Women have more power now than in previous generations but even feminism appears to have been hijacked by people with something to sell - it's more than a coincidence that this age of alleged female power coincides with the age of consumerism
'You're surprisingly funny for a f***ing feminist," Richard Desmond reportedly told Rosie Boycott. Desmond had just bought Express Newspapers and Boycott, the first woman to edit a national daily in Britain, was editor of the group's flagship title.
As a pornographer who made his loot publishing magazines such as Asian Babes, Posh Wives and Big Ones, as well as the "celebrity" mag, OK!, Desmond might have been expected to find even "celebrity" feminists more antagonistic than amusing.
He regularly wore, according to Boycott, a designer suit and gold Rolex. The Rolex, like the cigars he smoked, was "obscenely big". But then Richard Desmond is a big entrepreneur, a product of our times. When the rival Daily Mail described him as "Desmond the Degrader", Boycott says he became very emotional. "I've worked my way up from f***ing nothing. Porn has never harmed anyone. It doesn't exploit women," she reports he said. (Well, he would, wouldn't he?) Whether porn has made Desmond more objectionable than many other newspaper publishers - a breed which, along with producing paragons has given us propagandists, war-mongers and swindlers - depends on your sense of values. But the Desmond/Boycott episode brought together representatives of two titanic forces of our times: the ruthless, cost-cutting entrepreneur and the committed, crusading feminist. Clearly something had to give. Within a month, Boycott resigned.
One entrepreneur thwarting one feminist might be no more than a particular case. Yet it's hard not to conclude that the cult of the entrepreneur and the free market fundamentalism of which it is a part and which blithely commodifies porn for profit, has effectively thwarted feminism. Sure, women have more power now than in previous generations but even feminism appears to have been hijacked by people with something to sell. It is more than a coincidence that this age of alleged female power coincides with the age of consumerism.
Consider the marketing of cosmetics, for instance. Spinmeisters sell snake oil products as though the buying of these was some sort of quasi-feminist act to allow women take control of their bodies. Advertising and, of course, more disposable cash, combine to persuade women to spend ever more on a traditional female concern - appearance - in order that consumers might feel "free" and "empowered". Cosmetic surgery too is on the increase and though some of it seems ill-advised, fair enough.
If women have the desire and the money, it's their choice. If they feel surgery or the regular application of unpronounceable herb extracts, "hydroceramides" (whatever they are!) and equally cryptic entities using "lipo" as a prefix, are doing their looks a power of good, carry on. But too often it sounds suspiciously like women's liberation by cash, chequebook and credit card. Then there's all that "shopping" and "pampering" (a vile word crying out to be preceded by Richard Desmond's favourite adjective!) sold as more freedom and more empowerment.
THERE'S the sniff, sorry "scent", of a con-job about a lot of it. It's not that people haven't the right to look as they please. It's the notion that freedom, power and self-realisation - reasonable aims of feminism - can come in a lotion or from a scalpel. Of course, most advertising - to men as well as women - promises far more than the product can deliver; but given advertising's lurid history of exploiting women, feminism might have been expected to be more resilient and more transforming of the nonsense.
It hasn't. Certainly, there has been a change in the depictions of women in advertising. The smart woman, the capable woman, the predatory woman are well-established staples at this stage. Even the swaggering, haughty, acceptable-level-of-violence woman - throwing drink in men's faces or pouring it over their heads - is already passé. Within such genres, the idiot man, the incompetent man and the conceited, spiv man have, of course, been routed.
Yet such commercial cameos are enlisted primarily to sell stuff. Almost invariably the women are glamorous and have model figures so while depictions of their actions have changed over the years, acceptable-in-advertising female appearances have not. It's not Richard Desmond stuff but it often is its little sister. Whether or not it is ultimately less patronising and exploitative than the Benny Hill-style smut of a generation ago is probably best left to women to decide.
Since buying Express Newspapers, Desmond has given £100,000 to Tony Blair's Labour. Boycott argues that it was "dirty money", made from a porn empire. Mind you, porn profits haven't hindered Desmond. He has been invited to Downing Street and Chequers where he met Alastair Campbell, and Margaret McDonagh, a former general secretary of Labour, moved to work with Desmond as general manager of Express Newspapers. Perhaps New Labour women have no objections to the porn business.
They might, of course, object to porn or shrug and dismiss it resignedly. But once the word "business" is added on to porn or even on to "arms", the morality, it appears, changes. It seems that even feminism has been unable to resist the overwhelming power of the market. In fact, the propaganda became so insane late last year that one of the reasons regularly advanced for the US bombing of Afghanistan was to liberate women from burkas. Yeah, right!
Time was when feminists protested against the Miss World contest. Such stuff has long since been removed to the nether regions of television. A few weeks ago, TV3 screened Miss Universe 2002. It was being held in Puerto Rico and certainly its first quarter of an hour (and presumably the rest of it) was naff beyond belief. The contestants were almost always referred to as "ladies", as though they were either the wives of lords or female Gaelic football players.
In fact, the only times the contestants were not called "ladies" was when they were called "delegates". Watching it was like going back a generation except that the pace of it suggested the director must have been snorting unusually high-grade speed. Epilepsy seemed a constant risk as the gig zoomed by in explosions of dancing, teeth, cleavages, legs and primary colours called "national costumes".
"The fun is just getting started. Next we're going inside for Mark Anthony and the Top 10," trilled the shrillest voiceover in history. Mark Anthony was not the Cleopatra dude but a Latin lover effort in shades, a shirt with a collar he could hang-glide from and an off-white suit. There was no need to see any more. The sexism was so blatant you could see why the gig was banished to nether-world TV. And yet, for all its naffness and its obvious, indeed ostentatious, efforts to make a profit from having punters ogle women in their physical prime, it just seemed like an extremely gauche version of much current advertising.
It's not surprisingly funny that such shows became a feminist target - they deserved no better. But it is telling, though not surprising, that in an age when women have made so many advances, far sleazier enterprises are tolerated and even extolled - so long as they're doing good business. Even feminism, it appears, has been hijacked when it hasn't resigned in the face of the so-called "entrepreneurial spirit" guiding our age.