Wouldn’t it be great if… Kate Middleton had a job?

Okay, so my point isn’t as harsh as it sounds, but in the name of short-snappy column titles, I’m trying to be succinct. After the news last week that Prince William has (finally) proposed to Kate Middleton, it emerged that they would begin their married life in their house in Anglesey, North Wales. His majesty will go out and continue his training with the RAF and Kate will spend her time… cooking his meals.

Now, I’m not a staunch feminist who believes that every woman should sell herself to a corporate machine whilst accidentally forgetting to feed her small, token baby, but in these modern times, I feel that a future Queen consort should be relevant to the women of her day. In many ways, as the future King’s bride, Kate has bagged herself a job for life, but that doesn’t accommodate the eight years she spent sat on her bum waiting for him to pop the question. What if that day had never come? Did Kate go out and carve herself a career? No. Miss Middleton has effectively advocated that one needs to be continually on hand and readily available should the whims of one’s working other demand. By taking on part-time work for both her family’s mail order party firm and Jigsaw (the high end, high street store that friends of the Middleton family own) she ensured that she had the flexibility to be the girlfriend of a future king. She prioritized William above herself.

Some might say that obviously, her ‘investment’ in not investing paid off- after all, she finally got her guy. But she didn’t even give their relationship a chance to see whether it could function with both of them fashioning independent careers. It takes a certain kind of woman to wait (both on and for) a man whose devotion will always be to his country, first and foremost, and it’s not the kind of woman I’d trust myself to be.

Imagine a different scenario, where Kate is a doctor and they met a university whilst she was completing a degree in Medicine. Would she be in the position she is now? It would take a brave woman to find out, but at least she’d be self-sufficient and ready to earn her own living should the Prince she’d been dating decide to gallop off and spread his royal seed.

Women (and men) may choose not to work for a variety of reasons: disability, looking after children, being in the midst of a career change and illness to name but a few. But Kate’s mistake has been to dismiss the notion of building up her own career whilst being very well placed to do so. Hardly unemployable, Kate graduated with a 2:1 in History of Art from the University of St. Andrews. She is attractive, articulate and well-connected, so how did a girl from a rags-to-riches Berkshire family manage to dismiss any prospects of a potentially flourishing career? Pretty and prim does not a modern royal make. Whilst I will forever be in awe of THAT blow-dry and THAT Sapphire-hued Issa dress, I would want to feel like I had chosen my partner, instead of them choosing me because I had preened myself to mirror his ideas of perfection.

Review: Riptide Vol. 6

It’s not often that a university is lucky enough to be home to its own creative writing journal but, here at Exeter, we are blessed with not only a series which publishes writers from the South West and beyond, but an astoundingly good one at that.

Riptide is now into its sixth volume and still growing. Edited by Ginny Baily and Sally Flint, this volume of Riptide is something of a unique project and presents the ten short stories that were shortlisted in the Riptide International Competition for young adult fiction 2010. The competition was judged by the university’s own, Philip Hensher, and also contains his introduction. The book was launched on 2^nd November at Exeter Central Library as part of the Exeter Children’s Literature Festival, where prizes were also given to the authors of the top three stories and the winner of the Reader’s Prize.

Although these are stories for young adults, their richness and diversity is testament to the fact that good fiction is universal. Even Philip Hensher admitted at the launch that it took him a while to realise that this was in fact a competition for young fiction targeted at people aged 12+. Indeed the editors believe that ‘What unites [the stories] and sets up an echo between them is the youthful nature of all the protagonists struggling to find their path in worlds where adults don’t always hear their voices’. As a student, it can be incredibly nostalgic to look back at what seems so near, and yet is buried in past childhood memories and I found the stories to be both sensitive and complex enough for the older reader.

The stories themselves are at once hypnotic and beautiful, unnerving and thought-provoking. The winning story overall was Belfast author Sheena Wilkinson’s ‘What You Will’, a hilarious and frightfully cringing account of a group of teenagers putting on a performance of Twelfth Night at their school, which had me giggling in the solitude of the library. The short tale lets us into the life of Jordan, whose teenage crush spirals into a heady whirlwind of obsession and vodka: ‘I smelt his breath, Pringles and beer. My heart pounded.’

