Duly Noted: Online Abuse will Not Silence Women

This appeared as an opinion piece at The Age on 30 July 2013. 

It could be because we've got more banknote real estate to spare, but since the 1990s Australia has found it easy to recognise the historic contributions of women on its currency. Of our five notes, women feature on every single one. While Queen Elizabeth II might be there by default on the five dollar note, Dame Mary Gilmore, Dame Nellie Melba, Mary Reibey and Edith Cowan proudly symbolise women's achievements in journalism, music, business and politics.

In the United Kingdom, with the reigning monarch printed on the obverse of all four circulating notes and a plethora of big names in the arts and sciences to select from, the choice of which four people to memorialise is more difficult. Just who will schoolchildren learn are among the four most important and lasting contributors to British culture?

Since the Bank of England first depicted historical figures on the reverse of its banknotes in 1970, only two women, apart from the Queen, have ever enjoyed a stint in the line-up. Florence Nightingale appeared on the £10 note from 1975 to 1994. The current series of notes includes Elizabeth Fry, noted for reforming English prisons. The other three notes represent Charles Darwin, Adam Smith and pioneers of the steam engine, Matthew Boulton and James Watt.

With Fry scheduled to be replaced by Winston Churchill from 2016, the four places that could be allocated to any eminent Briton would have been entirely occupied by men. Feminist campaigners, however, successfully lobbied the Bank of England through a Change.org petition to demand that a woman, aside from the Queen, appear on at least one note. It was a clear victory for women when the Bank of England announced on July 24 that Jane Austen would oust Darwin to become the third historical woman to appear on a banknote.

This was until the woman who spearheaded the campaign, journalist Caroline Criado-Perez, was subjected to a barrage of abuse and rape threats on Twitter in the days that followed. A polite campaign to ensure that historical women were not erased from the British currency has taken an unexpected turn and raised serious questions about Twitter's failure to provide mechanisms for reporting abusive tweets. It has also once again exposed deep antagonism and hatred towards vocal women in the public eye.

Most of the rape threats and abusive messages targeted at Criado-Perez are believed to have been sent from men. We can also presume that these men probably felt very little personal grievance about Austen being honoured. Criado-Perez herself expressed disbelief at the aggressive response to the ''tiny, tiny thing'' of lobbying for women's representation on a banknote.

What the messages directed at Criado-Perez collectively show is a desire to silence women who take a stand and who speak out. Though women ostensibly enjoy formal equality, the undercurrent of sexism bubbles up at unexpected moments like these to expose discomfort about women's progress and anger at their gall to seek further gains.

Instead of Criado-Perez facing vigorous argument and debate about her feminist campaign, she was threatened with sexual violence in an onslaught of tweets. For example, ''This Perez one just needs a good smashing up the arse and she'll be fine'' and ''Wouldn't mind tying this bitch to my stove. Hey sweetheart, give me a shout when you're ready to be put in your place.'' One man has since been arrested in Manchester in connection with the abusive tweets.

In societies in which a woman can rightfully work in any field, earn her own living, or stand for office, there are few ways to press women back into the subordinate position that they once occupied. Threats of rape, however, are a crude last-ditch attempt to reassert male power and female powerlessness.

Powerful women, as in the case of former prime minister Julia Gillard, endure obscene put-downs and rape threats as part of efforts to undermine them. While a handful of crackpots can be dismissed, the endless and prolific nature of the sexually charged verbal abuse of women like Gillard suggests a real effort to silence them.

In the same way, the abuse that Criado-Perez experienced represented a concerted, if not actively co-ordinated, attempt to bring her down from her feminist high horse. The aim of the threats was to drive Criado-Perez from Twitter and to inhibit her confidence to lobby on women's issues.

It is fitting to remember that two women who have graced Australian banknotes, Edith Cowan and Catherine Helen Spence, who appeared on the $5 note in 2001, were involved in the movement for women's suffrage. Two of the women Australia has chosen to acknowledge in this most visible of ways agitated for women's rights.

Though suffragettes, including Cowan and Spence, were subject to intense opposition from men who thought the extension of voting rights to women was preposterous, it seems unlikely that they were confronted with repeated threats of sexual assault. While women's rights may have been gained, allowing Cowan to become the first woman elected to the Australian parliament and paving the way for our first female prime minister, the ways in which women's work towards equality are opposed have regressed into despicable abuse.

In answer to the men who work to keep women silent, it would be fitting if the women of today who relentlessly fight for advancement in the face of increasingly personal, sexualised attacks are honoured on the banknotes of the future.

