‘Women are their own worst beauty critics,’ says Dove in the latest instalment of its Real Beauty campaign. In other words, women are those whose insecurities are most effectively exploited by an industry that unashamedly rips apart women’s looks in general and bodies in particular every chance it gets. Shocker.

Luckily, Dove is here to show women that they are more traditionally beautiful than they think. How? An experiment that sees an FBI artist sketch the faces of women he hasn’t met based on descriptions by themselves and people they meet respectively demonstrates that the drawings based on strangers’ accounts result in skinnier women with lighter hair, straighter noses, fewer moles and less droopy chins.

The lesson? ‘You are more beautiful than you think!’

Or:

1. How you look IS important.

2. It’s your own fault that you feel shit. Relax and stop being so hard on yourself and maybe you’ll be happy.

3. Beauty is what it always was: see, you’re not as fat as you thought you were, and your eyebrows are actually very well-formed, and your lips could almost be described as full and sexy!

I respect Dove for trying, I really do. The problem is that a beauty product manufacturer depends on its audience wanting to be beautiful. And try as it might to convey that beauty comes from within, that’s not where it’s going to make its money – and, actually, it keeps failing miserably, every single time.

LOVELY, said a choir of clued-in, sensible, politically-conscious women on Twitter, and I died a little inside. ‘Dove is committed to building positive self-esteem and inspiring all women and girls to reach their full potential,’ reads the copy on the campaign site. It’s bullshit. Don’t buy it, girls. They’re part of an industry that makes money off your sense of inadequacy, and no matter how beautiful you are, they’ll keep doing it.

Women are their own worst beauty critics – mad, eh? No, not remotely. There’s nothing mad or surprising or shocking about the fact that people who are bombarded day in and day out with images creating an unobtainable ideal become experts at finding and focusing on their own flaws. It’s no wonder if, in a world where modelling agencies find their future stars outside anorexia clinics, women start to become both paranoid and neurotic.

I won’t judge anyone with an interest in beauty, but let’s not pretend it’s anything but shallow. And Dove, don’t you dare suggest that the hatred comes from within. It’s being handed down to us from a never-ending supply, sustained by companies just like you.

My dad and I have a habit of emailing each other links to interesting and often more or less philosophical articles. The other day, he excelled himself and sent me no less than three articles on a subject that could roughly be summarised ‘Is the standard of journalism declining?’, or, simply ‘State of the media’.

The first article was an opinion piece written by the former Editor in Chief of one of Sweden’s biggest ex-broadsheets, claiming that his counting of characters in newspapers comparatively across two decades shows that the quality of the journalism offered to readers of print media has declined significantly. The other two were responses to that first opinion piece, arguing among other things that any media analysis that focuses exclusively on print is embarrassingly old-fashioned and simply invalid. Now, I don’t know quite how much depth I can add to the discussion, but I figured that someone who emails three articles on one subject all in one day deserves an attempt at an analysis at the very least. So here it goes.

You don’t need to be an editor of a national quality newspaper or a media studies professor (although those were the authors of the two responses) to pick up on the fact that simply counting characters of various types of news content won’t provide a very nuanced answer to any question about the state of print media. As Wadbring, professor of media development, writes, quality and quantity are not the same thing. Moreover, you don’t need to be a particularly experienced op-ed writer to pick up on Svegfors’s dig at readers who prefer interiors features about loft conversions in central Stockholm over meatier political coverage. Svegfors certainly made his opponents’ job quite easy, subsequently coming out of the whole thing defeated, not to say crushed. But crushing a poorly-constructed argument is one thing; creating a solid one yourself takes a lot more.

‘For Svegfors there’s only the physical paper. And people who don’t know what’s best for themselves,’ write Samuelsson and Karén. ‘He complains about readers who, he suggests, would rather read about their dream home in the city centre than about social problems in Rosengård [one of Sweden’s most socially-deprived areas].’ Fair enough, Svegfors is arrogant – we get it. But this is a standard counter-argument whenever the current state of the media is criticised: we only give readers what they want.

