What does feminism look like? Polly Vernon and Elizabeth Day go head-to-head

Flutter your eyelashes and flirt your way to the top — or be more macho and never sign off with a kiss? Two of London’s gutsiest writers lock horns about how to get ahead
Polly, left, wears Jonathan Saunders dress, POA (jonathan-saunders.com). Shoes, £375, Jimmy Choo (jimmychoo.com). Elizabeth wears blazer, £1,170, and trousers, £340, Stella McCartney at selfridges.com. Shirt, £225, Theory (theory.com). Stan Smith trainers
Amelia Troubridge

'Turn up the heat' says Polly Vernon

I am bored by the notion that male behavioural patterns are the gold standard of all available behavioural patterns. By the notion that if women ever hope to get anywhere at all, we need to start being more like Them, and less like Us, and double-quick; or we shall only have our silly little selves to blame! That we need to blag like a man, shout down the competition like a man, ‘lean in’ like a man; take our place at the conference table, brag about our achievements, screw over whoever gets in our way, because that’s the only sort of behaviour men understand, right? Weeeeeell… maybe it is; but every time we tell women that the things we do — by instinct, or conditioning, or habit — are not adequate, not powerful, not recognised, and that we should — no, must! — override them in favour of the base notion that the male way equals the right way, we do ourselves an injustice.

Allow me to make a case for being as rampantly, terrifyingly, relentlessly f***ing female as it’s possible to be. It’s an art I’ve been perfecting for years; one that I’ve formalised and detailed in my new book, Hot Feminist.

It’s accomplished, most obviously, via the use of one’s sexuality, a practice roundly discredited by both the traditionalists of our tediously patriarchal culture and some feminists. Both parties imagine it to be deceitful, sneaky, and possibly immoral. Me? I think it’s an excellent, entirely valid, tool. If men are daft enough to allow themselves to be beguiled and disarmed by our really quite transparent lip-bitey, hair-twirly, smiley-smiley tactics, so be it. Just because you’re a rotten flirt, it doesn’t mean you don’t also have integrity, ambition, a strong work ethic and natural talent, does it? I also think there’s something distinctly suspect in the idea that a woman who flirts her way towards an end goal — or even just casually through a social situation — is manipulative, Machiavellian, needy, or somehow betraying the sisterhood; while a man who flirts is charming, cheeky — a touch sleazy, at worst.

Polly Vernon (Picture: Amelia Troubridge)

It is for this reason that I have no trouble flirting amenable male interviewees into submission. In the course of my career as a journalist, I have touched male pop stars and actors, politicians and It Boys lightly and repeatedly on the knee, leaning forward just so, while asking the truly tricky questions. When I took on a famously difficult lead singer a few years ago, one of his (weary) bandmates was deeply amused to hear me trilling: ‘Is it true you’re an arrogant c***?’ while smiling at Mr Lead Singer so sweetly, gazing at him so intently, he could do nothing but giggle and confess he was, a bit. Flirting is one of the tools I have at my disposal, and I would be quite mad not to deploy it. Which is why, when I watched Good Morning Britain host Susanna Reid flirt a pre-election Cameron into a gooey mess, I wholly approved. My female interviewer mate says: ‘I reckon half my male subjects walk away “knowing” they’re in with a chance with me. Fewer than five per cent are right. (Don’t tell my husband.)’

After flirting comes fashion. Nothing works in a woman’s favour like her ability to dress. We are much better at clothes than most men, much more advanced in the construction of competent striking, powerful, intimidating, challenging, witty, sharp, clever, dramatic looks. Every time we dress well, especially in a professional environment, we remind men that we’re fundamentally better than them in this — and, by implication, many other respects. They may try to destabilise us. I remember one senior male editor remarking, in reference to my new Ugg boots (worn circa 2003, at a juncture when a mid-length chestnut-brown Ugg was the last word in cool; Kate Moss had only just debuted hers): ‘Are those things fashionable? I don’t know about this stuff…’ (Subtext: ‘OMG, what have you got on your feet? I’m too clever to care about trends, as you know.’)

To which I replied: ‘R****, it’s me. Need you even ask?’ (Subtext: ‘Don’t even try, matey-boy. I am cooler than you by a million years, and you hate that.’)

I find that leather trousers, worn in a male-dominated workspace, have a potent impact. There you’ll be, clad in perfectly respectable, incredibly practical, ultimately wearable (and, may I say, desperately chic) garments; there they’ll be, trying not to equate them with fetishy sex, and quietly melting down as a consequence. I once wore a pair that made a senior male colleague fall over. Empowering? I should say so! The man was so embarrassed, he spent the next five years trying to convince me he admired me for my contribution to journalism. I didn’t need his validation but, oh, I did like to watch him dance!

