THE WOMEN’S NETWORK AND UON FEMINISTS PRESENT !
THE CONFIDENCE ISSUE
Contents !
2 A Letter from the Editor 3 Women’s Officer Blog 4 ‘What is a Feminist?’ Video Campaign 5 Confidence is… 6 Outside In 7 Confidence 8 Inspirational Women 9-10 Whatever happened to Solidarity Sister? 11 The Jumper Goddess 12 Domestic Abuse 13-14 Finding the Line 15 Stuck in our Stereotype 16 Who’s to blame? 17-18 An Interview with Ellie McWilliam 19-20 Yoncé 21 The Perils of Social Media 22 Send Her Away 23-24 The Confidence to Speak 25 The Search 26 Comfort Zone
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A Letter from the Editor 27/01/14
! I’ll start with a big thank you to everyone who picked up a copy of ‘The F Word’ last term. The response was absolutely fantastic and really inspired me to get going with the next one. So, less than two months later, here we are again with our second zine – The Confidence Issue. I chose the theme of confidence because I think it’s a really important issue that we’ll all encounter or are required to embrace during our time at University. Being confident often forces us into situations that might be intimidating or unexpected but they enable us to become stronger, more ambitious people. The aim of the zine was to celebrate female confidence as something powerful and liberating. It shouldn’t be turned against us or undermined by other men or women through labels such as loud, cocky, slutty, demanding or whiny. Confidence allows us to challenge the stereotype that we, as women are often reduced to and to realise our potential. I wanted to encourage women at Nottingham to be more confident but also to highlight it as something entirely subjective, not the skinny, airbrushed women we see in magazines. We all embrace confidence at different levels and in very different ways. The pieces that have been submitted reflect how everyone identifies with it a little differently. Hopefully they will also inspire you to be confident in ways you perhaps hadn’t thought of before. So, a huge thank you to everyone that sent in something. Look out for the submissions call for the next zine, which will follow on from this issue by looking at topics relating to bodies and sex. If you would like to help out or submit something then please do get in touch with us at wnzineteam@outlook.com In the meantime, find us on Facebook and Twitter at: University of Nottingham Women’s Network and @UoNSU_Womens UoN Feminists and @UoNFeminists
Rachael Cooney Editor
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Women’s Officer Blog #2 By Krishna Shah
! Last term the Women’s Network attended and hosted some extremely exciting events. As part of our F-Word day we hosted ‘Speed-dating with the F-Word’, an introduction to Feminism and Gender Inequality. Emma Maraio, Zaimal Azad and Jem Bloomfield came to speak; sparking a discussion on women-only spaces, intersectonality and men getting involved with feminism. We were so pleased that so many people attended and had so much to say! In the evening we headed down to The Ropewalk for the unveiling of the Women’s Network and UoN Feminists zine. We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who contributed to the creation of something so fantastic. Nina and I were so inspired by the submissions and a special thanks to Rachael Cooney and the Zine team! We are currently in the process of planning and filming a Women in Leadership video, as part of a wider Women in Leadership campaign. It will showcase some of the amazing women in positions of leadership at the University and also highlight the need for more women in positions of influence. We are also planning a week of workshops on chairing meetings, public speaking and support for running in elections. Nina and I are proud to announce that Kelly Temple, the NUS Women’s Officer will be running one of these workshops! They th will take place on the week commencing the 10 February. Remember if you are thinking of running for the position of Women’s Officer, don’t hesitate to email us about the role. A personal goal for us was to campaign on ‘Lad Culture’ at the university. Women’s Network are beginning by collecting data on your experiences of culture whilst at University that will then feed back into the campaign. the stories you tell are 100% anonymous, though we may quote them campaigns. Look out for the survey link on Facebook.
