Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism Read Online Free PDF

is now to reduce rather than increase women’s freedom. And it is not just the women who are directly involved who find their individuality threatened by the glamour-modelling industry. The marketplace is taking up and reinforcing certain behaviour in a way that can make it hard for many young women to find the space where other views of female sexuality and other ways for women to feel powerful are celebrated. By co-opting the language of choice and empowerment, this culture creates smoke and mirrors that prevent many people from seeing just how limiting such so-called choices can be. Many young women now seem to believe that sexual confidence is the only confidence worth having, and that sexual confidence can only be gained if a young woman is ready to conform to the soft-porn image of a tanned, waxed young girl with large breasts ready to strip and pole-dance. Whether sexual confidence can be found in other ways, and whether other kinds of confidence are worth seeking, are themes that this hypersexual culture cannot address. While no one would express unease if there were a few women expressing their sexuality in this style in a society which was also happyto celebrate with similar verve and excitement the myriad other achievements of other women, the constant reinforcement of one type of role model is shrinking and warping the choices on offer to young women.

10: Changes
    Our society is not monolithic: despite all the evidence of a backlash, the gains of the past have not yet been lost. Feminists in the West have already set in motion the greatest peaceful revolution the world has ever known, by achieving political representation for women, rights to equal education and working opportunities, and rights over contraception and reproduction. There are women who are still achieving their own dreams in a range of different realms, whether they are creating art or literature, succeeding in business or politics, or finding intimate relationships that answer their own emotional and sexual desires.
    This means that successful women in many areas are as full of optimism as they ever were. For instance, I discussed women’s current situation with Harriet Harman, just before she won the deputy leadership of the Labour party. ‘Young women now have good role models, they are forging ahead,’ she said. ‘Why do you think things are bad for them?’ I discussed it with Anne McElvoy, the deputy editor of the London Evening Standard , at a party to celebrate Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize. ‘Are you feeling pessimistic?’ she said incredulously, looking around a room full offemale writers and publishers and editors. ‘With all these women in powerful positions?’
    Given the changes in our society that have already been achieved by feminism, and given the successes that have been achieved by many individual women, it’s not surprising if we often feel complacent even when confronted by the reality of renewed sexism. After all, even if you feel irritated by the sale of irons labelled ‘Mummy and Me’ in a high-street store, or angered by the opening of a lap-dancing club in your town centre, you may feel that it would be a little extreme to complain. You may feel that the joke on a late-night comedy show is degrading to female participants, but then again you might wonder if you are overreacting. Even when you hear about or experience an example of outrageous sexism, from discrimination to violence, you may wonder if it is just one isolated and unfortunate incident.
    But rather than being lulled by the idea that such incidents are just the side effects of our freedoms and our choices, it is time to wake up to the fact that the resurgence of such sexism is reducing the choices available to young women. If we are to create a future which genuinely values women for their full human potential, it is time for more people to put their complacency aside. I think that this is already beginning to happen; while writing this book I have