The Fucking F-Word

Until this week, I had no idea who Ella Henderson was. My first knowledge of the X-Factor star's existence came from a disturbing recount of a phone interview with her by Emma Barnett, women’s editor of The Daily Telegraph.

Young pop stars being excessively controlled by their managers and PR is a story we are all well versed in, and horribly blasé about. It is but one of those in-your-face issues that makes X-Factor not just an hour long session in eye-scratching, but also sends its viewers on a double downward spiral of introspection and shame, in preparation for their Saturday night pillow-cry.* In all fairness, my usual alternative of spending 5 hours in the pub leads to pretty much the same conclusion.

According to the article, when Henderson was asked if she considered herself a feminist, the phone interview was interrupted by a PR official, preventing the 17 year old from answering:

'Suddenly a gruff man’s voice out of nowhere growled: “She’s not answering that.” Said aggressive man when asked who the hell he was simply replied: “Her PR”. I then pushed for Rude Bloke’s name and was told “Russell.”

'I then asked why she couldn’t answer this question, and he replied “She’s just not. It’s not to do with Safer Internet Day.”'

The article continued to interview many other industry professionals about the incident, in an attempt to make some sense of this confusing and disquieting situation. To me, it read like a spoof. A surreal, ridiculous tale, it resembled a left-field Lord Curzon commission, fallen straight out of 1912. It was an interview conducted from a dystopic, Orwellian representation of post-suffrage Britain: ‘Russell’ was a strange, resolute symbol; the last man left clutching to better time once had, now lost in a violent wave of votes for women, educational reform and evolving pop-culture. Because the discussion: ‘Is the f-word too dirty for pop?’ frankly, takes the piss. The consistent questioning of whether feminism is still too ‘dirty’ or ‘divisive’ for certain industries hit me like a horrible wake-up call to current general attitudes towards the word ‘feminism’. A true pointy pin in the side of my once floaty, optimistic progress-balloon.

One of Barnett’s interviewee’s explained that some acts will be ‘advised against it [identifying as feminist] out of a fear of pigeon-holing the pop star and putting fans off.’ This is the same warped logic found in mainstream music companies that dictates that the public control what music an artist makes. Now this mass, reactionary, Coldplay-adoring ‘public’ defines the personal views of those in the spotlight, too? If an artist is banned by their label from making their own opinions and music public, they should also be banned from using the word ‘role model’ and ‘individual’ while they are with that label.

I didn’t think we had equality, or that the fight was over. But the battle in my mind was very different to the one this article confronted me with. I was under the impression that any anti-feminist feeling in modern, sane humans was subconscious; a latent distrust that wasn’t really possible to articulate. Like the bizarre grudge that makes me switch channels every time Nick Robinson appears on the BBC. To me, 21^st century sexism was a thing that came from a cynicism and complacency started a long time ago, now inexplicably wedged firmly in the back of the minds of a few. An invisible, toxic cultural meme, where page 3 and spearmint rhino are ‘tradition’, like wearing hats at weddings, or the right to bear arms in America. It seeps secretly into everyday life in the form of ‘eesh, got your period?’, ‘slut’, ‘whore’ and ‘aw she thinks I’m being sexist!’ (That one did personally happen to me. It turned a nice evening of mattress surfing rather ugly. But that’s for another time).

But this, this was blatant. Questioning whether the society is ready to hear people publicly claim to be feminist? Seriously? Whether young girls need to hear their idols speak about gender? Whether they should be exposed to something alternative, that shows them they don’t need to dance like Rihanna, or wear cupcake bras, or get approval from boys to be normal? That being successful by picking up a pen, or a banner, or a pair of fucking roller skates is just as fathomable? QUESTIONING whether women should affiliate themselves with the movement that turned us into the voting, working, jeans-wearing, slut-walking sex we are today? I really thought we were past that. That’s not sneaky, subconscious sexism. And it’s just as dangerous, if not more so. It’s evidence that feminism is losing momentum. The debate’s been sidelined. We’re being pushed backwards.

That people can still have dubious opinions on the use of the word ‘feminism’, while claiming to be an advocate of equal rights, is just so stupid. No modern member of western democracy would openly claim to be anti-feminist without expecting to be thrust into some serious controversy. And yet you don’t even have to take to rural, reclusive England, or the recesses of the internet to be met with a barrage of people flippantly detaching themselves from the movement for equal rights, because (and again I’m quoting from real experience here) ‘I like shaving my legs’, ‘If I want to hold a door for a girl I will’, and, my personal favourite, ‘I don’t want to be stereotyped.’ (Yeah, feminism really created a problem of stereotyping women). You don’t have to go out of your way to hear this. You just have to use the f-word.