The lad All in
Finally, we are very excited to be collaborating again with UoN Feminists in order to launch our Everyday Sexism Facebook and Twitter pages. As always don’t hesitate to get in touch or to get involved in any way with what we do. Email us at suwomensofficer@nottingham.ac.uk or go to Facebook and Twitter for regular updates. Krishna
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“What is a feminist?” By Francesca Garforth This is one of the questions that UoN Feminists posed to over sixty students of the University of Nottingham last term. The campaign aimed to get students thinking about the definition of feminism and to discover whether UoN students had a pre-conceived idea about what feminism is. There are a vast number of struggles and inequalities on a feminist’s To Do list: the image of women in modern marketing; female genital mutilation, unequal representation in government; archaic attitudes to rape and domestic violence…. and we’re barely scratching the surface. However, standing up to these crimes against humanity is made even harder as the most common way to dismiss a women’s rights activist is to smack them in the face with their stereotype. To smear a feminist with the ignorant image of a bra-burning, man-hating, squawking mess can be the ultimate put-down. As this image has been perpetuated by the media for the last hundred years, when the ‘What is a feminist?” campaign was in the planning stages most of us did not know what to expect. However, the answers we got were personal, surprising, funny, intelligent, inspiring, and for the most part positive. The overwhelming message that came through, for us, was one of encouragement for the feminist movement today. UoN Feminists would like to thank each person again for sharing your views with us. We took the hours of footage we had accumulated and edited it down into a fourminute video. The interviews were too good not to share and it seems others think the same – the video currently has over 35000 views on Youtube and has been shared by the No More Page Three campaign, Lillian Greenwood (MP for Nottingham South) and Crisis Nottingham among others. It also featured in a Telegraph article about student feminism written by UoN Feminist, Emma Pearce. We hope that the video inspires you with the confidence to brush off that ignorant person who uses a feminist stereotype against you. The pigeonholing of feminists is becoming more obsolete as the movement grows, constantly proving that the voice of feminism isn’t gender specific, race specific, or class specific; it is made up on individuals.
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Confidence is‌ !
red lipstick!
knowledge!
being strong-minded! laughter !
empowerment!
determination !positivity!
eye-contact being ! unafraid!
originality !
feeling attractive!
dancing !
strength!
sensible shoes! mascara!
inspiring !
Not caring what people think!
no-makeup!
circumstantial!
powerful !
sexy!
! public speaking! happiness bravery !
faith in yourself!
Buried in our appearances!
self-belief! age!
subjective ! Intelligence ! beautiful!
being comfortable in your !own skin ! success! self-assurance! a haircut!
being carefree!
heels! being fearless! ambition! !
how we are perceived by others !
a tan !
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honesty!
Outside In By Rachael Cooney
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I asked some of my friends what confidence meant to them and the answers are displayed on the previous page. Many listed inner qualities such as ‘ambition’, ‘fearlessness’, ‘strength’, and ‘knowledge’. However, most answers referred to our physical appearances, from ‘being comfortable in your own skin’ and ‘feeling attractive’ to ‘red lipstick’, ‘a tan’ or ‘no makeup’. Though we tend to associate confidence with these inner qualities that we possess or aim to possess, actually our confidence is often rooted in and determined by our physical appearance. Though we may be determined, highly ambitious or very intelligent, often these valuable traits are undermined by worries regarding our looks. Sadly, there is no escaping the fact that our culture prioritises the aesthetic; we are constantly thinking about and judged on how we look. Our confidence levels ultimately stem from how much we adhere to the norm, the ideal that has been ingrained within us; that beauty is tall and skinny with delicate features and flawless skin. Most of us spend a large proportion of our daily lives conforming to this concept of beauty, whether it’s applying make-up, wearing the trends, shaving our legs or exercising; all because, it helps to make us feel more confident. During her recent stint in the Australian jungle, Olympic champion, Rebecca Adlington confessed her bodily insecurities as she compared herself to the former Miss Britain Amy Willerton. In an interview for the Times, Adlington said ‘I will always be insecure and I will always look in the mirror and wish I was a pretty girl.’ Adlington’s four Olympic medals, that represent her determination, her strength and her fearlessness, are clearly not enough to overcome her physical insecurities or maintain her confidence. So I question; can we ever be truly confident if we are not happy with our physical appearance? Further, are we ever completely happy with our physical appearance? It’s all right having beautiful women like Mila Kunis and Miranda Kerr telling us that it’s what’s on the inside that counts or that confidence is knowing who we are. As a part of the tiny minority deemed aesthetically perfect by society, of course confidence is as simple as ‘knowing who we are’. For the rest of us, in particular those for whom confidence doesn’t come all that naturally, it seems we must learn to love ourselves first, and thus our appearance, in order to obtain inner strength and a sense of fearlessness. Yet, we cannot continue to accept the judgement that men thrust upon us, and in turn we must stop imposing judgement on each other and on ourselves.
