Why I have no time for Jeremy Clarkson.

I am of the belief that the majority of male TV presenters “of a certain age” can be identified as belonging to one of various subcategories of “Uncle” types. For example, Noel Edmunds is decidedly of the variety of Uncle who you see just once a year, probably around Christmas but not on the day itself, where direct contact is limited to him making a few really gut-wrenchingly awful jokes – at which you laugh anyway, not out of politeness, but with a genuine emotion probably bordering on something that COULD take the guise of pity or even fondness, in the weakest sense of the word. Jeremy Paxman, on the other hand, is a different sort of Uncle – cool, aloof and slightly intimidating, he probably married into your family and likes to see dinner gatherings as a platform for exercising a rigorous wit that would be substantially funnier than that provided by Edmunds, were you not too scared to laugh. His one concession to whimsy is wearing a paper hat from a Christmas cracker, which draws nervous screams of laughter from small cousins, who find the juxtaposition of such floppy cerise headgear in contrast with his steel grey curls shocking in its absurdity.

I can deal with both of these, and other similar, paradigmatic male faces staring out of my television set at me. Like real uncles, their presence in my life is an accident of fate – too distant from any act of volition on my part to demand any explanation, or justification, and of little negative consequence to my own existence. My default position is not one of ill will, more a sort of casual indifference. As a girl, in her twenties, born in 1987 (Thatcher secures a third term in office, British Rail renames Second class as Standard class, Van Gogh’s Sunflowers go for £24,750,000) I have little in common with men born in the 1950s,  in the vague climate of post-war altruism; before equal rights for women, before aids, before the internet, when people still paid for things in shillings and nobody got divorced. Why would I? We are creatures of different times, and our interaction must always be analogous to diplomatic missions – this is not to say that we are incapable of finding some common ground, some mutual shared interest that spans the inevitable chasm that arises from generational and gender differences; rather, that any such dialogue that does take place is often one between individuals from very different worlds, and must be treated accordingly. I feel no dislike for them – as I’m sure they do not for me. My response veers between distant curiosity and a polite indifference. Why should it be any other way?

But there is one specimen of TV Uncle who does not give rise in me to such feelings of vague fondness and casual disinterest. There is one archetype who, over a number of years now, has began to grate on my nerves more and more, and is likely to excite dark mutterings from me whenever his portly face barges its way, uninvited, into my living room by way of my TV set. I do not know why my reaction to him has become stronger over the years – perhaps something to do with growing
up, and becoming more sensitive to just how abrasive certain varieties of personality can be? Arrogance, particularly when it is not apparently deserved, fills me with a cold revulsion that leaves little time for the building of any affection, and this genus has it in bucketloads. I am referring to, of course, Jeremy Clarkson.

Clarkson is the sort of Uncle who forgets your birthday, year on year; he is the sort of uncle who notices when you have put on even a pound of weight/accumulated some new spots/are feeling insecure and comments on it loudly, using his boorish wit to undermine and bully you. Clarkson is the kind of Uncle who turns up in his shiny new auto and insists on showing it to the entire family for 40 minutes, telling you all the while about the various features it has in the finest and most excruciating of detail, all the while intimating that he is better than everybody else because he has a better car. The Clarkson archetype not only wants you to know the technical ins and outs of his car, he approaches his presentation of his own life in the same way – and, crucially, not only does he want to tell you all about them, but he genuinely expects you to care. About him, and his things, and his opinion on everything that he deems it relevant to comment on. Which is anything and everything, of course, because Clarkson knows it all.

So, Clarkson has decided that it is his place to wade into the media dialogue about the recent Richard Keys/Andy Gray controversy.For the uninitiated, Keys and Gray were caught on microphone making sexist comments about a female lineswoman. Something of a gaff in itself. They criticised Karren Brady, West Ham vice chair-man, who had recently written a newspaper column about sexism. Then, later footage emerged of them basically behaving like teenage louts, with Gray asking a female assistant to tuck a microphone cord into the crotch of his pants, and later making lewd remarks to Jamie Redknapp and referring to an ex girlfriend on multiple occasions as 'it'.