Five Things Girls Will Learn from Julia Gillard’s Prime Ministership

“The problem with the pursuit of equality is that, while admitting women to the world of men, it reinforces the idea that men’s way of organising the world is natural.” Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal: The History of Australian Feminism, 4. 

In the week since Australia’s Prime Minister of three years, Julia Gillard, was deposed as Labor party leader, there has been much analysis of the role that sexism might have played in her poor poll results and subsequent overthrow by Kevin Rudd. The denials of the effects of sexism have ranged from eloquent musings on the different kinds of attacks that might be directed toward different woman in power to outright delusional claims that Gillard being a woman had no effect on the responses of the public, the media and her political colleagues.

Gillard herself felt that sexism definitely played some role in perceptions of her as the nation’s leader: “[T]he reaction to being the first female Prime Minister does not explain everything about my prime ministership, nor does it explain nothing about my prime ministership.” In her concession speech, Gillard also optimistically looked forward to a future in which “it will be easier for the next woman and the woman after that and the woman after that” to serve as Prime Minister.

With the level of bile directed at Gillard, it is hard to imagine that we will see another female Prime Minister in the next several decades, in the same way as it’s been almost a quarter of a century since Margaret Thatcher left office in Britain. The second Australian female Prime Minister is most likely still a young girl. We ought to ask ourselves what would intelligent, promising Australian girls have learned about how women leaders are treated during Gillard’s term as Prime Minister.

1. As a woman, how you look will override the substance of what you do.
In 2006, when Gillard was appointed as Deputy Opposition Leader, journalist Anita Quigly suggested that she 'bungled it with a less than flattering haircut and a frumpy ‘80s tapestry print jacket’. ‘Get yourself a stylist and get one fast’, Quigly urged Gillard. While the leader of the day, John Howard, had wild, unkempt eyebrows and a penchant for striding purposefully in a daggy green and gold tracksuit on his morning walks, clearly no one thought that he “bungled” his political career because of his grooming habits and lack of fashion sense.

The obsession with Gillard’s appearance ramped up once she became Prime Minister. Even Germaine Greer, the most influential Australian feminist of the past half century, expressed a dislike for Gillard’s choice in jackets, which she claimed only emphasised the leader’s 'big arse'. Gillard's new pair of fairly ordinary glasses earlier this year occupied headlines for days.

2. Activities traditionally performed by women are a waste of time and conflict with important business.
In the week before the leadership spill that ousted her, the sexist criticism of Gillard reached the heights of ridiculousness after her appearance in the Australian Women’s Weekly. Whether the decision for Gillard to pose in the act of knitting was that of her own team or that of the magazine is irrelevant to the response that the photograph elicited. We’ve seen many male leaders making feeble attempts at throwing and catching cricket balls, and we can’t forget, however we try, the sight of Tony Abbott in his extremely brief Speedos exiting the surf. These sporting activities don’t lead anyone to question men’s abilities to lead. After all, schemes like the Rhodes scholarship, of which Abbot was a recipient, seek candidates who excel at sports as well as academic pursuits.

Knitting, however, is not on that list of accomplishments. Internationally, Time magazine thought the photographs of a female leader knitting were “weird”. Locally, the attempt to show Gillard engaging in one of her long-term hobbies, and one which clearly resonated with the historical audience of a magazine like the Australian Women’s Weekly, was seen as an attempt to “soften her image” that conflicted with her calling out sexism in Parliament. The BRW  described the photos as “a jarring and perplexing interlude to the bigger gender politics of recent weeks and months”. In other words, if Gillard was trying to make a point about being a strong and competent leader, despite being a woman, she shouldn’t have showcased her interest in a typically women’s activity like knitting. The BRW also declared  that “[v]oters don’t like Gillard’s ploy to make gender a vote winner”. So by pointing out the way that sexism was making her job harder, people became disgruntled, according to the BRW, and further responded by lambasting her for her interest in a traditionally feminine skill. Many online comments referred to how much time Gillard must have “wasted” knitting or being photographed when there was the important business of running the country to attend to.

But, conflictingly,
3. If a woman is not fixated on tasks that usually fall to women, such as providing a welcoming home and raising a family, regardless of the demands of her career, then she cannot understand “normal” people.

