Lollercopter

My blog entries have quite a few spelling mistakes/typos. I'm either slightly dyslexic or slightly bad at spell-checking. Or a little bit of both.

One day i might draw a lollercopter.

I know its not very original...

but i do love Ellen, and I don't care how stereotypically gay that makes me. and she's done an advert for Covergirl (of ANTM fame). Behold!


As far as I can work out, this is an official, legitimate, commissioned by CoverGirl advert. Except it feels like Ellen's mocking the whole thing? In a lovable way. The trouble with me is I seem to have a genuine difficulty in spotting the difference between irony, mockery and satire and genuine heartfelt meant opinions.
ANYWAY , turns out CoverGirl isn't just an ANTM tie-in (which I always sort of assumed it was).

Selling Out?

I've been worrying quite a lot recently about my new job (paralegal in the Financial Services) and projected career path (lawyer, of some description, which I'll have a better idea about after I've done a year of my Graduate Law Conversion).

I'm not worrying about my ability to do the job because, although it is pretty stressful and involves being hyper-organised which doesn't come naturally to me, I'm actually pretty good at it and have yet to cause any of the clients I work for to go bankrupt. Not that Financial institutions need MY help to do that, they seem to being fucking up quite effectively without me. No, I'm worrying because it feels like 'selling out'. I'm acutely aware that although I got the paralegal job based on my ability to do the job the only reason anyone was aware of this ability was because my Dad had got me work experience in his firm. And I don't like that I have essentially unearned opportunities just because of an accident of birth. Except I can do the job, and having done it will open up opportunities to work in other law firms that focus less on Financial Services and maybe more on defending people's rights. Moreover it's not like my not taking advantage of these opportunities means my parents would suddenly offer legal work experience to someone else or to pay for someone else's post-graduate professional qualifications.

I tried for a year not 'selling out' and becoming a lawyer or some other 'traditional' career and I discovered that I really really hate being unemployed. To the point where I took a two day a week job which paid the same as benefits and involved commuting down to London. I also discovered that I don't like not having a plan - which was interesting to learn because before this year out my life was planned, not by me by my parents and to a certain extent my class/education. Turns out I do want a career path, i just want to know that I've chosen it. More importantly, I spent the year discovering my queer, feminist, creative self which was immensely enriching and empowering. Unfortunately it doesn't pay any bills and whilst I don't aspire to amassing a large pile of money and sitting on it cackling to myself I DO aspire to being able to pay bills, rent, tax and being able to afford to have fun and going to queer, feminist creative events. So maybe I'm not selling out I'm just using what I've learnt about myself in the past year to choose a career.

A huge part of feminism is the belief that women are capable of being doctors, lawyers, architects, police, investment bankers. So it doesn't actually run contrary to my beliefs as a queer feminist to try and work in a traditionally straight-male dominated sector. It just feels like it does.

Hah!

My Dad just told me I should start a blog.... 'Oh, I already have two, but one's stupid drawings and the other one's quite gay, I basically use it to indulge my 'women in suits' fetish' (is that a real fetish?)
Currently listening to: Girls Aloud - Biology
Shame level: 0

The Law! Or, how my time on the internet became a lot gayer recently. With added roller derby.

I've been rubbish about updating both this blog and my shiny new picture blog. I have an excuse however: I've 'sold out' and come down to London to do work experience at a city law firm. In the financial services department no less. You don't know the meaning of fun until you've proof-read a contract with phrases like 'funds of funds', 'draw down period' and 'master-feeder relationship'. Sadly that last one has nothing to do with kinky sex. Anyway, originally this was just to persuade law school to accept me for a post-grad law conversion course so I can be Elle in 'Legally Blonde' / a gay rights lawyer/ feminist lawyer /a lawyer on the side of the 'good guys'. 'Look I want to be a lawyer SO MUCH I'm working for a city law firm', is what I was trying to suggest. Only it turns out I'm quite good at law-ish stuff. even when it involves the aforementioned weird dialect.

Sadly, although I 'get' law and can 'think like a lawyer' (hint: people will try to screw you over unless you make ABSOLUTELY SURE you've covered you ass), I cannot 'be like a lawyer'. I have been wearing HEELS and SKIRT SUITS and KNEE LENGTH DRESSES.

All of which I would normally wear be highly unlikely to wear of my own free will, but that's ok, it's a job, it's a uniform, this is all going to get me somewhere and one day I’ll be a highly respected partner in a radical law firm and wear whatever I damn well please. What I can’t really cope with is the highly hetero-normative culture: men open doors for me. I stand looking confused for a minute, then realise what’s going on and have to say thank you. I am not allowed to get out of the lift last (the men will stand there, waiting for me and the other women to get out first). It’s REALLY weird. Really weird. Or the fact that I can’t be even a little bit gay at work. Or, I’m not brave enough. Case in point: the man who sits next to me and the man on the other side of the partition were talking about ‘Girl With A Dragon Tattoo’ I LOVE GWaDT, I LOVE the Swedish film of GWaDT, I LOVE Noomi Rapace aka Salander in the film. I went to see the film the day it came out. But instead of joining in with the conversation (‘I know! How awesome/hot is Salander? And such a nuanced portrait of women’) and gaying out over Noomi I was sat there, pretending to read ‘How The City Really Works’ (I am going to understand how feeder funds work if it kills me), and they were whispering in case it offended me (‘Oh that book’s so violent towards women’).

