These days I hardly ever listen to the Today programme because I like to remain calm and serene while getting breakfast for the kids. I like to just float through the house, Mary Poppins style, cleaning up a spill here, supervising maths there, giving some hugs when needed, all the while stirring the porridge and fetching the hubby a cup of tea.
Should I ever turn the radio on, things go south pretty quick. Once the BBC propaganda machine starts to invade my pleasant home my mood sours. Inevitably some leftie is on being ‘interviewed’ by one of its leftie presenters about how great the latest leftie entitlement programme is or how evil the Tories are for not taking in every single refugee in the Western World.
As my outrage grows, the porridge boils over, I start shouting at a maths error and forgetting about the tea. In short – the BBC Today programme makes the Perrins breakfast crappy again.
Tuesday was one of those days. My serene start to the day was destroyed as I pressed the button on my radio and on came a couple of crazy people complaining about children’s books and cartoons.
Apparently, apparently, there are just not enough female characters in children’s books – or at least not the right kind of girls. Lauren Child, author of Charlie and Lola, explained the fabulousness of Lola, and how she once emptied an entire shoe shop not because she is ‘shoe mad’, but just because she wanted a particular shoe. I am sure Lola’s never-to-be-seen mother and shop assistant appreciated that.
Anyway what really got me going, though, was how Lauren Child and presenter Mishal Husain started banging on about how great it is that Lola and other characters ‘do not confirm to the female caring stereotype’, that seems to be foisted upon girls. How terrible that would be, I thought to myself, that a young child, especially a girl, should show that she cares about her family and friends. Down with this sort of thing!
Never mind that we are talking about toddlers and young children here – it seems one is never too young to be exposed to gender politics and fanatical feminism. I thought to myself – sure, what this world has is too many people who care.
They then started prattling on about a new girl character that will be essentially an engineer with super-duper powers of engineering. Fine, if that is what you want to do, fill your boots. Mishal Husain declared she was a massive fan already; there were indeed not enough female engineers out there. However, the irony of the journalist who studied law and the author of children’s books complaining about the lack of female engineers seemed completely lost on them.
So I’d had enough. I turned it off and fumed for a while, fumed at the utter craziness of it all. My eldest daughter is seven and, as a good and dutiful modern mother, I give her extra maths in the morning and send her to computer coding classes.
So far, thank God she has been a delightful, hardworking child. But her greatest characteristic is without a doubt the kindness she shows to her brother and baby sister. She is a girl who cares, which according the feminists makes her a ‘stereotype.’ I’d take the caring daughter and sister over the engineer every time.
(Image: Amin AkhtarVodafone Institut)