Clarkson weighing in:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12296317

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-12298190

Note the comments on these two youtube videos – often, people seem to struggle with the idea that this behaviour was sexist, preferring to refer to it as “sexist” in inverted commas – as if whether it's wrong to be asking a female member of staff to put her hands next to your dick is open to interpretation. Or here are a few other common angles:

“I think sky sports was wrong to sack gray, firstly this is common joke that men make about women and the second things that football players has a lot of pass and the game is played very fast it is hard for women official’s to keep up with them. If they cannot keep up with them then it will be difficult for female official to make a decision based on off side.
1913Highbury 1 day ago”

“This a laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of PC and sexist stereotypes of women. Ironically because of PC it has screwed two great sports commentators out a job. Women constantly make jokes about male sexist stereotypes such as how men can't multi-task and such.
But when we have a go at them for not knowing the offside rule it's a different story. The only victims of real sexcism here are Andy Gray and Richard Keys.
ScotlandForever1986 2 days ago”

“actually men are protective towards women...and despite the media lies actually like women...conversely women hate men even their own family members and wouldnt save a man drowning in front of em...its women who are sexist...not men..
RichardKeys10 2 hours ago”

“What a way to get sacked... almost like kissing your girlfriend and getting jailed for it...
CraigoohHD 23 hours ago”

“ARE FIFA 11 GOING TO STOP SELLING lol,,thanks to you stupid bitches FOOTBLL is going down the toilet.. what the heck do you want to play or take part in a mans sport,, we havelost our best pundits down to u slags, hope ur happy
spurskimo 1 day ago”.

What concerns me about the furore surrounding the sexist behaviour of Richard Keys/Andy Gray is not necessarily the actions of the two men themselves, who are, let’s face it, just dinosaurs – sad loser remnants of an old industry in the process of rapid modernisation but filled with a pervasive structure comprised of individuals too arrogant to change their ways. (let's face it, they were probably set up by Murdoch, anyway).I feel no bile towards them – no anger. Perhaps this in itself is worthy of concern – that such sexism is, still, so ingrained in our society that I can’t even work up the energy to be offended by it. They’re just a pair of idiots, and when you get caught being an
idiot in the workplace you get called up on it, and that’s just how it goes. Either you don’t behave stupidly, or you do and you don’t get caught. Getting caught leads to facing the music. That’s how it is and that’s what’s happened. No, what I find the most worrying about the whole scenario, is the response of the surrounding media discourse. The narrative woven around any event that permeates the public consciousness is a performance constructed, that the “audience” of the UK may use as a
backdrop for the playing out of their various perceptual fantasies. Hence, to me, this is a story about sexism, and the inevitability of inter-generational conflict, and about how once again, the establishment doesn’t care about the feelings of twenty something females. But for someone else, it is a story about football, and about sport, and about watching the match in a pub when you could still smoke indoors, and a world that’s ever changing, and the sense of losing ones place in it. And for people like Clarkson, this is about the irrelevance of mocking women. It is about how much it DOESN’T MATTER to make derisory comments about girls in a workplace environment. It’s about the fact that, in his eyes, it’s a non issue – it’s about how him and his entitled little cronies should be able to swagger around, staggering under the blunt weight of their balls, ensuring that everyone is exposed to whatever irrelevant bit of fluff they wish to espouse. The media furore surrounding Gray and Keys leaving has become a platform for every one so inclined to express just how unimportant they think it is that two men in a position of power and influence should be held accountable for being caught behaving with astoundingly sexist impropriety and generally behaving like utter idiots. People have weighed in to show just how negligible an issue they think it to be when men behave in a misogynistic fashion in the workplace – apparently advocating the view that, because Keys and Gray are respected sports broadcasters, this should somehow provide mitigating circumstances for their disgusting comments. The implication is presumably that if you are higher up and well respected in your career, your reward is a free license to behave with as much prejudice as you see fit. Misogyny is a reward for success.