In another quote, what the two editors are really trying to say suddenly becomes crystal clear: ‘[Svegfors’s] opinion piece sums up the world view with which he almost drove the paper into the ground: contempt for the readers, a lack of insight into the needs and expectations of media consumers, and an inability to see the bigger picture.’ Brands, economics – these are the terms discussed here. Wadbring may be slightly more pragmatic, but her bias is the same: she talks of ‘big consumers of news’ and readers who ‘choose freely amongst different types of content across a wide variety of platforms’. Consumers, eh? Oh, the power of choice.

Svegfors talks about tabloidisation – failing as he might to explain the concept – and a quick look at the work of other tabloidisation critics reveals that this kind of rhetoric is exactly the thing they oppose. Media, countless democracy theorists argue, should act as a fourth estate, a force to be reckoned with when politicians must be held to account and private sector lobbying gets dodgy, and a platform for debate where citizens can air and share their views. The point, then, is that talk of brands, consumers and commodities shows an already built-in bias, an approach that has in itself already taken sides. Put simply, if those in charge of the press run the show according to the rules of capitalism and marketisation, how can they ever criticise it? Or, at its extreme, can’t they be assumed to inadvertently perpetuate such a development?

Svegfors suggests that ‘the most important content’ has disappeared, and writes that the ‘values of commercialisation and economism permeate society’s every pore’. Unlike the other writers, he has expectations of media content against which he measures its value, and so he doesn’t agree that it, like commodities, has value simply by its sheer existence or to whatever extent readers bother reading it. He’s not actually attacking readers, though he agrees that they ‘aren’t exactly complaining loudly’; what he describes is a development on a societal level, and a worrying one.

This is not about arrogance. The way I see it, this is highly political: it’s about defending the case for a fourth estate independent of the powers that be, and not only in the form of politicians, but also in terms of private vested interest and market forces. Media content doesn’t simply reflect the world – it creates life as we know it, and as such, any notion of plain and simple supply and demand is irresponsible and inappropriate. If our political system relies on democratic media in order to work, perhaps editors and media professors shouldn’t be so quick to crush critics like Svegfors – even if they’re too busy counting characters to get to the point.

It’s not all that easy becoming a mother, being a feminist. When a vulnerable little baby who must be cared for 24/7 comes into the world and only one of two parents has a pair of tits, the meaning of the word equality is redefined. But that’s just the beginning – because, let’s be honest here, most people can actually think that far before the baby comes out, and thus have the chance to prepare themselves mentally for whatever that means to them.

It’s in conversations with old friends who are now also mothers – and, if I’m honest, in inner dialogues with myself – that the really difficult stuff has surfaced. ‘I’m very happy taking most of the parental leave,’ some friends have said; ‘I want to take it, but I guess I wish he’d want to as well more than he does.’ Or, ‘It works very well for us this way, but it’s just that I feel like I should want to return to work and he should stay at home. Not for our own sake, but just because we should.’ Or, ‘I don’t want to go back, period. I want to be a full-time mother, but we just can’t afford it.’

The personal is political. We’ve all heard it. But is it?

I’m always eager to point out that my feminism isn’t militant, that I’m not interested in telling people how to live their lives. It’s about equal opportunities and obligations, about the possibility of making choices one way or another regardless of gender. And, logically, once fathers have the option to take paternity leave and mothers have the option to return to work whenever they want to, the labour market will adapt and women of child-bearing age will no longer be discriminated against because of the assumption that they will cost more than their male counterparts in the form of maternity benefits and associated costs – because men will be just as likely to do the same. Brilliant.

Well. You see where I’m going with this.

I genuinely don’t know what to make of it. I read articles that highlight that a majority of mothers want to go part-time in work or stay at home with their kids, and my political gut tells me that we can’t talk like this, that we have to recognise that these are learned patterns and nurtured behaviours, all of which can change. Then I become a mother and organise family life around flexible working-from-home commissions and my husband’s full-time salary, and talk to friends who admit that, actually, if they didn’t feel pressured into it, they probably wouldn’t go back to work for months or even years to come. They like motherhood at home. They’re modern, educated, equality-conscious women, and they don’t mind their husbands going out to work and being the bread-winners. In other words, there’s nothing there for the labour market to adapt to; status quo remains what it always was. And that’s fine for the mothers who want to and get to stay at home. Not so fine, unfortunately, for their career-minded female friends.

