2013-05-23T01:23:50-04:00 Helen Charman http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=helen-charman Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Helen Charman Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3039320 2013-04-08T15:30:33-04:00 2013-04-09T08:21:45-04:00

Helen Charman http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-charman/
News of her death, then, was predictably explosive, dividing people along lines that have been scored deep into the sand for decades now, as anyone with any opinion at all was drawn back into the same dance of argument and hyperbole that characterises this kind of news day. There was a lot of gloating, and a lot of counter-gloating, and a lot of nausea-inducing glorification, but what struck me the most was the implied assumption amongst certain sectors that anyone of my generation, or younger, of those who didn't experience Thatcher first hand, were either shockingly ignorant (how dare fourteen-year olds around the country know more about One Direction than a politician who left office before they were born) or espousing opinions that somehow hadn't been earned.

Yes, it is true that myself and my peers cannot comment on what life was like during the 1980s, in much the same way that I couldn't possibly give a first-hand account of life in Ancient Thebes, but this doesn't mean I won't be writing about Oedipus in my finals when they come around. No, I am not old enough to remember this political monolith in action, and yes I live in the South, am fortunate enough to have access to a university education and there is nothing of the miner about me: my grandfather was one, but that was in another country, twelve thousand miles away. Yet these are all factors of circumstance: I do not need to be patronised. Anyone politically aware, politically interested, politically anything knows, if nothing else, that Thatcher has left a legacy that still very much holds the nation in its sway: why else would her death attract such vitriol? Thatcherism has informed our current political situation so heavily that the flames of the aggression she inspired whilst in power have only been stoked, not quelled, over time.

Of course, gloating is not dignified or sympathetic. Death is always sad, and an elderly, by all accounts pretty confused, woman has died, leaving two children and a grieving family behind; it particularly stings me, as those odd little details always do, that she died in a borrowed room, in a hotel. It wasn't any hotel, though; it was the Ritz, and this was one of the many things that attracted the vitriol of the internet. It's funny how genuinely inspirational quotations, like Martin Luther King's 'I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy', are appropriated in the Facebook biographies of former primary school acquaintances and wheeled out as platitudes so often on occasions like this that they seem to lose all meaning.

As fine a sentiment as that is, it is easy to see why people with first-hand experience of Thatcher's policies are rejoicing. It isn't the inhumanity the right-wing press will no doubt claim it as, however insensitive: it is a response to the human cost of Thatcherism that is far greater than the death of one woman, however unpalatable that sounds. She set about the systematic dismantling the welfare state, dismissed feminism as a poison and labelled Nelson Mandela a terrorist; there are enough eloquent accounts of the victims of the 1980's to fill countless libraries, if you can find any that haven't yet been closed down.

I saw the excellent This House at the National Theatre recently, a play dealing with the aftermath of the 1974 hung parliament, and it reminded me of how farcical politics can be, and, conversely, how touching human decency can be in an area where it is all too often sorely lacking. Understandable as the joy at Thatcher's passing is, I hope the left wing response in particular isn't defined by hatred: the left is the side of the spectrum that deals in humanity, in picking up the pieces of the lives her policies broke apart, as the brilliant response 'Don't hate, donate'http://http://donthatedonate.com/ illustrates.

Her legacy is a poisonous one, but for me, and, I'll wager, for many others in my generation, the main impact she has is in her echoes. Still, the political figure I was filled with the most hatred for today was David Cameron, standing firmly in Thatcher's footprints and relishing the media attention, trotting out smug eulogies to a woman whose influence remains in the very core of his policy, on the same day his government scrapped the Disability Living Allowance.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2833664 2013-03-07T23:21:08-05:00 2013-05-07T05:12:01-04:00

Helen Charman http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-charman/
Since the appointment of Maria Miller as Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport in September 2012 the effects have been obvious and immediate, and would be completely laughable if they weren't so heart-breaking. As well as having thoroughly questionable views on equality -she has voted in favour of defining homophobia and racial hatred as 'freedom of speech' and against the gay adoption rights, against the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, against the progress of the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill- Miller has caused consternation in the arts world by her total avoidance of meeting any of the key figures involved in our cultural institutions, prompting vocal concern from the likes of Danny Boyle, Nicholas Hytner and the Guardian's Charlotte Higgins amongst numerous others. Miller appears to have little interest in gathering the opinions of those most qualified to provide her with advice about the way to ensure cuts can be made in the most sustainable way possible, preferring instead to distance herself entirely from those her policy will be directly affecting.