The first suspicious evidence on this front was the photograph of Julia Gillard seated in the kitchen of her Altona home in 2005. The benches were clean and tidy, with only a few appliances visible, and the bowl on the kitchen table was empty. It did not matter that she’d just returned from overseas, having not yet even unpacked her suitcase, and that there was a potential challenge to then Labor leader Kim Beazley in the works. Gillard was clearly not preoccupied with her home and with ensuring partner Tim Mathieson ingested enough fibre because THE FRUIT BOWL WAS EMPTY! How could we trust a woman to lead the country if she couldn’t even ensure that some Pink Ladies and bananas were on hand at home?

The emptiness of Gillard’s fruit bowl was a sign of a greater emptiness in Gillard’s life. Senator Bill Heffernan infamously described her as “deliberately barren” because of her choice not to have children. His idea being that those who fail to reproduce have “no idea what life’s about” (Bulletin May 2007). And Heffernan cannot be seen as a lone dinosaur with an outdated view, as this criticism was repeated frequently. Senator George Brandis described Gillard as “very much a one-dimensional person” when commenting on her choice not be have children and her perceived inability to understand parents’ concerns (ABC Radio, Jan. 2010).

What did it matter that she was the first Australian female PM and how hard she must have worked, how much she must have sacrificed, to reach this milestone. As Janet Albrechtsen put it: “She’s never had to make room for the frustrating demands and magnificent responsibilities of caring for little babies, picking up sick children from school, raising teenagers”. Of course, if Gillard had been consumed by the demands of “caring for little babies” and “picking up sick children from school”, unlike her male political colleagues who presumably don’t perform the bulk of the childcare in their families, then it’s highly unlikely she’d ever have become Prime Minister in the first place.

This sticker is currently still being sold on eBay

4. As a powerful woman you are sexually undesirable and therefore unlikeable. You are a “bitch” and a “witch”.

Girls and women learn that being sexually attractive is vitally important. One of the worst ways to cut at a woman’s feeling of self-worth is to attack her appearance, regardless of her other skills and abilities. Labelling a woman “fat and ugly” is a way to dismiss all of her achievements and cut her down. Though Gillard is clearly not overweight and is a far more physically attractive woman than, say, Tony Abbot is an attractive man, you don’t have to look far online, or in talkback radio discussions, to find a plethora of “fat and ugly” comments.

Witches, of course, are commonly portrayed as the ultimate in female ugliness. They’re also figures who are disliked because they use magic to reverse the physical power imbalance that exists between men and women. Female witches are figures to fear because they can’t be controlled by men. The infamous “Ditch the Witch” signs in Canberra show the simplistic associations of powerful women with upending the natural gendered order and the need to denigrate the appearance of these women.

5. If you’re a powerful woman, it compromises the masculinity of the men around you.
A powerful woman like Gillard not only attracts personal derision, but those close to her are not safe either. Girls watching the treatment of Gillard would also learn that the hatred directed at her as a woman also directly affected her colleagues and partner. Gillard was asked if she had sex with Tim Mathieson and questioned on “rumours” that he is actually gay. The latter question supposedly arose because of his hairdressing profession, but at the bottom of both accusations is the idea that a masculine man could not possibly form a sexual relationship with  powerful woman. Such a thing is unnatural.

During Gillard’s term, due to the nature of the hung parliament, intricate negotiations were required with the Greens party. One of the other infamous placards displayed in Canberra alongside “Ditch the Witch” was “Bob Brown’s Bitch”. Yet offensive cartoons by Larry Pickering, including one depicting Gillard wearing an extremely large strap-on, with the caption “Time for your daily briefing, Bob”, showed that the real anxiety was not about Gillard doing the Greens’ bidding, but Gillard exerting her power over men and rendering them effeminate just like her hairdresser partner.

As the opening quotation from Marilyn Lake suggests, the pursuit of gender “equality” enabled us to get to a position where our country could boast its first female Prime Minister. Formal gender equality does not, however, change the fundamental structures and beliefs that underlie a patriarchal society. And this is why Gillard faced rampant sexism in her role as Prime Minister. And it's also why the next Australian girl with high political aspirations might be dissuaded from following a path that will lead to hatred and ridicule, but which must be borne stoicly unless she wishes to be accused of  “playing the gender card”.

A Battle for an Unconventional Princess: "Saving" Disney's Merida

Left: Merida as she appeared in Brave (2012) and
Right: a  promotional image from Merida's induction
into the Disney Princess range.

