Miss Representation alive and well in London, 2012

Posted on February 6, 2012 | 4 Comments

So, Saturday should have been fun. After years of failing to get a ballot place, or failing in our quest for a gold bond place, myself and Charlotte, an exceptional teacher who runs role model projects for teenage girls, have finally both got a place in the 2012 London Marathon. Remembering our unfit schoolgirl selves as we used to run to the newsagents in our stilettos and (non regulation) pencil skirts to buy 10 JPS, rather than run even half a mile of the school playing field, it seems slightly hilarious that it is us two out of all of our school friends, who have become obsessed with marathon running. ‘Look at us, we’ve come so far’ we thought, as we met at the Institute of Education on Saturday for the Virgin London Marathon ‘Meet the Experts’ day of seminars.

Come so far? Within 20 minutes I felt like an enraged, powerless schoolgirl, as I became increasingly uncomfortable with the utterly offensive sexist nonsense that was being spouted on stage, all in the name of ‘light humour’ to amuse us marathon charity runners.

I’m not usually affected by this sort of thing. I’m not overly sensitive. Or perhaps I just live in an equality bubble where I really don’t encounter casual everyday sexism. But it was utterly horrendous.

Under the guise of a Harry Potter theme, this was more Hogwash than Hogwarts, as first we were subjected to a section that should have made us all extremely proud – a slideshow on the elite runners (so far so good) was followed by one on the celebrity runners (which is where it all went horribly wrong).

What these enlightened folk at Virgin London Marathon thought would be ‘inspirational’ at this point was to show only a tiny handful of celebrities, one of which was Katie Price, who was shown three times in various states of undress. This was meant to be a big, inclusive joke. We were all meant to find this as pfnarringly funny as the dusty old geezer giving us the presentation. We were meant to be sniggering at pictures of a woman getting undressed and posing provocatively, all in the name of an inspirational talk about marathon running and charity fund raising.

I’m so unused to this kind of thing that I can’t even work out what was meant to be funny. Was it the fact that Katie Price was seen by him as a figure of fun? The fact that naked women are just something to snigger at? I sure as hell know that he wasn’t trying to make a point about how hard she trained or how much money she has raised for charity, because there weren’t any images of her as a successful marathon runner. Or of many other successful female celebrity marathon runners…

We left the marathon day soon afterwards. But I feel bad that we didn’t say more, stand up and make our voice heard. We’re educated, strong women who work within the field of empowering other women. And yet at that moment, we both, it seemed, felt too powerless to stand up against discrimination.

In a week when all talk is of Miss Representation, it seems singularly inappropriate that what should have been a hugely positive, empowering day was ruined by such blatantly reductive attitudes towards women.

So to redress the balance, I’m not only taking the MissRepresentation.org pledge, I’m also pledging that next time I hear anything that makes me and the women I’m with feel worthless, I’ll say something. What surprised me was how hard I found it at the weekend.

Kath

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Presence not presents

Posted on December 23, 2011 | 1 Comment

Gifts are great – who doesn’t love a gift? A carefully chosen, wonderfully relevant, beautifully wrapped, given with love knock-em-dead gift? But when the need to give or receive gifts overshadows everything that the very act of gift giving is meant to be about, and the whole meaning behind the gift gets forgotten, the physical thing of the gift loses all meaning.

Remove the love, the care and the thoughtfulness from a gift, and you’re pretty much left with rampant consumerism and marketing forces made real. Add in the opportunity cost of what it took to get the gift (an afternoon spent pushing through the crowds shopping instead of spent with friends; a day’s extra work when you could have spent it on me-time, or with your children or partner; exceeding your overdraft limit or maxing out your credit card – and it all becomes a little bit more crazed, when you sit back and look at it. 

And presents can never be a substitute for presence, whatever the admen may like us to believe. 

With two days to go, and the last piece of paid work delivered, and a mound of Christmas prep still to do, I’m going to give myself a gift – to put a halt to any self-influcted mission creep madness and do the things that really matter. That means cancelling the extra shopping to have Christmas Eve kids lunch with friends; it means not worrying if the wrapping is a little wonky; it means letting go of usual rules re bedtime, healthy eating and tidying the house – which all adds up to presence – just being with each other, and not doing things in the same space as each other.