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! Confidence By Georgia Howard-Merril I am not here to share my wisdom as a self-professed hero of self-confidence. Despite appearing to be a confident, talkative kind of gal, as I’m sure many people reading this are, my confidence takes blows on a weekly, daily, even hourly basis. Often this will be because I’m not meeting expectations or ranking, on my own scale of “bad at living” to “pretty awesome at life”. Nevertheless, I feel that after several years of inquiry and a bit of soul searching, I’ve accepted some inalienable truths about my body and what makes me feel confident. I won’t deny I have amused myself on multiple occasions applying makeup and tittering at absurd lipstick names. But, there are some things about the beauty industry I find increasingly disturbing. It is a “colour her feminine” system, in which expectations are made of females to strive for an unattainable level of upkeep and perfection. There is an undeniable pressure for women to buy into the image of what it is to be female. Depressingly, with this comes a suggestion that there is something innately wrong with our bodies, or why else would we constantly need to keep them under control?! It’s almost as if, at its most extreme, women are denying themselves attributes that make them human. Body hair, pores and a few burst capillaries are just the freebies of life! No wonder the Internet is rife with young women channelling hatred for their physical appearance. They ought to be reminded that things have been skewed for a while now; Botticelli made up a hell a lot of stuff when he painted his image of Venus, because what women post puberty naturally looks like that? I like to focus on something my sister tells me; gender, unlike sex, is a social and cultural construction, not a biological one. So, there are no real rules in terms of how to look and hold ones-self. I am not suggesting it is imperative that we abandon personal hygiene but that we find our own routine: our own happy medium. There is nothing gained by denying women the pleasure of wanting to look and smell good, nor should it be suspect to feminists! To suggest that all women should throw away their mascara would take the women’s movement back to the Stone Age! We don’t want to crush female sexuality, choice or suggest that female maintenance is something of decadence. That would be neither constructive nor very perceptive. I want to stress the importance of not submerging yourself in the idea of a quest for perfection. As hard as it may be to address, there is a sure fire connection between admitting ones vulnerabilities and confidence. Writer Susan Brown Miller says she’d like to accept a body of authenticity – a “map of human 7 experience”. That is a view I respect!
By Hannah Eachus
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!!
Whatever sister’?
happened
to
‘solidarity,
By Becky Fearn Last month, in the Christmas special of Channel 4 hit Made in Chelsea, viewers witnessed Victoria Baker-Harber tell Cheska Hull (after a series of vile insults relating to her appearance) to ‘stop opening your f***ing fat mouth you f***ing fat turkey’. To say that this is an example of terrible female behaviour and bullying tactics only just scratches the surface. Aside from presenting a whole spectrum of other problems, this scene surely proved that even in the age of female empowerment, independence and supposed solidarity, women can still be pretty awful to each other. Whether you love or loathe the show, and whether there was indeed some very questionable editing that took place here, those toxic words still escaped from Baker-Harber’s mouth: a woman of apparent intelligence, sophistication and with 25 years of life experience under her belt. The worst thing about what Baker-Harber said was that it was a deliberate tactic used to humiliate Cheska about her looks and weight in front of her friends and peers. Unfortunately, this is evidence that the undermining of a woman’s confidence can often come from the words and actions of another woman. Let me just point out that I am not, by any means, inferring that all women are like this. But whilst the majority of women I know and have met wouldn’t dream of ‘doing a Victoria’, and are kind and good people, it’s still true that there are a select few dragging us down. I guess we’ve all been there in one sense or another. Many of us were bullied about our appearances in school (I was branded the girl with big teeth and a super skinny frame – a word that in my opinion, is not ok) and some of us may even be ashamed to say that we were on the other end of things. But I guess in a way we were just children, and we can provide all the excuses as to why as children we didn’t know better. But we’re grown up now, we do know better, and there are no excuses: It’s time to stop knocking each other’s confidence.
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‘In order to allow others to grow in confidence, we must be women, !and empower rather than belittle.’
! ! I worry that Victoria’s sort of behaviour is extremely dangerous in other ways. First and foremost, let me just put it out there: can we really expect men to respect us if we can’t even respect each other? And what about those who mock strong female characters or feminism? What message are we sending to them? We are hardly showcasing its strengths. If we broadcast the idea that it’s ok to insult each other’s looks, surely we are taking the risk that men will think it’s acceptable to do the same. Further, although as I have said, the majority of women do not participate in these sort of games, I can’t help but feel that some appear to be in competition with one another when it comes to their looks and bodies; who has the flatter stomach? Who has the most toned arms? Who has been doing their squats? This competition is never more prominent than on your Instagram news feed. Scroll down and you may quite possibly be bombarded with images of flat-stomached, Victoria-Secret-esque bodies and all those annoying gym selfies. It seems that you just can’t escape all the rock-hard abs and long limbs these days. One look at this and I, for one, start to feel a bit shit about myself… and then that’s it: confidence momentarily out the window. There’s a phrase I’ve been hearing a lot lately and have grown to love: ‘Girls compete with each other, women empower one another’. As clichéd as it sounds, in order to allow others to grow in confidence, we must be women, and empower, support and compliment rather than belittle, bitch, compete and tear down – anything but, would be extremely detrimental to the future of female bodily confidence. If we manage to do this, we might just be able to eradicate the Victoria’s of the world.
