About
eighteen months back, when I lived in the Staircase of Feminine Awesomeness*, a
friend of mine- in fact, let’s stop coyly referring to “friends” every time I
have to speak about someone, affect a silly Victorian letter-writing convention
and call her H.- had a birthday tea party and invited a bunch of people
around. Being a totally hardcore Feminist Fitty herself, H. had received several
Books About Women as presents, including a book called “How to be a Woman”, by Caitlin Moran, from fellow
staircase denizen E. . Now, at the
time my familiarity with Caitlin Moran was entirely through a story about her
once appearing in a BBC English textbook which I had to teach from in China, so
I was highly amused to discover a work of feminism written by this extraordinary
TEFL superstar. As we sat on H.’s sloping floor stuffing ourselves with various
baked goods and herbal brews, somebody got the bright idea to read a bit of an
extract out of this new female instruction manual.
I
don’t really remember what bit we read, although we probably didn’t get past
the first few pages, where she’s being chased across a council estate by yobs
and communing with a stupid dog whose vagina is more integral to the plot for
the first ten pages than Moran’s own. The point is, at some point very early
on, we stopped reading, looked at each other, went ‘I don’t think this is
really a feminist book,’ and got on with our lives. And by ‘got on with our
lives’, I mean ‘started reading extracts from “The Sex Diaries” instead’. Great
party book, that one. And that was the end of the feminist importance of
Caitlin Moran.
Except,
alas, it wasn’t. Fast forward to this summer, and S., another coolkid of my acquaintance,
sends me a link to an article about the
US launch of “How to be a Woman”,
along with the words ‘a compatriot of yours, perhaps?’ Yes, it turned out that
Caitlin Moran, TEFL superstar, had apparently written a very influential book
back in those heady days in the Staircase of Awesome, and we had been so preoccupied
with the bit about dog vaginas that we hadn’t noticed that this magnificent
being had single-handedly re-energised our movement! I disguised this earth
shattering moment in my existence with some highly intellectual musings on
Birmingham City Centre, and promptly resolved to discover more about this mysterious
tome. My very maturity as an organism was apparently at stake.
A
stroke of luck was upon us that day. S. had unwittingly chosen to enlighten me about
the movement of feminism (not to be confused with the feminist movement) on a
day when, not only was I in London, hangout of most of my awesome British acquaintances,
but H. had also just come back from her bohemian Vienna lifestyle to grace said
hangout. I purchased some patriotic M&S snacks and went to talk to my
fellow expat about the magic of our lives and the fate of our ideology. Many
were the insights had on that day over a therapeutic cat-petting session**- we
compared linguistic abilities, leg hair***, awesome foreign lifestyles and how
best to pet a cat. On Caitlin Moran, however, H. had only one thing to say: ‘If
she’s going to write a book saying “here’s the facts”, it would have been really nice if she’d looked up some
actual facts first.’
So
then I stopped faffing around and actually read the book. And there’s an
interesting habit I’ve picked up recently when reading books about feminism,
where I cannot help but make corresponding facial expressions when I’m reading
along. Sometimes, like with the bits of The Female Eunuch I dipped into**** a couple
of weeks back, this involves wearing a smug smile and nodding slowly along for
several hours; when making my way through Catharine MacKinnon the effect is
more of a full-face twitch as her reasoning lurches (in my indoctrinated mind, anyway) from brilliant to deranged and back again in
the space of a paragraph. I was going to see if I could emulate some of the
faces I pulled during “How to be a Woman”,
but then I Google image searched Moran and I discovered that the faces I pulled
whilst reading it were probably very similar to the faces she wore whilst
writing it. So, at first it was like this:
And then it went a bit like this:
And once or twice this:
And by the end, I was like this:
No, wait, that’s Benedict Cumberbatch.
Let’s try again:
That’s quite unfair, of course. This was a pretty hilarious
book, and the memoir parts of it (which is in fact most of it) were fascinating.
See, it turns out that the textbook-approved story about the plucky teenager
who wrote a book about her homeschooling experiences was actually a slightly
desperate, lonely teenager who wrote a book about being very poor in a huge
family in Wolverhampton. Having done so, she proceeded to create one of the
biggest life turnarounds ever managed by an impoverished teenager in
Wolverhampton, moved to London where all the awesome people are, and went on to
write hilarious newspaper columns and throw drinks on members of Blur, or
something along those lines. It’s all very heartwarming. But my goodness, whoever
thought you could write a book on feminism in a five month blaze of glory
needs a punch in the gonads.
Because, you see, for me the deal breaker wasn’t the bits
where the existence of facts was casually ignored in favour of a sort of Edgy
Modern Feminist reinventing of the wheel. I raised my eyebrows (figuratively
and literally, see above) when Moran starts musing on whether we are in the
fifth wave of feminism by now- show your working at least, Caitlin!- and again
when I was co-opted into the Edgy Modern Feminist movement of “strident
feminism”, but “How to be a Woman” is
pretty unapologetic about not being an academic text of any sort so I figured I’d
let this kind of postulating slide. Similarly, I am not so far gone into my
little bubble of feminist theory that I don’t recognise that for some women, it
may be new and exciting to be told that waxing your “foof” and wearing high
heels every day despite the pain are not an inalienable part of the female
condition. Full disclosure: I even quite liked some of the things she said
which fell well outside what passes
in feminism for a Party Line- so hey, don’t feel guilty for being bitchy or
flirting at work because men don’t have to feel guilty about being bitchy or
flirting at work! Obviously, being Manly Hunter Mans means that men never do
anything as feminised as bitch or flirt anyway,
but if they did, they sure wouldn’t feel as guilty about it as you probably did
before Caitlin Moran told you feminists shouldn’t tell you not to. I was even
in favour of the moral of the book, which is that we’re all just trying to be
one of “the Guys”; a bit linguistically unfortunate that, seeing as “guy” is
definitely not as gender neutral as I’d like it to be, but sure. Feminist
bestseller, whatever.