Second prize went to Amy Shuckburgh for her heart-rending story ‘The Lifeguard’. Annie’s Dad has been hospitalised with a serious throat problem and the story reflects on the need for family, strength and care, in all areas of life. My personal favourite, however, was ‘Kite Season’ by Anita Sivakumaran. An account of the uniquely bittersweet and competitive relationship that exists between brother and sister, ‘Kite Season’ is set in the tamarind groves of India, As Anand attempts to build the strongest kite, his sister is forced into the role of assistant, hanging from her bullying brother’s every words. The luscious language coupled with the grappling humility of sibling rivalry is conducive to a story that is both rich and poignant. Thankfully, karma reigns supreme as the narrative closes and Anand’s kite reaches an inevitably perilous fate.

I could go on about every story. Each one exemplifies the craft of the creative writer and each captures the imagination of the reader so completely in such a way that I didn’t think possible for stories as short as seven or eight pages. The stories in the volume represent the versatility of the short story form, the potential for discovery and the scope of human emotions. As Philip Hensher says in his introduction, ‘They are about very different sorts of people, and very different ways of life’ and we should relish the diversity that this volume of Riptide allows us to experience.

Copies of Riptide can be bought from the Guild Shop in Devonshire House, Blackwells on campus or online at www.riptidejournal.co.uk.

Six Degrees of Separation

Six Degrees of Separation: The sky’s the limit for the platform of social media

Six Degrees of Separation refers to the idea that every single human being on the planet is connected to every other human being by a maximum of six steps.

Put to the test by the omnipresence of Facebook, the phenomenon has come under much scrutiny. One could argue that population growth might cause six to become seven and so on, but this depends on the rate of people joining Facebook compared with the rate of population growth. Even so, should it hold to be true, the sky should indeed be the limit for advertisers looking to capitalize on the platform of social media, as no potential customer should ever be any more than six people away.

But how can companies ensure that the messages that they put out are not just skimmed past by five out of the six degrees? And just because someone is a ‘mutual friend’ does it mean that they are a genuine acquaintance or merely an ubiquitous ‘Facebook friend’? The Six Degrees of Separation is a useful tool, but on Facebook, where the nature of a friend is too arbitrary to rely on and where pages are so saturated with advertising that one can barely distinguish between promotions, it takes something piercingly novel to capture the attention of the fickle young things of today.

The key is in the relevance. Despite the possibilities that the theory discloses, the Six Degrees of Separation doesn’t target specific audiences, and as we all know, blanket communication is not the way forward. Businesses who engage with social media need to take a flexible approach to advertising and not indulge in the draw of reaching everyone via six links in the chain, tempting as it may be.

Feminism is a fantasy for the sex-obsessed culture of today

As any man will testify, women can be a fickle bunch. However, it really shouldn’t be like this. A recent survey found that 63% of women would rather be a glamour model than a doctor, nurse or teacher- surely insurmountable evidence that the female population is devoted to the pleasure our male compatriots. Fulfilling the fantasies of men has become something that women are more than adept at, but what we don’t realise is that through these aspirations, we’re not emancipating anyone or anything other than the libido of the guy who has turned with brooding anticipation to page three.

It’s a very sad, sorry situation when young women make efforts to distort their bodies and personalities into a male fantasy. What’s worse is that the media perpetuate this sordid image of what women should find inspirational. Let’s take a closer look at the very paradigm of what we shamefully call a modern feminist icon: Katie Price. A woman who gallops around on horses that she transports in a pink bus, with enough filler in her face to prevent even the vaguest of genuine emotions. A woman who made her name by undressing for the satisfaction of men and spending more money on plastic surgery than most people earn in a lifetime. ‘Inspiration’, they say, ‘girl power’. Girl power invoked by a pseudo-celebrity who spends more time splashing her children and personal life over the cover of cheap magazines. But ‘she’s making it in a man’s world’, I hear you cry, ‘she’s a modern businesswoman’. Yes, Price is shrewd, cocky and irrevocably canny, but the bravado isn’t even her own. Her management team are the brains behind the money making, Price herself is a mere puppet.