Why would over 240,000 people feel compelled to sign a petition asking a multi-national, mass media corporation to alter the design of an animated film character as she appears in their merchandise, including clothing and dolls? In the past three weeks, A Mighty Girl, a site that promotes books, movies and toys that celebrate "smart, confident and courageous girls", has promoted the "Keep Merida Brave" campaign. Those  who have signed the petition are disappointed that an unconventional girl heroine, who is confident wielding a bow and arrows yet uncomfortable in a fancy dress, has been homogenised in order to enter the Disney princess stable. (The Disney princesses are a lucrative merchandising phenomenon, until now based on the characters of Ariel [The Little Mermaid], Aurora, [Sleeping Beauty], Pocahontas, Snow White, Mulan, Rapunzel, Belle, Jasmine [Aladdin], Cinderella and Tiana [The Princess and the Frog].)

Everyone from Jon Stewart to Brave writer and director Brenda Chapman  has criticised aspects of Merida's makeover, including her noticeably thinner build, her dress's lower neckline (indeed the very choice to place her in the more formal dress that she despises in the film), the use of make-up, taming of her unruly hair, and, most significantly of all, the removal of her bow and arrows. Here is one "princess" heroine who does a little more than wait for her prince to come, and yet in her leap from film to Disney's merchandise machine, she has lost most of the qualities that made her distinctive.

Merida merchandise in the Disney store,
Manchester, England

It is astonishing to see so many people mobilise, even if only via an online petition, to preserve what they see as a more inspiring role model for girls in popular culture. There will always be comments that call debates about the representation of girls and women a "first-world problem". However, the view that endless depictions of passive girls and women in fiction plays at least some part in limiting options for them in reality has gained widespread acceptance.

While Brave was not quite a Disney production, in that it was produced by Pixar Animation Studios, Disney has owned Pixar since 2006. Though Pixar may have found a way to present a heroine who breaks convention (although in some fairly typical ways, such as through her fiery red hair, the signifier of "different" yet beautiful girl heroines since Anne of Green Gables), it is unthinkable that the homogenising force of the Disney Princess entity would not take some steps to make Merida conform to its brand.

Merida as a baby-face doll for young girls and sparkly
gold sandals from the range

The photograph above, which I took yesterday in the Manchester Disney store, shows a shirt that depicts something closer to the film's original image of Merida. The slogan that accompanies it describes her as "boldly beautiful". The adjective that describes Merida is "beautiful": her appearance is her most important quality. She is unique in that, as the adverb indicates, she is beautiful in a way that is bolder than the likes of Cinderella or Belle, but she's not sufficiently different to be "beautifully bold". Like other princesses in the range, Merida needs to be adapted to sell items like wigs (also available for Rapunzel) and shoes (like the sequinned sandals shown above). These items relate to transforming a girl's appearance in a way that a Merida set of bow and arrows do not. Merida's bow and arrows were not available in the store I visited in England, yet they are currently sold out at the Disney online store for America. The Merida tiara, puffy, sequinned pale blue dress, which bears no resemblance to Merida's preferred dress, and gold gladiator sandals (intended for girls to "embark on a courageous fashion adventure") seem to be in plentiful supply.

Merida dolls in two styles of dress.

Though Merida dolls in both the plain and more ornate dress are available in UK stores packaged with sets of bows and arrows, the overwhelming direction of the Disney princess juggernaut has been toward a particular vision of princesses, even as it has made superficial moves to accommodate diversity. Mulan and Pocahontas may have been granted admission into the pantheon of princesses, yet there are no costumes for these princesses to be found on the US Disney site (however problematic they might be if they did exist there). You can find a Mulan headband, complete with orchid leaves, and a Pocahontas jewellery set, but there is no way for girls to emulate these characters in the same way as they can dress as Cinderella or Rapunzel (who has several costume dresses, both regular and "wedding" edition).

It is still clear that a Disney princess means one particular model or ideal of being feminine, which originated with Snow White in 1937. Individual characters in recent films may break convention in some ways, such as The Princess and the Frog's Tiana, who aspires to own her own restaurant, yet the Disney princess- as an object to be consumed- minimises difference and unique qualities as an integral part of maintaining a brand.

While Disney has clearly been taken by surprise by this social media campaign, it is hard to imagine that the world of Disney princesses will ever expand to fully embrace a natural-faced girl heroine with a drab dress and messy hair. An average appearance and focus on skill rather than beauty is not the dream that Disney sells to small girls and, presumably, their mothers. While the campaign to keep Merida as she appears in Brave shows strong public support for different fictional role models for girls, the ongoing popularity of the generic Disney princess shows that she will be hard to dislodge from her throne.

MasterChef Offers a Slice of Sexism

This article was published in today's Age newspaper.


We don’t switch to reality television when we want to expand our minds, but their frivolous pleasures do not mean that these shows are beyond criticism and public debate. In the past week, the teaser promotion for the new series of MasterChef Australia has drawn international attention for its sexism.