I say I’m not interested in telling people how to live their lives. I guess what it all comes down to at the end of the day is choice. The right-to-abortion struggle is about the right to decide, the right to choose; in regards to parenting and work, that notion is very different for men and women the way things stand. But something’s got to give: the right of fathers to go on paternity leave won’t change a thing as long as mothers refuse to return to work. And it’s easy for me to preach, because we don’t have that choice – not yet, right here, not in our situation. But that’s a very comfortable side of the equation to be on.

So if the personal really is political, is the harsh reality that in order for future generations to be treated as equals, my generation of parents has to take one for the team and give up exactly that thing we’re fighting for: the right to choose?

[Ps. Yes, oh yes, I am indeed gearing up to write a post that answers the question 'Well aren't you some hypocrite?!'. Good things come to those who wait.]

Calm down, dear. David Cameron was undeniably patronising towards female MP Angela Eagle, but there’s more to that phrase than just superiority and arrogance. I’ve done a lot of thinking lately about my own tone, particularly on online platforms like Twitter, wondering if I should indeed calm down. I’m furious with the Tories over the cuts; I’m sick to death of the widespread sexism in media; I tell brands who cement old-fashioned gender stereotypes to piss off; yes, I’m pretty sure that if you ask any of my followers on Twitter, they’ll say if not that I need to calm down then at least that I seem pretty angry a lot of the time.

So I thought to myself that maybe I should take a chill pill. Maybe this is not how deliberative politics should work, after all. Michael Kelly of The Irish Catholic certainly finds the anger a bit much: people should be able to disagree on various issues without the debate getting out of hand, he insists. We must be polite.

There you go, I thought, an Irish Catholic who has more sense than I do – I definitely need to calm the hell down. So far so good. But Kelly uses the word ‘calm’, too. Senator Ivana Bacik claimed during a hearing that the Catholic Church’s anti-abortion stance was based on sheer hatred of women, an opinion which, according to Kelly, wasn’t expressed quite calmly enough:

‘Calm? Hardly. … A gentleman is one, the old saying goes, who can disagree without being disagreeable. The same surely applies for ladies. Shrill caricatures have no place in mature debates.’

See, I don’t think this is about civilised debate.

‘Many Irish people passionately believe that gay couples ought to be allowed to get married, many others believe that marriage should be a unique institution between a man and a woman. This should be a point that people of good faith can legitimately disagree about. … Sadly, however, it usually descends into name-calling and charges of homophobia.’

This is a bit like the neoliberals who don’t like to be called neoliberal, not because they aren’t, but because the word is sometimes used in an accusatory manner. You know, thinking you have the right to tell someone what they can or can’t do simply because they’re gay is homophobic, at least in my vocabulary. Calling a spade a spade is not name-calling.

But when Cameron tells Eagle to calm down and Kelly refers to Bacik’s voice as shrill, they consciously or subconsciously evoke the idea of female hysteria. What Kelly fails to understand is that the abortion debate simply cannot be polite and civilised – that’s the nature of the debate – and this is the case with most women’s rights issues. We can disagree politely for all eternity, but politeness is not – I’m sorry, Caitlin Moran – what gave women the right to vote. Asking politely is not what changed this shocking situation in the 1970s in Ireland.

‘Any woman trying to speak about [sexting] will be greeted with a volley of “you’re just jealous as no one wants a photo of your fanny”,’ as Grace Dent put it. Or you’re not polite enough. Or you need to calm down. Or your voice is starting to sound a bit shrill. Or you’re just hysterical and need a good seeing to. ‘Too often in our political discourse reasonable voices are shouted down by shrill opponents. It’s not a sign of maturity when some voices are silenced or bullied out of the public sphere,’ says Kelly. Or, maybe, voices become shrill, loud and angry in a discourse that keeps silencing them. Because you can say a lot of things about the climate for the current abortion debate in Ireland, but you can’t say that the conservative, anti-choice voice is being bullied by a bunch of progressives in a liberal left-wing hegemony. You can try, but with only 15% women in the Dáil and a constitution that still talks about women’s duties in the home, as a middle-aged white man you’ll only sound pathetic at best. When one group starts telling another to calm down, you can be pretty sure that they’re not in any major rush to challenge the status quo.

