rd 2012