It feels so old hat, and so tired, to still be defining feminism for people; to still be fighting against a negative image that never truly existed. ‘I’m not a feminist but …’ is the most infuriating sentence starter in the English language. Wouldn’t it be just FANTASTIC if we could get to a point in society where saying ‘I don’t consider myself a feminist’ created the same outcry and discomfort as saying the opposite once did?

I didn't have a lot on my plate today

*See an interesting and disturbing interview Louis Walsh did for January’s Q [I can't find it online so I can't link you unfortunately, but if you happen across a copy.] Barnett also quoted Crystal Castles’ vocalist Alice Glass on role models in pop. ‘She thinks a lot of female popstars don’t sell a good image of themselves to children as women. She cites Katy Perry (who recently refused to say she was a feminist) as an example of a pop star claiming to be all liberated – and yet dresses up in cupcake bras - and accuses her and others of sexualising children with their provocative clothes and actions on stage.’ It is important to think of the image we are selling to young children in mainstream music. Pop’s wariness of feminism is a probably just another step in the wrong direction. 

Love

I’m in love with Simon Amstell. 

Seriously. I fancy the tight little pants he wears in my head right off his sexy chiseled bum. Sitting on my own at home, watching him on TV, I find myself unconsciously laughing at his jokes extra loudly, and for slightly longer than I would naturally, then biting my lip while twisting a strand of my hair round my finger. His dark eyes and hunched, awkward demeanor effect some sort of cosmic dark magic that tickles me right down my spine. I intently follow his walk about the stage, consumed by the absurd notion that it would be just great to nibble at his hair…

Why am I making public my creepy obsessive tendencies? Because despite how clearly deranged it makes me sound, I know I’m not alone. The concept of celebrity crushes is something I have always been a bit confused by. It strikes me as more than a little silly to fancy someone you’ve never met. I’ve been openly freaked out by my friends drooling over film-stars, guitarists, Derren Brown … (well, that one still does confuse me). I’ve taken part in countless conversations that go a bit like this:

Me: ‘But you don’t know David Tennant. You’ve never had a conversation with him. When you see him on TV, he’s playing a character. How can you be deeply in love with someone who doesn’t know your name?’

Friend: ‘He is perfect. One day I will marry him.’

In the real world, it takes me more than a look, or even a conversation to decide whether I actually fancy someone. Probably more than two or three encounters. Even then I may still not know. I’m not exactly the hopeless romantic type. In fact, I think an official ‘sexual attraction and compatibility trial period’ would be a great system; you agree some dates with the candidate in question, and spend a week together in a hotel, maybe abroad. You turn your phones off, eat snacks, have tickle fights, play Pictionary and compare music collections. You also keep a log rating your excitement and tingles on a scale of one to ten each morning afternoon and evening, and a tally counting the number of times you fiddle with your hair, or speak in a ridiculously high pitched and yet husky tone completely unnatural to you. Once the week is over, you take your log home, catalogue your results (maybe draw some graphs), and see if you in fact might have feelings for the person in question. You then compare your results with the candidate: if you both tingled at least at a level 6 roughly 50% of the time, you can go in for the whole relationship thing. If you want. Like, seriously, I think this needs institutionalizing.  I mean, someone at some point chucked the whole ‘marriage’ thing out there.

‘William! Ranlyn! I’ve got it! This thing they do in the Bible? No, after the bit where they don’t allow prostitutes in Israel … before the command to add fringe to all clothing. Yes, ‘taking a wife’; I reckon we could make it big. We can sing songs and get rings, sign a Godly love contract, and then Godefryd’s your uncle! The girl is yours forever. Once ‘marriage’ has taken place, your wooing days are over my friend! She lives with you and looks after your sheep, and your children, and your mother when she gets old. Plus, you get official usage of the phrase ‘ball and chain’. Eh? Oh, hang on, hand me back the proposal, I’ve got an addendum ….. There. Her family also pays your family as much money as they can. Perfect, now it’s a good way to keep the women at home and richest people a class apart too! EH? EH?’

See, that took off. But I digress, that’s the real world**. I’m talking about the kind of slightly-a-bit-fictional world of fancying celebrities. I no longer find having a magnetic attraction to a public figure you know nothing about akin to an invasion of privacy. (Nor is it in any way equivalent to spunking over Megan Fox’s severely airbrushed tits/face in FHM. Lets just clear that up right now. I love Simon Amstell even when he has spots.) 