So am I angry? No, I’m well beyond angry, and no, I won’t calm down. I’ll calm down and be polite when women are treated as equals – in political debate and in society as a whole. Until then, I’ll be as shrill as I want to be.

When you start preparing for welcoming a baby into your life, one thing is likely to get very obvious very quickly: you are a marketeer’s dream. Countless are the things an expectant parent simply must buy: from prams and cots to breast pads and nappies. And understandably, there are just as many websites out there with reviews and consumer advice and test results, aiming to guide you on your journey to parental purchasing bliss and help you make the right decision every time the wallet comes out.

I like to think that I was raised to be a good consumer. Not just that: I was raised to be a good, responsible consumer, well aware of the value of money, down to every penny. What you spend your money on matters. It’s not just about finding what you need – it’s about finding the very best of what you need. Is this exactly the thing you want? Will it last? Are you sure that you can’t get more for your money, or, more importantly, that you can’t get the same thing cheaper, elsewhere? That’s before we consider the rest of the world’s population and the way they’re affected by what you consume: are the producers of this product getting a fair price for it, and are the factory workers treated fairly, and, dear oh dear, what’s the product’s impact on the environment?

You don’t just buy a pram. You consider your situation – stairs, car seat requirements, terrain – and then the research begins. You read reviews, narrow it down to a shortlist, visit a shop to have a go, and finally weigh up budget, functionality and whatever aesthetic preferences you may have, and then you buy one. I even signed up to be a member of consumer support network Which? only to cancel my subscription a week later, just so that we would get access to the full website with its endless reviews and test results. And then, somewhere between the signing up and the cancelling and the chats with other expectant parents, I started to feel really, really tired of being the good consumer.

We do what we’re told: we look for perfection or whatever comes closest, and we happily spend plenty of both time and money to make sure that our final decision is right – because, of course, the market has taught us that once a decision is made, we are responsible forever and ever, amen. We’re pretty much even responsible if the bloody thing breaks, because whatever you think about the manufacturer, we should have done our research more thoroughly. And as we bought our not-particularly-expensive pram, having done our research and realised that you don’t necessarily get more for your money just because you go with the premium brand, I thought of the not-so-good consumers.

There are people out there who have never heard of Which?, and whose gut doesn’t tell them to read a handful of reviews before committing to a brand. There are people without internet access, and people who can’t even read. There are plenty of people who buy what the adverts tell them to buy, and many who are convinced that the more expensive the product, the better it is. And then, of course, there are those who can just about afford the cheapest of the very cheap, regardless of whether it suits their needs or not. Somewhere between their need to buy a product and the delivery of it at their door, the logic of the market goes just a little bit askew, whether due to imperfect information or consumers who simply aren’t anywhere near rational enough, and it all starts to feel a bit like foul play.

I’m sick of being the good consumer, and I’m sick of the hierarchy it creates as the good consumers who choose Strada sneer at those who go to McDonald’s. Sure, we did all the research, and we’re very happy with our pram. But what about all that time we spent comparing one brand to another? What about that sense of disappointment as you realise that maybe, possibly somebody else’s choice was just that tiny bit better? What about this never-ending search for perfection, this idea that if we try hard enough and do it right we can get exactly what we want, all the time? What about that insecurity that drives us to try harder and harder and harder in a never-ending race towards something we’ve learnt to imagine as better, prettier, happier? Who’s to blame when it fails to deliver?

I’m sick of the society that says that consumerism, when done right, leads to perfection. No, actually, I’m sick of the society that puts so much emphasis on perfection in the first place that consumption society can work at all. What would happen if instead we stopped agonising so much and bought something that just seemed fine?