The offending ad pitches the upcoming series of the cooking program as a battle of a sexes, with the infantilising title of “Boys vs Girls”. The contestants are segregated on pastel gender lines with the women wearing pink and the men blue.

A volley of stereotypes relating to women’s and men’s respective abilities are traded as the teams trash talk. Women are “better at presentation”, for instance, because they’re “used to grooming” themselves. While the quality that “all the top chefs in the world” share is that “they’re all men”.  The women face off against the men raising their pink oven mitts like boxing gloves, while the men wield baguettes like batons.

Yet the repeated national broadcast of limiting views that suggest women are naturally suited to tirelessly producing meals for the family while men are destined to elevate cooking to a sophisticated art form has been defended by some online commentators. Indeed, the counter-response to criticisms of the MasterChef ad shows just how complicated it has become to critique sexism in popular culture.

From both within and outside the feminist cause, we are told to ignore the reinforcement of sexist attitudes in the media because there are more worthy battles to fight. Proponents of this argument point to violence against women and female poverty as “real” causes to which outrage should be more rightly directed. Last month, for instance, Helen Razer described the Destroy the Joint feminist social media movement as a kind of “dessicated...masturbation”. She argued that such campaigns about sexism in popular culture mean  that “we are spending our climaxes in tiny online moments when, really they are due elsewhere...”

Another common argument, which has been used frequently in support of the MasterChef ad, is that sexism sometimes arrives in the form of harmless jokes. Maudlin feminists are simply barging in to interrupt good-natured humour as self-appointed fun police. For those who subscribe to this view, there are innate gender differences that mean that men are incapable of doing two things at once (“A woman can multi-task”) and that women cannot complete most endeavours as well as a man (“When a man puts his mind to a job, it always turns out better”), and hilarity ensues from pointing out these fundamental truths.

Nevertheless, it is crucial not to separate the worst outcomes of sexist societies, such as violence against women, from the cultural ideas we take for granted that support them. The widespread propagation of ideas that women are inherently inferior and are primarily valuable because of their appearance and ability to perform domestic work contributes to the existence of the “more important” problems confronting women. While we need to agitate for political change to continue the process of lobbying for substantive equality in the workplace, reproductive rights and protection from violence and poverty, these victories will only come alongside transformations in how men and women are understood by our society.

This is not to say that MasterChef’s Stepford wives dancing with shopping trolleys have a direct impact on the treatment of women. Yet the continued acceptance of gender stereotypes as fact, and even as subjects of amusement, continues to imprint the belief that gender inequality is the result of natural differences rather than discrimination. An ad that was humorously playing with these stereotypes, rather than reinforcing them, might show a male contestant alongside a tiered stand of delicately iced cupcakes or would depict a woman bringing her tongs into the sacred realm of the masculine barbeque. Instead MasterChef gives us the uncomplicated view that biology determines whether we can bake or char-grill.

The show promises entry into an industry in which the majority of chefs are male for various reasons, including the incompatibility of restaurant working hours with the family responsibilities that primarily fall to women. The male hosts and judges are the resident experts on the profession.

One of the female contestants on the sexist ad spuriously claims that “the average woman cooks over 1,000 meals per year” in the home. Yet we understand that this kind of cooking is not regarded with the same esteem. Two of last year’s female “Professionals” contestants were repeatedly relegated to dessert duties, though they were not specialists in this area, while men took command of the mains, showing the entrenched view that a man’s work “always turns out better”. With real-world discrimination against women in professional kitchens, as in other prestigious male-dominated industries, MasterChef’s decision to exploit baseless gender stereotypes is thoughtless rather than entertaining.

Women Lost in the Academy: Why We Need Gender Studies

The following article was published at The Conversation on 17 April 2013.
It is sad to see perceptions in the article comments that Gender Studies must involve hatred of men or that it is irrelevant as an area of study if it does not extensively focus on men. Sadly, I think such views on a site that attracts educated readers provides even more conclusive evidence for why Gender Studies is needed in universities and beyond.

In his response to the Steubenville rape case, musician Henry Rollins suggested that women’s studies should be incorporated into high school curricula. Rollins proposed that if young people were to understand that women, as war heroes, politicians, writers and revolutionaries, “have been kicking ass in high threat conditions for ages” that it would help to improve respect for women.

As we express outrage at rape culture and other manifestations of misogyny in a supposedly “postfeminist” age, it makes sense to support the study of gender in classrooms. In this context, it is astounding to see Australia’s universities dismantling their gender studies majors.