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The Jumper Goddess By Emily Zinkin
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My dear you are not a jumper About to be pulled apart When one thread comes loose. You are not a ship docked at port Going to drift away into the wide open Ocean If your one anchor withers away. Choose not to think of yourself as something perishable That comes later, but for now You are here to stay, and whilst you might fray at the edges You will either tuck it away, neaten it up Or find some new material to fix it Or just snip it. Your worth is not diminished from its absence For if you consider it thread Then surely you can consider it worthless Be a tapestry that never finishes, Everything is a growth in your patchwork life Nothing can unravel it, only add messier parts Because you exist and can live and grow. Even better, consider yourself the weaver Or artist, or spinner, or maker, Do not be a passive item things happen to. Who else can make you but you? You are the writer and editor And everyone else guest contributors, They make you fuller, and richer In views and content But they are still not you. And surely that is glorious?
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Confidence By Alex Goldenberg
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‘Currently in Britain 2 women die at the hands of an abusive partner every week.’
Often when looking at domestic abuse the abuser is the bully. does a bully do? They destroy the confidence of their victim.
And what
Of course you cannot determine domestic abuse as simply a matter of schoolyard bullying. However, it is clear that confidence, or at least the ! destruction of confidence, plays a major part in abuse. This can be seen in many different ways with the creation of fear, shame and isolation, which manifests itself in women being far too afraid to tell authorities, or even loved ones what is happening to them. Currently in Britain, 2 women die at the hands of an abusive partner every week. This is at a time where over-sexualisation of women in the media is increasing. More than ever, women are being viewed as simply sexual objects and both men and women are conditioned to view women as sub-standard human beings. We see many females being raised to have little confidence in themselves, raised to believe that they cannot do better than what they have, that they do not deserve better, that abuse is normal. Even more damaging is that we are also living in a time where the Coalition is putting women in an increasingly vulnerable position. Cuts to welfare and legal aid leave women more financially dependent on abusive partners, whilst closure to women’s centres, the NHS and police cuts put women further at risk of domestic abuse with little chance of prevention, retribution and closure. It is as imperative as it ever has been to end violence towards women. Both the government and the media need to start protecting, instead of damaging, the lives of women, until all women are confident of their safety.
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Finding the Line By Emily Zinkin When women say they’d love to have lived in the 1950’s, I agree that I like the aesthetic,! but I wouldn’t be too keen on the social situation. There were many things wrong with the 1950’s: the post-war depression, the rising tensions of the Cold War and fear of atomic warfare, and the lack of rights many groups were denied, including women. Things have improved since then, hence why we can put a sugar-coated nostalgia tint on the whole era, like much of the past, but there is still a long way to go. We now recognise that being forced to abandon careers for marriage, to become full-time housewives and babies was bad. We can see that gender binary and assigned gender roles should not be as rigid as they were believed to be. Yet, if it seems so obvious to us, why weren’t gals rocking the rockability out into the streets and protesting? Well, some of them were thinking and writing about these problems and trying to change the system. However, on a mainstream level they suffered the same problem that to a certain extent we still endure today. Their position in society was normalised. Think about it, for many; you are raised at your mother’s skirts watching her kiss your father as he leaves for work and she stays at home. You are dressed in pink and given a doll to play with, and rewarded for showing empathy and caring, for being quiet and docile, whilst boys are given soldiers and trucks, and rewarded for showing aggression and social dominance. Magazine and media is telling you that getting married is the highest aspiration you can achieve. And every person around you is conforming to this or being punished with social exclusion for not. Admittedly, I’ve over-simplified this explanation, but it hopefully helps as an example of taught and internalised gender roles. As I’ve said, things have improved, but much of the same thing is still happening. Girls are taught they must choose between a career and time spent with their children, and that wanting children is still the norm. They are belittled for being aggressive where boys are praised for being assertive. They are taught to close their legs, whilst on public transport men often open their legs so wide they interfere with women’s space as though they have a right to it. Girls are taught their sexuality is for men’s pleasure; what clothes to wear, body parts to sexualise, but that masturbation is something only boys do. And this is done through advertisement using women’s bodies as tools to sell products, magazines aimed at giving women ‘the perfect body shape’ and ‘sex tips on how to please your man’.