So 2012 came and went quicker than quick and kicked 2011′s arse big style. It’s an understatement to say that a lot happened this year, but in brief, here’s how I’ve been:

Pregnant. Up the duff with a bang from day one. Nervous, scared shitless and in denial, but healthy, surprisingly energetic and completely free from morning sickness. And it lasted. It lasted – all the way until the very end!

Pensive. I started the year by writing one essay about the professionalisation of politics and another about branding of political parties and third sector organisations. Came to the conclusion that it’s all neo-liberalism’s fault. Continued by writing an essay on cultural citizenship, a rhetorical analysis of a speech by Olof Palme, and a dissertation on media representations of citizenship. Came to the conclusion that it’s all neo-liberalism’s fault. Started planning a revolution. Sort of.

Effective. How on earth I did all of the above while bringing in money as a freelance translator and copywriter, most of the time without even feeling stressed, I really don’t know. I think I deserve a medal or something.

Shocked. The pregnancy ended and out came Eddie: alert, breathing, unbelievably beautiful. And I was in bits (quite literally). Spent the first week to ten days in complete shock.

Overwhelmed. Spent the rest of the year overwhelmed: by tiredness, love, physical pain, more love, confusion and deep gratitude; by the fact that this little boy was my son; that the nights were nowhere near as difficult as I had imagined but the days so much harder; that a person you’ve known just weeks can make you cry tears of sheer joy and love and tears of tiredness and frustration almost at the same time; that the love for a person you’ve known and loved for years can deepen so much and so suddenly when you watch him become a father; that life can change so fundamentally in just one moment. I was, and still am, completely overwhelmed. In a lovely, exhausting, amazing way.

Delighted. I got my master’s degree, and I got it with a big fat distinction. Celebrated by wearing a funny hat whilst breastfeeding.

Angry. Read about Savita and the case in India and felt my blood boil. Watched this, felt all kinds of buttons being pushed, and started planning a revolution. Again. Sort of.

Happy. As Eddie approached three months, things started falling into place (a little bit – and I emphasise, a little bit). We brought him to Sweden and got to meet his beautiful cousin Ida, and then to Ireland, where Eddie was introduced to anyone that’s ever known his father, pretty much. We came back home to celebrate Christmas with the best of the brilliant, auntie Aoife and uncle Johnny, and I started working again while the rain poured down outside.

Here we are now, ready to welcome a new year: healthy, relatively rested, and very, very lucky. What a difference a year makes. (Now where’s that revolution?)

I don’t quite know what to say about Savita’s death. I’m lost for words, but I have to say something, because silence is acceptance, and acceptance is condonation. I wrote, fuelled by anger and frustration, about the Irish abortion laws a while ago, and I think that post explains pretty well how pathetic I think any excuse not to legislate in the wake of Savita’s death would be. I don’t need to write that post again.

I need to add, though, that I’ve been uncomfortable with some of the debate that’s taken place since that post was written. Some pretty powerful campaigns were carried out, and some very admirable efforts were taken to bring this debate back onto a mainstream media platform – and quite successfully so – but all these progressive voices had one thing in common: the word ‘if’.

Taking on the pro-life forces in Ireland is a huge challenge, I realise that. Yet, I find it hard to accept that this has been allowed to compromise the message of the pro-choice, or I should say pro-choice-if, campaigns. The conservative Catholic heritage appears to be so powerful that no one dares to get down to the core of the issue and say that choice must be about a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body, no matter what. The so-called progressive voice has had to settle for bite-sized baby steps, working hard to bring into force legislation that legalises abortion in very extreme cases, if…

Every little helps. Of course. And this is what the women in the Guardian article I mentioned in the aforementioned post understandably argued: they should have had the right to terminate their pregnancies, because they were already deemed futile – their babies were incompatible with life. This is what some will argue in the wake of Savita’s death, too: one should have the right to terminate a pregnancy that is already about to end, if the mother’s life is in danger. Abortion per se, then, is still considered morally wrong; there is no choice to talk about, after all.