I’m never going to be in a room with Simon Amstell. People say my crush is silly because he’s gay. And!? Him being gay is not the only reason me and Simon Amstell being together is never going to happen. It’s not even the second or third reason. That I don’t know him and have never met him are also pretty solid grounds. That doesn’t pain me either. I have a ridiculous level of attraction to him, because the idea of us being actually together is such a surreal idea that I can be over the top and silly with it. In my head we get along famously and never have disagreements unless we’re discussing deep philosophical issues, which we do like to engage in occasionally over a glass of red on a Sunday night. It doesn’t matter that I don’t really know much about him at all, that his stage presence probably isn’t the real him at all, or that he may not like me back, or that he’s gay, and in a relationship. Hell, I like the gay thing. He’s my fictional perfect man. I’m just basing my fantasy in reality. It’s the ‘hot crush’ equivalent to reading Harry Potter when I was five and imagining the Great Hall at Hogwarts as my Grandma’s living room. Siobhan’s head Simon Amstell does not exist in real life. So yes, I do sound a little creepy, but it’s cool like, because I would never confuse Siobhan’s head Simon Amstell with the real one. With Siobhan’s head Simon, we play scrabble, say lovely sexy things and make each other origami sea-creatures (I make a mean narwhal). But if I met him in real life I probably wouldn’t hopelessly vie for his affections. I can’t even do origami. Instead I would probably tell him that while I find him hilarious and fantastic, much as I tried to like it, I really didn’t find Grandma’s House engaging at all. In fact I thought it was a bit egotistical. Sometimes love is cruel.

I used to think that fancying celebrities was ridiculous and a bit insane, given that it’s not a two way thing. But having my own obsession has taught me that it's actually brilliant. You never find out their flaws, no-one’s off limits, and as long as you don’t get weird on their twitter feed, hang around where they live or send their other halves hate mail, no one gets hurt! Edward Cullen, Kylie Minogue, David Cameron … Whoever floats your boat, they’re yours!

*Simon Amstell, if you are by some freak chance reading this, we should definitely have a drink some time. In fact no, let’s not. I don’t want you to burst my bubble.

**Not the completely historically inaccurate world of my head.

'I'm from Hertfordshire Darling'

My first post of the new year, 20 days in. This poor blog's been neglected for 3 whole weeks. Sorry about that. My friends were back from university for Christmas and I got quite excited. There’s been a lot of catching up to be done. Now they’ve all returned to studying and my to-do list once again reads something like:

 - Find a job

 - No, seriously, find a job

 - Any job

 - Sort out banking and tax forms

 - Start getting up before 11

Of course now it’s snowing all serious plans are on hold, but once the weather clears up I will stop writing rude words outside with sticks and taking pictures of frosty spiderwebs, and get back to sorting my life out. Well ‘get back to’ may be slightly over-optimistic wording. ‘Start sorting my life out’ may be more accurate. I haven’t been in St Albans that much at all these last few weeks. Considering there’s not that much to entertain or distract me here, it’s strange that this fact depresses me slightly.

I went to Scotland last weekend. It was lovely. I met up with my best friend from childhood (and from, like, ever) and celebrated her turning 21 in beautiful, rowdy, drinky, teary style. Getting off the train at Waverley always makes me feel excited and nostalgic, and whenever I go back to Edinburgh, I always find myself wondering why anyone would leave. After spending all of 5 seconds in the capital, the crash of rain and the sound of piping hits my eardrums, and my mindset completely reverts into ‘local’ mode; 5 minutes walking down Princes Street and a brash Scottish twang that I never really had even when I lived there injects itself into my accent, and I’m complaining about tramlines, Lothian bus fares and tourists with everyone else.

This time, despite being overjoyed and excited and completely ready to blend seamlessly in to the post-hogmanay birthday celebrations, I found myself not quite so brash. I didn’t encounter anything as drastic or conscious as feeling out of place, or like a foreigner (which, in fairness, with my accent and dislike of irn-bru WKD, would have been easy to do in the circumstances). But in hindsight, I think after having been away in the States, I arrived with a slightly reinforced southern identity. Going for walks round St Albans on Google street view was easy to explain away as simple home-sickness when done from New York. Now though, I found myself in Edinburgh, my second home, still talking about pub closures, and the accordion man, and the field I had to take a piss in once. I think I may have become an official, proud Home Counties resident.

