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Why Toxic Masculinity Hurts Women Too
Equality Issues · Opinion

Why Toxic Masculinity Hurts Women Too

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In a previous post, I wrote about how Toxic Masculinity is damaging to boys and men. And I mentioned that it can be equally damaging for girls and women. And here’s why:

If you tell a boy that he does something ‘like a girl’ for example cry / throw / run etc, and are using the saying to stop him from doing it that way, or to mock him, both the boy in question, and any boys or girls within earshot, internalise the idea that doing something ‘like a girl’ is bad.

To the girls internalising this message, they unconsciously take on board the idea that to be a girl is less than, that they are the other sex, second in line to boys. For the boys who hear it, they too internalise the idea that girls are less than they are. Not much room for men and women to view and treat each other as equals if they grow up with this unconscious bias.

And what if a boy enjoys doing something, like many girls are known to do? Play with dolls, wear pink, dance? Tell this boy often enough that he has to stop being like a girl, and at best, he will hide his true feelings, his likes and dislikes from you. He may deliberately act in a more ‘boyish’ way to further hide his preferences for toys or favourite colours, and internalise any shame he feels for liking something you’ve made fun of. At worst. this shame might lead him to mock other boys, or to take out his frustrations on girls, people who he sees being able to make the choices he can’t. Shame him enough and he might never show his feelings again, or choose to hide them with aggression to prove how ‘manly’ he is, which can only have a negative impact on the women in his life, be that a sister, friend or partner.

So while toxic masculinity is damaging to boys and men, it’s pretty rubbish for girls and women too. No one wins.

Not much room for men and women to view and treat each other as equals if they grow up with this unconscious bias.

Can we talk fashion and makeup?
Equality Issues · Opinion

Can we talk fashion and makeup?

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Saturday 7th November was such an historic day as for the first time in over 200 years of US politics, a woman became the Vice President-Elect. Senator Kamala Harris will become the 49th VP since the office came into existence in 1789. And this is not just historic due to her being female, but also because she is a woman of colour; her father was Jamaican and her mother Indian, and it stops a pattern in the history of VPs:

How striking is that graphic. What a moment in history. What an achievement! She was a District Attorney in San Fransisco, The Attorney General of California, elected to the US Senate in 2017 and will enter the White House in January 2020 with President-Elect Joe Biden. So I was a bit surprised this week when I was scrolling through Twitter and saw this headline from The Telegraph Newspaper:

“Why Kamala Harris is the modern beauty icon the world needs.”

This stopped me scrolling, as I sighed that her ‘war paint’ was the thing they wanted to focus on: Kamala Harris as a beauty icon. And it’s left me feeling all… bleurgh, about my feminism!

Feminism is the advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of the equality of the sexes. It is the belief in full social, economic, and political equality for women. And it leads me to believe that women therefore have agency over their choices. The choice to wear makeup, or not, is therefore the choice of the individual. As is the choice to read about the makeup regime of another woman, and thus the choice to write about it. But VP-Elect Harris is not a beauty expert, a makeup artist, a model; she’s a politican who’s been elected to the second highest office in the United States. So to write about her as a beauty icon, it just feels… well, bleurgh, again!

I did some googling while writing this post btw, and found another Telegraph headline: “The secret formula behind Kamala Harris’s winning politician hair.” Politician hair. Winning, politician hair…

Anyway…! So now I’m left with this feeling of conflict: I’ve since read a couple of pieces about why it’s not sexist to have written about Harris’s makeup. That the beauty and fashion industry, and the writers and journalists who write about it, are predominantly female, and that to suggest their work is misogynistic, is in itself a misogynistic act. Which, ooo, makes me start to feel all bleurgh again. I don’t want to be a misogynist!

For me, in trying to unpack these conflicted feelings, I’m leaning towards: why did they choose to focus on that, of all the things they could have talked about? It doesn’t sit comfortably with me. Now, people also talked about Kamala Harris’s choice of a white pant suit for her speech on Saturday night. And this I don’t mind so much, and here’s why: it was a nod to the white outfits worn by the women of the original suffrage movement. Paying tribute to those women who fought then, to allow this to happen now.

