After a cup of strong black coffee, I force myself to look at the Daily Mail every morning.
Before you start pelting me with rotten tomatoes, I read it to keep up with what the fabled Middle England thinks of benefits ‘scroungers’. And disabled people. And single mums. And mums who only have one child. I could go on. Knowledge is power.
Anyway, my particular gripe today is their ‘Femail’ section, published each Thursday. Here’s a selection of last week’s illuminating articles:
- The couple who say the secret of a happy marriage is NOT having children – selfish and deluded or just honest?
- The nun who ached to have a baby.
- Would you let your man pack your holiday case?
- I’m anorexic but love Bake Off.
- Simple tricks to look 10 years younger.
- The real reason you’re stressed….SUGAR.
- The new parenting fad experts fear could KILL your baby.
- The five shoes every woman should own.
- Quicker chores.
If this is a snapshot of today’s modern woman, just hand me a bottle of Fairy Liquid and chain me to the kitchen sink in protest. Apart from the fact it’s truly astounding we even have a dedicated women’s section in a national newspaper (we can’t handle the proper news, eh?), this section consistently rams home the same old dreary message week after week: all women (even nuns) want children, and if they don’t, there’s something wrong with them. All mothers need expert guidance, or we could kill our babies.
We also all want to lose weight (either that or we’re at the anorexic end of the spectrum), look younger, need tips for whizzing through the housework faster, presumably to allow us more time to affectionately tease our ‘men’ when we let them pack our suitcases for us only to sigh at their helpless, endearing incompetence. Men, eh?
The subtext message is even more sinister than just wanting to keep us in a Prozac-ed version of the 1950’s. The paper consistently pits women against each other – who can forget the Samantha Brick ‘I’m so beautiful’ furore? We might laugh at this ridiculous newspaper, although their ‘experts’ could quite feasibly claim too much laughter leads to cellulite (here’s 10 top tips to deal with this orange-peeled menace!), but the fact is, The Daily Fail has a daily readership of over 4 million and their website has over 100 million unique visitors a month.
Don’t ask my opinion though, I’m far too busy whipping up a tasty meal for my man. Oh. I don’t have a man. Maybe it’s the cellulite?