Pretty in pink
I am turning into a girly-girl. This is worrying, because for as long as I can remember I have been an ardent feminist. I used to get very indignant as a child when the rag doll Looby Loo secretly cleared up after Teddy and Andy Pandy had retired, knackered, for a sleep in the picnic basket. Why would she even think of doing that? A few years later in the 1960s, however, I was a real Miss World fan. In our tiny primary school, we used to play Miss World in the playground. I was always a Scandinavian contestant who, although blonde and beautiful, disgraced herself by tripping over. I thought it added a bit more character, a bit more interest, to the role. I didn’t think the two viewpoints were mutually exclusive. You could have beauty as well as brains and I always went for the underdog. Girl power. What I didn’t like was the traditional perception that a woman’s place was in the home where she looked after the children and did the housework. And nothing else. That independent s...