Item 1, the adverts for V Water. They all show a figure in profile drinking the water with a heading depending on what type it is. Has anyone else noticed that the 'female' figure is headed "GORGEOUS" and the 'male' one "LIVELY"? Unfortunately I couldn't get a picture of the ones on the Tube, but here's an example that I saw in the London Paper, headed "PURE". I wonder whether they have any other gendered ones?

Women! Never forget that you are supposed to be "Gorgeous"!

Item 2, the adverts for Groupsave - a train company's special offer for groups of four or more travelling together. There are two of these - one exhorting us to, and I quote, "Groupsave the girls" by taking them on a trip to a new town. The ad shows four women - sorry, girls! - shopping. The other shows four guys walking along the beach eating ice-creams and says something like "Groupsave your mates to the beach" (or words to that effect).

Women! Never forget that you are supposed to enjoy shopping at all times and the only reason you would ever leave your home town is to shop, shop, shop!

Item 3: The London Lite (for those outside of London this is an appalling free rag that is physically thrust at you by street vendors turning your daily walk to the office an obstacle course*). The other day I spotted this advert in it.

What an amazing way to sell TVs!

Yes, Women! Never forget your bodies will be plastered on any totally unrelated item to sell sell sell!

(*I know it's not the street distributors fault. They're only trying to make a living like everyone else.)

At Ladyfest London I watched a very powerful and moving anti-prostitution documentary called "Not For Sale", by Marie Vermeiren.

The film is available to see at the European Women's Lobby website.

Whatever your opinion on prostitution I think this is worth watching - as many people as possible should hear these women's stories. It features interviews with women who have been involved in prostitution in the UK, Europe and the U.S.

It's about 22 minutes long altogether.

Be warned it is very upsetting in places.

You can also buy the DVD from the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women website.

(lyrics copied from one of those dodgy lyric sites, may not be 100% accurate)

Shopping for labels, shopping for love Manolo and Louis, it’s all I’m thinking of Shopping for labels, shopping for love 1,2,1,2,3,4 (?)

I already know what my addiction is
I be looking for labels, I ain’t looking for love
I shop for purses while I walk out the door
Don’t cry, buy a bag and then get over it
And, I’m not concerned with all the politics (?)
It’s a lot of men I know I could find another one.

Oughta know that I’m always happy when I walk out the store, store
I’m guessing Supercalifragi-sexy, nothing to be playing with
I love him, hate him, kiss him, just I’m trying to walk a mile in my kicks

(Chorus)
Love’s like a runway but which one do I love more
No emotional baggage, just replace it with Dior
Love’s like a runway, so what’s all the fussing for
Let’s stop chasing them boys and shop some more
1,2,1,2,3,4 (?)

I know I might come off as negative
I be looking for labels, I ain’t looking for love
Relationships are often so hard to tame
A Prada dress has never broken my heart before
And, ________
I’mma do the damn thing, watch me do the damn thing
Cause I know that my credit card will help me put out the flames
I’m guessing Supercalifragi-sexy, nothing to be playing with
I love him, hate him, kiss him, just I’m trying to walk a mile in my kicks

[Chorus]

Gucci, Fendi, Prada purses, purchasing them finer things
Men they come a dime a dozen, just give me them diamond rings
I’m into a lot of bling, Cadallic, Chanel and Coach
Fellas boast but they can’t really handle my female approach
Buying things is hard to say
Rocking Christian Audigier, Manolo, Polo, taking photos in my Cartier
So we can’t go all the way, I know you might hate it but
I’m a shop for labels while them ladies lay and wait for love

What can I say? Just... awful! Wrong, so very wrong on so many levels. Let's all embrace our shopping addictions, yeah, that's feminist, right!

Why is this relevant? Well, the series and the film is being spoken about as if it represents all women everywhere, and this is the sort of thing we'll be told we (women) are supposed to be into: shopping, shopping, shopping.

Well, I suppose we shouldn't have expected much more from Fergie of the Black Eyed Peas, who came up with My Humps, which Wikpedia notes was described as "one of the most embarrassing rap performances of the new millennium" and "really bad—transcendentally bad, objectively bad."

On that note, did you catch Alanis Morrisette's cover version of My Humps? See it. It's very, very, good. I don't think I've heard anyone sing as sarcastically as she does here. It's a brilliant parody of the soullessness of modern pop of this type.

Before I turn myself into The F Word's Sex and the City correspondent I'll sign off.

Now get back to the serious stuff - go and take some action on Abortion Rights straight away!

