Episode #2: Women’s Bodies, Part II
WHAT WOMEN WEAR: On performative scruffiness, feminist selfies and what women wear to parliament. Or: pantsuits, pussy-bow blouses and Frida Kahlo.
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SHOWNOTES:
Tony Blair's first cabinet, with Margaret Beckett (front row) and Harriet Harman wearing red. Other women in the photo are: Clare Short, Mo Mowlam and Ann Taylor (all top row).
1929 photo of female Labour MPs, including Mary Agnes Hamilton (top right) whose shoes might very well be red… Ellen Wilkinson is in the front row, second from the right. From the National Portrait Gallery's collection
- Laura Beers Red Ellen: The Life of Ellen Wilkinson, Socialist, Feminist, Internationalist (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2016). Read more about Dr Laura Beers’ work and research here and follow her on Twitter at @Fiery_Particle.
- Betty Boothroyd: the first woman to serve as Speaker in the House of Commons, 1992-2002, she was a Labour MP for West Bromwich/West Bromwich West 1973-2000. Read more about her here.
- Harriet Harman’s autobiography, A Woman’s Work, was published by Penguin in 2017. Read Emma’s review for the LSE Review of Books here;
- Homosociality is a description of the non-romantic bonds that develop between individuals of the same sex, e.g. within single-gender organisations. The conference Emma attended in Oxford was ‘Beyond Between Men’ – organised by Dr Rachel E Moss. You can read Rachel’s conference report here and follow her on Twitter at @menysnoweballes;
- The Prince of Wales check (or, as traditionalists would call it, the Glen Urquhart plaid);
- Emma used to study and teach at Birkbeck, University of London. She recommends it;
- Charlotte quoted from Susan Harlan’s ‘Poem on the End of the Academic Semester’:
“Poem on a Male Colleague’s Thoughts on My Clothing
You really don’t need
To dress up, you know.
I mean, I don’t worry
About that sort of thing.”
- Emma mentioned this blogpost by Swedish journalist Rebecka Åhlund, whose neighbour in Hackney advised her against gold teeth;
“Had Barbara not screwed up before a leadership election, rather than in Mrs Thatcher’s case, 10 or 11 years after she’d become Prime Minister, Barbara could have easily have been Labour leader, and probably Labour Prime Minister.”
- In Place of Strife – the White Paper on trade union regulations that ended Barbara Castle's opportunity to become Britain's first female prime minister - a brief introduction from the National Archives.
- Theresa May and Frida Kahlo: here's Dr Deborah Shaw in the Conversation on that bracelet; please send us your thoughts!
- Madeleine Albright and her pins;
- Bim Adewunmi’s tweets about Theresa May/Frida Kahlo:
Follow Bim at @bimadew
Theresa May in the Fawcett Society’s ‘This is what a feminist looks like’ t-shirt.
- Yarl's Wood: Amelia Gentleman, '"What crime have I committed to be held like this?' Inside Yarl's Wood' The Guardian 3 March 2015;
- Feminist selfies: Charlotte mentions Bridget Minamore's #selfiesasfeministpraxis hashtag. Follow Bridget on Twitter @bridgetminamore and read more about her at bridgetminamore.com. Read Professor Peggy Phelan's take on the selfie as a feminist act here;
- See what we look like (and how Emma hides her face...) on our 'About' page.
OUR RECOMMENDATIONS
- Charlotte recommends Double Love – the podcast on the Sweet Valley High books by Anna Carey and Karyn Moynihan. Listen via Headstuff; follow on Twitter @svhpodcast
- Emma recommends Reasons to be Cheerful – the podcast by Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd on good ideas that could save us all (plus indiscreet Westminster anecdotes). Listen via Libsyn; follow on Twitter @CheerfulPodcast.
NEXT EPISODE: WOMEN AND WORK
We’ll be talking about actual labour, emotional labour and being a woman in various workplaces. Sign up to our newsletter to get the episode footnotes in your inbox, and subscribe here to make sure you're the first to know when Ep #3 is available!
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