the news with nipples

It’s become a bit of a thing lately for the mainstream media to run opinion pieces that criticise women for criticising women. I’m not suggesting that everyone needs to be nice to each other, but these articles certainly benefit the MSM in terms of traffic. And of course, the “women are their own worst enemies” is a classic misogynist move.

The latest is this one from SMH journo Stephanie Peatling: Why are women hell bent on destroying each other?

Hell bent on destroying each other? Really? The headline comes from a line in Peatling’s piece, so I can’t blame a sub editor for it. Look around you – how many women do you see being “hell bent on destroying” other women?

She starts with Time‘s breastfeeding cover:

It also provided an irresistible excuse for women to rip into each other.

They justified their own choices, denigrated others, called mothers who did or did not breastfeed selfish and generally descended into a good old catfight. All this came 48 hours before Mother’s Day.

This is not about women ripping into each other. Look at the comments on any news story or opinion piece on a Fairfax or News Ltd site and you’ll see people ripping into each other. Yes, I think it’s worth discussing why so many people post nasty comments on news sites. But let’s not pretend that it’s women who do this. It’s some women, just like it’s some men. Besides, the blame for the comments becoming a “good old catfight” rests with the people who moderate the comments – they decide what gets published and they control the discussion. People can post nasty comments all they like, it doesn’t mean you have to publish them.

Women seem to spend the first third of our lives tearing each other down about clothing and weight before spending the next third, regardless of whether we have children, arguing about parenting techniques.

Maybe that’s what your friends are like, Stephanie, but my friends are not like that. Sure, I’ve met some women and some men in my 35 years who act like this, but they are in the minority. And in the workplace, in my experience, it’s more likely that men will be talking about a female colleague’s appearance/clothes. I’ve heard male editors in their 30s discuss the fuckability of female uni students on work experience. In two workplaces, the male editors and senior journos had ranked their female colleagues according to “hotness”. And there was always at least one idiot who thought that telling a woman she was near the top of the list would get him laid.

It is more than 20 years since the publication of Naomi Wolf’s book The Beauty Myth, with its powerful arguments about the pressure women put on themselves and each other to conform to a socially acceptable idea of attractiveness.

Ok, it’s been a while since I read The Beauty Myth, but that’s not what I remember it being about. (Check out Jessica Barlow’s piece at Lip mag.)

As a political reporter, I see every day the different standards by which female politicians are judged.

Before they open their mouths, their appearance is assessed as if, as one of my colleagues puts it, that was one of their key performance indicators.

I give you Exhibit A: a whiney piece by your newspaper’s state political editor, Sean Nicholls, saying it’s Kristina Keneally’s fault that he considers her haircut to be Important News:

Her decision to get hair extensions shortly after the election caused a media meltdown. In hindsight, it was the first hint of things to come but rightly, at the time, it was seen as her business.

How can something cause a “media meltdown” if it’s seen as “her business”? That’s just stupid. Also, it’s a complete load of crap because it was not seen as “her business” at all. At the SMH, Nick O’Malley wrote about it, Heath Aston wrote about it, Melissa Singer wrote about it, Damien Murphy wrote about it (and also seemed to imply that Keneally is the only female politician to be judged on her looks). And that’s just at Sydney’s broadsheet. The Daily Telegraph‘s political journos had a field day as well.

If you want to talk about the way female politicians are judged on their appearance and not what they do as part of their jobs, you need to start with the journalists. After all, the place where we have public discussions IS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA. Derr. I’m sure Natasha Stott Despoja, Kate Ellis, Amanda Vanstone, Cheryl Kernot, Belinda Neal, Kristina Keneally, Lara Giddings and Julia Gillard would have a few things to say about the number of journalists at Fairfax and News Ltd who have written about their hair, clothing, shoes, handbag, ears, relationship, and status as a working uterus. And they’re just the ones in the last few years. It’s a shame that Peatling can’t see the role her colleagues play in this. It’s like those journalists who write about a “media meltdown” as though they weren’t part of it, and report that “the family has asked for privacy” without realising that the family is asking for privacy FROM THE JOURNALISTS CAMPED OUTSIDE THEIR HOME.

And then there’s this:

Are men sitting around on the milk crates of inner city cafes discussing how Fred’s latest pair of lycra cycling shorts isn’t doing his stomach any favours? No.

Are they secretly thinking Sam is a bit of a hippy because his kid wears cloth nappies? No.

And you know this, how? In my first week in one workplace, I was informed by two women and five men that the highest-ranked woman in that office was sleeping with the boss. Sure, this is just one example, but it’s of equal weight to Peatling’s evidence-free assertion that men don’t do this.

Peatling makes a good point at the end about letting adults make their own decisions without abusing them for it, but the rest of the article does exactly what she’s criticising women for.