It may be unfair to judge a book before it’s published and before I’ve even read it, but I did hear the author on the radio this morning and on hearing what she had to say my feminist radar immediately went “Spung!! Twee stereotype alert!”
And I speak as someone raised on Arthur Mee’s Childrens’ Encyclopaedia and Enid Blyton. But I also read Swallows and Amazons and Ursula LeGuin and knew when I was being talked down to by condescending adults.
The book in question is called ‘The Glorious Book For Girls’ and purports to be a riposte to that best-seller to middle-aged men, ‘The Dangerous Book for Boys’. There’s certainly room in the market for a book that teaches girls survival skills – it’s just not this one.
I must say my hackles went up right away just at the title: The girls’ book is called ‘Glorious’. But why not ‘Dangerous’? Don’t girls want to tie knots, ckimb trees, collect coins and stamps, start campfires, make their own microscopes and cause small explosions too? I know I did and I still do.
Here’s the publishers’ blurb:
Homemade scones, pom-poms, daisy chains. . . The Great Big Glorious Book for Girls will take women back to a time when we made cup cakes with our grandmothers, when girls weren’t obsessed with all things pink, when they didn’t wear ‘hot to trot’ t-shirts aged eight and when a bit of sticky-backed plastic and a tissue box could be the answer to your dreams.
Perfect for mothers, grandmothers, aunts and godmothers (as well as daughters, granddaughters, nieces and goddaughters, of course), this is a book for all women who secretly, or not so secretly, loved playing French elastics, dream of making elderflower cordial and need reminding of how to play cat’s cradle.
Sounds quite tempting, doesn’t it? I certainly enjoyed doing those things when young.
So despite my misgivings about the title I was quite interested. But as the discussion progressed between the author and the feminist lawyer who’d been invited to give the opposing view – because as any fule kno, any BBC radio news discussion must be reduced to two opposing views- the book’s actual content became clearer and my heart sank.
Glitter and ponies. How to talk to boys and pluck your eyebrows; how to bake a cake, sew a hem and what? How to sulk?.
Surely it couldn’t be so regressive, could it? The author couldn’t be trying to turn girls into little po-faced, fairy-loving Violet Elizabeth Botts or embryo Fanny Craddock memsahibs, all flowery pinnies and high maintenance hairdos – could she?
Oh, yes she could.
The Telegraph (what a surprise that the Tory papers should love this book) gives a little more insight into the book’s topics:
10 Things Every Girl Should Know
1. How To Deal With Boys
2. How To Have A Best Friend
3. How To Cope When Your Best Friend Gets A New Best Friend
4. What To Do When Introduced To Older People
5. How Not To Be Fazed By Other People’s Strange Habits
6. How To Keep A Secret
7. How To Tell If An Egg Is Fresh
8. How To Sulk
9. How To Have A Crush
10. How to Set Your Inner Alarm Clock
To which I might add, 11. How to tell when someone with no conception of girls’ lives today other what she gleaned from Enid Blyton school stories is talking down to you. Or 12. How to tell when you’re being flim-flammed by your own side.
I could go on, but you get the drift.
This is the corresponding publisher’s blurb for The Dangerous Book For Boys:
The Dangerous Book for Boys gives you facts and figures at your fingertips – swot up on the solar system, learn about famous battles and read inspiring stories of incredible courage and bravery. Teach your old dog new tricks. Make a pinhole camera. Understand the laws of cricket. There’s a whole world out there: with this book, anyone can get out and explore it.
That’s the book I’d’ve wanted to read, not some twee advice about fairy cakes or ballet shoes. If someone had bought me a book like the Glorious Book when I as a girl, I would’ve thanked the giver and immediately ‘lost’ it (the book and my temper) the moment I came across this :
Build your own fairy house
Fairies usually live in hedges and little bushes, so you should look out for them and help make their houses more comfortable. Choose the tree or bush you think is most likely to be a fairy’s house and carpet it with moss and flower petals.
Acorn cups make good bowls for water and basins for the fairies to wash their faces and clothes. Small fluffy feathers are very soft for pillows; if you live in the country, find some lamb’s wool – fairies love to sleep on it.
Empty snail shells make good sculptures for fairy banqueting rooms. Find pieces of wood to make a grand dining table and benches for the fairies to sit on.
You can leave tiny things to eat. Fairies like small garden peas, berries and rose petals.
Mark out a garden path with tiny coloured pebbles and make a fairy garden with flowers and twigs. If you dig a little hole and place a small bowl or cupcake tin in it, this could be a garden pond.
Fairies don’t like to be seen, so usually come out at dusk, just before bedtime so they can find your gifts and eat their supper while you are sleeping. In the morning, when you go back to the fairy house, you might have a little clearing up to do to get it spick and span.
So when climate change starts to hit, our female young will be perfectly prepared to build shelters, find food and care for themselves fairies.
I think that speaks for itself as to what the authors think it’s useful for girls to know. Not how to deal with bullying by SMS, or keep yourself safe on the bus, or what to do if your friend’s Dad gets a liitle too friendly or your house gets flooded. Nope, the answer is glitter, pompoms and fairy cakes. Oy.
Feminism may not be quite dead, but some of us women are doing our best to kill it.