Happy hang out Christmas, here’s to doing a lot less and enjoying it a lot more!

Kath

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A celebration of female friendship

Posted on October 3, 2011 | 3 Comments

This is a post about female friendship, and the value of true friends both old and new.

There are times in life when we need new friends to help us evolve and progress. A change in job or circumstance, a shift into marriage or motherhood – it’s amazing how at times of real change, it can often be newer friends who identify with our emotions, and support without judging.

And there are times when the endurance of decades-old friendships reminds you of who you really are and allows you to look back in laughter, and to make sense of what’s ahead.

Last Sunday one of us had lunch with old schoolfriends (pictured above, lunch and pic courtesy of @talktoteens Charlotte Berry, centre) and one of us dined with someone new who extended the hand of friendship and invited her over for lunch.

Both were exciting, entertaining and enriching experiences, and it meant we spent a lot of our non-work time together this week debating the significance of female friends.

So much tripe is written about female friendship that it’s almost difficult to put the negative connotations to one side – and focus unashamedly on the fact that, to our minds, female friendship is one of the great and enduring joys in life. Reading and watching certain forms of media may almost lead you to believe that female friendship is either i) a hotbed of backstabbing, bad-mouthing and betrayal or ii) an endless cocktail-infused light dialogue about shoes, sex and suntans – but we all know that these comprise the outer, rare, peripheral moments. True female friendship is more than this – although we’re as happy as the rest to indulge in the light, that’s not the stuff that binds us. And, as we move further through our 40s, and life’s less fluffy side is increasingly prone to jump up and bite us on the bum (near-death experiences, legal battles and other such high points), it’s the unwavering support of old friends, and the kindness of new ones, that we are eternally grateful for.

So with one of us spending more time than ever with oldest and dearest friends and rediscovering what we love about each other, and the other having moved to a completely new area and busy forging ahead with a new female friendship group, we’re experiencing the best of both the old and the new.

It’s made us think about how and why we’re friends with our friends, what we give and what we offer in return. And this reflection was brought even further into focus last week when I went to see the BRILLIANT new play Di and Viv and Rose at the Hampstead Theatre.

More than any trite chick lit novel or overblown movie plot, this was a deeply moving and poignant exploration of female friendship through the decades – the initial flirtations and hesitant approaches, the giddiness of getting to know each other, the euphoric first experiences that cement your relationships – and the many, many subsequent years of high points and low ones that inextricably bind you with certain people and ensure that you measure out your life in their company.

It’s the sort of play that makes you think deeply about friendship, and whose themes remain with you long after you’ve left the theatre, because they ring so true. It made one of my friends leave the theatre in a sombre mood “I’m just a shit friend, I never pick up the phone and call”) It made me send an ‘I love you’ message to a friend as soon as I got home (although on reflection I really should have called her instead.)

But the point here is not guilt, but celebration. Female friends touch your life in a way that’s totally different to partners, families, children and any of life’s other most enjoyable things. And yet some days, thinking about the amazing women in my life, and how complex ‘real life’ can be, it seems as if the comfort and company of female friends is almost the most enjoyable thing there is…

Posted by Kath

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Posted in Culture, Lifestyle

Women the worst drivers? No, probably just the busiest…

Posted on June 27, 2011 | 1 Comment

Lives have got ridiculously busy recently – we know it’s a modern curse to talk about busyness, but it did get stupid busy for us both for a while there. And believe us, it’s not for want of trying to calm down and smell the roses more often than just now and again…

Which is why this recent report into middle aged women being the worst driving offenders by a country mile really caught our eye…

Police and Network Rail monitored level crossings across London and the South East because near misses were up 15%. They were extremely surprised when it emerged that women aged 50-65 accounted for a massive 46% of offences – they were still expecting to be able to blame it on errant yoofs.

But it came as no surprise to us that middle-aged women were caught time and time again hurrying around, driving recklessly, whereas males aged 17-25 only accounted for a paltry 8% of offences. Let’s face it, we’ve hoiked car insurance for young men to literally £1,000s a year; we’ve saddled them with huge graduate debts and we’ve all but erased any hope of a secure and well-paying job – so we can’t actually bring to mind many young blokes who even if they had the means to afford a car, would be in such a hurry to get anywhere that they’d hare across a level crossing on a red light.

