Melissa Benn on Female Representations in the Media

Author and journalist Melissa Benn took time out from Edinburgh International Book Festival in August to educate The Skinny on feminist issues and challenging a media which views women through a distorted lens

Feature by Alan Bett | 15 Sep 2014

“You ARE a feminist,” the woman in the front row's position forcibly set during Melissa Benn’s Edinburgh International Book Festival event It's Different for Girls. Not by Melissa of course, she’s far too measured – but the majority of the audience. “But I don’t know if I agree with all feminism, I just want equality,” the woman claims “…so I don’t know if I am a feminist.” “You ARE!” it's confirmed once more.  A few male faces in this crowd may just concur with this audience member's misgivings, as did Holly Baxter of the Vagenda blog in her earlier festival appearance, explaining that “for me, a feminist is a person who believes in gender equality – with no tick boxes or categories beyond that.” 

This debate seems to interest Melissa when chatting with The Skinny afterwards. “What you need to recognise about some feminist writers is that they’ve got to keep provoking and keep saying new things and they’ve got to be vivid and colourful and all the rest and so while their work is less empirically careful and complex, it's more deliberately provocative.” They are patrolling 'on point' you might say. So, perhaps this provides the spark of debate for more restrained words to follow. “Being of a more cautious mind,” Melissa tells me “…one of the criticisms of my book is that it’s very balanced and very full of information and some feminists said that it’s too heavyweight or dull.”

The discussion moves from distinct strands of feminism onto a subject which should unite all fronts, the ways in which ideas relating to what a woman is and should conform to are communicated through image and word across a spectrum of media. This manipulative representation is nothing new. In many ways it has moved on and past the condescending yet tame sexualisation of the 50s. Even the cultural regression of 90s lads' mags has almost been washed away by the tide of fourth wave feminism. Yet there still exists an uncomfortable chasm between the actuality of being a woman and expectations set by the media.  One area of blame is obvious and bland. “Definitely at the lads' mags' end there is a culpability I think, showing women as mere sex objects.” Melissa tells us; but perhaps our supposedly benign mainstream is even more worrying and influential. What she sees as “…represented by the likes of the Daily Mail and their sidebar of shame, which does sexualise all women and criticise all women,” she argues.  “In a funny way for me it’s the criticising that I dislike as much as the sexualising of them.” The list is worryingly extensive “…that they’re never getting it right, that they’re too sexy, that they’re not sexy enough, they look tired, they’re changing partner, they look unhappy in a marriage. All that type of thing is depressing, so I do think there is culpability in the culture.”

And although the male set agenda is an easy target, much critique is generated internally, then propagated by publications written by and targeted at women. “I do think that those women’s magazines have changed and now zoom in so much more on the body and there’s whole articles on are you happy with your boobs, the thigh gap, so on. So it’s like girls are being disassembled and asked to look critically at bits of themselves... in a funny way the pressure comes more from other girls and female to female publications than from Zoo and Nuts, which most girls probably don’t see.”

What has changed the publishing landscape immeasurably is the internet. “It’s good to start by saying it’s a revolution and like all revolutions it can be harnessed for good or bad.” Melissa opens, focussing then on the latter to suggest it has “…increased a banal narcissism where everybody’s making these same boring slightly mainstream sexualised faces like this –” and she mugs a little, pursing her lips and tilting her head to mimic the millions who themselves ape glamour models on Facebook and Tumblr each day. “The most inhibiting things for girls is living a life which is inner and outer, what you think, what you learn, what you feel strongly about is your inner self. If you’re constantly thinking how does this look, does it project well, is it a good angle, you’re just restraining yourself to such an extent and actually I’d like to see girls be more free and just think fuck it I’m just going to say what I think and not worry about the reflective consequences.”

Yet the behaviour of the young may be dictated by their view of the old. An unhealthy pressure is placed on young women by the fact that those past middle age are invisible to the public eye. It creates almost a gender based social half-life, leaving a compressed window of youth in which it seems everything must be achieved. “I feel there’s a kind of hidden narrative about it,” Melissa agrees, “…which is, look girls, do what we say and you won’t end up disappearing or derided. There are a few token older women, thank god for Helen Mirren, thank God for Judy Dench; one does have trouble finding more of them.” Yet Mirren exists so far from the truth of everyday women that she works in opposition to this point. “She’s exceptionality good looking, she’s exceptionally rich, she’s exceptionally successful so she’s not of any use as a role model to anyone.”


“I’d like to see girls be more free and just think fuck it I’m just going to say what I think and not worry about the reflective consequences.” – Melissa benn


While it's tough to feel compassion for a Tory politician, the recent treatment of newly appointed female ministers by the Daily Mail  – condescendingly judged as if on a catwalk – was damaging beyond this narrow political horizon. “It made me angry because the paper concerned judged every one of those women to have got it wrong and there was something about that which got to the heart of the problem, and maybe I feel it particularly as a woman who does come out and argue and sit on stages. You're just there to be criticised and belittled and torn down... there’s a degree of scrutiny which I think is just misogyny actually and I just think it holds everyone back.”

It can be argued that men are attacked by agenda-led media in similar ways. Milliband’s recent bacon sandwich struggle seems to act as a perfect example, his image contorted and mocked by the mainstream press . “That’s an interesting point.” Melissa concedes, yet feels that this is specific targeting of an individual rather than a gender. “My view about Ed Milliband is that it’s subtly tied in with the politics, I don’t think the powers that be want a Milliband government because I think he’s to the left of New Labour and I think they want to discourage and belittle and, yes, try to destroy him.” She has raw personal experience of these attacks, as daughter of Tony Benn, one of the most revered, but at one time despised politicians of the 20th century.  “Here I speak as the daughter of somebody who a few decades ago was the most hated politician in the country and those kinds of things are very powerful and that was very clearly about somebody who was seen to be Left wing but was described as mad and psychiatrists said he was completely loony and so on.” Her advice here goes beyond this point, relevant to this full discussion of targeted misrepresentation.  “What’s very interesting, having grown up with that... seeing my father treated in that way, the most important thing is to carry on and don’t break down.”

Thankfully that seems to be the rally call for all those combating the representation of women in the media – strength in action and confidence in numbers. It's a positive point for Melissa to close our conversation on. “There is at the moment a big campaign to ban page 3, and personally I think the great power of that is there’s thousands of people in the campaign and I think for a young girl, if you open up the Sun and see a naked pair of boobs and feel diminished by it you also know that there are 80,000 people led by Lucy-Anne Holmes saying we’re not accepting it, so I think that politics and collective action gives young women a lot of confidence.”

Melissa Benn appeared at Edinburgh International Book Festival on 17 Aug What Should We Tell Our Daughters? is out now, published by Hodder http://melissabenn.com