BBC's The One Show has just "celebrated" the new Sex and the City film by having a gob-smacking montage of sexist comments about women and men.

First they interviewed seemingly all the sexists on the streets of London, who all said things like "Men and Women are TOTALLY different and will never understand each other!" "Men leave the toilet seat up!" "Women nag!" And so on.

Adrian Chiles said something about believing that women and men are the same really, but then introduced a clip from Child of Our Time which supposedly showed that men and women are genetically hard-wired to be different. The clip showed children tasting two drinks, Rocket Pop (blue) and Princess Pop (pink). The drinks were the same but the boys rated the Rocket higer and the girls the Princess pop. Very interesting, but this was presented as if it was conclusive proof that men were from Mars and Women were from Venus.

Then we were told that there would be a contest at the end of the show which would prove which sex was the better, ha ha ha, called, and I kid you not, "Heels or Wheels". Hilarious!

Oh for goodness sake... I feel like I've just been hit over the head with a sexist mallet.

The thing that frustrates me about this approach to covering the sex and the City film is that SATC was so NOT about putting forward the Mars/Venus viewpoint. It portrayed men and women as human beings with individual perspectives and emotions. If anything I would say it actually tried to go against that whole Mars/Venus thing. I never once viewed it and thought, goodness, men and women are SO different and will never understand each other.

The other part of the whole SATC hype that I find quite interesting is the assumption that what we all REALLY want to see is Carrie getting married to Big. It seems that they're assuming SATC fans think that getting married is the only really important goal, that this would be the end of the story.

Well I say - bollocks. Absolute bollocks. That's not why I'm going to see the film. But I'll talk more about this later.

Sorry if this post is rushed and crappy, but I'm sat here watching the One Show getting more infuriated. I'd better turn it off now... oh, it's finished. Phew!

At Ladyfest London's Race and Activism workshop, I met Jacqueline Applebee, a writer who is looking to set up a group for black / women of colour bisexual women and their friends/allies.

If you're interested, email her at contact@writing-in-shadows.co.uk.

Photo by vanpelt, shared under a Creative Commons Licence.

"Compare the descriptions of the women, with those of the men!" said Andrew, who emailed this to me. Yes, let's!

Men

SPARTAN - Roderick Bradley, 24, Grantham- "Handsome, disciplined and brave. Will take on any army - the perfect warrior"

DESTROYER - Damar Martin, 38, Croydon - "Determined and strong, angry and unstoppable - nothing gets in his way"

PREDATOR - Du'aine Ledejo, 36, Newark - "Volatile, quick and poisonous, hunts down prey and takes no prisoners"

ATLAS - Sam Bond, 24, Bournemouth - "As strong as He-Man, fights hard and with dignity"

TORNADO - David McIntosh, 22, Altrincham - "Violently destructive windstorm full of unstoppable energy - leaves you in a spin"

Women:

ICE - Caroline Pearce, 27, Cambridge - "Cold, steely, frosty and beautiful"

INFERNO - Jemma Palmer, 24, Tamworth - "Hot, fiery, dangerous and destructive"

PANTHER - Kara Nwidobie, 26, Morecambe - "Beautiful, sleek, aggressive and powerful. Panther is the strongest and fiercest of the wild cats"

ENIGMA - Jenny Pacey, 25, Borehamwood - "Mysterious and beautiful, contradictory and unpredictable, impossible to capture"

TEMPEST - Lucy Boggis, 19, Quintin, Wiltshire - "Naturally beautiful, a force of nature bringing furious agitation and commotion"

BATTLEAXE - Shirley Webb, 26, Edinburgh - "A weapon of war, domineering, aggressive and indomitable. Battleaxe is a warrior queen"

Notice anything? Methinks Battleaxe (presumably not "beautiful" enough?) is the exception that proves the rule. Oh and p.s., the black woman is the only one shown crawling on the floor. And her name is Panther.

Now, if only they'd bring back Crystal Maze...

I had this leaflet through my door - it's a colour leaflet setting out the local health services in my Borough. The front cover shows some people walking down the street - presumably the type of people the leaflet is aimed at. Of the eight little cartoon people shown, five are women, one is a baby (being pushed in a pram by one of the woman), one is indeterminate and one is a man.

Is this deliberate? Aren't we supposed to be getting men to use the health service more? Don't we keep hearing about the need to encourage men to go to the Doctor more often? Intentionally or not I think this leaflet sends out a clear message that health is the responsibility of women.

Inside the leaflet, these are the representations of medical professionals:

So, they are male, then.