The University of Queensland houses a 41 year-old gender studies program. It plans to discontinue its undergraduate major from 2014. This will mean the loss of the last gender studies major in the state. Students at the university have planned a rally to protest the decision.The program itself, as at many universities, has no dedicated staff member. It relies on committed staff in disciplines including history, English and philosophy to teach subjects within the major.

This year has already seen the elimination of the gender studies major at the University of Wollongong. In 2012, La Trobe University began to restructure its Arts faculty, and gender, sexuality and diversity studies was targeted for discontinuation and inspired significant student protest.

The University of Melbourne abandoned its gender studies major in 2008. In response to continued student interest, a new gender studies lecturer was appointed in 2011 and the major was recently reinstated.

Overall, however, the trend toward the reduction of the number of majors within Arts degrees is endangering the formal existence of gender studies within Australian universities.

Enrolments for subjects in these programs are healthy, but the number of students who undertake gender studies majors are usually small. More than 80 students are currently enrolled in UQ’s introductory gender studies subject. Yet Executive Dean of Arts Fred D’Agostino justified the program’s axing because only 13 students have declared a gender studies major this year. Despite the phasing out of gender studies at Honours level in 2005, the students are committed to the major.

D’Agostino maintains that “most” gender studies subjects will continue to be offered at UQ. The primary difference is that students will no longer graduate with a gender studies major and their ability to pursue postgraduate research in the area at other institutions will be compromised.

If the subjects will continue to be taught, what are the savings that the removal of the major will generate? The price is the erasure of an important, interdisciplinary field. Nevertheless, the gradual dissolution of gender studies programs cannot be viewed purely as economic or demand-based decisions.

These courses arose out of the women’s movement in the early 1970s. They were sparked by activism for women’s rights and aimed to counter and critique the heavy male orientation of academic disciplines. In many instances, battles were fought to launch the study of women and feminist scholarship as legitimate areas of inquiry.

Activist and academic Merle Thornton taught the first women’s studies subject at UQ in 1972, establishing the program with Professor Carole Ferrier in the following year. It was as much of a challenge to the status quo as when Thornton chained herself to the bar of Brisbane’s Regatta Hotel with Rosalie Bogner in 1965 to protest women’s exclusion from public bars.

When a women’s studies course was put forward at a Humanities Board meeting at Flinders University in 1972, it was mocked. A Spanish Professor circulated a joke proposal among the male members of the Board for a course on “The Philosophical, Social, Sexual and Artistic Transcendency of Tauromachy [bullfighting]”. It belittled the very concept of the women’s studies bid.

Universities often suggest that the pioneering feminist scholars who initiated these courses have been so successful that “gender” is now integral to most subjects. Clearly there have been transformations in Australian society and university culture since the 1970s. However, simply because English departments, for example, no longer set entire courses devoid of women writers, it does not obviate the need for a distinct space for a focus on gender in the academy.

Today we grapple with the continued realities of misogyny and sexism even though our nation has achieved formal gender equality. Now is not the time to dismantle the courses that help us to understand how gender impacts upon us all.

Scary Fairy Stories: The Gruesome History of Fairy Tales

Walter Crane, Beauty and the Beast (1874)

A few months ago, I was invited by ABC Melbourne's Libbi Gorr to record five short segments on fairy tales. The aim was to talk about how earlier versions of the tales, prior to their revision for children in the nineteenth century, had more salacious and gruesome origins than most people know about from their own childhood reading.

I gathered together some of the most fascinating and unusual elements of some of the most popular tales as they have been told and recorded across time and place. The five "Scary Fairy Stories" that I discussed were Beauty and the Beast, Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel and Cinderella.

The 10 Most Influential All-Girl Bands

With the exception of groups of handsome teenage boys who sing bubblegum pop, we don't use the terms "boy" or "man band". After all, so many rock bands are made up of men only that we don't need see the need to distinguish them. While there is no shortage of amazing female singers in rock bands, there are far fewer female instrumentalists who have been part of mixed sex bands. For drummers, think Maureen Tucker in The Velvet Underground, Cindy Blackman who played with Lenny Kravitz, and Meg White in the White Stripes. On guitar, there's Poison Ivy from The Cramps, Gillian Gilbert from New Order, Bilinda Butcher from My Bloody Valentine and Kelley Deal from The Breeders. You'll find a few more women on bass, such as D'arcy Wretzky of The Smashing Pumpkins, Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Debbie Googe of My Bloody Valentine and Kim Deal of The Pixies.