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‘Women are still trying to find the line between unfair and biased social expectation.’
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Women must walk a fine line, where they are sexual but not slutty, ambitious but not a bitch and achieve, but not to the extent that they undermine men. There are standards still imposed on women that are dependent on undefined lines that can be blurred depending on the situation. When does a skirt go from flirty to slutty and at what point can a rapist use it as an excuse? The answer is never, and yet it still happens, and often seems normalised when it does. Hence why a song about the ‘blurred lines’ of sexual consent remained at the top of the charts for so long and was blasted from every radio station this summer. Unfair standards and casual misogyny in all its many and varied forms are still often accepted as okay, because of taught behaviour, and women are taught this is normal and equality has been attained. This is one of the main reasons feminism is so often dismissed as unimportant, but also the reason we need to move vocally discuss the unseen issues; because that is how they are recognised widely as issues, and action can then be taken. I’ve skimmed a variety of issues here, and may be preaching to the choir, but it is important to recognise that there are unseen issues that are normalised into being seen as acceptable. It is the reason people can still claim not to be feminists, and the reason we ourselves can be ignorant or dismissive of matters that are in fact greatly important. Just look at the growing awareness of the difference between white feminism and intersectional feminism Women are still trying to find the line between all the unfair and biased social expectations, and are still taught this is normal. Things might be improving, but if first wave feminism is the Suffragists and Suffragettes pre-WW1, as some people consider, then it’s moving slowly, and taught behaviour and societal expectations are slowing it down and causing many of the problems. We need to find the link between what we are told to want, and what we actually want, and be confident enough to make the changes necessary to achieve it.
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Stuck in our stereotype By Johanna Estrin Despite the recent rise in student and national feminist support, an overwhelmingly! recurrent response to the F-word rears the head of that fat, ugly, lesbian man-hater who likes to make a fuss about nothing. When confronted personally with this stereotype, I found it difficult to respond, unsure which layer of ignorance to peel first; the pegging of an entire gender’s rights as “nothing” or such a lavish description of the unf***able lady being used as a weapon to disarm her credibility. Well, at least the latter was served with a more than healthy portion of irony. Resisting, I chose to question the stereotype further, lowering myself further into the stereotypical grave-hole kindly dug by the patriarchy. Quickly, it became clear that this regurgitated stereotype did not hold strong in the face of logical warfare. Reason 1: Rumour 0. So, the question is why? Why are people still calling their enemies ugly? Depressingly, superficial insults have lasted because they remain as Laurie Penny puts it: ‘the last, best line of defence against any woman who is a little too loud, a little too political.’ The insecure card is being played. By telling us that feminist are ugly and fat, we are being told that love and ideologies are mutually exclusive. A woman with strong beliefs and expectations is undesirably; fat, ugly, lesbian. So, choose, ladies; how bad do you want this equality-lark? It is the superhero’s dilemma, the world as you want it to be, or someone to love, except the feminist has somehow acquired the role of both the superhero and her personal damsel in distress. But let’s not overlook that hearty meal of contradiction, which us fat feminists love to feast on. Our stereotype is forcing us into the realm of outsider, along with our fat, ugly, lesbian friends. This remark implies that feminists are the ones being rejected by society, completely ignoring the fact that we rejected it first. Patriarchy is saving face. I don’t want to sit pretty in a societal structure that ignores my rights because of the genitalia I was born with, even if “pretty” I would be sitting. Our stereotype criticises us on our ability to fulfil the submissive role; well it’s right, we’re not good. But this is not the society we’re happy with, we want a better one; a society which does not blackmail those who question, with the notion of being conventionally unappealing; a society with room for difference and celebration of similarity. We don’t want you misogyny, lick your wound and get over it.
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Who’s to blame? By Immy Moore
Am I to blame? because my beaten bones can’t support the weight of your lies You hold my heart in one hand but I should know it is only to touch my chest and stroke my thighs I am supposed to know better, right? I am supposed to not be so naïve that if you enter maybe you care what’s inside? I am supposed to not be so dumb as to believe the words you empty into my ears as you begin the video tape in your mind So you have something to share with the guys Later When I’m alone in my room wiping off my makeup, feeling so full And with your vow of silence that stubbornly waits for days and days and days That feeling slips away And I remember what I read once more What I was told before How if you give it up too fast they’ll call you a whore If you don;’t write up a contract they don’t owe you anything right? Have I been conned? No. I was dumb I thought the tears in your eyes as you fed me those lies were something else. Not the eye drops that those monkey men passed down to you. It’s not my fault. It’s mine… I should feel better I should know better I’m not angry with you, not really I know the hairs on your chest were burnt in when you were born Like angry scars they taught you to deceive and trick And of course Think with your dick. But who is to blame?/I know who’s to blame.
