Ég hef verið að hugsa - einsog stundum gerist - um hversu brenglaður fjölmiðlaheimurinn er orðinn og áhrif hans á mína kynslóð og komandi kynslóðir.
Við lifum á hápunkti upplýsingaaldarinnar. Við höfum nokkurn veginn aðgang að öllu því sem við viljum sjá, lesa og heyra í gegnum tölvurnar okkar - og nú til dags þá eiga flestallir krakkar sínar eigin tölvur.
Aðal markaðshópurinn fyrir vinsælustu sjónvarpsþættina eru unglingar - krakkar sem eru meðtakanlegri fyrir flæði af upplýsingum og földnum auglýsingum og skilaboðum. Þessir vinsælu sjónvarpsþættir eru m.a:
16 and Pregnant - MTV raunveruleikaþáttur þar sem 16 ára stúlkur fá borgað fyrir að leyfa myndavélum að fylgja sér eftir í því erfiða ferli sem meðganga hlýtur að vera fyrir unglinga.
Jersey Shore - Um það bil 20 ára krakkar sem eru stoltir af því að standa fyrir þau gildi að djamma þar til þau drepast og stunda random kynlíf með fólki sem þau hitta úti á djamminu.
Pretty Little Liars - Þær þurfa að vera pretty...skömm ef þær væru bara "Little Liars"
Toddlers And Tiaras - Fegurðarsamkeppni ungra stúlkna, allt niður í 3-4 ára. Mömmur þeirra sprauta þær með botoxi og spreyja brúnkuspreyji á þær þar til þessi litlu börn líta út einsog Oompa Loompas.
...ég gæti virkilega haldið áfram en ég held að skilaboðin séu nokkuð skýr.
Málið er að ég sé hvergi neitt þar sem er verið að hvetja stelpur til þess að læra og gera eitthvað annað en að skemmta sér og líta vel út. Venjulega ef það er þannig karakter (bókaormur) í einhverjum þætti þá er oftar en ekki sagt við þá manneskju "slappaðu af! Ekki vera svona alvarleg alltaf. Skemmtu þér einstaka sinnum!" - því það er náttúrulega samasem merki á milli þess að vilja lesa og læra og að vera alvarlegur og að skemmta sér ekki.
Það sem svona áróður skilar sér er kynslóð af stelpum sem eru álitnar "karlmannslegar" ef þær eru íþróttamanneskjur, nördar ef þær hafa gaman að lestri og þekkingu og "druslur" ef þær eiga of marga strákavini. Ég hef til dæmis oftar en ekki heyrt baktal um mig og mínar vinkonur afþví að við fylgjumst með fótbolta, höfum gaman af tölvuleikjum einsog FIFA eða Mortal Kombat, vitum hver Scotty Pippin er o.s.frv. Ein vinkona mín er góður golfari og fær oft að heyra að það hljóti að vera kjaftæði - hún er stelpa!
En það versta við þetta er að þetta baktal og þessi skítköst koma frá öðrum stelpum! Hvað varð um "girl power"? Þegar strákar komast að þessu þá finnst þeim þetta "svalt" - sem er allt gott og blessað, en þetta á ekki að vera svalt. Þetta á að vera sjálfsagður hlutur að stelpur geti haft áhuga á öðru en að mála sig í framan og versla föt.
Ein af þeim konum sem ég virði sem mest er Anna Wintour, hún er ritstjóri Bandaríska Vogue og um það bil áhrifamesta og valdamesta manneskjan í tískubransanum - og nei, tískubransinn er ekki bara fyrir stelpur. En þegar ég las ritstjórapistil eftir hana árið 2007 þegar forsetabaráttan í Bandaríkjunum var sem heitust - og hún tileinkaði þessum pistli - sem margar milljónir lesa - því að Hilary Clinton (önnur sem ég virði mjög mikið) ætti að ganga oftar í fallegri fötum, þá blöskraði mér. Anna hefði getað skrifað HVAÐ SEM ER, komið til skila hvaða boðskap sem er...en hún skrifaði þetta.
Ég vil endilega deila eftirfarandi pistli eftir J.K Rowling - sem er uppáhalds konan mín, á eftir Mömmu að sjálfsögðu!
Being thin. Probably not a subject that you ever expected to read about on this website, but my recent trip to London got me thinking...
It started in the car on the way to Leavesden film studios. I whiled away part of the journey reading a magazine that featured several glossy photographs of a very young woman who is either seriously ill or suffering from an eating disorder (which is, of course, the same thing); anyway, there is no other explanation for the shape of her body. She can talk about eating absolutely loads, being terribly busy and having the world's fastest metabolism until her tongue drops off (hooray! Another couple of ounces gone!), but her concave stomach, protruding ribs and stick-like arms tell a different story. This girl needs help, but, the world being what it is, they're sticking her on magazine covers instead. All this passed through my mind as I read the interview, then I threw the horrible thing aside.
But blow me down if the subject of girls and thinness didn't crop up shortly after I got out of the car. I was talking to one of the actors and, somehow or other, we got onto the subject of a girl he knows (not any of the Potter actresses – somebody from his life beyond the films) who had been dubbed 'fat' by certain charming classmates. (Could they possibly be jealous that she knows the boy in question? Surely not!)
