The Vagenda

While You Were Sleeping: Here’s Some Lady News That Happened This Weekend

Helena Frith-Powell being awesome at housework
1. Royal broodmare Kate Middleton had a ‘perfect, natural birth’ that absolutely did not involve pooing on the table or calling someone a cunt. 
2. Sponge cake botherer and style muffin Mary Berry admitted that, when she said she wasn’t a feminist, she didn’t actually know what one was, thus proving what we’ve been saying for ages, which is: we need some clarity, y’all.
3. French fashion matchstick Carine Roitfeld also claims that she is not a feminist, telling Cosmopolitan: ‘”I love if someone invites me to a restaurant so I don¹t know if that¹s a feminist, but I really believed in the word in Europe — I don¹t know what you call it in America — matriarchal. You know it¹s very important, the role of a mother… I don¹t know but it¹s feminism to me to love your kids.” Worry not Carine, you can still go to dinner on our watch, but loving your kids is a tad more problematic. Didn’t anyone tell you that all feminists hate their kids, especially their sons?
4. Jodie Marsh also had some things to say about the Lose the Lad’s Mags campaign on Twitter. Mainly that she thinks it’s a joke and that feminism should be about celebrating women whether or not they take their clothes off rather than trying to cut off their revenue streams. As we’ve said before, it’s only a matter of time before the market does that for you, Jodie.
5. Much like a severe British nanny might take away a giant teddy bear away from a naked baby, Anna Wintour has apparently taken away Miley Cyrus’ Vogue cover, thus illustrating the age old Vogue paradox (Chanel tits* = fine, other, less ‘tasteful’ nudity, including twerking = not fine)
6. Cosmopolitan magazine asked some fashion week models what they ate that day. It seems to have been mainly juice but also bacon is now apparently OK (see, last year’s story: Heidi Klum OK with the Occassional Burger)
7. Canadian students seem to have formed some kind of rapey cheerleading squad. According to Jezebel, they’ve been chanting: ‘Y-O-U-N-G at UBC, we like ‘em young, Y is for your sister, O is for oh so tight, U is for underage, N is for no consent, G is for go to jail.’ Yeah.


8. Sometime journalist and frivolous writer of rubbish Helena Frith Powell is a housework machine who doesn’t believe in asking men to take responsibility for 50% of the household chores because er, basically, they’re cavemen who are crap at it (she wrote in the Times this weekend.) Thanks Helena for that nuanced contribution to sociological perspectives on gender. 
9. Boffins at Bangor University have told us what we all knew already: feet are the least erotic parts of the body. 
10. Being born into this awful world as a girl and having to put up with rape chants and juice diets and smugness about natural childbirth still totally fucking sucks, but it sucks even more if you’re an 8 year-old child bride in the Yemen
*copyright Camilla Long

9 thoughts on “While You Were Sleeping: Here’s Some Lady News That Happened This Weekend

  1. You forgot the part where Saturday night saw the first ever female conductor to conduct the Last Night of the Proms – followed by an inspiring speech about how ridiculous it is that there can still be firsts for women in 2013!

  2. I had a ‘perfect natural birth’ too but only because the fucking epidural didn’t work. It was only later that my husband informed me that when the consultant (Man in Bow Tie) came into the room and asked me to keep the noise down that I told him to ‘go fuck himself’.

  3. Hi I’m Marie Berry, feminist writer and blah blah. Last year at the beginning of the Great British Bake Off, Radio 5 called me to ask if I would mind appearing on a show about baking’s (really pretty staid and seemingly seasonal) renaissance.

    I was a bit confused as to how that was a feminist issue and asked the producer if it was because of a page in our ‘zine called Fuck Cupcakes ( and she sounded confused that, as a stalwart of traditional British baking, and a rather posh old lady, I would say fuck cupcakes. Honestly I was nearly on the way to the studio before we established that I am not the 70 year old baker lady but a 30 year old writer of profanity. Maybe that’s why they asked her if she was a feminist, and she was like ‘fuck feminists.’