In such a male-dominated art-form, it hasn't been easy for bands comprised of women to find an audience and success. This post celebrates some of the pioneering women who have broken through perceptions that females can't rock by forming bands with only female members. To qualify as an all-girl band, the primary members must all be women, therefore ruling out bands such as Hole, where a male member was integral to songwriting and performance across a significant period. I've also focused on rock primarily, so you won't find country bands like The Dixie Chicks or classical ensembles like The Medieval Babes on this list. (And I appreciate that the term "girl" can be seen as infantilising when applied to women, but as I think the rest of this blog suggests, "girl" ought not be a derogatory or insulting term.)

10. Jem and the Holograms/The Misfits
Now this isn't like when an Australian publication listed a horse as Australian sportswoman of the year in 2012. There are countless female musicians, and indeed hundreds of all-girl bands across the past ninety or so years, but for girls growing up in the 1980s, the relative lack of female musicians on MTV was countered by the morning cartoon Jem and the Holograms (1985-1988) in which girls could play instruments and form their own bands. (Not that I'd recalled it, but Ken and the blonde-mulleted Derek butted in to Barbie and the Rockers.) And to top it all off, Jem had to overcome the schemes of rival all-girl band, The Misfits. Not one, but two, bands to show young girls dressed in their nighties that girls could not only sing, but play bass, guitar and drums.

9. Pussy Riot


I can't say much for Pussy Riot's musical influence and the group considers itself as a feminist collective of performance artists rather than a traditional band (the members have rebuffed offers to play with the likes of Madonna because they oppose capitalism and paying gigs). Nevertheless, a group of female musicians has perhaps never had such a significant impact on world politics. Five members of the collective created the video "Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!" by performing in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in February 2012. Within weeks three of the group had been arrested and were later convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred". Two members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, were sent to prison labour camps in October 2012. The women are not scheduled to be freed until October 2014, despite the fact that both are mothers to small children.

8. The Ingenues

We're still dismayed that women rarely succeed in the performing arts unless they also happen to be spectacularly beautiful, and so it was from 1925 to 1937 that the promotion for successful Chicago all-girl jazz band, The Ingenues, often emphasised the women's physical appeal, though most of the members were talented multi-instrumentalists. The women's visual appeal encouraged a career in film shorts, including the unbeatably titled "Syncopated Sweeties". Despite the giant entourage of 22 performers, The Ingenues were sufficiently popular to mount tours of Australia, South Africa, Asia and Australia.

7. The Slits


When most people imagine the classic era of British punk, they inevitably picture the likes of The Sex Pistols and other groups disaffected working-class young men. The Slits formed in 1976, around the time that key bands like The Buzzcocks and The Pistols emerged. While other phenomenal female performers like Siouxsie Sioux (of the Banshees)  arose out of the punk scene, The Slits were the only all-female band to attain notoriety . Their debut album, Cut, released in 1979 when singer Ari Up was still only seventeen years old, unsurprisingly attracted attention for its cover, on which the band appeared topless but for a light covering of mud. Yet, though their biting feminist critique was somewhat overlooked at the time (the song "Typical Girl" asks cynically: "Who invented the typical girl?/ Who's bringing out the new improved model?/ And there's another marketing ploy/Typical girl gets the typical boy"), The Slits have since acquired legendary status and Cut's influence has been acknowledged in lists of the most important albums in rock.

6. The Runaways


The Runaways was not the first girl rock band to be signed to a major label in the United States (that honour belongs to Goldie and the Gingerbreads at number 1), but the band did find mainstream success, most especially in Japan, and influenced succeeding generations of female musicians. The Runaways launched Joan Jett to stardom and also created an inauspicious beginning to the career of The Bangles' eventual bassist Michael (Micki) Steele who was fired from the group. The band crossed a number of gender barriers in the music industry:  bands such as Van Halen and Cheap Trick opened for The Runaways headline shows  and the group took to hanging out with The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, The Damned and Generation X. The Runaways' signature song 'Cherry Bomb', from their first album in 1976, is shown in this clip from their sold-out Japanese tour of 1977.

5. The Go-Go's
While 'We Got the Beat' and 'Our Lips are Sealed' have little punk or feminist fire, The Go Go's are the one of the most important girl groups by virtue their debut album Beauty and the Beast (1982) being the first ever album by a female group who played their own instruments and wrote their own material to top the US charts. Though it might be hard to imagine 'Leave a Light on For Me'-era Belinda Carlisle being on the musical edge, the band developed out of the Californian punk scene. The Go Go's began to establish a following in their home city and in  England when they supported Madness on a substantial run of dates in 1980. Though the band did have subsequent gold albums and top ten singles, The Go Go's were not able to replicate the phenomenal success of their first album, which topped the charts for six weeks, and disbanded in 1985 after the release of a third album.