Contemporary celebrity cheapens what spirited women fought for years before silicon was even invented and the feminist fantasies of today are creating a disappointing culture of pseudo-empowerment. But we’ve become so good at artificially creating the male fantasy that it’s more of a commodity now than it ever has been. Women today seem to think that empowerment can be derived from enslaving men. But we need to learn that reducing men to their base instincts does not constitute power or intelligence, nor does it produce a society based on equality. Sadly, Price’s female fans worship her for being ‘real’, yet I am irretrievably led to ask what is so real about her? A life devoted to the camera lenses of ageing paparazzi? A body that needs continuous maintenance to keep the pennies coming in? This is a female selling herself, and the image that is purveyed only makes any money because it succeeds in gratifying males.

Purely for the purpose of investigative research, I found myself repeatedly watching What Katie Did Next, the addictively trashy reality TV show that documents Price’s life with her new husband, cage fighter Alex Reid. Watching her attempt to fathom the location of Dublin whilst attempting to remain in a state of concentration for the duration of her online IQ test exemplified the profound despair that I feel whenever I hear anyone deeming a plastic, processed, overly-lacquered female an icon. You don’t have to be a staunch feminist to see that Price manifests a mainstream culture sodden with pornographic values. Other, though not quite so explicit, members of this proud 21^st century version of the Women’s Institute include Kelly Brook, The Saturdays and tirades of footballers’ wives and soap ‘stars’.

As a society we must ensure that young women start to believe that their futures rest on the talents of their brains and not their bodies. Women like Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of support charity Kids Company or Carol Bartz, Chief Executive of Yahoo need to be celebrated because they embody the sentiment that flesh should not and need not equal success. They don’t need anyone to leer at them to ensure their salary and they use their talents to give back to society and provide important services worldwide. Satisfying the domestic and sexual appetites of males has too long been the aspiration of women, it’s time for empowerment to mean more than a plastic fantasy

Clouded Judgement

Word clouds tell a detailed story, perhaps more meticulous than their name would suggest. Constructed using a piece of text the size of the word is proportionate to the number of times it is used in the text. One is able to deduce implicit or subconscious messages from them, be they intended or unintended. If anything, word clouds are useful to the author in terms of illustrating whether or not they are saying what they want to be saying or, indeed, communicating something slightly less desirable. It’s not telepathy, but it’s the next best thing.

To demonstrate my point, I looked at word clouds which were generated from two interviews with Tony Blair, one with Jeremy Paxman about the Iraq war and one more recently with Martin Kettle, concerning the recent publication of his memoirs.

The former, as one would expect, contains brutal language: war, regime, weapons, inspectors, chemical, oil, nuclear, aggression, sanctions, threat, destruction, breach, extreme and terrorism. It’s raw and clinical, not to mention defensive: effectively, agree, believe. There’s even a small indication of frustration on the right hand side in the words ‘done’ and ‘talking’, surreptitiously sat together below a beacon of apparent ‘resolution’. Surprisingly, ‘inspectors’ crops up more often than ‘war’, perhaps Blair was unintentionally trying to shift blame onto the sources of what was perceived to be false intelligence.

Furthermore, a specific tone of voice can be gauged from the Iraq interview, as opposed to the one about memoirs. Blair regularly identifies people and countries: George (Bush), Colin (Powell), Saddam Hussein, Iraq, Korea and Afghanistan to name but a few, pointing an invisible finger at the many facets of the situation he has found himself in. The lack of this direct language in the Kettle interview shows how Blair is now distanced from his former political situation, aside from the smaller yet undeniable presence of ‘Gordon’. The language is softer and retrospectively vague: end, issues, support, state, reason, progressive, going, time, know, welfare, respect, reforms, relation, conversations, public, explain, sense, social, engaged, frank. However, a lasting strain remains in the former prime minister’s words, perhaps a hint towards his continuous involvement in the public eye, and the incessant criticism which follows: still, difficult, argument, danger, problem, order, changes, completely, absolutely, never.

What becomes clear from comparing these two images is that the insightful phrases in fact lie in the periphery of the clouds. Political language is permeated irretrievably with words such as ‘think’ and ‘people’, and so the larger words, in these clouds, don’t really tell us much about the particulars of the person or situation. Further evidence of this can be seen in the word clouds that were produced from the televised political debates during the election earlier this year, where ‘think’ was the predominant choice of word for both Nick Clegg and David Cameron. The truth therefore resides in the words that sit outside of the main bulk of political jargon. There’s still hoping then, for those than can squint hard enough to see the ‘sorry’ that sits pitifully between ‘country’ and that ubiquitous end goal: ‘resolution’.

