Tuesday, April 21, 2009

It's Still All About Me

Seventies feminist icon Rosie Boycott is developing a nice little sideline in mea culpas for the Daily Mail. Only a few months back she was telling us that biology is destiny, now she's telling their readers yet again what a bad girl she's been.

Well, not quite. She's got a confessional to publicise - first issued in 1985, now to be republished - and the DM do like a good 'middle-class girl gone wrong' story. They don't come any more middle-class or go any wronger than our Rosie. Bring them together and let toxic synergy do the rest.

I suppose it's possible that the DM have tweaked the interview to make her seem like a self-centred airhead. What can you make of this, describing her father, an upright military type who didn't speak to her for a couple of years after the original washing of the dirty linen in public :

"His rejection of my book was very painful to me. I think now it was partly his British stiff upper lip, but he probably also thought: "Gosh, maybe I didn't take care of her enough,"' she says.

'My life got very out of control and maybe he felt there was more he could have done. He probably felt, as a parent, that he had failed me.' "


But enough of him, let's talk more about me, eh ? The poor chap was probably regretting all those times he left the belt on the back of the bedroom door.

I also notice that the most influential of Ms Boycotts years - the feminist, Spare Rib years - seem to be airbrushed out. Ms Boycott has one child.

Another Seventies alternative icon with one child and a past of drug abuse and sexual liberation wasn't quite as middle class as Ms Boycott, and never found peace on a Somerset chicken farm. Her parents didn't speak to her for a couple of years, either.

If you were casting a pornographic blockbuster now I'm not sure you'd cast a Karen Carpenter lookalike as your star, but Marylin Chambers, who was found dead in her California trailer last week, was a Seventies hit in Behind The Green Door, which cost less than a hundred thousand but reportedly grossed 25 million dollars. Along with the late Linda Lovelace, she - or more accurately the men who filmed her - helped make pornography more mainstream - almost chic - in fashionable America, a trend which ain't stopped yet.

She leaves one child.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Worked with R Boycott once.

Not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

Anonymous said...

If one were being crudely utilitarian, I'd say Ms. Chambers brought more joy to the world than the dowdy Ms. Boycott. At least she knew how to smile.

Martin said...

Laban,

With the greatest respect, while demographics and the failure of the native population to reproduce itself are of course fair game for debate, I do sometimes wish it could be remembered that there are those to whom this is a matter of concern and who are not childless by choice. My apologies if I sound a little tart - having fallen out with everyone else who's ever had a good word to say about me, I have no intention of falling out with you if I can possibly help it.

Anonymous said...

Thanks Martin

Until you spoke up I hadn't realised that Laban was attacking people who are unable to conceive.

Martin said...

I didn't say he was. Did I?