Going from the current embarrassing state of affairs to one where abortion is legal and accepted might seem impossible. I understand that. I’m just not sure the debate, in its current shape, is doing much good. It’s a tough challenge for pro-choice campaigners, but right now we’re only beating around the bush.

We need to talk about the fact that the Irish government still thinks it has the right to control women’s bodies. And we need to talk about the fact that, as a result of this, women are dying. Now, if the government is in control and people die, who should we hold responsible?

‘Pretty in pink’ and ‘Cool dudes in blue’ read two of the three headlines in my first ever mailout from Mamas & Papas. High on excitement about becoming a parent, I had somehow gone and allowed myself to hope that it wouldn’t be like this, that things really can’t be quite as bad as they seem. The mailout, then, came like a slap in the face of my ideas about gender-neutral parenting, and I tweeted Mamas & Papas and told them to grow up and piss off. Needless to say, they didn’t respond.

A friend did respond, though, saying something along the lines of ‘no shit, they’re still playing that stupid colour game’. No shit. And sure, it is hilarious that in 2012 you still can’t go to a kids’ clothes shop without being told that it’s great that you know that it’s a boy so that you can stock up on blues and forget all about the yellows and other in-betweens. It’s laughable that Mothercare, despite having a non-gendered newborn tab in their drop-down menu for baby clothes, feel the need to add a caption below the picture of babygros in pink saying ‘for girls’ – just to make sure you don’t misunderstand and, god forbid, buy pink clothes for your unborn son. But it’s not about the colours, really, is it? I’d happily dress my baby boy in head-to-toe blues, even if it happens to be one of my least favourite colours. Frankly, I think good parenting is about much more than fashion.

But what’s in a colour? ‘Pretty in pink’ and ‘Cool dudes in blue,’ read the headlines. And no, it wasn’t the colours per se that made me explode in a tweet. The colours, of course, are just signifiers for gender stereotypes and the expectations we put on little girls and boys of what they should grow up to be. Dress your girl in pink as much as you like: it’s not until you start telling her how pretty she is that you really start to tell her what matters. When your son is labelled as ‘tough,’ it’s no longer about the colour of his t-shirt. And as Mamas & Papas describe your daughter as ‘precious’ and your little boy’s jeans as ‘durable,’ we’ve gone way beyond fashion as simply a visual experience.

Last year, it was discovered that Lindex, a big Swedish high street chain, produced clothes for boys that were bigger than the same size clothes for girls, despite using ‘centilong,’ a size directly related to the height of the child in centimetres. The rationale, a Lindex staff member explained, was that boys like to mess around more and need loose-fitted clothes. In other words, parents can’t be trusted to know their own children and decide how tight-fitted clothes they need; instead, a boy centimetre was made bigger than a girl centimetre. Pure logic.

So boys need durable, loose-fitted clothes, because they mess around; softer fabrics will tear, and tighter clothes will be restrictive. Girls, the implication becomes, are calm and quiet. And as a friend warned us that boys can be a handful as toddlers, more so than girls, I realised that this is a widespread preconception.

I’ve been told countless times since having my son that boys are more ‘hard work’ than girls, and that may be true – I really don’t know, and frankly I don’t care. I may be of the belief that we are pretty good at living up to society’s expectations of us, and that even kids become a lot like what people tell them they should be, but the thing is that even if I’m wrong, even if the majority of boys are born louder, messier and more active than girls, there will always be exceptions. There will be bold, lively girls and calm, quiet boys – so why the need to tell them to change, to presume that deep down they’re not naturally like that? Why the need to make them feel inadequate only because of their gender?

I don’t know what happens when we tell boys that they are tough and cool, but I can guess. I don’t know how girls respond to being complimented on their looks, but research on body image tells a tale. ‘Pretty in pink’ and ‘Cool dudes in blue’? Grow up and piss off, Mamas & Papas.

