Atomic Kitten singer Natasha Hamilton has spoken about the abuse she’s received for being a “4x4” mum – the mother of four children by four different fathers.
“I do get people saying nasty things because my children have different dads,” said Hamilton, “but I feel I would have been a worse mum staying in relationships that were detrimental to me and my children’s happiness.”
With respect, Ms Hamilton, neither you nor any other woman navigating a complicated life needs to explain herself to anyone. The real issue is: how can it be that such a grotesque term as 4x4 is still doing the rounds?
There’s never been anything amusing about 4x4. It’s a vile, sexist slur, basically a way of calling a woman (a mother at that) a slag. The woman who probably knows this more than most is Ulrika Jonsson, the most high-profile UK female to have been publicly branded a 4x4. Jonsson has written eloquently, with admirable candour, on the complex way her life and relationships have panned out, for all the good it’s done her. For some, she will always remain the punchline of a sniggering national joke. But why? Are women such as Jonsson and Hamilton supposed to regret their children, apologise for their very existence? Oh the irony, when it’s they who are owed the apology.
As well as being nasty, 4x4 doesn’t even make sense. All it says is that a woman procreated with four men – is this really such a huge number that it blows some tiny minds? You have to wonder what people are specifically objecting to – the men, the children, the relationships, the sex? Employing these criteria, I’m a 2x2, but for all anyone knows I may have had just as many relationships and just as much sex – hey, baby, perhaps more! – than a so-called 4x4. Even though I’m this relatively virtuous-seeming 2x2, what’s to say I haven’t been the biggest slag on the block?
If perceived reckless procreation is the problem, where is all the “hilarious” coverage on 4x4 men – after all, it’s far easier for men to father multiple children by multiple partners?
If anything, the fact that those women chose to procreate suggests that they sincerely believed that they were in meaningful relationships that would last. If being mistaken about a relationship lasting is a crime, then hang us all.
It would make as much moral sense as subscribing to the twisted mindset that a woman having relationships with the huge tally of four men is (just about) acceptable but the woman who chooses to have children with the same men is a pathetic, brain-dead slut.
Even if some 4x4 couplings aren’t particularly long term or meaningful (it happens), what business is it of anyone not directly involved in the child’s upbringing or welfare?
Once again, we arrive at an ugly truth – that some people simply can’t accept that a woman’s body, fertility, and life choices are not some bizarre community issue. Instead, they are her own concern. A womb (used or otherwise) ultimately belongs to one person alone. Just as her situation is solely the childless or child-free woman’s business, it’s an entirely personal matter if another woman has children with multiple fathers.
Even if you don’t agree, there are the children to consider. How do you think they feel when their mothers are disparaged and their own existence turned into a squalid joke? It must take a very warped personality not to care that these kids might be deeply hurt.
Certainly it looks tricky to hang on to the high moral ground when that means insulting and denigrating innocent children.
It’s now 2015 and while the grossly misogynistic 4x4 tag was never acceptable, it really is time that it died a quiet death.
Jon Snow’s dead. Oh sorry, didn’t anyone tell you?
How amusing to witness the reaction to Jon Snow’s death in Game of Thrones mired in shrieks of “spoiler!” as people struggled to discuss the event without actually mentioning it, in case somebody else hadn’t seen it. All this going on, days after it was broadcast, as if sensitive viewer-lambs still had to be protected. Give over.
It’s not as though Snow’s death was a secret (it’s in the books). It wasn’t a genuine shocker, like Jimmy Darmody’s death in Boardwalk Empire. Oops, sorry, for that spoiler – it only happened four years ago.
But that’s the tedious overkill of spoiler culture for you – everyone going into meltdown regardless of time passed: “But I haven’t watched the box set yet!”
Bring back appointment or commitment TV where you showed up to watch something on the night, or at least within the same week. Not giving away previews is one thing, but how devoted can a viewer be if they’re still moaning about spoilers days after a hit show has aired?
Here’s a thought: if you’re such a fan, then watch it within a reasonable timeframe, and, if you don’t, that’s your own lookout. Deal?
Othello… it’s not really a grey area
Steven Berkoff has taken umbrage at a theatre review that observed that white actors no longer blacked-up for Othello. Railing against “fiends of political correctness”, Berkoff described Laurence Olivier’s blacked-up performance of Othello in 1964 as “spellbinding” saying how such performances are more than “a bit of shoe polish on your chops”.
In some ways, you can appreciate where Berkoff is coming from when he says: “Great drama is colour blind.” Certainly, white actors playing Othello was never equivalent to blacking-up for, say, an edition of The Black and White Minstrel show. However, this is missing the main point, which is that black actors have only lately been “permitted” to play a plum part such as Othello – and black actors finally (and exclusively) playing this role is partly an overdue reaction to longstanding racism, covert and otherwise, in the arts. There’s a culture where British black performers are still generally disregarded to the point where many of them feel they have to relocate to the US to further their careers.
The fact that black performers used to be overlooked even for roles such as Othello (where the character is supposed to be black) is both risible and offensive. While certain white actors may have played the part brilliantly, what about all the black actors of the past who never got the chance?
In this way, it’s not really about much-maligned political correctness; it’s about trying to correct a longstanding absurdity.
Instead of asking: “Why is it wrong for white actors to black-up and play Othello?” it becomes: “What’s so offensive about there being a major Shakespearean role that is purely for black actors?”
Sometimes it’s not only about finding the right answers, it’s about asking the right questions too.
