I know plenty of feminists whose guilty pleasure is reading the Daily Mail.
Walk up behind them in their lunch break and say “boo!” and they’ll be frantically trying to minimise their browser, hiding the sidebar of shame. Yes, they were reading about Karl Stefanovic looking downcast while stepping out with his mum; or about the side boob of some celebrity so far down the alphabet the letters have run out.
But, they might argue, after spending the morning wading through a 1,400-page document on carbon trading, surely there’s something harmless about taking a five-minute mental break to see which reality TV celeb you’ve never heard of is dating which random Instagrammer you’ve also never heard of.
It’s the equivalent of a micro sleep. Or taking a nonmedicinal tranquilliser.
It’s fine. Of course it’s fine – more entertainment than journalism, the digital version of a supermarket tabloid.
It’s fine, until one day you realise that to read it – even to hate-read it – is to be complicit in a tawdry enterprise that is taking us all backwards at a time we need to be stepping up.
To be fair, this weekend’s Daily Mail Australia story about Channel Seven television host Sam Armytage wearing granny underwear didn’t set out to demean and humiliate me. It only set out to demean and humiliate Armytage, and Armytage alone.
How else would you explain taking a photo of her on the street, from behind, without her consent, and plastering the results on the internet: “Sam Armytage dares to bare with her giant granny panties showing visible line in Sydney”. (Firstly, she didn’t “dare to bare” anything. She was wearing a dress over her underpants. That is why they are called underpants.)
It was one of those stories where the shame spreads from the subject to the reader; one of those pieces that make you feel your humanity has been reduced just by reading it – that you have taken part in online shaming, bullying someone because they were wearing … underpants? (Lovely, comfortable, full-brief underpants that most people wear, that look good under clothes.) I read it and felt gross, like I’d been part of some feral, leering mob.
Armytage has told Buzzfeed Australia that the matter is now with her lawyers. I hope this means they won’t continue shaming every semi-famous woman who wears normal underwear to the shops.
But the whole tawdry exercise speaks to a wider issue. There has been much talk in the past few weeks of ideas that seemed unacceptable a few short months ago slowly being normalised.
In an essay for the New York Times Magazine, Teju Cole wrote about the days following Donald Trump’s US election win: “All around were the unmistakable signs of normalisation in progress. So many were falling into line without being pushed. It was happening at tremendous speed, like a contagion.”
Normalisation is a choice. When you are part of the chain of production that enables a story like Armytage’s undies to even exist – when you commission, write, click, consume – you are normalising cyberbullying, stalking, sexism and just all-round general creepiness.
We have to call this stuff out now, more loudly than ever – even if we’re at risk of repeating ourselves or sounding angry or shrill.
Madonna’s doing it. At the Billboard awards last week, the global superstar let it rip from the podium: “I stand before you as a doormat ... Oh, I mean, as a female entertainer,” she began.
“Thank you for acknowledging my ability to continue my career for 34 years in the face of blatant sexism and misogyny and constant bullying and relentless abuse,” Madonna said.
“If you’re a girl, you have to play the game. You’re allowed to be pretty and cute and sexy. But don’t act too smart. Don’t have an opinion that’s out of line with the status quo. You are allowed to be objectified by men and dress like a slut, but don’t own your sluttiness. And do not, I repeat do not, share your own sexual fantasies with the world.
“Be what men want you to be, but more importantly, be what women feel comfortable with you being around other men. And finally, do not age. Because to age is a sin. You will be criticised and vilified and you will definitely not be played on the radio.”
We’re not living in a post-racist, post-feminist age – we’re in some other place, the “12th century perhaps”, as novelist Margaret Atwood said in October.
She described feminism like this: “First wave, the vote. Second wave, the image. Now it’s about violence and rape and death: we’ve got down to the nitty-gritty.”
There’s nothing new about a granny pants story – but there is something new about the world it arrives in. We need to push back against sexism, against misogyny, against bullying. We need to push back against creepy, invasive tabloid stories. We need to stop the normalisation of ideas we should find abhorrent. We need to make like Madonna, and draw and hold the line.