It’s probably rose tinted nostalgia, but when I was young, being out in the car was pretty much all about the journey itself – windows down, mates laughing, music blaring and silk cuts blazing – and why would you want to hurry through that?

Now though, it seems as if life is one big hurry-through. As if hurrying through tasks had somehow become the way to live life. And no-one knows this more than the 50-something woman. Working harder and longer hours than ever before. Working harder on her relationships, parenting, promotion, health and looks, and self improvement at every level. And, as the squeezed middle of the sandwich generation, doing this while also, increasingly, supporting elderly parents with ever-increasing needs and ever-decreasing support from society, and 20-something offspring who find it impossible to get a job, let alone a mortgage.

It’s hard to justify jumping a red light on a level crossing – but it’s easy to see that if you’re busy to the point of brain freeze, where you face each day just hoping you can get through everything quickly enough to get it all done, you start to take ill-thought risks, quick fixes and short cuts.

Putting it in print makes it sound awful, but we’re as guilty as the next of being an amber gambler at the traffic lights, rushing across as the green man turns to red, running through the tube doors as they’re about to shut – and we’ve seen countless other women doing it (one that we know recently sped a red light on her bicycle with her two children on board, and the back child nearly got squashed by a bus).

It’s madness when you stop to think that the very children that you care so much about that you don’t want them to be late to school, may not make it at all due to your reckless road sense. Put like this, no-one in their right minds would take these risks. So why do we all do it?

Perhaps reframing rush as risk would help – perhaps it would help even more if we thought that even if our rush is not putting anyone else at risk, constantly living on an adrenalin edge is extremely wearing on the mind, body and soul. Perhaps for some it would be enough to think about the risk to others that our rushing could be creating.

Either way, this report made us think – we may not get there on time, but rushing/taking risks may mean that we never get there at all. Either way, the days of women merely multi-tasking by putting lipstick on at the lights is a thing of the past. These days, she’s probably on her Blackberry, eating her breakfast and doing her pelvic floor exercises while the lights change – if she’s even waiting for the lights to change in the first place…

Posted by Kath

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Because we’re worth more than this

Posted on March 29, 2011 | 4 Comments

Shock news this week of yet another beauty brand being taken to task by the ASA, this time for claims that their tummy tuck product doesn’t, it seems (brace yourselves here) give the effect of an actual tummy tuck.

I could name names but frankly, that’s not really the point. That particular ad may have been canned, but we won’t be surprised or shocked when another few spring up to replace it, especially as we approach the summer holiday season, when even the most intellectually ample among us have been known to stockpile any product with a transformational claim, in the hope that it will work a little bit of magic.

And it’s the size of the gap between fact and fiction that’s crucial here – as well as the price we’re paying. We’re all willing to involve ourselves in a little suspension of disbelief (I’m unlikely to lose sleep over the fact that my prawn cocktail-flavoured crisps don’t taste much like that much-maligned 70s starter, for example). I’m happy to buy a cream that hints at relaxing or moisturising properties, or a fragrance that classes itself as fresh and youthful. But it does rankle when products are only bought (and for an inflated price) on the basis of a statement that’s misleading, unsubstantiated, or falsely represented by an image that has nothing to do with the stuff that it’s advertising.

It also rankles that expressions such as ‘tummy tuck’ are becoming normalised, as if we should simply accept cosmetic procedures as a natural part of our maintenance and grooming. Don’t get me wrong; it’s up to each and every one of us where we draw the line, and I’d fight until my last breath for any women to choose to do anything she wants as long as it does no harm to others. But in my magazine Editor days, I was very careful not to blur the boundaries by featuring surgical procedures on our ‘beauty’ pages, and making women feel as if it was the next logical step.

Wouldn’t it be better to promote a product by pinpointing exactly what it is that we want to know about it, and then sharing it with us? If you’ve spent years in a laboratory creating the perfect conditioner for frizzy hair, or a great waterproof mascara that actually did the job, wouldn’t it be an idea to tell us about it, and show us how best to use it – with real language, using real women or real body parts? Instead, though, we’re served up hair extensions and false eyelashes to seduce us into buying haircare and mascara. Don’t brands want us to truly understand the benefits of their products? Or is it that many are not even listening hard enough to develop the products that we actually want?