Now I am not for one moment suggesting that Clarkson would be remotely bothered by my opinion. In fact, as he has aptly demonstrated, him and his ilk have no concern for the views of me and my kind. Clarkson is as incapable of understanding the feelings of a woman in her twenties as he presumably is of understanding the subtleties of power dialectics in a male dominated industry, of the frustration one feels at being patronised by those with less knowledge or experience purely on the basis of their position of privilege, of the humiliation of having to put up with such behaviour because the hierarchical power structure still so prevalent in our society means that any attempt to challenge it results in ostracisation. Clarkson doesn’t give a fuck what I think. Clarkson cares about what Clarkson cares about, and Clarkson will think about whatever he damn well chooses, it seems – and not pay any heed when the “thought police” come along and start making outrageous requests for things like a respectful working environment and some level of common decency in treatment of co-workers. You know; the sort to point out that anyone with a position of influence funded by license payer money and a platform beamed straight into people’s living rooms has at least some sort of obligation not to justify sexist behaviour in the workplace and, by implication, assert that people shouldn’t be held accountable for violating common standards of decency and respect because it’s all just a bit of banter, after all.

No, Clarkson et al do not understand me. They don’t understand girls like us, who  grew up in a world very different to theirs – who have, thankfully, never had the experience, an everyday one for our mothers, of having to grit our teeth and smile while some older lumbering dinosaur of a man patronises and insults us. Of being a second class citizen. We have always known that we are, by default, equal to any man, no greater or no worse; we have always known that we are entitled to have any evaluation of our character and abilities be derived, not on the basis of our gender, but from who we are as people. No, we have no patience for indulging the outdated minority of men who are like Clarkson – and soon, some of us will be in a position to do something about it. The slow progress of the gender equality movement means that more and more girls who think like me will finally begin to infiltrate positions of influence. Soon, girls like me will be hiring, not hired; they will not be lewdly asked to tuck in microphone cords to the crotches of cringeworthy, middle aged men – they will be telling such men to pipe down and do the job they are paid to do. We won't have to indulge your hyper inflated egos – why would we put up with being talked to like that? You're on the way out; we're just discovering our own power; you're the old, we're the new. Don't mistake your dominant ideology for ours. Our generation, both male and female, is one that has grown up expecting equality; of both males and females in the 20 -30 age bracket, views expressed jokingly by Gray and Keys vouched for by Clarkson seem antiquated and soon it is us who will be in charge. So here is my message to Clarkson, the man who does not understand, us, and does not wish to – I don’t wish to understand you either.  Stand aside, dinosaurs – your time is nearly over. Soon, this will be our world – and do not be surprised if, given how irrelevant you deem our feelings to be, we extend you a similar courtesy.

Diet Coke Break

Diet Coke adverts featuring dolls like the one above have been around for a good few months now - the campaign started with a print advert featuring, (quoted from here "three talented, confident and sassy girls who are best friends that work together at a fashion magazine, Eleanor, Bernadette and Irene. Their lighter attitude to life means they inject their own passion, style and spirit into everything they do, and always come out smiling. These girls know how to lighten up!"

Quite apart from Diet Coke's mildly confusing insistence on referring to characters who are (apparently) 28, 24 & 26 respectively (roll your mouse over the pictures on this site to meet them!) as "girls", what is really perplexing about this particular ad campaign is that it seems to be marketing a product to grown women via the medium of small dolls. We all know that advertising is no longer really about selling a product, but selling an idea - by telling an audience that they too can look like a supermodel, become irresistible to the opposite sex, or find some kind of sense of happiness and fulfilment should they only care to buy the right car, make-up or perfume. But so far as I can tell, this advertising campaign seems to be holding up what are essentially 21st century Bratz dolls as aspirational figures to women in the 20-30 age bracket. Are we really that desperate to be infantilized? (actually, looking at some of the comments on this blog apparently some of us are - although personally I find something a little unnerving about grown women saying things like, "I WANT A DOLLY!!!"[caps in context])

Quote from the website:

"Bernardette is 28 and is the magazine's relationship correspondent. This is quite an ironic position, as when it comes to her own relationships she's pretty rubbish - there are too many boys out there to flirt with!"

