Bradley Manning, Nigella Lawson and my Mum

This is a super speedy off the cuff blog post about something my Mum said the other day. Groundbreaking stuff! It was a fairly innocuous comment, but it left me with some questions. Whilst flicking through the newspaper, she came across a photo of a pre-divorce Nigella Lawson looking pretty glum. To be fair to Mum, Nigella looked extremely world weary, with a furrowed brow and teary eyes. Then came the comment:

"Oh, look at Nigella's sad face," said Mum.

This would have been a perfectly acceptable comment, were it not for the picture of Bradley Manning on the opposite page. Manning looked haggard, thin, ill even, staring into nowhere and awaiting a predicted sentence of around 136 years. The juxtaposition of the two lives (sensitive work by The Daily Mail, as ever) is almost farcical. Both images arguably depict lives falling apart, but the difference in context is almost unimaginable. A divorce, and a whole life taken away in the name of 'justice'. Despite that, for my Mum, it was Nigella's expression that drew out an expression of sympathy. I was outraged, and spouted an ill-advised holier-than-thou remark about the fact that she seemed to care about something that, to me, wasn't important. I couldn't understand how the sheer tragedy of Manning's story had been bypassed for a gritty paparazzi shot of a celeb.

Once I stopped being so melodramatic, I realised that the whole thing was just an example of the way in which everyone feels sympathy and sadness differently - a relatively simplistic epiphany, really. Mum clearly had much more sympathy, even empathy, with a woman her age having a difficult time over marital or familial issues, not unlike many people my Mum may know, or be friends with. It's nigh on impossible to empathise with someone who is probably going to be in prison for the rest of his life, sentenced with a number of years impossible to complete. The situation almost becomes abstract, so far away from anything the average person normally encounters, and involving systems well beyond my understanding at least. It's reminiscent of Stalin's much quoted words about deaths and statistics. Manning will essentially a death sentence - he has certainly already lost a chunk of his life, but the attachment of a potential 136 years to his charge is almost unimaginable. Many of us will have witnessed a messy divorce, few of us will understand the consequences of the Bradley Manning trial, or the alleged "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" he suffered during his year in solitary confinement. 

I feel bad for Nigella, obviously, but I can't really explain what I feel for Bradley Manning. Perhaps I reacted emotively to his image out of a sense of obligation - I've followed the case, I disagree vehemently with his treatment, I feel a strong sense of injustice. However, I think it is more than that. I cannot understand how someone in his position must be feeling, but a photo of anyone in his situation is enough to inspire some educated guesswork - lonely, afraid, tired. We've probably never had cause to feel like Manning does, but any level of basic human empathy Without the context of their stories, both images could easily evoke these emotions, and in the case of me and Mum, they did. I suppose that means it all comes down to what you know, what you believe and what you experience. I'm fairly sure that Mum feels bad about Manning, but she's well within her rights to think of Nigella first, even if I berate her from my high horse for doing so. Sympathy is relative, and empathy unpredictable. And I am still confused by Mum.

Bradley Manning
Credit: Daily Mail















Nigella Lawson
Credit: Daily Mail

'Life and Style', and the myth of women's journalism

For all the lefty-liberal and progressive qualities of The Guardian, there is one element of its online design that seems oddly archaic, and a little unsettling. In the grand scheme of women's rights it isn't exactly at the forefront of our problems, but nevertheless it strikes me as odd, and got me thinking. My question is this: why, oh why, is the women's section of the newspaper tucked away in 'Life and Style'? 

'Life and Style' is a weirdly nebulous part of any news or magazine publication, generally containing high quality photographs of the latest fashionable pan-something dish, pseudo-scientific articles on whether vitamins actually work, and passionate arguments for why this new style of yoga really will change your life. The sections tend to be a mix of tips and trends, with a pinch of celeb gossip and the occasional link to dating sites and the like. I don't mean to describe these features pejoratively; they form light reading in most newspapers and they are what they are. It's just that they don't exactly fall under hard hitting news, unlike a lot of the pieces that are featured in the 'Women' sub-section. The Guardian tabs (see below) arguably suggest that the Women sub-section contains articles that are only as important as those of 'Fashion' or 'Food', or if we were to be really fussy (and why shouldn't we be) suggest that they are less important, due to their placing. Just as Culture and Sport come after the News on the main page, Women come after other more significant sections. 

It should be said at this point that a) I love The Guardian, and b) it's certainly not the only publication guilty of struggling to find an apt place for a women's section. Although The Telegraph place their Women section alongside the other main sections of the newspaper, the frankly hilarious page title "Wonder Women" is suggestive of an ideal readership of multi-tasking, stiletto wearing power Mums shouting "I can have it all!", baby monitor in one hand and Blackberry in the other. That may have been a bit of a tirade, but it's more than a little patronising, and Theresa May was staring from under the headlines at me during writing so I was immediately ticked off. In comparison to the Daily Mail's 'Femail', both The Telegraph and The Guardian are positively saintly in their representation of women - at least both contain comment pieces on the most important women's issues of the moment, i.e. online sexism, female campaigns. As we can see in the snapshot below, the Femail section contains a huge advert for WeightWatchers (you are too fat, Femail readers), an article about Gwyneth Paltrow, and the new trend of nipple surgery. 

At least The Guardian do not automatically assume that its female readers will be interested in babies and weddings, or for that matter, assume that readers of the opposite gender will not. The Mail however seem to be using their Femail section to perpetuate and encode a stereotype of womanhood that many female journalists are explicitly fighting against. 

It is perhaps not the paper that's the problem, but the idea of a "women's section" to begin with - a place for female journalism, directed at female readers. Criticising a space for women to share their views and read about issues affecting them may sound a little counter-intuitive, but the fact is, this kind of marginalisation is outdated. Thirty years ago a women's section would have been a breakthrough in the media, and rightly so, but surely we are now living in an age where women's news is mainstream news, the subjects important to everyone regardless of gender. For example, within The Guardian's women section is a subsection for feminism - a movement now commonly regarded to be the business of anyone who cares for equal rights, no matter what sex they are or which gender they identify with. 

To be fair to The Guardian their stories can be tagged under any section, as former Guardian IA Martin Belam kindly pointed out to me, and there is a subsection for women under News. However, the branch of Life and Style still sends out a bad message. Although it may initially seem strange when newspapers and magazines don't have a women's section, it actually means that stories which could be interpreted as by females and for females have actually been assimilated into the mainstream sections and editorials to which they belong. Before writing this piece I (being a complete wannabe journo-geek) asked feminist author and writer Laurie Penny for her opinion on the matter, to which she gave a crackingly succinct response, noting that these type of sections cover 

"'Women's-issues journalism' or, as I like to call it, 'journalism'."

And therein lies the whole point of this issue - there is no such thing as women's journalism. Indeed, articles such as the many recent ones on Twitter abuse, misogyny and campaigns such as No More Page Three are of as much importance to men as they are to women, and in many cases are supported by men as well as women. These issues are universal, and so maybe newspapers should consider treating them as such.