It's a shame isn't it?

It does make me wonder, though. When we feminists look at representations like this, publications and advertising, do we want them to represent the way things really are or the way they should be in an ideal equal world? There seems to be a tension to me.

On the one hand, if a there is a severe gender inbalance existing (e.g. in a profession, like teachers, nurses, mechanics, or the split in household chores and child-rearing along gender lines), I think it would help to change that situation if men and women were shown equally in those scenarios. So in these cases I want publications to try to show an "ideal world" rather than the actual truth of the situation as it happens to be now.

Yet when it comes to things like the representation of domestic violence and rape, I want publications to represent the pure facts: that men are responsible for the vast majority of these things, and not to try to pretend that gender doesn't come into it or is irrelevant. So I don't want them to represent a world where violence occured equally across the genders and women were not oppressed. I want them to represent what happens now.

Is this hypocritical?

When Zawadi's interview was broadcast on Radio 4's Today programme and on the BBC's World Service, the response was extraordinary. Numerous people wrote and emailed to express their outrage at what they had heard. Many also wanted to help, to do something. Months later enquiries were still coming in.

What, people wanted to know, had since happened to Zawadi and her only remaining child?

I returned to find out at the end of March this year. Many weeks of phone calls to charities in eastern DR Congo yielded nothing about Zawadi's fate. Neither did initial enquiries to the Panzi Hospital in Bukavu where I first met her.

But finally, after a lengthy visit to the hospital one of the managers there made a breakthrough. He had received information, he told me, that Zawadi had not gone back to her home village but is living in a suburb of Bukavu.

I found her sitting listlessly in a small shack without electricity in an extremely run down suburb. Physically, she looked much improved on the distraught and tearful figure I met in April last year. Mentally though, it was a different story.

Throughout most of the interview Zawadi's eyes stared straight ahead, rarely looking at me. Her face remained rigid and set even when cuddling her five-year-old daughter, Reponse, who is the only other surviving member of her immediate family.

"I wish they had killed me to that day," she muttered.

Now, like many other people when I first heard the news Tate would be in this series I have to admit I really wasn't sure about it at all. In fact I did register my disgust, in the really ineffective way many people seem to do these days, by signing up to a Facebook group, this one called Get Martha Jones Back in the Tardis!.

But I was thinking yesterday: won't it be refreshing to have a female character in Doctor Who who is a little bit older for a change? Tate is 39 - not exactly ancient obviously - but certainly a different generation from Rose (Billie Piper, 25) and Martha (Freema Agyeman, 29).

I think its a good thing to have a female character who's a bit older (whether her character will be a good one remains to be seen). But without being an expert on the Doctor's past "companions" (which the more I think about it seems a little bit of a creepy word to use), it seems unusual to break the mould of older Doctor, young female assistant (does anyone more geeky than me have any stats on this?).

So really, this is just to say - yay for an older woman in the Tardis for a change.

The scene: me in a pub, with three male friends, T, S and A.

S: How's J?
T: Fine. She texted me the other day, said she was just about to get a haircut for £50.
S & A: (aghast) £50?!!!
Me: Yeah, sounds about right, mine are normally about £45-£50.
S: Did you know [local barbers] have put up their price to £11?
T & A: Tsk!
Me: Oh, boo-hoo! (sups pint dismissively)
T: Actually I knew I was really bored yesterday when I started to calculate how much J would save if she just had a man's haircut instead. I started to create a spreadsheet comparing all the costings...
All: (chortling at obsessive spreadsheet geekery)
T: Then I added a field for the inflation rate, which you can amend as things change, and calculated the total compound savings each year...
All: (guffaw)
A: If she went into a hairdressers they'd probably just charge her a special "womans' rate" anyway regardless of the style.
Me: Yeah, exactly
S: Nah, not at [local barbers], I reckon they'd charge the same for a woman as a bloke.
T: ...So then I added a column showing how much it'd be if she just bought clippers, taking into account the need to replace them every ten years or so.
All: (laughter)
Me: He he, spreadsheets are just brilliant!
T: I worked out that over a lifetime she could save about £54,000.
S & A: (stunned silence)
Me: (splutter)
Me: (drops jaw)
Me: £54,000????? (thinks what I could do with £54,000, seriously considers having a man's haircut)
T: Yup
Me: Oh my god send me that spreadsheet, I have to blog about this.
T: Maybe I should add a column that recalculates what the savings will be worth in todays money?