"Irene is 24. She's the junior arts columnist. Her love of music and all things dance means she hits the town most nights and has many a tale to tell about her adventures out and about. She loves all kinds of music - but particularly anything she can dance to."

"Eleanor is 26-years-old. She is the magazine's fashion sub-editor. She lives, breathes eats and, well, wears fashion. She knows everything there is to know about it - every designer, every brand, every store, what's hot, what's about to be hot, and if it's not, merchandise it up a little until it is."

I can only guess at what "merchandise it up a little" is supposed to mean, but I find it fascinating and vaguely horrifying that Diet Coke is running a campaign aimed at grown women that assumes that the same thing will appeal to them now as it did 20 years ago when they were playing with their Barbie dolls. Hopefully a few of us have moved on since then - perhaps some of us might actually be working at magazines like the fictional one in these advertisements, although I'd imagine there is less time for jumping around dancing on desks to the song from Flashdance. And hopefully we have diversified our interests a little outside of boys, dance music and clothes.

There is a degree of mimesis involved in being a consumer. The representations of ourselves we see in adverts both shape and are shaped by our wants and desires. Cases of women trying to achieve the unrealistic physical proportions presented in adverts like this one are, unfortunately, commonplace. In a consumer society, our bodies have become, to some degree, commercial spaces. No longer are we expected to want to look like women who look like dolls, the middle (wo)man has been removed entirely. Things have come full circle and, at 25, we're little girls again - expected to be playing at having jobs, playing at having careers, and apparently, buying soft drinks thanks to slogans like "No problem is too big when you have killer heels!", or "It gives you a little lift... like platforms!"

Of course, the overt gender-oriented advertising by Coca-Cola was boosted into hyper-drive following the launch of Coke Zero - exactly the same product as Diet Coke but in a Black Bottle for Boyz, accompanied by EXTREME adverts about skiing and loud noises and smashing stuff up and kicking ass and stuff, you know, boy junk like that. AWESOME. Is there something morally wrong about marketing the same product as two separate products, solely defined by gender stereotypes? Personally, although I know some people would argue that advertisers are merely catering to a market, I don't think the relationship between consumer audience and advertiser is a one way street, in which adverts are shaped by consumers who dictate how their attention should be captured. Adverts don't just cater to target markets, they create and shape them. Evidently it is in someone's interest for boys to be boys and girls to be girls... my question is, do we really want to define our gender identities to suit the profit projections of Schweppes?

We're all for sale these days..

So, yesterday the same topic was brought up (by someone other than myself) in two entirely different conversations with two entirely different people, which is always a good sign that it bears further scrutiny. Co-incidentally, it's also very relevant to a term paper I am (sort of, thinking about) writing at the moment.

The topic in question would be the alleged feminisation of male behaviour in contemporary western society. This is much lamented in many corners; the American media in the early to mid 2000s (as documented by Susan Faludi) displayed what can only be described as a hysterical need to reaffirm traditional gender roles in response to a sense of emasculated national identity, for obvious reasons. Male fashion in the late 2000s has been descried as overtly feminine in many corners – as a male friend of mine pointed out last night, it is now fairly common for boys to dress in “girlie” garments like cardigans and low necklines; to sport high maintenance haircuts that require straighteners and multiple hair products; and finally to indulge in cosmetic routines (3 step facial cleansing processes, fake tans and even waxes) traditionally considered to be firmly within the female domain.