Not, I hasten to add, that I have become some kind of League of Gentlemen style ‘local’. It doesn’t mean that I’ve somehow suddenly accepted everything I used to hate about living in a £4 a pint Tory safe seat where the shops are shut by half four and people wear suits to the pub. I’ve not started baking cupcakes or taken up knitting, I’ve not joined the town council and I’ve still never bought anything from Liberties, Boohoo or Waitrose (apart from gingerbread). But I think there might be something deeper to be gleaned from that fact that throughout my weekend in Scotland, home of whisky and Tennents and Brewdog, I stayed markedly sober, playing only the less popular (and much less interesting spectator sport) ‘water-pong’. Ditching the cava around 2am, and getting into my pajamas, I reasoned to my friends and fellow revelers that ‘where I come from, the pubs shut three hours ago.’

Maybe it’s just living at home, and not frequently being around so many people my age. Maybe it’s not being at university. Or maybe it’s something more. Maybe it’s what 8 years of St Albans residency has done to me. Maybe it’s having spent most Friday nights since I was 17 in the same two pubs that put disco lights on after 9pm and host dodgy middle-aged cover bands; the strange purgatory to which teenagers living in English towns are seemingly committed until they move to London. Maybe it’s, despite having grown up there, not being from the city. Maybe it’s not being used to ‘Hive ‘til Five’, or having ever heard of a ‘jager-train’. Maybe it’s that during the compulsory pre-party drinking games, after a few rounds of ‘never have I ever been fingerblasted in St Andrew’s Square’, and ‘never have I ever got my foof out on a Lothian bus’, I hadn’t drunk a drop, and felt the intense need to stand up in the middle of the circle and declare (in slight deviation from the standard game format) ‘I’m from Hertfordshire! Drink if you’ve ever realised mid-way through sex that you’re doing it to the Radio 4 shipping forecast!’ before downing the rest of my G&T. Level the playing field. Cultural difference, innit.

For those of you who don't know, this is the accordion man. He really deserves a shout out. 

Just a Little Note Before the Year's End

It’s the last day of 2012, and I’m finally sitting back infront of my laptop and writing. It’s been a very long time. Sorry everyone. Before I wish you all a VERY happy new year and all that, I’ll give you a quick round up of the last few months of my life. 

This Winter I Have:

è Left my internship post at BritishAmerican Business, New York, leaving behind many awesome people and unbelievable career opportunities.

(Much as I appreciate the total, unbelievable, super-fantastic-ness of the experience I was cutting short, not one sad goodbye was said. Since landing back in the UK neither of my feet feels the least bit shot at, and I am happy and safe in the knowledge that I will never be a high-powered business woman. I don’t miss America at all. If anything - and I know this sounds bad – it’s become even more of a strange and distant land, which I regard with no emotional attachment at all; just morbid fascination, curiosity and occasionally the tiniest amount of sick in the back of my throat. The amount of syrup they put on their waffles – and their bacon – is a little too much for me. As is the general optimism and happy confidence in the people. No bad feelings, America, you’re just not my place).

 è Worked lots and lots, to make lots and lots of money

The slight problems with leaving early from a year-long placement abroad are the costs incurred.  Needing to pay back the money spent on my visa for the time I won’t be using it, and buying rather too many flights on rather too few student loans payments has left me sitting in my overdraft, with a cool sum of about £1200 in debt.

è Moved back to my hometown, saw my friends, family, ate Christmas dinner and generally got back into the swing of England life (obviously starting in the pub).

It feels really good to be home. I don’t mind the rain. I don’t mind how awful the buses are. I don’t mind not having my own place to live. I don’t mind everything being shut by 6pm. I like the comfortably silent London underground. I like the BBC. I like chip shops. I like that I haven’t put on a pencil skirt or blazer in 5 weeks. I much prefer working any and all shifts that Waterstones St Albans will give me to working 4 days a week in an office, getting stepped on in stiletto heels and being told to ‘mingle’.

So not having to go back to New York has really made this Christmas for me. I’m just about to go out and see in the New Year with friends, beer and takeaway. In contrast to my usual, chronic cynicism concerning New Year’s Eve, I’m getting a bit tingly and excited. I will probably be merrily shouting along to Auld Lang Syne with the rest in 6 hours’ time, giving my hands to all my trusted friends, and anyone else who walks past, having downed many a cup of kindness. I’ve loved seeing and hugging and nibbling and tippling with all the people I know and like, and hope 2013 will be equally weird but a little less stressful than 2012.