In 2002 we asked readers of The F-Word to send us their lists of feminist "Must Reads". The most recommended book? Germaine Greer’s The Whole Woman.

I've now added a page on The F Word Shop which highlights these items. It's worth a browse for some really interesting and varied suggestions of reading material.

(Don't worry, we aren't going to be posting about the shop all the time, honest!).

Whilst doing some reasearch I stumbled across Tampax's "educational" site for teenage girls, www.beinggirl.co.uk. The site is filled with relentlessly upbeat articles on dating, boys, makeup and periods.

One of their advice sections is entitled:

Everybody's crazy about boys (except me). Feel like a freak simply because you're not lusting after anything (or everything) in trousers? Worry not - being boy crazy is not the law.

...and it makes me want to puke. It says boy crazy is not the law, but then says:

Developing feelings for the opposite sex is a totally normal part of growing up

Er, nor necessarily.

Just because your best mate has turned into a boy-crazed loon overnight doesn't mean there's something wrong with you just because you're still interested in other stuff.

Ok, good...

Chances are, the boy bug will bite you at some point too so don't worry about it.

Argh! That's right, don't worry, you're not gay, you'll fancy boys soon like normal girls.

In the meantime, having interests in lots of stuff (not all exclusively male...) makes you a far more interesting anyway we say!

Only in the meantime, though.

The second page is a story about two 14 year old best friends, Jess and Chloe. Chloe ditches Jess when she gets a boyfriend, Matt. But not to worry, the story ends "happily".

Earlier this year, she introduced Jess to one of Matt's mates' Sam. They're not 'boyfriend/girlfriend' - yet - but Jess has admitted to Chloe that she thinks Sam is seriously cute...

Bllleeerrgh.

It makes me really sad to think that this is what teenage girls have for advice about love, life, and menstruation.

Photo from clemente used under a creative commons license.

Hello all you lovely people. This is a quick message to say thank you to those of you who have been buying your Amazon purchases through the F Word Shop. Since we launched in December, you've ordered about 120 items, which is an amazing response. We thought we'd let you know that we appreciate your support.

Popular items you've been buying include:

• The Beauty Myth
• It's So You
• Manifesta
• The Women's Room
• The Woman's Bible
• Grassroots: A Field Guide to Feminist Activism
• Life's a Bitch
• Dykes to Watch Out For

More info on the Shop is available, explaining what it is and why it's there. Beady eyes readers may also have noticed that we've added some links on the side bar of the blog, which highlights certain items from the homepage of the shop.

If you have any comments, let us know! We'll keep you updated as things progress.

I love Trail Magazine. For a mag all about hiking and clambering up big mountains in the cold and snow (well at this time of the year anyway), it'd be easy for it to slip back into a Wainwright-y attitude and assume its readers were all middle-aged beardy blokes who go out on t'hills leaving 'the wife' at home to do the cleaning and cooking.

Yet Trail consistently recognises that women like to get out on the hills too, and includes non-sexist articles, often featuring their female staff like the lovely Claire Maxted. Hurrah.

I was reminded of how much I appreciate it by this month's letters page which included this little gem:

Trail, you've done it again. You made me burst out laughing and reiterated your stance not to fall back on old-fashioned stereotypes. Full marks!

Writing about the five murdered women who worked as prostitutes, he says:

It might not be fashionable, or even acceptable in some quarters, to say so, but in their chosen field of “work”, death by strangulation is an occupational hazard. That doesn’t make it justifiable homicide, but in the scheme of things the deaths of these five women is no great loss. They weren't going to discover a cure for cancer or embark on missionary work in Darfur. The only kind of missionary position they undertook was in the back seat of a car.

Un-fucking-believable.

Check out The Burning Times for a detailed response, which also includes details of how to complain:

Editor: Paul Dacre
The Daily Mail
Associated Newspapers Ltd
Northcliffe House
2 Derry Street
London
W8 5TT
Email: letters@dailymail.co.uk

There's a really interesting post over at the craft blog Needled. Entitled The Domestic in Drag, the post discusses the issues behind the aspirational, some would say unrealistic worlds portrayed by shows such as Nigella Express and publications such as Jane Brocket's The Gentle Art of Domesticity (based on Brocket's beautiful and popular craft blog Yarnstorm).