4. L7


It's a long way from 'Summer Rain' to throwing a used tampon from the stage*, but though L7 may have never had the chart success of fellow Californians The Go-Go's, the band is emblematic of an important swathe of American girl bands who preferred to get angry than to co-ordinate their jumpers and perms. (I could have equally included any number of Riot Grrrl bands that rocked out from the early to mid-'90s, most notably Bikini Kill.) There is perhaps no better example of expressing anger rather than feminine insecurity and self-loathing than L7's track 'Shitlist': "When I get mad/ And I get pissed/ I grab my pen/ And I write out a list/ Of all the people/ That won't be missed/ You've made my shitlist." The band was also politically active for women's rights causes. In 1991, L7 organised and played at Rock for Choice, a pro-choice benefit concert. L7 had their roots firmly in punk, but successfully adapted their sound during the explosion of grunge with the single 'Pretend We're Dead' put on high rotation in 1992.
*At the Reading Festival in 1992, the crowd erupted angrily and started slinging mud when L7 was affected by sound problems. Donita Sparks removed a tampon from her vagina and hurled it into the crowd, with the following cry: "Eat my used tampon, f***ers!"

3. The Pleasure Seekers/Cradle

Now I've got to admit that, as a child, I was only aware of two pieces of information about Suzi Quatro: (1) she often performed on the "golden oldies" circuit in Australia and (2) she played Leather Tuscadero in Happy Days. I probably thought that Leather Tuscadero was a real musician, as the show clearly conveyed that somehow this character was famous beyond the set of Al's Diner. Not only did Quatro become a rocker and celebrity in her own right, but she was a founding member and singer of Detroit's The Pleasure Seekers, one of the first girl bands to be signed to a major label. As with The Slits, the band was formed when its members were still girls; when their first single 'Never Through You'd Leave Me' b/w 'What a Way to Die' was released, Suzi was only fifteen and her guitarist sister Patti was seventeen. Not only did both of the band's singles chart, but the group managed to change direction from the comparative restraint of The Pleasure Seekers to become the heavier outfit Cradle in 1969 and toured the United States and Vietnam.


2. The Bangles 
The Bangles might not be everyone's idea of one of the most significant female bands, but the band certainly impacted on me as a girl. Beyond cartoon images of female musicians, The Bangles were the first live women I saw on television who played instruments. There were no shortage of female singers, but I was soon aware that playing guitar or drums was not something that women typically did. But here were four exceedingly attractive women, who not only were fashionable and pretty, but who could wield a guitar. The band emerged from the West-Coast "Paisley Underground" scene in the early 1980s, in which bands paid homage to 1960s pop such as The Mama's and the Papa's, the influence of which remained evident in The Bangles' emphasis on vocal harmonies. The band's story, like that of many other female artists, is coloured by both elements of triumph and constraint in a male-controlled industry. The Bangles wrote the vast majority of their own material, but the three most successful singles, 'Walk Like an Egyptian', 'Manic Monday' (penned by Prince) and 'Eternal Flame', were written by men (though singer Susannah Hoffs was a co-writer on the latter single). Purportedly significant parts of hit album Different Light (1986) were overdubbed by no-doubt male session musicians, with the exception of the bass of Michael Steele (formerly of The Runaways). Internal division was sown as the sexy Hoffs was gradually promoted as the central figure in a band that actually shared lead vocals and through the intervention of executives who sought to extricate Hoffs from the group and promote her as a solo artist. Steele was similarly promised a solo contract to encourage the dissolution of the band, but unsurprisingly, the less marketable Steele never received a solo record deal.

1. Goldie and the Gingerbreads


Without Goldie and the Gingerbreads, however tame their songs, such as 'Can You Hear My Heartbeat' which hit number 25 in the UK singles chart in 1965, there might never have been a riot grrrl movement. The band of four (a drummer, organist, guitarist and vocalist) was the first all-girl "rock" group to be signed to a major American label (Decca) in 1963. Goldie and the Gingerbreads faced general apathy toward female performers, or alternately promotion that situated them as a "novelty" act because of the members' gender. Though various circumstances, including the difficult conditions for women artists, forced the band's demise in 1968, the band had already made monumental strides for women musicians by touring with The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Beatles and The Yardbirds in the United Kingdom.