So expect many more posts in 2013. As I’m now unemployed and not again planning to persue any careers unsuited to me, I should have much more time to wast- I mean, write. 

Merry Super Happy New Year everyone!!!!!

A small Christmas present to my hometown:

Central Ave, Brooklyn

The Literary Review Just Got Exciting!

Well, it actually has been for the past 20 years, I just didn’t know. 



As a student of English literature, I’m no stranger to the Literary Review. It’s a place I regularly find myself trawling through, looking to impress my tutors with up to date criticism. I hope they might be duped into thinking that my fantastically relevant reference articles are pieces I merely happened across while eagerly flicking through my monthly subscription, rather than the product of a few haphazard taps of my keyboard (I don’t even have to type it all out any more - my igoogle page remembers my frequent and frantic search on the eve of every deadline).

But oh, how I have missed out in only giving this magazine the minutest fraction of my attention! I have been so dismissive and unappreciative. Blinkered by my narrow search criteria, driven solely by my quest for a precise result. And consequentially I have denied myself the world of pleasures available to those aware of all that this esteemed and valuable publication has to offer.

Did you know they do a BAD SEX AWARDS!?!


That’s the problem with us students. We’re only after one thing. Once we have our references we just toss the magazine aside, not taking the time to discover all its other beautiful aspects. Philistines.

It saddens me when I think about all the years of my life I’ve spent, unaware of the amazing invention that is The Literary Review Bad Sex in Fiction Award. I feel similar to how I imagine the second dude to leave Plato’s cave felt. After continuing to resolutely face the cave wall, calling the first guy who climbed out a wally, telling him to stop talking nonsense, only using him to bring back that outside-chicken he got that somehow tasted so much better than shadow-chicken, I’ve finally seen the light. And I now know that I was the real wally. I’m newly enlightened, and embarrassed that I wasted so much time in the dark eating ghost meat.

Every year the Review holds a lush ceremony in London, where one deserving author (if they are brave enough to attend) is presented with a statuette of a naked woman splayed out across the pages of a book, and the title of ‘author of the worst description of a sex scene in a novel’. The award excludes erotic and pornographic fiction (so not a whiff of Christian Grey anywhere near this year’s shortlist). What they are looking for is ‘bad sex in good books’ (so again, Christian Grey nowhere in sight). The magazine’s website explains that the award is designed to draw attention to ‘crude, badly written, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description’, a common crime in contemporary novels, according this entertaining and informative video.

The Review are seeking in their own way to improve the standard of modern fictional sexy encounters by highlighting authors’ awkward metaphors and evasive similes; hopefully discouraging such badly written inclusions in future. The founder of the award, former editor of the Literary Review Auberon Waugh, started it due to his belief that publishers encouraged the inclusion of sexual content to boost novels’ sales.

On a serious note, this is an awesome cause: eliminating poor obligatory sexual content, and working towards making sure modern novels retain a beautiful literary standard. I don’t want sex scenes to become shoddy laboured requisites in every novel, be they crime, historical, or that Alan Bennett one about books and the Queen. I don’t want to become desensitised to the danger and excitement of a good sex scene by recurring dodgy content. I really like that there’s a (sort of) quality control working to stop rubbish sex scenes being brushed over by editors and publishers, due, I can only assume, to some sort of universal sub-conscious recognition that sex is always crude, and therefore can be crudely described, even in a really good book. Sex can’t just be prudishly accepted by authors and critics as resident in the land of awkward, embarrassed euphemism and unhelpful metaphor, not requiring the same powerful, expressive language one would use for describing deep seated emotion or a picturesque landscape.

On a less serious note, it’s also REALLY REALLY FUNNY. My favourite example is from 2010 winner, Rowan Somerville’s The Shape of Her:

'Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her' 

Is it just me who found that more reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs than of anything remotely sexual?

This award is without a doubt my best discovery of 2012. It’s light-hearted, entertaining, and is simultaneously allowing us to laugh out loud at awkward and far-fetched descriptions of sex, while keeping sacred our ability to have a little naughty giggle at the good stuff too.

Here’s some extracts from this year’s shortlist (hee hee hee!) I don’t know about you girls, but no part of my body is a bakewell pudding, or a light-sensitive manual camera. And jockeys don’t (to my knowledge) go inside saddles (pelvic or otherwise). And my Lady Jane is definitely nothing like a chrysanthemum (though I will admit my plant knowledge is pretty shaky, and I had to do a quick google image search just to check). Enjoy! 

