"The Independent" article [2]

Amy Jenkins: Don't think pink, girls. It will only turn your brain to mush
Saturday, 14 November 2009

Kirsty Moore said she decided to join the RAF at the age of 13 while watching the Red Arrows loop the loop in the Lincolnshire sky above her home. Luckily she didn't know that the RAF didn't allow women to fly fast jets at that time – the excuse being that the G suits weren't "female friendly". And equally luckily, the kit problem had been sorted out by the time Kirsty was old enough to apply. Now, at the age of 32, Flight Lieutenant Kirsty Moore is the first woman to break 45 years of male monopoly and join the Red Arrows.
She has flown Tornados on combat missions in Iraq and has been an inspiring trainer at RAF Valley in Wales. Soon she will be flying "Red Three" at speeds of 400mph only six feet away from her neighbouring Arrow in the world's most skilful aerobatic team.
And – as if all that wasn't enough – she's also been named role model of the month by my favourite feminist campaign, PinkStinks. PinkStinks aims to counteract the enduring media obsession with women who are famous, thin, rich or married to famous men, by celebrating women they see as inspirational, important, groundbreaking and motivational. They also, as their name suggests, despise the culture of pinkification – that is, the world of putrid pink princesses and ponies that young girls are subjected to during childhood – at what PinkStinks calls "the pink stage".
The campaign is a timely response to evidence that body-image obsession is starting younger and younger in girls. The seeds are sown during this "pink stage" when children receive narrow and damaging messages about what it is to be a girl. The board game Monopoly is now available in a pink edition. The dog, thimble and shoe player pieces have been replaced with flip-flops, a handbag and a hairdryer. Instead of houses and hotels there are boutiques and malls and the utilities are beauty salons. It all comes packaged in a box that can double up for jewellery.
"It's all a bit of fun," say the makers of some squishy high-heeled shoes for babies (yes – that's babies who can't even walk yet) – but a report from the American Psychological Association shows how sexualisation harms girls, not just in that it makes them aspire to the wrong things, but that it actually compromises their brain function.
One study showed how anxiety about appearance does just that: girls were asked to try on a swimsuit or a sweater in a private dressing room, supposedly to give their opinion. While waiting they were asked to do a maths test. The girls wearing swimsuits did much worse than those comfortably clad in sweaters. The anxiety they felt about their bodies – the negative thoughts they were having – actively undermined their intellectual self-confidence.
There are some terrible websites. "Are you ready to become Queen of the Bimbos!?!" exclaims MissBimbo.com. "Become the hottest, coolest, most intelligent and talented bimbo the world has ever known!" MissBimbo, it turns out, is a virtual fashion game and community. You're invited to look after a Bimbo character as she "goes through life". Scarily MissBimbo boasts 1,931,773 "registered Bimbos!" They might talk of being intelligent and talented, but last time I looked, bimbo meant an empty-headed woman.
It's mind-boggling. They've taken a term of abuse and sold it back to young girls as if it were a badge of honour. And don't tell me they've reclaimed the word like some black people supposedly reclaimed "nigger". There's no "girl power" in lipsticks, handbags and mini-skirts. There's just the tedious reality that there are still far fewer women in top jobs than there should be.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission reported on the snail's pace of women's progress. At the rate we're going, it calculated, it will take 200 years for women to be equally represented in the UK Parliament – almost as long as it would take a snail to crawl the length of the Great Wall of China.
Girls need strong, independent women as role models – not bimbos. Flight Lieutenant Kirsty Moore is a great candidate. Her arrival as a Red Arrow has already triggered queues of girls looking for signed photos at publicity events – and that's exactly what's needed to counteract the stink of pink. Moore has said she hopes girls will hear about her appointment and think they can be part of the RAF too. "They should go for it," she says. Moore's father taught her to aim high and go for what she wanted. He is a retired Tornado navigator and he took her to the air displays as a child. But if his daughter had looked up into the sky at the age of 13 and seen not a team of exhilarating acrobatic fighter jets but a pink princess on a pink cloud putting on pink lipstick, would she be joining the Red Arrows today?