#representation

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Read about my journey into becoming a creative freelancer, interviews and reviews with great authors, and advice on writing and creative living.

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Jul 10, 2017
3 min

Why I’m Only Reading Books by Women

I’m trying to remember the last time I read a book by a man. Or, for that matter, the last time I watched something that didn’t have a female character in a dominant role. It seems that, perhaps unconsciously at first, I’m moving away from things created by men, or at least things that have a dominant male perspective. That might seem pretty reductive, to some. Surely only viewing the world through one lens is restrictive, no matter which one you choose? That would be true, i

Nov 19, 2016
1 min

Fragment #1 The Jacket

It was bought for Harry’s christening. Sharp darts in the waist and a slippery blue lining. Mum kept it at the back of the wardrobe, shielded in a cover. Black makes anything look smart. A baked late-September day; the interview. Perched at the back of the bus, the hum of the engine vibrated sweat into my skin. Keep the arms down. CV printed at the internet cafe with grades in a bigger font than the school name. I’d tried to press out the cardboard shape from the shirt packag

Sep 30, 2016
4 min

We Are All Disordered

This month I started teaching AS Media Studies. What a treat. I’d forgotten the delights of delving into the signs and representations that we are bombarded with in daily life, and unpicking the institutions behind them, the messages they send us, and why. Of course, it can lead to a few rude awakenings. Poring over Lynx’s ‘ironic’ adverts depicting a scantily clad woman pulling a turkey out of the oven, it was clear that some of my students were already hyper-aware of the sk

Sep 7, 2016
5 min

We Need to Keep Talking About Kevin

In the book I’ve just finished reading, several rather unpleasant things happen. Arguably the first most significant even is when, about 200 pages in, a mother throws her six-year-old son across the nursery so hard he breaks his arm. Upsetting, yes, but not for the reasons you might think. Because as the arc of the small child was described in detail, I felt joyous. Fantastic, I thought, that little sod is finally getting his just desserts. Serves him right. My emotional reac

Aug 19, 2016
4 min

Why I’m Not an Angry Feminist

Today I had the joy of experiencing a running buddy while out on the streets. As I ran past him, he came into step beside me, waving his arms and making silly high pitched noises. After which he collapsed in giggles, so amused by the sight of a woman running down the road. All of this was done in the sight of, not a crowd of jeering lads, but what I assume was his young daughter. I can only imagine the lessons she has learnt about the value of women through her eyes as she wa

Aug 5, 2016
4 min

Empress Orchid – The Mistrusted Empress

I first heard about ‘Empress Cixi’ through a BBC documentary called ‘The Ascent of Woman.’ An impressive summary of a huge swathe of human history, the programme asked questions about the subjugation of women over the centuries, and examined the reasons behind it. Much of it was startling, such as the fact that covering women up with veils was considered appropriate to show status and sexual promiscuity, many hundreds of years before Islam existed as a faith. It also examined

Jul 31, 2016
4 min

A Little Life

There’s something immensely satisfying in a novel that appears to start out one way, and then takes you somewhere you weren’t expecting. Initially, A Little Life appears to be a well-written if slightly superficial account of a group of young men in New York. The prose is beautiful, but not laboriously so. At a moment of poignant observation, we are treated to a delightful turn of phrase. What separates this from wordy writers that just like to describe everything, is that th

Jun 10, 2016
4 min

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing

Personally, I’m not a fan of the word ‘genius.’ It’s derived from ‘genie.’ The idea that a little imp comes and sits on your shoulder and gives you an idea, and that’s where your fantastic work comes from. To me, that detracts from the graft, the inspiration, the dedication, needed in order to produce something of wonder and beauty. As Adam Grant points out in his TED talk, one of the reason people end up with beautiful creative things is that they create lots of average or c

May 23, 2016
3 min

Wearing Makeup Isn’t Empowering

Genderspecs – unpicking gender stereotypes, one blog at a time There’s an awful lot that can empower you these days. Shower gel, pants and even socks are being held up as things that allow us to assert our rights. To a certain extent, this can be true. The physical expression of who we are can allow us to be noticed, taken seriously and even challenge stereotypes. Where I draw the line (a metaphorical one around my eyes which makes me look cross) is at the idea that wearing m

May 13, 2016
4 min

The Dark Rooms Writers Have to Enter

Yes I’m a little late, but I have just devoured Emma Donoghue’s wonderful book, Room. Not since Christmas have I found a book that made me pause at every moment I could on my journeys around London, and even had me walking down the street reading in order to just get a few pages in before work. One of the most beautiful things is the voice. A child narrator can sometimes be a little trite and affected, but Donoghue’s use of subtle syntax, vocabulary and slightly skewed perspe

