Something was bothering me.
That something could have been the fact that the half term holidays are over and I have to start thinking of ways to engage 30 children at a time in a subject that society fails to value, where half of them can't even clap, let alone clap in time. It could have been due to the fact that I had resorted to pushing a selection of painkillers around my body with a shot of caffeine or the fact that I am a hormonal mess who has forgotten how to sleep properly anyway.
Images of dresses floated through my mind and I kept thinking about what Rosie Millard said on Newsnight. At the time, I agreed with her. "Yes," I shouted at the TV, "So true. How can women expect to be taken seriously if they turn up looking like a loo roll holder?" She had a point.
No she didn't.
Women are not an amorphous hive-minded blob. Women are a collection of individuals who have breasts of varying sizes and no penis. In that respect, they are quite like men but without the penis. Women don't have a duty to other women to dress in a certain way. Their individual value should not be diminished by what they wear.
What really worries me is that it took me a whole sleepless night to decide to disagree. I had looked at the pretty dresses, without even noticing the women and know that the point about these women being coat hangers for designers to show off their creations was true. I had seen the pictures in the press that gave the impression that the Oscars was a 'women only' event, despite the fact that the winner of best leading man (Eddie Redmayne) will be remembered more than best leading lady (I've forgotten already). I had even looked at some of them and thought they needed a good meal, "Boy, that's a skinny coat hanger," I thought.
I watched Patrica Arquette's speech, where she called for equal pay and watched Meryl Streep (who was not attending as a clothes horse) whoop and fist pump. I watched John Travolta inappropriately touch women he was on stage with only to see them grimace politely, rather than dig a sharp elbow into his ribs, stamp on his foot and shout, "Hey, get off, creep!" I watched Rita Ora wiggle, pantlessly on the red carpet and thought that she was wearing quite a lot of clothes for a girl whose profession it is to dance in pants.
I watched all of these things without even realising that I was judging women as a whole. This isn't something I do to men. I didn't watch Eddie Redmayne's giddy Oscar speech thinking, "Men, they're just so excitable". I didn't look at John Travolta and think, "Men! Perverts, the lot of them." I didn't hear Sean Penn joke, "Who gave this sonofabitch a green card," and think that he was letting down every man who ever presented an award. When Neil Patrick Harris appeared on stage in his pants socks and shoes I thought, "He can come and dig my veg patch any time," but I didn't think that he was letting down men everywhere by whoring his body in this way. I don't suppose anyone except the Long Suffering Husband, noticed his 15 changes of costume throughout the night. "I hope he doesn't just put it all in the washing basket," said the LSH, which is something you think when you have a teenage son.
I can remember all these men's names. The women, I tend to think of as the one in the red dress, the one with the pretty flowers who was homeless before she met her husband ("I'd like to thank my husband for giving me a home,") or the one who couldn't get up the steps because that dress was too tight, as the designer forgot that human hangers have legs.
So, maybe the fact that most of the men wore exactly the same thing allows us more freedom to remember their names. Maybe I should go back to shouting, "Yes," at the TV, Rosie Millard has a point. She said that these women at the Oscars were being used by designers and that they couldn't claim outrage when people only noticed the dress. Can we really expect people who are told what to wear for their job (actors) to turn down an offer to be paid for wearing what someone tells them too? If all women were to turn up at next year's Oscars in a black tie and DJ combo then would the press give them a break? It's difficult and maybe all we can do is be aware of our prejudices.
When I had an award ceremony to attend I thought very hard about what to wear. I wanted something that was comfortable for eating in but as there was a possibility of a photo my eating outfit of track suit bottoms and jumper were out. I still managed to nearly go up on stage with my dress tucked in my knickers and stand on Roger Black's broken toe. I wouldn't like to have to make a decision about how to dress for the Oscars and now that I know that even self aware feminists are making judgments about women based on the clothes they wear, rather than what they have achieved I might just collect my Oscar dressed in my gardening clothes or I could borrow a bow tie from the dog.
So, maybe the fact that most of the men wore exactly the same thing allows us more freedom to remember their names. Maybe I should go back to shouting, "Yes," at the TV, Rosie Millard has a point. She said that these women at the Oscars were being used by designers and that they couldn't claim outrage when people only noticed the dress. Can we really expect people who are told what to wear for their job (actors) to turn down an offer to be paid for wearing what someone tells them too? If all women were to turn up at next year's Oscars in a black tie and DJ combo then would the press give them a break? It's difficult and maybe all we can do is be aware of our prejudices.
When I had an award ceremony to attend I thought very hard about what to wear. I wanted something that was comfortable for eating in but as there was a possibility of a photo my eating outfit of track suit bottoms and jumper were out. I still managed to nearly go up on stage with my dress tucked in my knickers and stand on Roger Black's broken toe. I wouldn't like to have to make a decision about how to dress for the Oscars and now that I know that even self aware feminists are making judgments about women based on the clothes they wear, rather than what they have achieved I might just collect my Oscar dressed in my gardening clothes or I could borrow a bow tie from the dog.
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