Hytner has also pointed out that it won't be institutions like the National Theatre, or the Royal Opera House, or the National Portrait Gallery that suffer from the cuts: these institutions are fortunate enough to have the reputation and contacts base that enables them to draw on private sources for funding, and are too established to face any serious direct threat. Instead, it is the regional theatres, art galleries, dance studios and community centres that will suffer, particularly those outside of London. Between 1979 and 1992 25% of regional theatres closed down due to funding cuts, and the removal of regional artistic opportunities affects the national institutions too: the youth theatres, the art classes, the poetry workshops that provide a little blessing for millions across Britain cannot continue to exist without support.

The usual responses to concerns about this, usually made by self-proclaimed 'realists', justify this by bringing up the recession like an irrefutable trump card, with financial concerns beating artistic ideals every time, like scissors over paper. The arts are not necessary, we are told. They just aren't as important as all of the other things we can't afford. True, we cannot argue that the arts are as necessary in an immediate sense as the education system, or the NHS - not that those aren't also being dismantled like Lego castles, by the way- but if we begin to accept only things that are strictly necessary as important, somewhere along the line we've begun to miss the point.

The value of the arts cannot be quantified, but this mustn't be mistaken for an assumption that they are therefore valueless. You only have to watch the 2002 documentary Feltham Sings, or see a child drawing a terrible picture of a spaceship in glitter and green felt-tip, or read one single poem to understand that the value of the arts is not the kind to be worked out with a calculator and one eye on what is essentially a very large national overdraft. A reduction in funding reduces in turn the opportunities for people to discover what they like, whether it's watching other people or creating something themselves, something that can help bring a little more joy into the bad day, or the bad week, or the bad year.

A recession usually means that for lots of people- and not the people making the decisions about what gets funded- things are going badly and are set to get worse. Stripping away opportunities to experience the feeling release and expression, or just simply the entertainment that the arts provide is an act that will be more detrimental to the general well-being of society than mere number-crunching can calculate. The old aphorism may be a cliché, but it serves as a warning: some people are so poor all they have is money.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2757918 2013-02-25T07:17:11-05:00 2013-04-27T05:12:01-04:00

Helen Charman http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-charman/
It still felt liberating to sit in that audience and see women stand up and talk about sexual pleasure with an honesty that is wholly absent from most of our discussions of female sexuality, which tend to either sit on the coy, bizarrely infantilised end of the scale (take a bow, Zooey Deschanel) or the caricatured shrieking of much of Sex and the City and Loose Women, the latter a viewing experience that feels a little like being trapped in the most mundane circle of hell. In 2013, this shouldn't still be the case.

Obviously, talking about something as intimate as (forgive me) intimacy is not something that we should feel the need to engage in with everyone we meet, just as it isn't necessary to celebrate sexual freedom by propositioning everybody you see, unless that's what floats your proverbial boat. We should, however, be comfortable with engaging in as much or as little sexual activity as we wish to, and with saying as much or as little about those experiences as we wish, without fearing reproach, mockery or- and this is crucial- being negatively judged and labelled accordingly.

'Slut-shaming' is the term for it, the charming practice that is so ingrained in our cultural make-up: the nasty way that any women openly discussing sex is liable to attract unfavourable attention. The notion that female desire is something that is still not appropriate to discuss in the same way as its heterosexual masculine counterpart is subtle but pervasive, and here the heterosexual aspect is important: it really is only heterosexual male desire that is truly socially acceptable to discuss openly; although the portrayal of an aggressively normalised masculine sexuality, the kind that Lynx advertising campaigns are based around, is still a reductive stereotype, representing a tiny fraction of a broad and complex spectrum.

Slut-shaming is a phenomenon that fits in with the ancient division of women into three broad categories: mother, maiden and whore. Perhaps the best example of the way that this is still cultural shorthand is the phenomenon that is Taylor Swift. Swift, a woman who seems incapable of understanding that the mere act of ending a relationship is not tantamount to an actual crime (imagine what would happen if she got divorced! One in three, Taylor. One in three) appears to subscribe wholeheartedly to the notion that the only acceptable form of female sexual expression is to listlessly writhe around in a field in a decidedly white dress, singing wistfully about Georgian stars.

