This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/25/what-should-tell-daughters-review
The article has changed 2 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
Previous version
1
Next version
| Version 0 | Version 1 |
|---|---|
| What Should We Tell Our Daughters? by Melissa Benn – review | What Should We Tell Our Daughters? by Melissa Benn – review |
| (21 days later) | |
| Firstly, we'll have to tell them that yes, apparently a book about the relevance of feminism in the 21st century does require a hot-pink colour palette and a cover image of a moodily lit naked teenager, posing with just a scarf and a pair of discarded stilettos. The cover is an act of terrible bad faith with a book that is wide-ranging, thoughtful and entirely well-intentioned: a "deliberately hybrid work" in which writer and campaigner Melissa Benn, who has two daughters, synthesises feminist history and contemporary research with interviews and personal memoir to explore what the subtitle calls "the pleasures and pressures of growing up female". | Firstly, we'll have to tell them that yes, apparently a book about the relevance of feminism in the 21st century does require a hot-pink colour palette and a cover image of a moodily lit naked teenager, posing with just a scarf and a pair of discarded stilettos. The cover is an act of terrible bad faith with a book that is wide-ranging, thoughtful and entirely well-intentioned: a "deliberately hybrid work" in which writer and campaigner Melissa Benn, who has two daughters, synthesises feminist history and contemporary research with interviews and personal memoir to explore what the subtitle calls "the pleasures and pressures of growing up female". |
| Benn sees a contradiction at the heart of society: a "nasty new, and not‑so-new, sexism" coexisting with a "genuinely unabashed celebration" of female achievement and growing equality. Meanwhile, countless books and articles tap into social anxiety about the impact on girls of porn, celebrity culture and the perils of the internet. Benn makes the point that it's "odd to consider Girl Land as a territory somehow separate from Woman Land"; the experience of the women around them is what really teaches girls about being female (she illustrates this with a "collective hollow laugh" from mothers at parenting guru Steve Biddulph's utopian message that "looks don't matter"). | Benn sees a contradiction at the heart of society: a "nasty new, and not‑so-new, sexism" coexisting with a "genuinely unabashed celebration" of female achievement and growing equality. Meanwhile, countless books and articles tap into social anxiety about the impact on girls of porn, celebrity culture and the perils of the internet. Benn makes the point that it's "odd to consider Girl Land as a territory somehow separate from Woman Land"; the experience of the women around them is what really teaches girls about being female (she illustrates this with a "collective hollow laugh" from mothers at parenting guru Steve Biddulph's utopian message that "looks don't matter"). |
| Benn begins her chronological tour of female experience with an investigation of the links between academic overachievement and anorexia, and the idea that both are rooted in female obedience (not as revolutionary a notion as she suggests). Condemning sexism before sexualisation, she refuses to join in with the "mainstream alarm about mass pornography", fearing it will encourage the condemnation of young women's sexual expression and only send attitudes backwards (even the liberal friends she polls admit they should have been more open with their daughters). This is quite a difficult position to hold to in the face of the hair-raising statistics and anecdotes about exposure to porn that she includes. "Perhaps we should be grateful to 'pornified culture', which provides more information than we dare?" she asks. Perhaps she would feel differently if she had been able to bring herself to type "porn" into Google after all ("Reader, I couldn't face it"). | Benn begins her chronological tour of female experience with an investigation of the links between academic overachievement and anorexia, and the idea that both are rooted in female obedience (not as revolutionary a notion as she suggests). Condemning sexism before sexualisation, she refuses to join in with the "mainstream alarm about mass pornography", fearing it will encourage the condemnation of young women's sexual expression and only send attitudes backwards (even the liberal friends she polls admit they should have been more open with their daughters). This is quite a difficult position to hold to in the face of the hair-raising statistics and anecdotes about exposure to porn that she includes. "Perhaps we should be grateful to 'pornified culture', which provides more information than we dare?" she asks. Perhaps she would feel differently if she had been able to bring herself to type "porn" into Google after all ("Reader, I couldn't face it"). |