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An interview with Ellie McWilliam By Rachael Cooney As an incredible inspiration for women at Nottingham I was really keen to include an interview with our SU President Ellie in this issue and quiz her on the subject of confidence. She tells how embracing it has got her where she is today. Q: When did you decide to run for the role of President? A: I decided to run Christmas of last year. Q: How did it feel know that you were the first woman to be voted in in 15 years? Did you feel any added pressure? A: Obviously I was overwhelmed at the start and extremely proud of myself. If I’m completely honest, my parents treated me as an equal all my life and I attended an all-girls school, which meant I never felt personally held back because of my gender. It wasn’t until my campaign, when I was only running against men that questions regarding my gender came up. I have been appalled by the facts and figures of women in top-level position or even in the union movement, and so now I do feel a pressure. I feel a pressure to help women progress to and secure leadership positions, hence why I have a manifesto point focussing purely around women in leadership. I feel a pressure to do other women proud and to help Nottingham females achieve everything they want to. Q: What do you think confidence is? A: Confidence to me is feeling comfortable in a situation and believing in myself. Q: Would you describe yourself as a confident person? A: Yes definitely, though I am my own worst critic, but I have learnt to push myself, whilst also reflecting positively when I have done well. I think far too many people don’t pause to celebrate when they have done something to be proud of. I guess that comes with confidence and self-belief.
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Q: How has this helped you in attaining and maintaining your role? A: My role as president is extremely varied, and that’s not to say I have moments of panic or uncertainty, but I believe in creating a better student experience for Nottingham students. My confidence helps me because I believe I’m doing the right! thing, yes I might be doing it in my own style, but if we were all the same life wouldn’t be any fun! Q: Have you received any negative response for being (a confident) female within your professional environment? A: Not personally. However, I have heard other women complain that they are labelled as ‘too aggressive’ or ‘too feisty’ and I can see that males do not receive the same criticism. I do believe the Student Movement is a very accepting place for women so I am aware I have probably been lucky thus far! Q: You mentioned that you have women in leadership on your manifesto. Why do you think it’s important to encourage women in leadership? A: I think it’s SO important! When women and men make decisions together, the decisions better reflect the diverse needs and rights of the entire population. In every country, women are running households; women are being mothers, workers and carers. It’s a huge shame that when it comes to the top there is a massive imbalance between women and men. Things are changing, but men still mostly hold the top jobs. Q: Can you tell us about any campaigns or plans you’ve got for this? A: I am running a women in leadership event, hosted by myself and the Birmingham Guild president, Poppy. (We are the few females in the movement.) We are going to have a series of workshops, guest speakers and employers to get women together and talking about the issues they have faced, and might face in the future. Q: Finally, what advice would you give to others who find a lack of confidence to be a setback at university? A: I believe that the time you spend at university is a time of personal growth and a chance to try something completely different. Everyone is equally nervous (though some don’t show it) to join a new club or society. I think it’s a great time to try something new, as long as you are morally right doing whatever you are doing. Don’t listen to what others say, go and enjoy yourself! I got laughed at when I told my first year hall friends that I was going to play rugby; I did it anyway and have loved playing ever since. So trust your gut and don’t let others knock or undermine your confidence or what it is that you want to do. Follow Ellie on twitter @UoNSU_President
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Yoncé !