The Quiddity of Will Self, Sam Mills

'Down, down, on to the eschatological bed. Pages chafed me; my blood wept onto them. My cheek nestled against the scratch of paper. My cock was barely a ghost, but I did not suffer panic' 

Noughties, Ben Masters

'We got up from the chair and she led me to her elfin grot, getting amongst the pillows and cool sheets. We trawled each other's bodies for every inch of history'

Back to Blood, Tom Wolfe

'Now his big generative jockey was inside her pelvic saddle, riding, riding, riding, and she was eagerly swallowing it swallowing it swallowing it with the saddle's own lips and maw — all this without a word' 

Rare Earth, Paul Mason

'He began thrusting wildly in the general direction of her chrysanthemum, but missing — his paunchy frame shuddering with the effort of remaining rigid and upside down'

The Yips, Nicola Barker

'She smells of almonds, like a plump Bakewell pudding; and he is the spoon, the whipped cream, the helpless dollop of warm custard'

Infrared, Nancy Huston

'This is when I take my picture, from deep inside the loving. The Canon is part of my body. I myself am the ultrasensitive film — capturing invisible reality, capturing heat' 

The Divine Comedy, Craig Raine

'And he came. Like a wubbering springboard. His ejaculate jumped the length of her arm. Eight diminishing gouts. The first too high for her to lick. Right on the shoulder'

The Adventuress: The Irresistible Rise of Miss Cath Fox, Nicholas Coleridge

'In seconds the duke had lowered his trousers and boxers and positioned himself across a leather steamer trunk, emblazoned with the royal arms of Hohenzollern Castle. 'Give me no quarter,' he commanded. 'Lay it on with all your might.' 

So there you go. You may have learnt nothing new about sex, but I personally was not previously familiar with the word ‘wubbering'. The winner will be announced on the 4th of December!

Am I A Middle-Class Wanker?

I wrote some thoughts in my notebook coming home on the 63 bus on Sunday:

Caitlin Moran’s column in the Times Magazine this weekend was about why, despite having her own conservatory and piano and recycled wine glasses, she still feels working rather than middle class. And how it’s not about how her life looks, but her frame of mind. What a silly thing to write for the Times! It’s only going to be read by other middle-class people at their kitchen tables over their morning filter coffee. None of her readership will identify with her at all!

As I read the column, eating grapefruit in my friend’s kitchen with all matching appliances (including an impressive 4-piece toaster with bagel button), I completely agreed with her. She admits that ‘the way we calibrate class in this country does indeed insist that if I were now … to claim that I am still working class, I would be, in some obscure way, a bit of a w***er’. And that is true. The logical explanation for this is that in identifying yourself as working class you are claiming you have less than you do, and to do so implies you do not appreciate what you have. I often worry about the level of hypocrisy I excude when I talk to my friends at university about the importance of unemployment benefits and child support and EMA while shopping for new dresses at the Bullring Topshop. But that doesn't stop me feeling working class, like my upbringing still matters. Class has not been defined purely in monetary terms by just about anyone for like, ages. The real reason you’re seen as a bit of a knob for distinguishing yourself as a class that belies your earnings, is that you’re seen as a try-hard. You’re like a tory MP rallying for votes in Sheffield by maintaining you’re best mates with Jarvis Cocker. But Jarvis Cocker has just as much money as a tory MP. Does that mean they are now of a similar social class? Does the fact that a bunch of people really really liked Pulp and paid money for their albums make Jarvis a wanker for continuing to sing about common people?  

Of course not. As humans we make stereotypes because we like to define things. We like rigid rules to dictate these definitions, so that we can recognise people and put them into categories easily. We want to know as much as we can about stuff; our brain naturally wants to fill in the gaps. So we like to be able to see a copy of The Art Book, or a Nigella recipe out in someone’s home and immediately be able to deduce from that that they also probably liked The White Album and have recently taken up knitting. All these traits are of course as unconnected to class as they are to each other. There seems to have been something of an obsession recently with defining ‘middle-class’. Recycling is middle-class, irony is middle-class, guilt is middle-class, swearing for effect is middle-class. Mocking the middle-class is middle class. According to the blog ‘Stuff White Brits Like’, ambivalence about Will Self is middle-class. Seriously? Ambivalence about Will Self is the default emotion everyone has about Will Self. Those overly long and complicated words he uses in his consciously deep and philosophical writing. He epitomises the ‘fit but you know it’ dilemma. Will Self himself is probably ambivalent about Will Self (the self-aware middle-class twat). It doesn’t matter how you were brought up and what you believe in. As soon as you start a compost heap or use the c-word you are no longer allotted the right to quote Arthur Scargill or drink tennants. It’s a package deal. You have to move out of your flat, take your compost and dirty words down to Surrey, buy a cat which you will have to name after an obscure 80s music icon and start a record collection. Because OBVIOUSLY there can’t be any overlap. Working and middle-class people can’t engage in the same activities. They are two distinct spheres. How on earth can people in completely separate worlds both follow Stephen Fry on twitter? It’s confusing an immovable divide!

