Equality lies in not fighting the status quo? What rubbish!

Hello everyone - hope you had a lovely weekend in the sunshine! I am still wanting to rant after reading the article in yesterday's Sunday Times about Catherine Hakim "She's counting up erotic capital". She apparently believes that our "increasing sexualised age is a 'trend' and that we should just relax because there is no point swimming against the tide". What complete rubbish. I would love to have a good heart to heart with her and learn what world she inhabits. So if what she says is true, our grandmothers should've bothered to fight against the status quo and claim our political voice because somehow we would've got the vote. How? How would not swimming against the tide create change? Our increasingly sexualised age is a backlash against women's increasing power. Susan Faludi writes about this and Naomi Wolf writes about how women's and now girl's bodies have increasingly become the focus of controlling our time and self-esteem as we gain more economic, social and political power. Making girl's and women worry about how they look reduces our entitlement to claim our power and space.

I feel that the increased sexualisation of girls and women is very much because women are starting to crack the top levels of power. It is also about deflecting our attention and our daughter's attention from the very real voices of having choice, do it for yourself and girl power into hyper-focusing on what we look like on male terms. You just have to look at the Spice Girls and Girls Aloud to see this in action - the language of empowerment turned against ourselves into being extremely thin and sexy within a very narrow definition of sexiness.

Which brings me to a related issue. In March I attended the Women Unlimited conference for businesswomen where Emma Wimhurst was paraded as a role model after making millions selling cosmetics to the young Spice Girl's fans during the 1990's. I was shocked that no one seemed to say how completely unacceptable this was. No one seemed to make the connection between the increased sexualisation of our girls and this business idea. This was a room full of women, mothers with daughters for goodness sake.

I would love to hear from women who also reacted about this! There is something very destructive about the business world's obsession with making money without reflecting on the social and environmental consequences to how anyone decides to make their money.