Mar 31, 2016
4 min

Genderspecs – The Gendered Gaze

Genderspecs – unpicking gender stereotypes, one blog at a time. The Gendered Gaze Come on, you’ve done it too, haven’t you? Described your mate Terry as a ‘man’s man’ or as ‘bloke,’ your mate Fiona as a ‘girly girl.’ These are broad brushstrokes we all recognise. Terry probably likes football, or some sort of sport, while I can bet that the canine following Fiona round the house is not a wolfhound. Gender is a nice simple set of rules we can assign to people. The problem is,

Feb 25, 2016
2 min

Characters we Love to Hate

I’m far more tolerant in fiction than in the real world. Hours of page-turning will be spent on characters I thoroughly despise, who wouldn’t last more than a few minutes in conversation or who would get a quick ‘delete’ from my social media if they expressed similar views. Or possibly an extensive reply under an offensive Daily Mail article, depending on my mood. I recently encountered such a character in Hygiene and the Assassin by Amélie Nothomb. For hundreds of years, wri

Feb 15, 2016
4 min

It’s All About Perspective

One of the most powerful things in the world to experience is someone else’s perspective. It’s also one of the most frustrating. As anyone who’s encountered a view or opinion that they find utterly objectionable on social media, the TV, overheard in a bus (a broadcast of anything Donald Trump has ever said) the initial reaction is that they are wrong. Utterly, idiotically wrong. The interesting thing is, no-one thinks they’re ill-informed. No-one thinks they’re simply regurgi

Nov 6, 2015
4 min

What the ‘Consent’ Conversation is Missing

Recently, a man complained about being forced to go to ‘consent’ lessons at University. I can see his point. Not only is it a little bit insulting, but it’s probably a little bit late. But what else are Universities supposed to do? When one in seven women in University will experience some form of sexual assault, it’s not surprising they’ve decided to do something about it. To me, the word ‘consent’ is, in itself, a little misleading. It likens any sexual activity to a trans

Sep 17, 2015
2 min

Are You Sitting Uncomfortably?

This week, I experienced a familiar feeling. Awkward, a little sweaty, over-exposed and defensive. This wasn’t a first date, or a public presentation, but a lesson on the novel Noughts and Crosses. In the incredibly diverse secondary schools I’ve worked in all over London, it always feels a little disappointing to answer, ‘here,’ to the inevitable question; “Miss, where are you from?” While I’ve been told I sound Australian and look French (?!) there is nothing particularly

Aug 25, 2015
3 min

Exposure

One of the key pleasures of reading (and, as it turns out, the one that makes you a better person) is the way you can be completely dissolved in the experience of a person which you will never know yourself. As a white woman living in London, there’s absolutely no way I can truly understand the myriad feelings experienced by a Nigerian moving to the USA. Being able to read about a fictional character’s experience in Americanah, through the eyes of Chimanda Ngozi Adichie, I ca

Jun 29, 2015
3 min

How to be Both

What are the conditions needed to be truly moved by something? I like to think it’s intensely personal, like falling in love. The intricate web of circumstance, location, what you had for dinner that day, your mood, how difficult it was to get where you were going. All of these elements can combine to produce a few treasured months or years, or perhaps a chance meeting that you sometimes think about but you never led to anything. So too, with art. I’ve watched films that have

Jun 12, 2015
5 min

The View from the Other Side

I’m trying to write a book with a dual narrative. It seemed like a good idea at the time. When I found myself wading in a sea of post-its, spending three hours on a Thursday afternoon shuffling them around to try and figure out how to intersperse the two stories I’d written independently of each other, it didn’t seem like such a good plan. It’s so much more complicated than I realised. The first go was simply to figure out what happened where, to whom, and when. The next phas

Jun 3, 2015
4 min

Office Politics

I’ve never worked in an office. I remember a teacher I used to work with swapping for a more ’normal’ job. She spoke of the euphoria she felt when she could go to the toilet, literally, whenever she wanted. Non-teachers don’t understand the true meaning of bladder control, that feeling when you look at your timetable and realise you can’t wee for the next three hours, or when it gets to 5pm and you suddenly realise you haven’t gone since 7:30am and you’ve drunk four cups of c

May 23, 2015
6 min

Writing the Unwriteable

So what’s your book about then? It’s the obvious question, once you’ve fessed up to what you spend a large chunk of your time doing. There are several options here. You can keep it vague, although you run the risk of sounding pretentious: It’s about gender identity. You can make it very specific, more about the actual style: It’s a dual narrative, looking at the same event from a male and female perspective. Or, the more blunt reply (which probably gets everyone looking terri

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