So talk about her outfit: good. Talk about her makeup: bad? A bit tricky eh? And one of the reasons why I think of myself as a feminist in progress, a term I first heard the wonderful human being that is Jameela Jamil use. I don’t profess to be an expert, I’m learning and self correcting all the time. I want to be able to have the confidence to say, you have a point, I’ll take that on board or, I think you’re right. But on this one, I don’t think it was a good call to lead with a headline about beauty, on the night the first ever woman was declared Vice President Elect of the United States of America. That pant suit was on point though.

So what is toxic masculinity?
Equality Issues · Opinion

So what is toxic masculinity?

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Our new book, How Frank Helped Hank, tackles the subject of toxic masculinity. But what is toxic masculinity?

It’s a term used to describe the societal expectations placed on boys and men, that can have a damaging affect on them, and as a consequence, on women. It’s the outdated idea that there are traditional male gender roles, that men, strong men, manly men, winners, must behave in a certain way. That being seen to be this strong, manly type of man, is the most desirable way to be. So from a young age we tell our boys to ‘man up’. We tell them, ‘don’t cry like a girl’. We belittle them if they ‘throw like a girl’ or ‘run like a girl’. We throw around the word ‘girl’ (or other more sweary variations of the word!) as a derogatory term, intended to make fun of the boy or man on the receiving end. But why is this damaging?

In the simplest of ways it’s just bizarre in 2020 that we expect people to behave in a certain way, and not just allow them to be themselves. But there is a more serious reason.

In the UK, one of the biggest causes of death for men under the age of 45, is suicide. On the home page of their website, CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) states that every week in the UK, 125 people take their own life, and that 75% of all UK suicides, are male. These numbers are shockingly high; I was astounded, and so saddened when I first read about them. And I wondered why it is that boys and men are more vulnerable to this.

The CALM website lists 3 societal pressures that boys and men live under, which likely contribute to this:

  • They feel a pressure to be a winner and can more easily feel like the opposite.
  • They feel a pressure to look strong and feel ashamed of showing any signs of [perceived] weakness.
  • They feel a pressure to appear in control of themselves and their lives at all times.

It’s not a massive leap to understand that a childhood of being told to man up, and not cry like a girl, negatively impacts on a man’s ability to access and express his emotions, and seek help.

Blimey Suze this is all a bit heavy for a kids’ book isn’t it? We can think that, or we can start to change the messages that boys receive so they are not embarrassed to ask for help when they need it. And also, y’know, so they don’t grow up to be macho dicks with gigantic egos and a total lack of empathy for their fellow humans!

So if toxic masculinity is damaging for our boys, why and how does it negatively impact on our girls? More on that in our next blog post: Why Toxic Masculinity Hurts Women Too.

Cara Delevingne reads The Queen Engineer
Company News

Cara Delevingne reads The Queen Engineer

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We are so proud this week, to have played a small part in a wonderful campaign for Save the Children UK.

Launched in the US by Jennifer Garner and Amy Adams and led in the UK by Save the Children Ambassador, Poppy Delevingne, every donation to Save with Stories will help raise urgent funds for the children and families who’ve been hardest hit by the coronavirus crisis, both in the UK and around the world.

Last week Cara read our second award-winning rhyming story, The Queen Engineer, which has so far been watched by over 40,000 people on Instagram and over 7000 on FaceBook.

Every penny helps, so if you can, please, text the word STORIES to 70008 to make a one-off donation of £5.

Earlier in the month our first book, She’s Not Good for a Girl, She’s Just Good! was also read for the charity, by Peaky Blinders Star, Annabelle Wallace.

It’s an amazing campaign, and we are so very delighted to have been a part of it.

#savewithstories

She’s a Girl with a Fishtail​
Opinion

She’s a Girl with a Fishtail​

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Disney, as we know, are in the process of remaking some of their much loved animated classics, as live action movies. The latest film to go through the magic remake machine is The Little Mermaid, which was released in all its underwater technicolour glory back in 1989. 

The live action version is causing a bit of a stir on the old interweb / Twittersphere because, gasp, the actor cast to play Ariel is Halle Bailey, who shock horror, doesn’t have flaming red hair! Actually what they seem really cross about is that she isn’t white *inserts face palm emoji here. In fact, it didn’t take long before the hashtag #notmyariel started trending on Twitter. People were very cross about it, and we have to ask why?  We know that representation matters; you can’t be it if you can’t see it. It’s really that simple. All children need to see themselves reflected in the books they read, and the movies they watch. It shows them that they can take up space in the world; that they are part of it, that they add value to it.  All children, of all races, need to see all children, of all races, so they grow up knowing that everyone has an equal place on earth. 