Considering recent attacks on the book in the Telegraph and in a Woman's Hour feature entitled Is there anything wrong with reclaiming home crafts?, Needled discusses their portrayal of:

A world where there is always a clean, fresh shirt on the line and a cake on the table; where each member of the family will be perpetually wrapped cosily in its favourite quilt and the colours of your comfy shoes will always match those of your current knitting project. Like the performing home and family depicted in Nigella Express, the world of Jane Brocket is one of luscious surfaces, sensory overload and visual excess….with something (for me at least) hollow and questionable at its core. The book celebrates a sort of hyper-real—or indeed drag—early twenty-first century version of a 1950s domestic ideal.

Go read the whole thing.

It is fair to note that in response to accusations that she is perpetrating some kind of 'Stepford Wife' / hyper-priviledged version of reality, and assumptions about her background and class status, Brocket posted background information about herself, her family life, and career choices on her blog, although the post has now been removed. But I think Needled's post raises wider issues.

Having a somewhat love/hate relationship with the hilarious Nigella Express, I found this whole discussion fascinating. It's pretty obvious to anyone with a brain that Nigella's world isn't real; that the lifestyle portrayed is aspirational and unrealistic. Its like watching Jamie at Home and dreaming for a moment that we can all have our own butternut squash plantation, and then realising we don't have a 5-acre garden and a bearded hippy gardener to look after it for us, and we never will.

But that still doesn't mean we can't enjoy these things for what they are and enjoy the fantasy. I enjoy watching these shows and reading these kind of books, but I don't really believe life is necessary like that, just like I enjoy LOST without believing that all the loose plot ends will be tied up at the end of the series (as if!). There's just something incredibly attractive and relaxing about the lifestyles portrayed in these books and shows.

As a letter from a teenage girl in a recent issue of the Radio Times pointed out, Nigella Express is positive for showing an attractive woman who really loves and eats a lot of food - very unusual these days, and commendable. But if you think the show is a portrayal of modern women's lifestyle, you're crazy, as 'mofgimmers' points out here:

How much does Nigella Lawson like Pea Soup? Well, on the strength of last nights Nigella Express (BBC2, Monday, 8.30pm) she likes pea soup to the point of the ridiculous. After making some soup, she had a quick bowl before she set off for her 'really full on day'. Her full day seemed to consist of drinking some pea soup on a bus (full of very quiet and still actors) which she caught to go and sit on a bench (whilst drinking pea soup) and then, from the park bench she got in a taxi (drinking pea soup) and went home. Now, I don't know if you're like me, but a 'full on day' doesn't usually involve me constantly drinking pea soup without a break.

Photo by mel_e_mo, shared under a Creative Commons License.

It's funny how people make sweeping statements about women and men's nature and then almost in the same sentence, describe something from their own experience which contradicts it - but they don't seem to realise. In October 2007's Harper's Bazaar, Marie Helvin writes about her enthusiasm for flings and lack of desire for a monogamous relationship. It's a jumbled article full of contradictory statements about men and women and their supposed attitude towards relationships.

First off, the title of the piece, 'Dating Like a Man' implies that all men are not interested in monogamous relationships and just want sex. Therefore a woman who wants the same is being 'like a man'. The fact that she is a woman and wants these things is assumed to be the exception and presumably not something a 'normal' woman would want. Helvin comments:

[My] libertine attitude is all down to my marriage... I was married to David Bailey, my first - indeed, my only - husband. But it wasn't always a happy marriage. Bailey screwed around (don't all men?).

No, actually. All men don't. This 'boys will be boys' / 'all men are bastards' attitude is insulting, sexist and simply gives excuses to those men who do behave badly.

But then later on she says:

I have male friends who are exactly the same [as me and my friends]: some happily married; others who are searching. But it seems to me that it is the men who do the pining for the ultimate relationship; they're the ones looking for the romantic ideal.

So, they don't all screw around. Right. But didn't you suggest earlier that they did?

Then she says:

...men are genetically programmed to spread their genes far and wide...

So they are genetically programmed to do this, but at the same time they all want romance and to be married? Eh? Which one is it?

It's the same confusion with the women.

As women, we are hardwired to be nurturers.

But then in literally the next sentence she describes herself in completely opposite terms:

I care about people, but I also care about myself. I don't want to 'be' with someone. I don't want to be in a relationship with someone. I don't want to know someone's birthday - I'm not interested. Perhaps its self-preservation. Perhaps it's why I never wanted children... At the moment I'm single, in the sense that I'm not sharing a house. But I'm sharing a bed. It's casual, it's sexual... I'm not interested in 'taking' him: I don't want to live with him, marry him, be engaged to him. I just want to have sex with him.

So what is it? All women are hardwired, except you? If all women are hardwired how does that explain what you just said? It doesn't - it directly contradicts it.