Come on guys, it’s not about what you buy, or what music you listen to. I may buy organic when I can, and find Thom Yorke's voice enchanting and beautiful. But this is Britain, class is POLITICAL. Financially, my social class confuses me. Politically, it does not. Despite not having very much money when I was a child, I can’t deny the reasonable cushtie-ness of my life. Being met with the fierce scent from the brewery across the road every time we opened the door or window of our first Edinburgh flat made me feel poor (especially that time when upstairs had a shower and our kitchen ceiling fell in). Reading Irvine Welsh a few years later made me feel very, very well off. Mark Renton would shun me as a peroni-drinking university dickhead. I mean, my mum’s not a miner. She’s a camera operator. We have an imac. I’ve spent whole hours of my life convincing her of our new, undeniable middle-class status, pointing to the aforementioned snazzy computer, and her own black and white photography framed on the walls of our open plan living room. PRIVILEGE, DUH. But my reflex has always been to regard middle-class as something I’m surrounded by, rather than part of. I will still feel far more easily united under the phrase ‘tory scum’ than ‘squeezed middle’. As Ms Moran says, the good old days were only good for the man. Being working class is about change: ‘joy, revolution, progress, urbanity, carousing until you bust’. The only way is up. Restlessness; a need for change. Walking down Millbank on the first student fees march in 2010,the beautiful flames outside office buildings warming my belly and satiating my need for some kind of revolution (however small), I received a text from my grandma saying ‘I’m in Trafalgar Sq, where are you?’. That made me feel brilliant. She didn’t receive the call-to-arms passed round every student halls in the country, but still she wrapped herself up and left her Hertfordshire home to defend what she believed in. She remembered the importance of higher education not only in providing young people with degrees, but also an opportunity to GET OUT. Whether you’re looking from a balcony at the top of a tower block, or through your bay window onto a tree lined street, the world can still look old and crap, and in need of a reshuffle.

If our current earnings negate our past ones, then there’s no reason to hope to vote anyone into Parliament who will actually represent the working classes. If we connect salary with one’s ability to identify with certain classes, then as soon as anyone gets elected and settles into their accommodation near Westminster, we effectively retract their ability to communicate with the common man. I’m not saying social typecasting is the only thing stopping politicians being fair and open-minded. I’m not so naïve as to assume that our poor representatives really have a degree of ‘normality’ to prove, and we’re being unfair in branding them ridiculous for queuing up in northern pasty shops attempting to dupe us into thinking they’re just like Roger from Greggs except if he had power. I know they’re not stuck feeling hopelessly trapped in their lonely upper-class money bubbles, jumping up and down in a furious attempt to smash through the glass ceiling, trying desperately to free themselves from the GOSH DARN pheasant dinners and free police horse trials. But champagne socialism is rare. And people do play-up to their stereotypes. So putting so much emphasis on rigidly defined class, and labeling people as wankers for trying to contradict their background probably doesn’t help.  

OH. And why was I reading the Times Magazine on a Sunday morning, you ask? They don’t sell that it New York, do they? And you won’t have bought your way round the pay wall will you Siobhan, you blatant Guardian reader. Well no, that’s true. I was reading the weekend paper left on my friend’s kitchen table. In south London. I left my internship at BAB, and I left New York, and I flew back to England. They don’t really have class war there. Or healthcare. And the lights are really, really too bright. I had no kinfolk, and the utterly superfluous business of international bigwig schmoozery was getting me down big time. So I only lasted 3 months as a grown-up. I’m going to take a break and try again. Anyway, more explanation coming soon, but for now, it’s great to be back in the shire. Just great.  