More and more, it seems as if the genuinely engaging and enlightening brand conversations are happening outside of the old-school advertising budgets. If Lauren Luke and her many imitators can show us how to put on mascara, why have the mascara brands been so slow to cotton on? If TV production companies understand the power of a makeover, why isn’t this reflected in many advertising concepts aimed at women.

The truth is, it’s easy to get women to bond over shared experiences and the pooling of knowledge. There’s nothing we like better than passing on information, tips and recommendations (and we’re also quick to do the opposite if something doesn’t live up to expectations or promises). So why do we see so few facts – and so many half-baked truths, in advertising that’s aimed squarely at us?

And don’t try telling us that buying a new shampoo is a form of escape, and that we don’t really expect to look as glossy-haired as the gal in the ads after using it. We want results, not spin. We welcome information and knowledge, not disclaimers in the small print (if that). Frankly, we reckon we’re worth a bit more thought.
Kath

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Posted in Culture, Lifestyle

Marketing to women – can it really be this hard?

Posted on February 18, 2011 | 4 Comments

We started this blogsite and survey to find out where all of the bright, cool women that blazed a trail in their teens and 20s ended up in their 30s and 40s. Because if there’s one thing that we knew for sure, it was that they certainly didn’t end up running the world (in the shape of running huge organisations) in the way that they might have thought, or the way that they were led to believe when at school.

We started this because we ended up as two very rare beasts – working mums at director level in media agencies. We didn’t think this was unusual, it’s what we’d always thought we’d be able to do. We never thought that we’d be a minority, but we most definitely were. We didn’t truly understand that this was only possible because we had fantastic bosses who understood that effectiveness is not dependent on presence or set hours, but let us work how and when we wanted, as long as we continued to deliver and grow business. We didn’t know how rare that was until we started this site and survey.

Those who’ve been with us for a while will know how shocked we were to discover that, despite legislation, feminism and supposed equality, women still make up a measly 13% of board positions in the advertising industry – an almost unbelievable 3% drop from the 1970s.

Of course, this will come as no surprise to any of you who’ve had the misfortune to view a TV ad aimed squarely at ‘us women’ – because let’s face it, they’re not exactly hitting us between the eyes with extraordinary insight into the way we live our lives. Not exactly capturing the essence of our hopes and dreams in those precious few seconds of airtime. Even when viewed at x8 speed with the sound muted, the women we see rapidly acting out a brand’s dream don’t seem to have much to do with our everyday life.

And the truth is, we don’t know any women that like these ads. We’re not sure who connects with them, or feels even a spark of recognition for the women characters portrayed. None of the words that they say or the things that they tell us make us scream ‘yes, that’s me, that’s exactly me and my life’ in the way that say, reading an Allison Pearson or a Marion Keyes or even, hell yes, a David Nicholls makes us feel.

We’ve sunk a long way down since the days when Fay Weldon was creating ad straplines (working in advertising, in the ’60s, with one of our mothers – believe it or not). We’ll bet you can’t find one advert today that makes you want to buy the product because you connect with the model or the messaging. Which means that we’re buying these products in spite of the ads. The very ads that are meant to make us buy them. Crazy when you think about it.

Infuriating for us, as we’ve spent our working lives with brands – striving to create strategies that do connect with women (mainly busy mums who have literally seconds to decide whether to interact or not). It’s a received wisdom that that 85% of brand decisions are made by women – so we care passionately about trying to make sure that this smart, interesting, active majority are finding things to believe and love.

But really, why is it so hard to sell us breakfast cereal or shampoo in a way that we can relate to? Why are the women so unreal, the children as unrecognisable as any we’ve encountered – and the men so unfailingly complicit in this stereotype?

The campaigns get even worse when let lose in the wild west that many regard as social media. Just because we’re online doesn’t mean that we want to play a game, sign up to a trite campaign or endure endless ads in our social streams (yes Facebook, we’re talking to you).