It’s not in my nature not to do things properly. In fact, it’s the complete opposite of almost everything in my nature to do anything any way other than as close to perfect as is humanly (or, sometimes, super-humanly) possible. But here’s the deal: I’ve got the urge to blog, but my site is in a state of incompleteness and imperfection, and I don’t have the time to sort it out; and what more is, whether I blog or not, the last thing I want is for my son to grow up thinking that only near-perfection is good enough if he wants his pedantic mother’s approval (because obviously he has no way of knowing that I expect myself to be a lot more perfect than I expect others to be).

What I’m saying here, in a long-winded way, is that I’ve decided to continue blogging: not elsewhere or differently or in any specific way at all, but I’ve got the urge, so I will blog. Maybe with time this blog will take the shape of a so-called ‘mammy blog’, albeit political and at times radical in nature, or maybe it will cease to mirror that part of my life entirely, becoming instead a place of a mixture of escapism and holding on to another side of me, to self-expression, activism and reflection; I don’t know.

For now, I’ll just blog: one post at a time, on an incomplete, confused, directionless website. I’m doing it purely for me, and in some roundabout way for my son, but you are very welcome to read it – if you want to.

May the blogging commence.

When stand-up comedian Eleanor Tiernan wrote about sexism against men, it was welcomed as interesting and refreshing, as a new perspective. Enough of all this nagging about sexism against women: here’s a different take on things. Maybe because it’s “a bit subtle” or “easy to miss”, the author guessed.

Tiernan describes how TV adverts continuously portray men as stupid, messy, unreliable and lazy, and draws the conclusion that women are made out to be superior to them. Her problem with this is the rationale behind the adverts, which she assumes must be the belief that women, who stand for the majority of purchasing decisions, will be so thrilled to be paid a compliment that they will rush out to buy whatever product is being advertised to them. It’s patronising, basically, and what more is, this approach is essentially sexism against women in disguise as it assigns an ugly, judgemental tone to women. And we’re not like that.

I’m glad that I came across this piece, because it gives me the perfect opportunity to make a point I’ve been meaning to make for a while now: that feminism is not a war between the sexes.

It happens all the time: you say something about the prevalence of body-image anxiety amongst women, and someone feels the need to emphasise that it’s not men putting that pressure on women, but women themselves. You talk about the glass ceiling, and someone highlights that women are bitches who can’t and don’t want to work together. You mention the huge, and increasing, pay gap between women and men, and you can be sure that women’s own choices of poorly-paid career paths will come up. But the point is that it’s never quite that simple, because the problem goes much deeper than the choice of one person or the behaviour of one sex. Nobody is trying to point the blame on men, so there’s no need to feel accused and offended. As Tiernan writes at an insightful moment: “Pitting the genders against each other will not bring us closer to enlightenment.” Damn right it won’t.

Feminism is not about superiority and inferiority; it’s about gender stereotypes that cement a set of ideas that underpin our entire way of living. And no, Tiernan, they’re neither subtle or easy to miss. They’re blatantly obvious, and they affect all of us – men and women.

In fact, the portrayal of men as hapless, childish and irresponsible (not to mention that of fathers as simply absent) fits incredibly well with the depiction of women as constantly in control and the wish to make them try to live up to this perfectionist ideal. The notion of men as so uncivilised and infantile that they can’t even take responsibility for their own actions and control their own urges is unfortunately all too evident in laws related to rape and sexual assault as well as in the huge majority of such court cases that have ever taken place, and yes, together with the idea of the always stressed, omniscient wife of his, this male stereotype does a pretty good job of creating a lifestyle norm that is neither healthy nor fair – but which stimulates consumption. Just look at the adverts currently put out by P&G, one of the official sponsors of the London Olympics (and self-proclaimed “proud sponsor of mums”): I’d be as pissed off if I were a father as I am as a mother-to-be.

It’s not, I’m sad to say, in any way ground-breaking that sexism against men is all around us. It’s part of a much bigger picture, and we’ve got plenty of reasons to reject the brands behind it that are much more important than some notion of it being patronising to women. It’s not us against them, it’s not about superiority, and nobody wins because sexism is directed at someone else. The patriarchy and its gender stereotypes are patronising and unfair to all of us, and that’s what feminism really is about.