To celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th, from today until the end of March I’ll be writing articles about ‘flawed’ women in fiction. As a psychologist and as a woman, I have never warmed to passive women in fiction. I see them as a foil to the ‘bad man’ and isn’t that too easy? […]
Now January is over and done I’m starting to look forward to 2018 even more. In case I hadn’t mentioned it, I have a novel out this year! Perfect Ten will be published on the 6th September 2018. As you can imagine, this is very exciting for me, and I’m going to start at the […]
Never loses its impact, does it? This poster was from 1998. More than ever, in a world where it’s easy to temporarily change your body with enhancement products, just a reminder that the last layer is our own skin and that’s where we need to be comfortable.
After reading the comments by Mr Willett as reported by the Daily Telegraph yesterday, I had to admit that there was some truth in it. There is definitely evidence to suggest that feminism has helped women into work, with their worth and ambition and, in turn, this has mean that ‘ambitious working class men’ have […]
If your first reaction after reading the word ‘sexism’ in the title of this post was to think the picture compares male and female brains, you probably need to reassess you basic assumptions about equality. This post is not about women being better than men, or vice versa, but about empathy.Lots of people have emailed […]
I couldn’t let this week pass without writing about an uncomfortable experience with the photocopier repair man. In he came, with his hard black case and his porn moustache, a distinct throwback from the days of Jason King. He unpacked, immediately requested cup of coffee, and began to work on the machine. Eventually I decided […]
So it’s as I have suspected and ardently highlighted these past ten years – female characters in some novels are not feminist-friendly. Fairly unsurprisingly, lots of women are tired of reading about dieting, shopping, romance and other subjects that do not apply to their own lives. Far from requiring a patronising dose of escapism thrust […]
Still on the subject of writing and storytelling, I (and many other writers) have realised that there is a link between storytelling and psychology. Apart from my own PhD study which I have explained in the last blog, there have been many psychologists that write who have made a strong connection between identity and storytelling. […]