So why oh why are people getting so angry about this casting? I even read that people are trying to use science to prove that mermaids can only be white. Seriously, there was a discussion about how little melanin (the pigment that determines the colour of our skin and is responsible for tanning) would be present in a mermaid’s body, given that they live so far under the water, for so much of the time. 

Let’s stop and think about that for a minute. Taking time out of a busy day, pushing matters relating to say climate change, a lack of school funding, the damaging effects of toxic masculinity on the 84 men a week who take their own lives, to ponder, mermaid science. So, shall we say it once more, for the people at the back:

mermaids aren’t real! 

They are mythical creatures. She’s a girl with a fish tail.  Who breathes both under and out of water. Whose makeup never runs and whose hair looks freakin amazing all the time… Their minds are gonna be blown when they realise the crab can sing. 

Change the message
Equality Issues · Opinion

Change the message

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In 2016 a deputy principal in a New Zealand school, called a group of 15 and 16 year old girls into a meeting, and requested that their school skirts are worn no shorter than knee level.

On the face of it, this isn’t a particularly unusual request: there are dress codes that we follow all over the world every day. You wouldn’t wear white to a wedding, or a bikini to a baptism. But it wasn’t a simple school dress code alone that prompted this request. The reason given was to

“keep our girls safe, stop boys from getting ideas and create a good work environment for male staff.”

Parents and commentators were, quite rightly, outraged by this reasoning. It clearly sends the message to young women that they and they alone are responsible for boys “getting ideas”. That their choice of clothing is what will create a good working environment for the male staff (presumably meaning they will be less distracted?). And that if they don’t wear a skirt of the appropriate length, they will not be safe. That last one is really creepy because it’s almost a threat: short skirt? Expect the worst.

None of this reasoning puts any of the responsibility at all onto the young men or the male teachers. It, in fact, teaches boys that their actions are caused by girls, thus rendering them blameless. It’s effectively allowing them off the hook and teaching them that they won’t be held accountable.

But it’s also teaching them that girls are only there to be looked at, to be a distraction. That they are an ornament, something to gaze upon and be beguiled by. It’s teaching the boys this, but it’s teaching the girls it too.

A report published last year by The Children’s Society found that almost a quarter of 14-year-old girls have self-harmed (the term “self-harming” was used to describe a wide range of behaviours, including drug and alcohol abuse, as well as physical self-harming). The Girlguiding Girls’ Attitudes survey found that 71% of 11-21 year-olds would like to lose weight, with 52% saying they have been on a diet, and 38% admitting to having sometimes skipped meals to try and drop the pounds.

Let’s change the messages that both our boys and girls receive. BOYs you are responsible for your actions: if a glimpse of leg or shoulder is distracting, look away. GIRLs you are not only alive to be attractive to men: your body is an instrument not an ornament.

We would never tell a group of schoolboys that they can’t wear shorts as it’s distracting to the female teachers. It sounds absurd just reading that, doesn’t it? So let’s change the messages. Let’s try and create a more equal society for our girls and our boys.

Have you got her back?
Opinion

Have you got her back?

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3 minute read

Did anyone see Love Island this week? Two new girls entered the villa and the existing girls started baying for blood as they watched some of the boys interact with them. It made for unpleasant viewing, watching immature eye-rolling behaviour and listening to the childish heckles of a group of young women, wracked with envy and unsure what to do with their feelings. It was directed mainly at one of the newcomers who put on a brave face and played up to it, but also admitted that it was getting to her. It was uncomfortable to watch and made me want to shout at them all to support each other on what is undoubtedly an experience that will screw with their heads.

Madeleine Albright, the first female Secretary of State, famously said,

“there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other.”

She was introducing Hillary Clinton who was then campaigning to become the first female Democratic nominee. It wasn’t the first time Albright had used the phrase, and after that rally, she went on to say “In a society where women often feel pressured to tear one another down, our saving grace lies in our willingness to lift one another up.”

I was reminded of Albright’s quote as I watched a group of young women act childishly, and meanly, clearly feeling threatened by the presence of another. Why would they do this?

I think it’s because, for centuries, a women’s value was based on two things: her attractiveness and thus her ability to find a husband and provide (male) heirs. Women had no other reason to exist in society, save to look pretty and keep a man happy.