By Elizabeth Watson
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Beyoncé has been the world’s girl-power icon since the demise of the Spice Girls. Whilst songs like Survivor have been on most of our “we don’t need no man” playlists for years, recently Beyoncé work has been championing female autonomy and pride in a much more prominent way. Her latest album, Yoncé, has been heralded as the sound track to 2013’s “Third Wave” of feminism, the music-lover’s alternative to Lily Allen’s auto-tune nightmare, with songs such as Flawless even being called feminist anthems. This is no surprise with her sampling the brilliant speech by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in which feminism is clearly defined as a belief in gender equality, dispelling the myth that feminists are man-haters. Using the widereaching scope of her music to promote feminism is really only something that should be applauded, especially as most feminist discourse does not manage to reach mainstream popular culture. In the video for the track Pretty Hurts, Beyoncé takes on the persona of a melancholy looking beauty-contestant, and denounces the way that society teaches us to “shine the light on whatever’s worst”, something that we can be sure Beyoncé herself has experienced through years in the public eye. However, despite the empowering messages of certain tracks, it’s difficult to ignore both the extremely sexualised imagery and lyrics on other tracks of the album, something that has been all too familiar in pop-music in recent years. There of course should be no problem in championing a woman’s sexuality, and that is something Beyoncé is keen to express. However, videos like Partition give off a mixed message about gender equality. We see Beyoncé pole dancing, as well as a sample in French that says; “Men think that feminists hate sex, but it’s a natural thing and women love it.” But, considering most people listening do not understand French, this then just seems like an easy way to get the word sex said by a seductive French lady into the song I see the intention here; to tell women it’s okay to be sexual, but we are living in the post Carrie Bradshaw age and I feel that this message is no longer necessary. Even in Drunk In Love, a song that seems to specifically celebrate the love between her and her husband, we see Beyoncé dancing in a bikini on the beach next to a fully clothed Jay-Z. Whilst you could argue that Beyoncé
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‘The juxtaposition of a nearlynaked lady and a fully clothed man just reiterates the one sided !!! nature in which sex is presented in the music industry.’ is just promoting sex within a happy relationship, the juxtaposition of a nearly-naked lady and a fully clothed man just reiterates the one sided nature in which sex is presented in the music industry. You might even say it echoes the dreaded Blurred Lines video, one that I’m pretty ! sure we’d all like to forget. Although Queen Bey has also released documentary style clips explaining that it was her choice to express her sexuality in this album, I personally find this difficult to accept considering her choice to work with director and photographer Terry Richardson, the man who was also behind Wrecking Ball. If you combine this with his long history of allegedly sexually abusing his models, it makes her feminist mantra even harder to swallow. In her explanations, Beyoncé claims that in showing off her body she is celebrating her loss of baby weight and inspiring young mothers to reclaim the fun back into their lives. She even tells us in her explanation “I lost 65 pounds” (I think that includes the weight of the baby because that is like 4 and a half stone, which is ridiculous), yet, the sheer fact that Beyoncé felt obliged to rush to lose her baby weight so quickly massively contradicts the “love yourself” themes of Flawless and Pretty Hurts. I know it is a big ask for a pop-star to stay fatter just to make a point about feminism, but I can’t help thinking, as idealistic as it would be, a “stretch marks and all” video would have done more to inspire confidence within the new mums of the world. The fact is, women’s bodies look different after they have babies, and I don’t see why we can’t celebrate this change in a woman’s body rather than pressurising her to look exactly the same as before. I say all this with the utmost love for Beyoncé and for this album. We need strong female role models in pop music and it’s brilliant to see the popularisation of feminism. But, I can’t help feeling that attaching yourself to a cause as complex as this one, requires a lot more though into the way in which your work is going to be received, even if some of the messages given off are unintentional.
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The Perils of Social Media Rachael Cooney We are living ! in an age dominated by social media, a part of the generations who feels obligated to document life in all its details; in an attempt to prove just how exciting our lives are. Social media encourages us to compare and to compete with one another, to prove ourselves as fun, busy, successful people. Though on online persona’s may give this impression, it can also easily distort and exaggerate the truth, and succeed in undermining our confidence. I think Facebook and Instagram are the real culprits here. We are all guilty of tagging the places we’re at, de-tagging any unattractive pictures that surface and writing status’s that reflect our achievements rather than our failures. This show of profile perfectionism results in an unrealistic and essentially false representation because we feel pressured to appear as superior social beings, attractive, popular and always busy. When it comes to confidence, Facebook can be a double-edged sword. We’ve all experienced the boost from a profile picture that is greeted with an abundance of likes. Yet, we can also end up feeling pretty rubbish in comparison to those who seem to be having a consistently crazy, wonderful time. When I first came to Nottingham, Facebook was a great way of keeping in touch with friends and seeing how everyone was settling into University. Unfortunately, I ended up in a flat that didn’t gel all that well. Although I made friends with the flat upstairs and course mates I always felt a bit like the outsider. Browsing through Facebook, all I saw were people tagged in photos, making loads of friends and having what looked like an incredible time, which only made me feel twice as unhappy, It wasn’t until I went home for Christmas and discovered that actually, a lot of friends were in a similar boat to me, Uni was ok but far from the incredible experience Facebook was making it out to be. Our online profiles are us at our very best. During first year I thought it mattered more that I looked as though I was having a good time than if I actually was. Nights out are so often dominated by people taking photos in order to prove to everyone else just how much fun we’re having, or how great our new clothes look, much better by the way through a flattering Instagram filter. Rather than living vicariously through Facebook or racing to share photos, just sit back and enjoy the moment. We shouldn’t feel pressurised to justify our experiences, or to constantly compete and compare ourselves. Most importantly, don’t, like I did, torture yourself through social media and let it undermine your confidence or your happiness.