Word cloud generated from Tony Blair's interview concerning his book with Martin Kettle.

Word cloud generated from Tony Blair's interview about the Iraq war with Jeremy Paxman.

A Lust for Leather

Remember that episode in Friends where Ross wears leather trousers on a date, goes to the loo and can’t get them back on again? The one where the lotion and the powder come together to form a paste? Well if you thought that was a fate that was far beyond you, this season, think again…

That’s right folks, leather trousers have made the comeback of all comebacks. The epitome of a sartorial nightmare, leathers were thought to have bitten the dust along with the Backstreet Boys, 5ive and most other forms of mid-nineties paraphernalia, but woe betide those who believe this to be true. The fashion powers that be have hailed the return of the most difficult item of clothing to wear. Ever. The woman to blame is French fashion designer of the moment, Isabel Marant. Her skinny, cropped leather trousers in cherry red and black sparked a stampede of trend-hungry stylists and French fashion editors with long, lean legs. Now clearly your average British body doesn’t exactly match up to this vision of chic, but I’d like to think that we could give them a run for their money.

The question is, should we embrace leather trousers, or run screaming in the opposite direction? Perpetual recollections of unshaven men, mid-life crisis, atop gleaming motorbikes might dash your hopes of achieving goddess-like, leather-clad proportions, but perseverance is the key. If you’re going to embrace, do so with utter confidence and conviction. Not for the light-hearted, leathers need fierce heels and an attitude to match, unless you have the legs of Elle Macpherson, in which case go as flat as you like. What’s more, the British high street is unbeatable; so trawl the stores until you find a style that suits. Leather trousers are risqué, but they are also ever so slightly risky, so be on your guard for any mutton-dressed-as-lamb-esque incidents. If in doubt, drag a skeptical friend along to view your transformation.

It is important to keep in mind that leather trousers say far more than good old denim. Like your friend for life, jeans will stick around throughout your moments of black, biker madness, whereas leathers are for now. They’re the friend that tells you that one more drink won’t hurt. For women, they’re about fashion and power, for men they cannot help but be sexual and slightly scary at the same time.

Of course there are other ways to wear leather this season: shorts, boots, skinny belts and shearling-lined jackets, but for me at least, none incite a distinct lust for dishevelled insouciance in quite the same way. For the ultimate in edgy yet minimal, trend-led but not try-hard, look no further that the leather trouser. They’re having a moment, a moment of madness perhaps, but a moment nevertheless.

What does the decrease in popularity of French at GCSE level mean for Britain and its students?

Parlez-vous Francais? Apparently not, any more. With the recent news that GCSE French has dropped out of the top ten choices for secondary school pupils, it would appear that communications between us and our francophone neighbours aren’t going to improve in forthcoming generations.

Taking a more long-term perspective, the number of students studying GCSE French has dropped by 45% in eight years. Although Brits have never exactly been the linguistic answer to Mensa when compared with our European counterparts, French is a language that most of us could always vaguely grasp thanks to our early experiences with tedious vocabulary and grammar lessons at school. We’re a dab hand at asking for l’addition and never forget to say merci, but is this all about to change?

Not without reason, says language learning expert Paul Noble. School-level French is notoriously unhelpful past basic conversation, he says, ‘Even students who come out of doing French A-levels can be surprised at what they can't say - the teaching should be far more conversationally based.’ Furthermore, a modern foreign language at GCSE is now no longer compulsory, so students are opting for seemingly ‘softer’ subjects such as media or religious studies.

But this research does not explain why Spanish is up 16% among GCSE students since 2002, Mandarin has increased by 38% largely because of ambitious pupils with hopes for careers in business and German has become more attractive since it became the central language of the EU’s most dominant economy. These statistics would indicate that students are now selecting the languages that they feel will be most relevant to their lives and job prospects. Far from a communication breakdown, the decrease in the popularity of French when aligned with figures from comparable languages points towards school students actually becoming more in-touch with global development.

The world around us encompasses a myriad of cultures, languages and, increasingly, potential job locations. Practically, it can only be a good thing that students are realising the latent possibilities of exploring other languages aside from seeing French as the solitary choice. The more options that are open to school pupils the better, and Britain can only benefit from its discerning adolescents broadening their perspectives and widening their horizons beyond the English Channel.