A Load of Arse

I intended to write a rousing piece about the irony of squeezing past chauffeur driven cars around the back of the Intercontinental Hotel to join a demonstration calling for borders to be open and a small part of our wealth being given to those in need.  It would have been full of inspirational moments of human kindness and the euphoria of a crowd bolstered by Corbyn’s sweeping victory.   It would have been profound and more beautifully written that what’s coming, but I've chosen instead to write about what happened at a motorway service station on our way back from the demonstration; I should warn you there’s a lot of arse. 

 

My partner doesn’t think about her clothes; I am vanity incarnate and feel self-conscious if I haven’t plucked my moustache hairs before setting my face on the public, but she gloriously doesn’t give a shit.  I would say it’s a defiant feminist and lesbian statement, but to be honest, I just don’t think what she looks like occurs to her.  It’s one of the many reasons I love her.

So, I was ranting at the lack of independent cafes in service stations and pretending to choke on my evil capitalist Costa-fortune tea and my partner was languidly sipping her coffee.  At this juncture, I should point out, I am a petite and feminine 33 year old, though on first glance I look considerably younger (in the past people regularly thought my business partners have been my dad).  My partner looks much younger that her 31 years, and consequently regularly gets asked for ID and spoken to as if she’s an educationally subnormal child.  I suspect this is in part why what happened happened; if we were a straight couple who looked more obviously like thirty-something professionals I am sure my partner’s dress would have been left for her man to oversee.  Alternatively, if she were a man, I doubt it would’ve been worthy of comment.

An older woman, I guess in her 60’s walked over to us from where she’d been sitting inside.  In a conspiratorial gesture, she put her hand on my partner’s shoulder and said to her,

‘I hope you don’t mind, and I don’t mean to embarrass you, but people have been talking.  Your trousers have slipped down and your behind is on show, they’ve been laughing about you.’

Instinctively, my partner pulled up her trousers, though there was a mere sliver of skin showing; it was hardly a builders’ full moon.  I sat there mute, trying to understand whether the stranger was genuinely concerned about my partner’s dignity and wondering who the apparent chimps were that deemed a spot of skin something so worthy of hilarity.  My partner muttered something polite and flushed as the woman shuffled off.

Too late, all the things we should have said fell into our minds, namely ‘who are these hoards of prudish morons and why didn’t you address their behaviour not a stranger’s clothing?’ and many other less coherent things to the tune of ‘fuck off and mind your own business.’

Something about it, that oh-so feminine ‘between us girls’ took me straight back to school.  I am pleased and proud that I went to a girls’ school, but I remember with horror the policing of one another’s behaviour along strict codes of feminine behaviour; the shaming and impossible balance between ‘too much make-up’ or else daring not to make an effort and looking like (whisper it) ‘a lesbian.’   If I’ve tucked my skirt into my pants (which I do with surprising regularity) and someone kindly points it out that’s one thing, but shaming a stranger’s body is quite another.  I don’t think it’s misogynistic of me to point out that women are often instrumental in shaming other women for ‘unfeminine’ behaviour.  At the most extreme, this is adult women perpetrating FGM on girls to make them acceptable, and at the milder end are the endless vitriolic ‘look at her flab’ comments that sell celebrity magazines.

Anyway, I wrote this because I was surprised at how angry it made me, clearly it tapped into something much deeper, that all of us live with all the time.  This tiny incident reminded me of how prescriptive and narrow acceptability still is for women; in the cafe we were surrounded by male football fans, shouting and spilling over chairs with a liberal display of hairy arse cracks.  It made me all the more resolute that I will not be complicit in the shaming of women for what they decide to wear or what they look like.  Shame on you motorway service station woman!