The male friend I have just mentioned was the second incidence of the topic in one evening, as I explained previously. It was interesting to hear a male perspective on this, particularly one from my generation which came from a vantage point of intelligent interest rather than some kind of overt need to reassert a masculine identity against perceived threats. In a fit of that strange symmetry which pervades life more than we would care to admit, the first ocurrence was during conversation with the mother of another close friend – an insightful lady with a well rounded perception of, well, things in general, actually. She was lamenting the loss of “real men” - and the plethora of self serving, cowardly boy-men that seem to have taken over; the need for them to “man up.” Again, the perception of actual physical changes in the average male (less facial hair, bearing etc) was touched upon. That interests me actually, and when I have time (ie not now) I will look into whether there has been any studies into whether any of these assumptions are grounded in genuine physiological data – but anyway, regardless of whether they are or not, general consensus certainly seems to think so, and more and more these days I am leaning towards to the opinion that it's quite possibly the myths that drive reality in the direction it takes, rather than the other way round.

Anyhow, the jury is still out on that one, in my opinion anyway, but what I was mulling over before as I vacuumed carpet on each individual stair in my house earlier (my life is so rock and roll these days) was what qualities exactly is it that we see in the contemporary male that seem to us to be so inherently feminine that even when displayed by someone who is obviously a man, they still somehow signify womanliness. Of attributes typically described in this context – longer periods of time spent grooming, increased use of cosmetic products, increased time/money spent keeping up with fashion, greater emotional openness – only the latter, and even that arguably, I can see as being justifiably considered somehow intrinsically feminine, rather than merely the result of socialisation. When asked why wearing makeup is a girly thing to do, the only possible response I can think of is because it's just what girls do, which is an infinite regress with hardly a leg to stand on, I think. If we look to the animal world, we can hardly say that there is a general, massive gap between the time spent grooming by males and females of the same species. There is no biological reason (that I am aware of) why women should spend such a disproportionately large amount of time grooming – it is not as though there is a dearth of eligible male sexual partners about, such that women need to engage in extreme competition to attract a mate. So I would posit that perhaps it is not that men are becoming more “feminised”- but rather that in this instance, due to the complex and ongoing process of gender identity construction, there has been a “levelling out” of behaviours that were previously considered primarily characteristic of one or other gender.

Of course, the next place to take THAT particular assumption would be the fact that presumably at some point the pendulum might swing back in the other direction and your average woman-on-the-street might begin to spend the same amount of time getting ready to go out (ie quick shower, glance in the mirror and out the door) as has been typically ascribed to your average bloke in the past. But then on the other hand, I doubt that would happen – I think that maybe we can attribute this “feminisation” (or increased homogeneity in the behaviour of individuals of both genders) not to some kind of emasculating force in modern society, but rather to the all pervading influence of commercialism in western society. The body is becoming an increasingly commercial space – not only in such extreme and overt ways as expensive plastic surgery, but also in the wearing of designer clothes (acting as a living advert for designers who hardly need the publicity) and the propogation of the beauty ideals purported by the media as so many people strive to become an ideal that has no grounding in reality; that ultimate postmodern creature, the simulacra -a copy of a copy of a copy of which there is no original. I see these strange plastic creatures more and more, particularly those deeply embedded in cultures where rampant consumerism has taken a stronger hold, and they both amuse and perplex and sadden me, these little cartoon people, striving for two dimensions, wearing a mask to hide the fact that beneath it there is nothing. Anyway, I digress – my point is that maybe it's just that male identity has simply begun to succumb to the strong influence of money and the need to be a viable and appealing product a little later than his female counterpart. After all, the female body has been a commercial space for a very long time. Think of the oldest profession, of the dowry, and the dialectics of buyer/bought in a society where, for many hundreds of years, the majority of all wealth and property (and thus, capability to buy) was owned and controlled by one gender, while the other could, for the most part, only acquire rights to such things (and the power that accompanies them) by entering into an unequal partnership – or, by attaining worth only through the process of being bought.

Of course, now we live in a more enlightened, empowered society the gap is shrinking, and the great equalising force of capitalism means that we're all getting shafted to more or less the same degree. Thank heavens for small mercies?