Noomi, being attractive:

So today, after two weeks of this weird environment I went a little bit crazy on Google images. And I found so many swoon-worthy pictures, like pictures of Ellen ‘Babe Ruthless’ Page

....with the rest of the cast of Whip It!:

(Which, by the way we’re going to talk about IN DETAIL but not tonight because it’s late and I have work tomorrow)

And pictures of women in suits,

a perennial favourite theme of mine

(of everybody’s, surely)

(above is 'Pip' of Ladyhawke) but particularly because I’ve been seeing men in suits every damn day and women just pull it off better.

See?

and with that, I feel I've fully indulged my gay, and can go to work in a dress tomorrow (and Doc Marten heels - vive la resistance...) and not explode.

I've moved! Sorta...

Ok so basically, Blogger is not so brilliant for displaying/sharing photos/pictures. Which is sort of a shame given that this blogs raison d'etre was to display mah drawin's. SO I'm moving my sketches and comics to a Tumblr account but ne'er fear, I'm keeping blogger for written blog entries and other stuff.

Also it seems to be easier to use.

Anyway, in case you're saddened by the move (yeah, right), here is a picture of Marlene Dietrich to cheer you up:

"Women"

I've just finished watching the second episode of the BBC programme 'Women' which was entitled 'Motherhood'. Having watched the first episode 'Libbers' over breakfast, I was keen to see what they had to say about motherhood vis Feminism. 'Libbers' was very interesting as it managed to give a more complete overview of the Women's Lib movement than I had so far gained through reading various texts by individual authors (Germaine Greer, Susie Orbach, Simone De Beauvoir, Marilyn French, etc). It was also refreshing to see Germaine Greer talking about Feminism, rather than say Cheryl Cole or fabrics, and her role within the movement.

Sadly 'Motherhood' was less interesting or maybe just less interesting to me because I knew all of it? All the women in it were middle-class, only one couple wasn't white. I know that as a middle-class, white woman I can't object to the inclusion of white, middle-class women on a programme about feminism. However, I do object to the fact to the exclusion of other women. Maybe only middle-class women agreed to be in the programme? But, whilst I believe that feminism is relevant to anyone who identifies as a women, in fact to anyone, regardless of gender, who believes in equality, you could argue that feminism is less important to middle-class white women purely because they come from a position of privilege that is not enjoyed by women from other sectors of society.
It also focused on married couples with children, apart from one couple who had separated. Clearly, in an hour long programme you can't address ALL the issues raised by motherhood for ALL women, I wasn't expecting that, but I found myself getting bored of the succession of well-educated, middle-class women in their large, expensive houses, 2.7 children and 'yes, I'd say I was a feminist' well-educated, middle-class husbands.

Anyway, the upshot of the programme was that in the majority of the couples, the women did all the housework (cooking, cleaning, shopping, rotas, 'running' the household), childcare and some of them also had full-time jobs. The two exceptions were: a couple where both man and women were surgeons, who had a nanny on weekdays (though the woman always had her mobile with her in surgery in case the nanny called); a couple where the woman worked full-time to support the family and the man was a house-husband.

I didn't need to watch an hour-long programme to tell me that the division of labour in family households is about the same as it was in the Fifties and Sixties. I was hoping that there might be some exploration of why the status-quo hasn't really changed apart from now women often work in a profession on top of doing housework. Why the women felt that they ought to be there to bring up their children, and if they didn't both they and the children were missing out on something fundamental, whereas the men didn't seem to feel that.

My conclusion, was that maybe instead of women needing to be empowered to throw of the shackles of domestic drudgery and enter the workplace, men ought to be empowered (?) or persuaded of the benefits of raising children and keeping the house in a nice state. Though if you saw my room you'd know I'm hardly the meticulous housekeeper my sex ought to have genetically encoded me to be. Anyway, if men felt that it was perfectly acceptable and right to want to stay at home by the hearth, instead of being the breadwinner, maybe fewer women would 'choose' to stay at home.

Anyway, I think the main reason for my disappointment in the programme was that, for me, one of the main obstacle to feminism now is the biological fact that women have babies and this seems to mean that they are more inclined to stay at home after giving birth and look after the children. Is this link between mother and child stronger than that between father and child? And if so, why? Is it biological? Or is it conditioned? And I was hoping that THAT was what the programme was going to address, rather then telling me (and presumably anyone who would watch the programme) what I was already aware of.

If anyone knows of any recently published books that address this please let me know. Other than The Beauty Myth, which though excellent (if you haven't read it I highly recommend you find and read a copy RIGHT NOW) I have read it. Also it was published in 1990 and that was TWENTY YEARS AGO. So that's hardly 'recent', it's nearly as old as I am.