British bank notes - Gender and class politics played out

Pride, Not Prejudice, we did it! 35K signed on @UKChange & @bankofengland will put a woman on banknotes http://ow.ly/i/2GVq6 

Is filling me twitter feed. Is it only me who feels a little deflated by this. Yes we have kept a woman on a bank note and the swap will happen at the same time as losing Elizabeth Fry from the £5. But lets be careful not to confuse a woman on a bank note with women on bank notes. There are 4 notes are there not and will still only be one woman (aside from the Queen). 

I did sign the campaign and am incredibly relieved that women have not been lost altogether and grateful to those women who tirelessly led the campaign at great cost to themselves, but at most this represents a stalling if not a slight regression and certainly not progress. Elizabeth Fry was an activist and reformer who called out abuse and exposed oppression. Jane Austin wrote love stories, which however subversive or radical they might have been at the time probably represent a message to women today to conform to a worldview that regards achieving matrimonial bliss and securing Mr Darcy and his large house as women's primary goal in life.

I am more interested in the outcomes of a review of selection policy which has also been announced and how that policy is implemented.  Currently the criteria requires that candidates be uncontroversial but Churchill made it through. How can anyone do anything significant and not be controversial? Churchill wasn't just the PM during the second world war he also fiercely opposed Indian independence and was no friend to women's suffrage, hardly. It is his memory which is supposedly uncontroversial not him himself.

Is it only me who in this age of cuts and shameless right wing propaganda feels uneasy that as a replacement for the social reformer Elizabeth Fry we have Winston Churchill. It just feels like a bit more hiding of a certain British history. Just like we saw at the jubilee and Thatchers funeral the right speak a narrative of our shared history many of us don't feel we share.

So sorry for not joining the party but while Jane Austin may have some feminist elements I can't see it as a massive achievement. Especially when she's got on at the expense of Elizabeth Fry - we should not have to have an either/or. Patriarchy pitting woman against each other on our bank notes. 

I know I'm spoiling the party. Sorry.

Not a Princess

My daughter (2&1/2) announced yesterday that she was a princess. This was inevitable, but I had not thought it would come so soon. I informed her that she was not and reminded her of her name. She then started singing the wheels on the bus, life moves on fast at 2. But it did make me think I need to pre think some strategies for tackling this one as it continually raises its head over the next few years. 

The timing of this comment was interesting since there is also another child born recently who will not be a princess but will most probably, though finally getting a republic is always a possibility, become a prince. I have to say that along with Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett I also feel a slight sense of relief that the royal baby is male and will not have to suffer being a princess.

Anyway in search of advice I went to twitter, and while I received some excellent suggestions much was about how to re-define or reshape what a princess is. I'm not sure I want to. I think I'd rather make being a princess an unattractive option. Also I don't want to lie to my daughter. I am not royal so she will never be a princess. I could say that princess can run around, climb trees, wear trousers, but they can't. Kate cannot wear what she wants, say what she wants, eat what she wants, yesterdays revolting issue of OK proves that. 

Also there is the danger of simply replacing one stereotype with another. I don't know if my daughter will enjoy climbing trees yet and I don't want her confronted with the options of pink princess or 'tom boy' princess. I'd rather she could just be her in any combination of interests and abilities she enjoys. 

It is not just the gender stereotyping of princess that I find so difficult but also the inherent hierarchy we cannot all be princess. As much as I love Brave and watch it with my little one repeatedly I'd much rather it ended with the king abdicating and setting up a democratic co-operative community. 

There is too much, competition, I'm the best, look at me, in children's media and for girls princess seems to be the ultimate expression of that. Princess also teaches our daughters to place the highest value in their appearance to the exclusion of other attributes. And not their appearance for their own enjoyment creativity or self expression, their appearance as measured by how sexually attractive they are to adult men. Which is why I would rather expose princess for what they really are (slowly and in an age appropriate way) than redefine princess as something a little more diverse. 

It's going to be hard work.