In 1792, Mary Wollstonecraft wrote in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, that this emphasis on marriage and aesthetic upkeep, causes women to become cruel under their calm exteriors, as they’re placed in a perpetual state of competition with one another. At the time, once married, men and women were legally considered to be one person, a woman having no separate legal rights from her husband. With so few rights and little to no education, the chance for economic survival outside of the marriage was non-existent. Wollstonecraft argued that the fear of being replaced (by a younger, more desirable model, one considered more likely to birth sons) led women to become sneaky and deceitful towards men, in an attempt to hold onto them, and limited the possibility of forming caring bonds with other women.

So for decade after decade, young women have learned that competition in the shape of another female is bad and requires sneaky tactics to be fought against. In 2019 women may have gained equal rights in the eyes of the law, but centuries of heavily engrained beliefs mean we still place so much of a woman’s value on her physical appearance, and thus ability to snare a man.

The ladies of Love Island tapped into those heavily engrained beliefs this week as they attacked their potential replacements. If the next generation is taught more about being each other’s equals, and learn to value each other for more than just their appearance, perhaps Love Island in 2035 will be a show where you can get all the feels watching people fall in love, but less discomfort watching women tear each other down.

World Book Day 2019
Company News

World Book Day 2019

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This year World Book Day is on Thursday 7th March. Now there aren’t many of us who would challenge how important books and reading are for children! But I know lots of parents probably think of it as a day when they have to spend money on a random dress up outfit; that won’t fit in a year’s time. In fact the wonderful Scummy Mummies once called it, World Amazon Prime Day! I imagine Jeff does do rather well in the week leading up to WBD as parents across the land (well, globe) scramble to get that prime order in at the last minute!

In fact, WBD is a wonderful charity with a mission to to ensure that every child has a book of their own. Research by the National Literacy Trust in 2017 found that 1 in 11 UK children do not have a book of their own at home, and this rises to 1 in 8 for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Director of the NLT, Jonathan Douglas said, “that book ownership in this country is really strongly linked to literacy issues and social mobility.” He went on to discuss that children who don’t own books are less likely to have positive experiences of reading, less likely to do well at school, less likely to send emails or read websites, and thus grow up with a disadvantage in the modern world.

To combat this, the World Book Day charity send millions of book tokens (almost 15 million!) to children and young people in the UK. And of course, to add a fun element and encourage children to read more, and to celebrate books, authors and illustrators, children get to dress up as their favourite book character, and share their book with their classmates! And this is when parents go, ahhhh!!

So! with that in mind we came up with a few easy ideas to dress up as the wonderful Florence from our books.

All it takes is a striped dress and a pair of white sneakers!

Or if you fancy dressing up as Florence when she’s all grown up and is The Queen Engineer, all you need is any blue dress (last years’ Cinderella, Elsa (or even Matilda), and a pair of red wellies and a construction hat!

Whoever and whatever your children dress up as this World Book Day, please do all enjoy it, and enjoy reading your favourite books. And remember: a book is for life not just World Book Day!!

Please note: none of the brands mentioned have in any way sponsored or endorsed this post. They are not affiliate links and this is not an AD.

International Women’s Day 2019
Company News

International Women’s Day 2019

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This year’s International Women’s Day is on Friday 8th March. Some people may (will) ask, why do we need an international women’s day? What about an international men’s day? Well. First of all, there is an IMD: it’s on 19th November. And secondly, whenever anyone responds to just about any question with, what about, you pretty much have answered the question as to why you needed it in the first place!

See IWD isn’t about men; it’s about celebrating women. Their achievements. Their acts of courage and determination. Their attempts to create change and a more equal world for everyone. So if you make it about men, by asking what about, then you’re missing the point altogether.

It’s like someone doing a sponsored run for Cancer Research, and saying, but what about heart disease? But, what about it? In choosing to run for research in cancer, we’re not ignoring heart disease. This sponsored run is for cancer research, because for this moment time, we want to focus on that. Doesn’t mean heart disease doesn’t exist, or isn’t worthy of our attention. Just right now, we’re focussing on cancer research.

But more often than not, people don’t say things like that. When you set up your Just Giving page and share it with friends and family, they either donate, or they don’t. Rarely would anyone openly challenge your decision to run 10k, and donate the sponsorship money to a worth while cause. But so often, when you say you’re a feminist, or that you’re celebrating a female focused event, like IWD, people challenge your thinking, and often, in the way they challenge, they make it about men.