We love the stuff that inspires, educates and informs in any other medium – books, films, tweets, blog posts, TED talks, galleries, theatre and beyond. And we fail to understand why an ad, with a massive budget backing it, can’t do any of these things. It should, at the very least, entertain and resonate. We’re too ready to find and enjoy the good things for brands to be doing us the disservice of serving up bad stuff.

And we can’t help thinking that in all honesty, if there were more women on the boards of advertising agencies, they wouldn’t let half this stuff out of the door…

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On women and work, Miriam O’Reilly, and creating positive role models

Posted on January 21, 2011 | 3 Comments

In 2010, we blogged, tweeted and even talked in the real world about a) how we need to showcase more positive professional female role models, b) the multilayered complexities of combining a satisfying professional life with a rewarding home and family life and c) the fact that women at board/director level in their 40s and beyond seem to be increasingly rare birds.

And three weeks into 2011, these issues seem even more all-consuming. The high-profile news stories of the last few weeks have really got us thinking.

Firstly, we have total respect for Miriam O’Reilly for standing up against her employers, being prepared to publicly confront difficult issues about women and age and forcing the BBC to back down.

But in parallel, we keep seeing reports that many young women don’t believe that going to university is worthwhile. Cosmopolitan have reported that nearly half of all young women who’ve been through university wish they hadn’t bothered. We have a feeling that people like Miriam O’Reilly will be tearing her hair out. If she’s prepared to take on the BBC to make it easier for women to work after their 30s and early 40s, we suspect she’ll despair of women not wanting to work at all.

And we’ve recently seen a piece of research that suggests that women would rather marry ‘up’ and stay at home, rather than work. It suggests that only 19% of women actually want to work, and that 64% of women would rather stay at home – and many of these women are not currently married or mothers. Rather they’re planning on this happening.

All of this seems to contradict our own experiences that suggest that many women would love to be able to do something for themselves – maybe not a full time, 7-7 City job, but have a way of having their own income, their own space and do something for themselves.

Children or no children, we’re worried by the idea that women would actively seek – from a young age – to be financially dependent on her partner. In our own research from last year, almost none of our respondents liked the idea that they were living off someone else – although many were staying at home to look after their children. The key point, as we see it, is that the young women in the research above are actively setting out with an aim to not work, and not achieve for themselves, and we think that’s a poor outlook for women and our economy if that’s truly the case.

It’s a sorry state of affairs to us that any women wants to live like this, and that any young woman aspires to this. Of course there will always be times in any relationship, if you’re in one, when one person’s career takes precedent, but to plan to be financially dependent on a man is not only foolish, it’s highly risky. If you set yourself up as something to be bought, don’t be surprised when you get replaced, discarded or upgraded.

One of our aims this year is to reach out to other generations of women. Women 20 years older than us who are fighting the battle against ageism. Women younger than us who crave positive role models and mentors who can help them see a future that doesn’t involve vacuous celebrity. We’ve been lucky enough to meet some amazing sixth-formers, led by their inspirational teacher Charlotte (tweeting as @talktoteens). Being part of their professional mentoring project has been truly gratifying, and we urge all of you bright, cool professional women to show the next generation down that yes, work can be knackering, challenging, harder than you ever thought possible, and not always a breeze – but that the alternative is so much worse. There truly is no better feeling than going to bed knowing that no-one owns you, and you owe no-one. Ladies, don’t let yourself be bought.

Kath and Fiona

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2010: What’s mattered to us this year

Posted on December 24, 2010 | 4 Comments

So we started this blog as a result of a conversation we had at Christmas last year. Eagle eyed and alert of memory Bright Women will remember that we came about as a result of having a Christmas meal in a private members club where the only other women in the room were the serving staff. This struck us as wrong, we started digging around, trying to define why it was that we, two working mums of very young children who held full time board director roles, were such a minority.

It’s strange to get to the year end and find that the same story still prevails in the press. In fact, it’s more prevalent than ever. Why are there so few women at board level? What happens to all of the bright, cool women who enter their twenties truly believing that they’ll change the world?

So here’s where we stand, at the end of this year:

If the same story still prevails, we need to work double hard to empower women everywhere to blaze a great career trail. We’ll be launching lots of new initiatives next year to do just that.