'But,' said the actor, in honest perplexity, 'she is really not fat.'
'"Fat" is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her,' I said; I could remember it happening when I was at school, and witnessing it among the teenagers I used to teach. Nevertheless, I could see that to him, a well-adjusted male, it was utterly bizarre behaviour, like yelling 'thicko!' at Stephen Hawking.
His bemusement at this everyday feature of female existence reminded me how strange and sick the 'fat' insult is. I mean, is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me; but then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny? I'm not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brain...
I went to the British Book Awards that evening. After the award ceremony I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? 'You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!'
'Well,' I said, slightly nonplussed, 'the last time you saw me I'd just had a baby.'
What I felt like saying was, 'I've produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren't either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?' But no – my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!
So the issue of size and women was (ha, ha) weighing on my mind as I flew home to Edinburgh the next day. Once up in the air, I opened a newspaper and my eyes fell, immediately, on an article about the pop star Pink.
Her latest single, 'Stupid Girls', is the antidote-anthem for everything I had been thinking about women and thinness. 'Stupid Girls' satirises the talking toothpicks held up to girls as role models: those celebrities whose greatest achievement is un-chipped nail polish, whose only aspiration seems to be getting photographed in a different outfit nine times a day, whose only function in the world appears to be supporting the trade in overpriced handbags and rat-sized dogs.
Maybe all this seems funny, or trivial, but it's really not. It's about what girls want to be, what they're told they should be, and how they feel about who they are. I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before 'thin'. And frankly, I'd rather they didn't give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls. Rant over.
It started in the car on the way to Leavesden film studios. I whiled away part of the journey reading a magazine that featured several glossy photographs of a very young woman who is either seriously ill or suffering from an eating disorder (which is, of course, the same thing); anyway, there is no other explanation for the shape of her body. She can talk about eating absolutely loads, being terribly busy and having the world's fastest metabolism until her tongue drops off (hooray! Another couple of ounces gone!), but her concave stomach, protruding ribs and stick-like arms tell a different story. This girl needs help, but, the world being what it is, they're sticking her on magazine covers instead. All this passed through my mind as I read the interview, then I threw the horrible thing aside.
But blow me down if the subject of girls and thinness didn't crop up shortly after I got out of the car. I was talking to one of the actors and, somehow or other, we got onto the subject of a girl he knows (not any of the Potter actresses – somebody from his life beyond the films) who had been dubbed 'fat' by certain charming classmates. (Could they possibly be jealous that she knows the boy in question? Surely not!)
'But,' said the actor, in honest perplexity, 'she is really not fat.'
'"Fat" is usually the first insult a girl throws at another girl when she wants to hurt her,' I said; I could remember it happening when I was at school, and witnessing it among the teenagers I used to teach. Nevertheless, I could see that to him, a well-adjusted male, it was utterly bizarre behaviour, like yelling 'thicko!' at Stephen Hawking.
His bemusement at this everyday feature of female existence reminded me how strange and sick the 'fat' insult is. I mean, is 'fat' really the worst thing a human being can be? Is 'fat' worse than 'vindictive', 'jealous', 'shallow', 'vain', 'boring' or 'cruel'? Not to me; but then, you might retort, what do I know about the pressure to be skinny? I'm not in the business of being judged on my looks, what with being a writer and earning my living by using my brain...
I went to the British Book Awards that evening. After the award ceremony I bumped into a woman I hadn't seen for nearly three years. The first thing she said to me? 'You've lost a lot of weight since the last time I saw you!'
'Well,' I said, slightly nonplussed, 'the last time you saw me I'd just had a baby.'
What I felt like saying was, 'I've produced my third child and my sixth novel since I last saw you. Aren't either of those things more important, more interesting, than my size?' But no – my waist looked smaller! Forget the kid and the book: finally, something to celebrate!
So the issue of size and women was (ha, ha) weighing on my mind as I flew home to Edinburgh the next day. Once up in the air, I opened a newspaper and my eyes fell, immediately, on an article about the pop star Pink.
Her latest single, 'Stupid Girls', is the antidote-anthem for everything I had been thinking about women and thinness. 'Stupid Girls' satirises the talking toothpicks held up to girls as role models: those celebrities whose greatest achievement is un-chipped nail polish, whose only aspiration seems to be getting photographed in a different outfit nine times a day, whose only function in the world appears to be supporting the trade in overpriced handbags and rat-sized dogs.
Maybe all this seems funny, or trivial, but it's really not. It's about what girls want to be, what they're told they should be, and how they feel about who they are. I've got two daughters who will have to make their way in this skinny-obsessed world, and it worries me, because I don't want them to be empty-headed, self-obsessed, emaciated clones; I'd rather they were independent, interesting, idealistic, kind, opinionated, original, funny – a thousand things, before 'thin'. And frankly, I'd rather they didn't give a gust of stinking chihuahua flatulence whether the woman standing next to them has fleshier knees than they do. Let my girls be Hermiones, rather than Pansy Parkinsons. Let them never be Stupid Girls. Rant over.
Ég hvet alla til að fara inn á http://missrepresentation.org og kynna sér kærkominn boðskap.