She also happens to have sold in excess of 26 million albums and 75 million song downloads, and is one of the most popular artists on the planet, with a devoted following that consists mainly, although by no means exclusively, of impressionable teenage girls. Regardless of how lovely I am sure she is in person, and of her admirable business nous and philanthropic contributions, the message her song lyrics project is a pernicious one.

Swift's lyrics are saturated with imagery of waiting for a marriage proposal to legitimise a relationship ('Marry me, Juliet, you'll never have to be alone', Lovestory) and the men she sings about are often described as radiant beings, emanating light like the offspring of a guardian angel and a 500 watt bulb. When she isn't sitting by the phone sobbing into her inexplicably formal domestic attire waiting for this lava lamp in human form to sweep her off her feet, she's labelling any other woman who dares to exist around the object of her affections as a promiscuous whore of Babylon figure, tempting these poor hapless men astray: it is almost always seen to be the woman's fault, removing any agency or blame from the man in equation. For Swift, who has openly declared herself not a feminist, female sexual emancipation is a synonym for promiscuity: she speaks of this universal other woman variously as being 'known for the things that she does on the mattress' (Better than Revenge), and as the kind of girl who wears 'short skirts' (You Belong With Me), the hardly subtle implications of the latter really hammered home in the video in which the virginal Swift's man is messed around by a wanton brunette in a red dress.

Taylor Swift is, in many ways, far from a negative role model for young women, but the near fanatical devotion she inspires in many of her legions of supporters illustrates that the message she is giving out is one that is likely to hit home, and it isn't a healthy one. Yes, it's pop culture; yes, it could be dismissed as trivial, but it's the everyday occurrences that maintain a status quo and perpetuate a mode of behaviour long past its sell-by date. Slut-shaming is incredibly negative and incredibly common, and, seventeen years on from the first Vagina Monologue, we really should be able to accept and discuss female sexuality without it.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2507635 2013-01-20T19:00:00-05:00 2013-03-22T05:12:01-04:00

Helen Charman http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-charman/ Girls. Dunham appears naked in the new series of the show she writes and stars in in a variety of ways, and not all of them in a sexual context (she appears in one memorable scene in the nude, eating cake. We've all been there) and the reaction amongst the show's American audience has been, on the whole, one of disgust and a sense of something distasteful and embarrassing; that Dunham is causing a scene by refusing to be ashamed of her body, or avoid nudity apart from a carefully prescribed, semi-pornographic context. Dunham's nudity is strange in that it is entirely different from almost any other type of nakedness we are routinely exposed to.

The anodyne inoffensiveness caused by 'normal' nudity in other shows, and by other actresses, stems from the total desensitisation that has occurred in the censorship of anything but the ideal female body, which in turn is a body designed to cause the minimal offence possible: it is a body with all quirks, all overtly personal aspects removed. The effect of the consistent exposure of slim, large-breasted, toned women in the media has been well-documented with regards to its impact on the self-esteem of women, but in this case the problem is more that the 'perfect' body is one stripped of the peculiar intimacy that, by rights, comes naturally with nudity. We are unfamiliar with seeing a 'real' body represented on screen, and the intimacy that it creates is startling, and challenging, and the challenge makes us uncomfortable, and discomfort leads us all too often to the kneejerk reaction of criticism and of disgust.

Our attitude towards nakedness is bizarre, and hugely regressive. The actress Eva Mendes, who has appeared nude on screen several times, has said "we seem okay with violence, but nudity we race to criticise and censor", and this is particularly apparent at the moment with the release of Quentin Tarantino's latest film, Django Unchained. Tarantino has generated almost as much public scrutiny as Dunham for the heavy violence in his films, but in Tarantino's case there is at least an acknowledgement of the fact that he uses extreme violence as a means of artistic expression, something that has become a trademark of his work. We make no such allowances for nudity, however, despite it being something that, after all, should surely be classed as less dangerous and harmful to potential impressionable viewers than systematic decapitation, no matter how amazing the soundtrack.

The naked body is humanity at its most vulnerable and its most truthful, and it should be celebrated not only for its potential to be beautiful but also its potential to be funny, and awkward, and sad, and old, because this in turn is all that we are, and can be. Instead, we condone it only when it is wheeled out and painted in tired one-dimensional shades of sexy, for titillation purposes only, and we react viciously (Howard Stern said that Dunham's nudity "kinda feels like rape", a misnomer that is a whole other ocean of fish in itself) to the suggestion that we look at it afresh and celebrate it for what it really is.