At work on Friday, I thought about boardrooms, warzones and language

At work this week (this strange one-day week created by hurricane Sandy, throwing me all off kilter), I was logging the book reviews published in our latest magazine into the database. Our magazine is about corporate and international affairs, and is only circulated round our membership. All articles written in it therefore, are essentially for the purpose of networking. The book reviews section features publications (mostly non-fiction) written by our members: generally CEOs of large multi-nationals who somehow still manage to write books about their profession. It makes me suspicious. Either being a CEO is easier than it looks or the quality of the books is fairly bad. If you are able run a company and publish masterful business commentary on the side, you must be cutting some serious corners somewhere. (I’m sure Barack Obama shouldn’t have had the time to write that picture book.)

Having neither read any of the books featured, or planning to, I can’t give any further insight into this particular problem. In this instance, the thing that struck me most about these highly specific corporate business publications was their titles: they were all overtly war related. (The only exception to this was ‘How Excellent Companies Avoid Dumb Things’ which, judging by title only, I feel might lend some weight to my previous point about something having to give in the CEO/Author life balance to create such works. In the case of this author, time spent on creating an intelligent and poignant title clearly suffered. The one he landed on gives the impression that instead of writing a book, he just went through ‘Market Capitalism for Dummies’ and deleted out the cartoons of confused looking stick women). Some of these eponymous battleground associations included ‘The Commando Way’, ‘Courageous Counsel’ and ‘Army of Entrepreneurs’. I think this reflects a general attitude surrounding the world of business. Whether it’s in the boardroom or ‘The Devil Wears Prada’, the corporate world is constantly presented to us in combative terms: it’s a harsh, unforgiving, aggressive environment. And seeing all these titles listed on the same page in front of me really made me think about how deep the comparison goes. From every angle, business is seen like a warzone; especially at the highest international level, where extreme free-market economics is generally the ideal. Survival of the fittest. The words ‘cutthroat’ and ‘dog-eat-dog’ are savoured in the mouths of both high up executives and beginning entrepreneurs. For some reason, this language is not considered to be reflective of a dangerous or unhealthy environment, but one to be survived and therefore one reserved for the best. I don’t for a second claim to be a business expert (if you’ve read much else on this blog you will know that I profess quite the opposite), but I think this image of business is probably both unhealthy and unnecessary for modern corporations. Or for the people that have to live in the same world as them at least. 

We know that the highest corporate boardrooms are a boys club, and always hear complaints about women not being able to break the glass ceiling into the offices surrounding Wall St and St Pauls. The constant presentation of business in such an aggressive and warlike way probably has no small part in that. The high up executive positions, like in the army, are advertised to appeal to men. Combat has been presented in this way since the dawn of time. I mean we all know war is justsophallic. Impaling spears gave way to stabbing swords which were replaced with ejaculating missiles. Even the term CEO, Chief Executive Officer, evokes battle-zone vocabulary. I know ‘Officer’ has the word ‘office’ in it, but I’m sure it was an army term before it was a business term. And I’m also sure that it wasn’t lifted from combative ranks unintentionally. Even if it wasn’t a conscious decision, the connotations of the title of ‘officer’ are significant at least on a subconscious level, in conveying what the expectations of the role are, and who is going to desire it. Much like in the army, the title of Chief Executive Officer is just another way for the less physical but equally competitive men in our world to metaphorically display the size of the gun they are carrying. The only thing missing is the pervasion of an offensive, ironic, sexy-CEO Ladies’ costume, mirroring that of ‘army girl’, to make the same gender bias official.

I don’t think business needs this reputation of violence and aggression being the way to succeed. It seeps through every section of corporation until it becomes normalcy. And you only need to watch one episode of ‘The Apprentice’ to see that those aggressive qualities in isolation do not make for a good business environment. They don’t even make good T.V.

It’s a sickening culture, and language is just the tip of the iceberg. We’ve all been agreed for a while that real international war-zones are bad, and should generally be avoided where possible. Even the Prince of warmongering, George W. Bush, conceded that he thinks ‘war is a dangerous place’ (well done G). So it can’t be a positive thing for the same imagery used to make war seem appealing to filter into business vocabulary. It makes (and has made) business exclusively for ball breakers and cutthroats, it perpetuates gender-bias, and excludes potentially successful and intelligent people who don’t fancy constantly being on the attack. People who perhaps could use international commerce as a force for good. It makes the highly questionable moral decisions of the Union Carbides and the BPs of the world that much more common and acceptable. Just as morality is suspended in a battleground, so does it seem to be suspended when corporate greed is at play.

International business should not be a war-zone. And if all war could stop too that would be great. Thanks, world

Yours Sincerely,

Siobhan Palmer.