one - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 April 2023
Summary
Do you remember the first time?
Claire, a White British woman in her mid-thirties, was seven years old the first time. She was going to a party at her primary school but had forgotten to tell her parents it was fancy dress until the very last minute. Determined to make her something to wear, they rushed around the house, found a bin bag, and worked it into an outfit.
So bin bag liner went to school. It was dark on the way back and it must have looked to someone going past like I was wearing a mini leather skirt or something because they wound the window down and went ‘Wahay!’ I remember thinking, what’s that? Like what is that? I don’t understand what that is? This was a very small estate where I grew up so I probably wouldn’t have been more than about 200 metres from school. It was dark, the middle of winter, but it only would have been six o’clock in the evening, seven o’clock at the latest. I think that we probably had freedom at that age more than typical eight or nine year olds would now where everyone’s getting picked up and there’s always an adult to escort kids around. That risk.
Anyway, I vaguely remember everyone getting really angry about it and almost a kind of, ‘That’s because it’s too short. That’s why, it’s because of what you were wearing.’ So there was an anger at how dare these people do this but combined with an, ‘Oh that would be the reason why, it’s because it looks like you’re wearing a short skirt.’ So they shouldn’t have done it but come on you’ve got to think about this as well. It was almost an equal weighting.
Delilah, a Black African woman in her mid-twenties, was older when it first happened, sixteen and self-conscious. She had been told she was overweight as a child and it had really knocked her confidence. When she was in her teens she started to lose weight and had gone out of her way to find a gym class she really liked.
I remember being on the bus, leaving the gym just reading a book and sitting there and the guy in front of me turned around and started talking to me. And I just thought it can’t be at me so I kept reading.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Right Amount of PanicHow Women Trade Freedom for Safety, pp. 1 - 18Publisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2018