Lena Dunham is an award-winning, talented writer and actress, and this is the first thing we should be talking about her for. Her approach to nudity is a secondary concern, but it is ground-breaking (although arguably breaking ground we should have left behind several centuries ago) and should be serving to shake us from the stupor of the blandification of over-sexualisation, particularly in a year that has already seen Beyonce spend a double page spread in GQ magazine defining feminism by the baffling admission that she owns a copy of every photograph ever taken of herself (and keeps them! In her house!) and Esquire magazine has run a feature that gives Scheherazade a run for her money by describing Megan Fox's figure in approximately one thousand and one different ways. Lena Dunham's bottom, then, in all its normal, average, fantastic glory, should be heralded as a turning point in our attitudes towards nudity: a herald of a happier, healthier, naked-er time to come.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2403615 2013-01-03T13:20:18-05:00 2013-03-05T05:12:01-05:00

Helen Charman http://www.huffingtonpost.com/helen-charman/
The inevitable hand-wringing from prominent responsible adults about the recklessness of the youth of today, throwing around the phrase "Skins-generation" with all the cultural ease of David Cameron's repeated bizarre hymns to Angry Birds, is sure to kick off soon, but rather than tread these tired paths of displaced responsibility, the productive thing to do is to ask why this happens. We all know how bad binge drinking is for you, and a night out in any university town is far more effective than any Drink Aware campaign in displaying both the popularity and the undeniably explosive (So classy! So cost-effective!) effects of binge drinking, yet downing half a bottle of vodka three nights a week is a far from abnormal student experience.

This isn't an example of an unusual deviance within our generation, a predilection for booze that has sprung out of nowhere: if you want to know why students are drinking so much, look to the context we've grown up with, the behaviours we've learned. In my first week at university I was told by a senior member of staff that the institution "runs on alcohol", that it lubricates everything that occurs in the place: we've grown up in a society that uses alcohol consumption, in no mean quantity, as a mark of adulthood, of sophistication, a liquefied symbol of coming of age. The quality of the alcohol consumed may differ - swapping Sainsbury's house Soave for Tawny Port- but the behavioural patterns there are the same.

Of course there are social pressures involved -of drinking societies, of Freshers' Week bonding, of sports team initiations- and of course it our own peer group who perpetuate these, but excessive alcohol consumption, at a safe distance, over a fry up the next morning or laughter at amusing stories from the night before, is often treated by even the most responsible of the responsible adults we know as an endearing trait that is the mark of a normal, socially active student, the benign evidence of high-spirited youth and a fulfilled university experience. Talking to your parents about that smoking habit you've happened to pick up or the joint you roll occasionally would be met, nine times out of ten, with horror or at the very least disapproval, but drinking a bottle of wine in one sitting is nothing out of the ordinary: after all, it's a wholesome family activity when done over Christmas dinner.

Compared to previous generations, those of us currently at university are quite spectacularly unfortunate: fee rises, the poor housing market and graduate unemployment are all conspiring to create a perpetually gloomy outlook which has contributed to the rise of a "fuck it" culture, the ubiquity of the almost unbearably witty phrase "YOLO" suggesting that if we're graduating into a world of debt, stress and competition anyway, we might as well enjoy ourselves while we can.

This could also offer an explanation as to why binge drinking is demonstrably more of a female than a male problem, despite the stereotype of Rugby lads drinking until they prove they are in fact medical marvels constructed entirely from testosterone : the Future Foundation think tank released research in 2012 detailing the particular pressures put upon young women in our society, suggesting we are actively preventing young women from fulfilling their potential by focussing on weight, on looks and sex appeal, destroying self-confidence and self-worth and all the other good things beginning with self, perhaps creating a need to escape into the oblivion drink can offer, or creating a greater need to use alcohol as a social crutch.

So if you're looking for reasons why students are drinking such terrifying amounts, and why female students are in particular, look not for signs of abnormally addictive personalities, or bad behaviour, or a lack of concern for health in our generation: look to the examples and pressures provided by the society that has been created for us. It's enough to make anyone reach for a double, or a bottle.]]>