Work truly matters to us. Being good at our jobs, if anything, becomes more important once we have children, because we want to be positive role models.

Work is only good if it’s stimulating, and meaningful to us, because if it’s not, the sacrifice of spending time with our children is too great.

Working hours change drastically once you have kids. The working day is split around the children. Everyone we know with the kids and career double whammy works school hours, then after they go to bed. As I type this at 11pm, there are literally 1,000s of other Bright Women all over the country tapping away, too (in between wrapping presents, making mince pies, etc etc)

Being a martyr is just not on. Choose your path, change it if it’s not working, but don’t be a moaner. celebrate what you have and what you are.

At the end of the day, it’s all about doing what you love, and being with those you love. These are the two biggest gifts that we can give ourselves.

And whatever you do, and however busy and stressed you are, there is always someone who is having it far worse. Some of the steepest learning curves we’ve been on this year have been about learning to put aside our day-to-day trivial worries, and support those we love who have been ill or in need.

As the year ends, we are counting our blessings, and focussing in on the stuff that really, truly matters to us.

We can live without the rest, it’s inconsequential.

Happy Christmas one and all!

Posted by Kath

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Posted in Lifestyle

Geraldine Laybourne: Watch this and rethink the way you work

Posted on December 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

Something for all of you having a snow day today – take a few moments out of your routine to listen to this talk

We found it really inspirational.

Do you agree with her points?

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Are you taking the wrong self into work?

Posted on November 18, 2010 | 1 Comment

Let’s face it, there’s not many things in life more terrifying than returning to work after a bit of time out of the office. Your workmates are yammering on about how ‘it hardly seems as if you’ve been gone a minute’ but to you, it can often seem as if everything’s changed.

It can be hard enough after a couple of weeks in Ibiza; even harder after that longed-for sabbatical or extended Christmas break.

So pity the poor souls returning to work after nine months’ maternity leave (t’was only six in my day, not that I took it all, bah humbug…).

Nine months out of work. Why, that practically takes you pre iPad. It definitely takes you pre-ConDem. Pre ‘we’re all in the same boat’ and public sector cuts and tube strikes (or were always with us?). Pre Daybreak (thank gawd I was at home with GMTV during my mat leaves)

None months ago, were we all getting our news via twitter? Networking through LinkedIn? Upgrading to iPhone 4s?

When things change so quickly, you really only have to be out of it for a matter of months to feel – well, totally out of it.

It’s horrendous enough cranking the work personality into gear after a long holiday or week’s illness (those were the days…). What’s even harder is that the women returning from maternity leave haven’t been lying on a beach somewhere. Their body’s been through the biggest trauma of their lives. Their minds are raddled with lack of sleep. Their time is not their own, nor will it be for quite. some. time.

In putting another human being first for so long, they’ve probably eschewed the gym (no creche, too expensive) for a cake and cuppa with another mum or two (unhelpfully resulting in piling on pounds rather than losing that baby weight). They’ve swapped The Today Programme for daytime TV, the news for Waybuloo and adult conversation for babytalk.

With no income to speak of, they’ve downgraded their clothes, their hair and their expectations.

And then they are catapulted back into work, and – no shit, Sherlock – feel a little inadequate, unprepared and, frankly, wondering if they have in fact made the right decision.

It’s another of those ‘why did no-one tell us what it would REALLY be like?’ moments. And a million ways to get it wrong. We’ve all seen the proud new mum returning to her desk, carefully placing umpteen pics of her baby around her desk, in fluffy frames, crying the odd tear, talking about how LOVELY it is to return to work and get some REST from the drudgery of home. Hell, most of us have even been that poor soul at some point.

We spent ages the other day talking with other bright women about how to get it right at work – and shrieking with laughter about the many, many ways there are to get it terribly wrong.

It all seemed to boil down to which personality you take into the office each day. And to our mind, whether you’re returning from nine months’ (or more) maternity leave, or a week on the sambuccas in the sun, we all too often drag the wrong personality into the office.

Ladies, the only personality that you should take into work is the one that gets you your paycheque each month. Last time we looked, that didn’t involve overstocking on fluffy picture frames or staggering around with a shot-induced hangover. Although anytime we find jobs that reward us on those criteria, we’ll be sure to let you know…

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