No, all of those things were just fine. But there are a few glaring
moments of “excuse me, what?” which
possibly moulded my face into whole new shapes with their depressing badness,
mostly because none of them needed to
happen. The first major one of these was the moment the “what should we
call vaginas” chapter descended into a prescriptive list of things we should
and should not call our vaginas. There I was, smirking along at the thought of
a teenage vagina called “Rolf Harris”, doing a little fistpump of recognition
as “Birmingham City Centre” entered the story for real, putting on my sceptical face for the whole sequence involving babies… and then Caitlin Moran told me
not to call my vag “vag”. It sounds like a middle aged woman, apparently (which
is fitting, because so does my vag*****). Not “here are names which make me
cringe”, which would have been functionally equivalent given the whole book is
based on one woman’s personal adventure, and allowed all the same jokes. Just, ‘I
know what feminism is, don’t call your vag “vag”’. I may have in fact said “Piss
off, Caitlin” out loud.
And this happens a couple more times. These occasional
jarring moments where, in the name of being funny
and down to earth and feminist at a bar and we’re all friends here
it’s just a laugh innit mate, these things just burst out of what could
otherwise be a pretty darn amazing book. The real killer for me was the chapter
on strip clubs (I think it is aptly titled “I go to a strip club!”) in which
Moran, in the heady days of the early noughties when apparently going to strip
clubs was a Thing (even the Spice Girls did it! The Spice Girls went to strip clubs!
My childhood is ruined!), goes to a strip club, doesn’t think much of it and
then gets kicked out by a bouncer who mistakes her for an ugly Russian
prostitute. This prompts a long discussion about how awful strip clubs are,
because everyone in them is a bit serious and angry, and then the assertion
that strippers are letting the rest of women down. No, sorry Caitlin, you don’t
get to make that claim. You got to leave home at 16 with an enormous vocabulary
and a published book and become a magazine-person-and-TEFL-superstar; other
women leave home with just their bodies and also do what they can.
This bit I almost forgave, however, after the following bit
about burlesque, which as we all know is Good Stripping: turns out that the
real clincher in favour of Good Stripping is that it is stripping frequented by
gay men, and women should pay close attention to the things that gay men like
as gay men are effectively a better version of women. Now, I’m not in the habit
of filming myself whilst reading (yet) but I’m fairly convinced that my
eyebrows actually left my head, anime-style, after I discovered this little gem
in the Feminist Manual of the Century. I know gay men who are experts in
linguistics, a capella, being amazing boyfriends, hipster fashion, misanthropy,
the music of the Final Fantasy video game series and taxidermy, among other
things, but perhaps I don’t know the Right Sort of gay man because none of them
have been even slightly good at being
women. In fact, it is possible that suggesting that the best type of woman is
in fact a type of man with their own set of societal prejudices to tackle might
be incredibly obnoxious to both parties involved! Yes, it’s just one little part
of your book, that you made as a bit of a wry joke, and you did basically get
your point across about burlesque, but now this thing you have written is being
read by people around the world who are taking it exactly as seriously as “hey
women, you don’t need to shave your pubes into the shape of Sicily!” i.e. very
seriously. I’m afraid I can’t see this as progress.
And it’s sad, because it’s unnecessary. Proudly writing your
feminist magnum opus in five frantic months, like a modern lady Kerouac with
less substance abuse, is only a good thing if you’ve got enough people in those
five months to read the thing over and, on occasions, point out that you don’t need to say that. It’s not
censoring your edginess to suggest you don’t slut shame just to have a wham
line at the end of your tragic strip club experience. It’s making your book
better, so that maybe next time we can have a New Awesome Feminist Book that
actually makes me grin like an idiot all the way through (then buy a hundred
copies and give them to everyone I know). Also, you would really save my poor
aching face muscles. Think about it.
*I’m not sure whether “staircases”
as a university living arrangement is self explanatory or not? It’s basically a
small group (5-15) of vertically arranged rooms. The Staircase of Feminine
Awesomeness was actually a couple of old townhouses converted into student
rooms, and there were 6 of us altogether, although only 4 on the officially
Awesome bit.
**I know this entry is about a book
where that would be a euphemism but honestly, here it’s not. There really was a
cat. It bit me.
***Yes, my best feminist sis had not
seen me with fully grown-out leg hair until this summer. This fact is going to
come as quite a surprise to some people and that is probably my own fault.
****Not a euphemism!
*****This is possibly the opposite
of the kind of content I should be populating my serious feminist blog with,
but it’s impossible to discuss the sounds of vaginas without including the
opinion of a different Moran:
Misandry! And misogyny! Together!
Comedy!