But as we’ve already said, IWD is about celebrating women. Though it officially became recognised in 1975 by the United Nations, there were a number of celebrations and days of observance dating back to 1909, when a National Women’s Day was held in New York. And in 1914, on March 8th, there was a march from Bow in East London to Trafalgar Square in support of woman’s suffrage. This was also the day that Sylvia Pankhurst (Emmeline’s daughter) was arrested outside Charing Cross Station, on her way to speak in Trafalgar Square. So it’s rather fitting that we chose International Woman’s Day, to celebrate the launch our collaboration with Cotton Twist: a make your own Emmeline Pankhurst peg doll.

So on this International Women’s Day, I shall be thinking about Emmeline and all the brave women who stood by her side, campaigning for a woman’s right to vote. So much has changed since then, and there are still so many amazing women (and men) today, lobbying and creating positive change for future generations of girls and boys. And that is certainly something to celebrate.

The make your own Emmeline Pankhurst peg doll is a Thea Chops Books collaboration with Cotton Twist, and the first in their Wonderful Women range.

Questions

Fairytales: what they are really saying?

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Previously on this blog, I’ve written about the power of words – how they are seldom ever ‘just words’ and how their meaning has such an impact on us from a young age.  I also gave you my take on Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  Not (in my humble opinion) a classic, much loved children’s fairy tale; but rather a rude, overly inquisitive little girl, who spreads her germs by double dipping spoons and breaks things without apology.  This week, I’m thinking about what Jack & the Beanstalk is really all about, and what it’s teaching our kids (spoiler alert – again, not so much!):

Jack & the Beanstalk

Having been given just one task to complete by his long suffering mum, Jack promptly ignores her request to sell their (only) cow, and instead arrives home having swapped it for some, woooo, magic beans.  And for this inability to follow a simple request, Jack is, in fairness, sent to bed.  But upon waking, and discovering a magic beanstalk has grown in the garden, he starts to climb (did he tell his poor mum where he was off to? Who knows but I’m guessing not).  At the top of the beanstalk, he discovers a blood-smelling giant, and not content with eating the giant’s sausages, he then steals a bag of gold from him, and hot foots it back home.

Now Jack’s mum seemingly doesn’t question where a small boy would procure such a bag of loot, and  she spends it all, admittedly on food (which they were in need of following the cow / magic bean swap).  Thing is, here once again is a child who isn’t shown any consequences for their actions.  If she wasn’t going to reprimand him for theft, the least she could have done is encouraged him to open an ISA.

Jack climbs the beanstalk again, and this time makes off with a goose who lays golden eggs.  It’s not made clear in the story, if the mum is complicit in this second act of larceny, but it would appear that Jack is once again, not reprimanded.

Not content, Jack scales the beanstalk a third time, and steals a self-playing harp.  But finally, he’s pursued by the Giant!  Jack’s mum (who now clearly must be totally in cahoots) throws him an axe and once the beanstalk is chopped down, the Giant falls.  To his death.  

And they all (save for the giant) lived happily ever after.  No prosecution for three counts of theft. Certainly nothing for gianticide.  Moral of the story:  crime does pay.  Handsomely.  And seemingly once again, with no consequences.

Now my tongue is once again somewhat in my cheek. But writing this got me wondering about what the actual moral of the story was intended to be.  A quick google brought up suggestions such as, one should take advantage of the opportunities that life provides for you. True enough. Another: listen to your mother.  This once left me thinking, or what?  You’ll end up very wealthy?!

We read to our children from the day they are born, and talk to them about stories, films, the world, everything we can. Little ears take everything on board, and they are very literal. When my daughter was small I asked her what she thought The Gruffalo was about, (the classic David v. Goliath tale of brains outsmarting braun).  And she replied, “It’s about a mouse. Who goes for a walk”. 

Not quite the message I was hoping had got though, but she’s not wrong though!  She was only about 2, and it was a good conversation starter! And that is the bit I hold onto when she requests one of these outdated stories or movies.  We use it to start an conversation and ask her what she thinks.  Start a discussion and their minds will begin to consider these messages for themselves. Encouraging children to think, is no bad thing!

Now, if we could just get her to find some magic beans, we’d be rich too!!