I've no problem with Helvin's opinions or actions - but why pepper the article with this Mars and Venus, 'hardwired', evolutionary biology stuff if what you're describing actually directly contradicts that? Is it some kind of weird blind spot that people have? Or maybe it just demonstrates how easy it is just to regurgitate stereotypes when even the evidence of your own life proves differently. It's like those female columnists in the Daily Mail who claim that women are naturally suited to not having paid jobs and staying at home with the children, forgetting that if that were true, they should hand in their resignation there and then.

Oh and by the way - the image above is my actual receipt from WHSmiths for this mag a while back. Made me chuckle, anyway.

Feminist views on Death Proof across the blogosphere are varied - it seems the film can be read in different ways. Here are a few feminist bloggers' discussions of Death Proof:

• Heroine Content
• Mad Melancholic Feminista
• Lily Cain
• Cleo Jones
• Pandagon

Oh and by the way - I just found out there's a Carnival of Feminist Science Fiction & Fantasy Fans! How cool is that!

Inspired by The Fawcett Society's campaign, Scarlet magazine's September 2007 issue (not the one pictured) includes a feature called This is What a Feminist Looks Like, in which four women are interviewed. Scarlet's take on this is kinda interesting:

Forget the dungaree-wearing stereotype - a feminist can be a housewife, a 'working girl' or even a man. As part of Scarlet's campaign to make feminism fashionable again, we let four Scarlet feminists state their case...

The women featured included Katherine Griffiths, a 'former book publisher, now housewife and mother', Alexandra Dymock, an 'SM activist and sexual submissive', Anna Span, a 'porn producer and director' and Letitcia, who has 'worked as an escort most of her adult life'.

For me, the interviews raise the question of what feminism is and how Scarlet is choosing to represent it. In answer to the question 'what makes you a feminist' Letiticia answers:

It is all about choice. I skip to the beat of my own drum; I'm true to my own self and I listen to me inner voice, which let's me know when something sits comfortably with me. I'm free to be me, and not some watered down version of myself.

That's certainly part of my definition of feminism, for sure, but surely there needs to be something more than that to make it feminism and not just a general statement?

In answer to the same question, Katherine Griffiths says:

My husband and I have very traditional roles, but that doesn't stop me being a feminist. I have a young daughter and I work hard to provide a strong female role model for her and to make her feel she can achieve anything.

I have always been of the opinion that no-one should stop anyone calling yourself a feminist, but this article, with it's rather vague definitions of feminism, made me wonder what sort of impression Scarlet is giving its readers. I know the pieces were short and soundbite-y and I'm sure the interviewees would have had a lot more to say given the chance, but in some of them there wasn't really any discussion of discrimination or sexism, or collective gains for women, or why anyone should call themself a feminist, apart from a couple of comments made by Alexandra Dymock and Anna Span. For example when discussing her decision to stay at home with the children, Griffiths isn't quoted talking about whether her choice was made more difficult by sexist social attitudes or discriminatory policies towards fathers versus mothers, or how her male partner contributes; she simply talks about not feeling able to put her child in childcare, hence giving up her job. Fine - but where does the feminism come in?

It'll be interesting to see how Scarlet's campaign 'to make feminism fashionable again' progresses. I know Scarlet is a sex mag and so they want to include interviews with women who have something to do with sex; hence the choice of three of the four interviewees. But if anyone was in any doubt of Scarlet's stance on sex work and the porn industry, it's becoming increasingly clearer. There doesn't seem to be a place in Scarlet's world for those women who have different viewpoints on these issues (admittedly, that's certainly true of many in the opposing camp too).

Is Scarlet's definition of feminism wide enough to incorporate women who feel differently about sex work and pornography? Or are they just lumping those women in with the 'dungunree-wearing stereotypes'? Just for balance I'd like to see them interview a feminist who works with trafficked women, who's organising a protest about rape, who's trying to reclaim sexuality from the Playboy model, or who disagrees with Scarlet's stance on prostitution, pornography and sex work.

Somehow I have the feeling they won't.

Go on, Scarlet. Prove me wrong.

Massive kudos to Jess McCabe, our fabulous editor, who appeared in The Observer Woman on Sunday in an article on "The New Feminists" which also featured other inspirational women, all under 30.

There is a growing wave of feminism in this country, people. Is the media finally waking up to that fact? Let's hope so.

Happy Birthday Jess from everyone at The F Word.

Photo by cross_stitch_ninja, shared under a Creative Commons license