| Moving on to adulthood and the world of work, she identifies "the fetish of the one-dimensional life" in which our economic role is squeezing out other aspects (a previously male problem becomes part of equal-opportunities capitalism). The young women she speaks to worry about their chance of motherhood – and so they should, as her chapter on the effects of having children on both career and domestic power balance demonstrates. Men may need to work less outside the home and more inside it (plenty of material here for "What Should We Tell Our Sons?", a book not appearing any time soon), but social changes that could make this possible – pre-school childcare for all, flexible working for both sexes, a shorter working week – look increasingly unlikely. | Moving on to adulthood and the world of work, she identifies "the fetish of the one-dimensional life" in which our economic role is squeezing out other aspects (a previously male problem becomes part of equal-opportunities capitalism). The young women she speaks to worry about their chance of motherhood – and so they should, as her chapter on the effects of having children on both career and domestic power balance demonstrates. Men may need to work less outside the home and more inside it (plenty of material here for "What Should We Tell Our Sons?", a book not appearing any time soon), but social changes that could make this possible – pre-school childcare for all, flexible working for both sexes, a shorter working week – look increasingly unlikely. |
| Benn is careful to be even-handed as she picks her way through a "small mountain of clippings". Her forensic approach adds valuable nuance to headline-grabbing material about hookup culture (vastly over-reported) or pay differentials (genuine progress, she finds, is "confined to a particular cohort of girls: the 'decoy generation' in the making"). Sometimes, though, the back-and-forth dance of this-but-also-that flattens argument or even sense ("On every level, then, culture soothes us and raises our hopes. But does it also deceive? Yes and no"). There's also a frothiness to some of the interviews, an impression reinforced by the inclusion of a boxed-out quote every few pages: "Boardroom quotas are the new (political) black" doesn't work in any font size. | Benn is careful to be even-handed as she picks her way through a "small mountain of clippings". Her forensic approach adds valuable nuance to headline-grabbing material about hookup culture (vastly over-reported) or pay differentials (genuine progress, she finds, is "confined to a particular cohort of girls: the 'decoy generation' in the making"). Sometimes, though, the back-and-forth dance of this-but-also-that flattens argument or even sense ("On every level, then, culture soothes us and raises our hopes. But does it also deceive? Yes and no"). There's also a frothiness to some of the interviews, an impression reinforced by the inclusion of a boxed-out quote every few pages: "Boardroom quotas are the new (political) black" doesn't work in any font size. |
| Young women are endlessly scrutinised, whether they're sexting, self-harming or getting really good A-levels; older women are a far less examined group. Estelle Morris, accused of "letting women down" after she quit as secretary of state for education because she felt she was not "good enough", has salutary things to say about power and parliament; while Miriam O'Reilly, the TV presenter who sued the BBC for age discrimination, remarks that: "everyone plays down the problems of older women … It's as if younger women project their fear of the consequences of their own ageing onto other women, rather than tackle the structures that diminish us all." | Young women are endlessly scrutinised, whether they're sexting, self-harming or getting really good A-levels; older women are a far less examined group. Estelle Morris, accused of "letting women down" after she quit as secretary of state for education because she felt she was not "good enough", has salutary things to say about power and parliament; while Miriam O'Reilly, the TV presenter who sued the BBC for age discrimination, remarks that: "everyone plays down the problems of older women … It's as if younger women project their fear of the consequences of their own ageing onto other women, rather than tackle the structures that diminish us all." |
| Women in their fifties, Benn discovers, earn less than women in their thirties, a statistic that should make our daughters worry for the long term. Those "later life careers" that one corporate high-flyer recommends, in which women "bow out" of the workforce from 30 to 45 to have families before coming back, look a long way off indeed. Benn is determined, as ever, to remain cheerful, calling on women to fight for justice, equality and fulfilment rather than corporate success, but her theory that "the already significant gulf between female 'winners' and 'losers' will only grow", with high earners contracting out the "women's work" of domestic care to an oppressed new servant class, is convincing and depressing. You have to stay optimistic, though: something else to tell our daughters. The alternative is worse. | Women in their fifties, Benn discovers, earn less than women in their thirties, a statistic that should make our daughters worry for the long term. Those "later life careers" that one corporate high-flyer recommends, in which women "bow out" of the workforce from 30 to 45 to have families before coming back, look a long way off indeed. Benn is determined, as ever, to remain cheerful, calling on women to fight for justice, equality and fulfilment rather than corporate success, but her theory that "the already significant gulf between female 'winners' and 'losers' will only grow", with high earners contracting out the "women's work" of domestic care to an oppressed new servant class, is convincing and depressing. You have to stay optimistic, though: something else to tell our daughters. The alternative is worse. |
| Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. | Our editors' picks for the day's top news and commentary delivered to your inbox each morning. |
| Write your review of this or any other book, find out what other readers thought or add it to your lists |
Previous version
1
Next version