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Send Her Away By Emily Zinkin
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Send her away With a frown of rocks and A finger pointing outwards Towards a horizon, somewhere And she will go. She will trip through Meadows of her own making Pastures of pure fear Where the sun dapples her leaves In all seasons of her lives. She may mourn her leaving But she will walk with her tears Her feet and her eyes taking her Own important deemed list Of places, people, faces, feelings. It may even return to you As a letter addressed to the frown Who made her go in the first place Or the lovely love that she stayed for At the start, it may be a diary come Into your possession through the tides Of gifts, legality or chance. But I tell you this, It shall not be her Because she has been sent away And at first she will keep walking To stop you seeing the tears, And then the anger shall quicken Her pace and her journey To fill the empty spaces. And before either of you know it She will again be so filled up There will be no reason to return To a frown of rocks or pointed finger That sent her away.
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Photo by Rachael Cooney
The Confidence to Speak By Hannah Eachus
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From where do female politicians derive their legitimacy? Is being elected enough to be considered equal to your male counterparts? When has a woman earned the right to speak? Today women are under-represented in Parliament, they make up just 23 of MP’s and any numerical gains in recent years have not increased the power of women collectively. Yes, we have had two female Home Secretaries, a female Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister but our political institutions continue to be gendered and men are still afforded unfair advantage and patronage in politics. We have a representative democracy, and we ought to have a representative legislature. Gendered institutions are expressed in: rules, informal practices and culture. The greatest difficulty women face in politics is getting selected for winnable seats. Quotas and/or women-only shortlists are the only viable solution to under-representation. However, women elected from shortlists have been treated as second-tier politicians, branded ‘Blair’s Babes’, often by other female MP’s. Political parties are a greater divider than gender in the adversarial House of Commons. Female politicians are not a collective or consensual force. Conservative women tend to be non-feminists, taking a more individualistic approach to politics. Nadie Dorries believes that being selected on ‘merit’ gives her a greater mandate to speak than her constituents voting for her. Many women oppose changing the practises of the Commons or the electoral system because ‘they got there all on their own’. However, this point of view is based on one of the central myths about British politics; that it is meritocratic. If only that it were. The problem with an individualist view of politics is that it blindly ignores the patriarchal restrictions faced by other women and will never successfully create a 50/50 gender split parliament. Gendered activity is different from explicitly sexist language and women are restricted by parliamentary language as well as by the language of parliamentarians, including from the Prime Minister who told Angela Eagle to ‘Calm down, dear’. (That’s Angela Eagle; Oxford graduate, MP for 21 years and Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, some would argue that she’d earned her right to speak.)
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‘Women were able to conduct political debate without it being gendered and without ! it being marginalised as a consequence.’ Dr Sylvia Shaw has conducted research into devolved assemblies, particularly in Northern Ireland; she found that the style of debate from ! women remained contentious, informative and political. Suggesting not that women were a ‘civilising influence’, or the opposite – that their behaviour ! was masquerading as male – but that women were able to conduct political debate without it being gendered and without being marginalised as a consequence. Women in parliament have increasingly found their voice outside of the commons. Twitter and personal blogs have allowed greater opportunities for political engagement and direct communication with the media, the public and other politicians when parliamentary discourse is limited by time and competition. However, female politicians still require fabled ‘thick skins’ when they are targeted by people mistakenly called ‘twitter trolls’. Stella Creasy received rape threats for suggesting that there ought to be a woman, other than the Queen, on English bank notes. Women in politics must now have the confidence to express their opinions in the face of endemic sexism.
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The Search ! By Laura Godin
Confidence is something I’ve tried to find I keep looking, but I must be blind. Most mornings I look at myself and feel kinda crappy So put on some make up and try to be happy It doesn’t do much to fix the route cause Of low self-esteem but I get out the door I put on a smile, pretend nothing’s wrong When really this has gone on too long. It’s time us girls all stood together Whether you’re a post grad or fresher We can tackle the issue and find some esteem But if all else fails, on me you can lean.
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By Amrit Santos
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