In addition to the flirting and the fashion are the miscellaneous acts of deeply female behaviour, which I’ve watched, or heard rumours of other women deploying, with awe. Like one female boss, who greets her male underlings as they cycle into work, nabbing them as they dismount from their Bromptons, tired, sweaty and Lycra-clad and so painfully conscious of the fact, they’ll agree to do anything she asks, just so they can get away, get showered and changed, ASAP. And, oh! How boss woman loiters, standing over them in her neat shirt, skirt and heels, making a big deal of (sort of) averting her eyes from their Lycra-encased crotches.

And then there’s the female editor (now retired) who went down in newspaper mythology because of her habit of summoning her male underlings to her office for meetings, during which she’d place both hands nonchalantly behind her head and lean back in her chair a little, thus fully displaying her sweaty armpits; such a supremely alpha, contemptuous and powerful gesture!

Celebrity feminists - in pictures

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Of course I hear Elizabeth’s points. I’ve toyed with the rightness or otherwise of putting kisses on emails (and ultimately concluded that e-kisses in themselves can be powerful: the passive-aggressive single X, the overwhelming and potentially insincere multiple Xing, the ominous absence of X when a male recipient finally offers up an X of his own…). And I devote a whole chapter in my book to the importance of learning how to say ‘no’ — not like a man but like a person who values their right not do the stuff everyone asks them to do all the time. But still, for me, wayward, raging, unapologetic, shame-free femaleness is the way forward.

Hot Feminist is out now (Hodder & Stoughton, £14.99)

'Be more Apha Male' says Elizabeth Day

Last month I wrote a piece for the online magazine The Pool. It was about how the male protagonist in my third novel, Paradise City, had paradoxically made me more assertive as a woman. Imagining myself into the character of Howard Pink, a testosterone-fuelled multi-millionaire with a stubborn sense of self-belief, had made me re-examine some of my own behaviour.

Before Howard Pink, I was a pathological people-pleaser who never wanted to say ‘no’ in case I offended someone. When I wrote emails I’d be perpetually apologetic, littering the sentences with words like ‘sorry’, ‘just’, ‘might’ and ‘probably’ (‘Sorry to bother you. I just had a thought and was wondering if it might interest you…’). And despite considering myself a feminist, I had never once asked for a pay rise in all my 14 years of being a journalist. I simply thought myself lucky to have the job in the first place.

Howard, by contrast, blustered where I blithered. He occupied space rather than being grateful for it. Howard did whatever he wanted. Blessed with a defiant sense of his own entitlement, he saw money, sex and power as his due. He took what he could, where he could get it — and the world rewarded him for it.

Elizabeth Day. Picture: Amelia Troubridge

I said in the article that ‘Be More Howard’ had become my own jokey mantra. Every time I found myself veering into self-doubt, I’d ask myself what Howard would do. Howard, for instance, would not dream of sending kisses in work emails in a pathetic bid to get someone to like him. Howard wouldn’t give a f***.

I didn’t expect ‘Be More Howard’ to catch on. But it did. The blog went viral. Someone started a #BeMoreHoward on Twitter. I had emails from women as far afield as Australia, telling me that the article had changed their lives. People I hadn’t heard from in years left me voicemails saying they were never going to include kisses in work emails again.

Mishal Husain — the world’s most brilliant broadcaster (I am unapologetic in my belief that this is an indisputable fact) — tweeted a link saying that ‘women everywhere should read this’. I heard stories of ‘Be More Howard’ being dropped into conversations as a kind of verbal fist bump. Women were emailing the phrase to each other, egging themselves on to be more assertive, to go for that promotion, not to take no for an answer.

But why would anyone want to be more like him? Howard isn’t a nice person. He does some morally reprehensible things throughout the course of the book. He is a sexual aggressor! He’s got a trophy wife! He swears, like, a f***load!

Whereas the women I know, well, they’re great. I mean, some of my best friends are women. My mother is one. So is my sister. In the house where I grew up, my father was a lone male. Even the cat was castrated. As a feminist I believe women should be celebrated for who they are. Surely, advising women to act more like a man is a little counterintuitive?

It might be, were it that simple. But here’s the thing: It’s not that I think women should seek to ape so-called ‘male’ patterns of behaviour, as Polly rightly says. I agree that this is retrograde and suggests there are codified gender norms when, really, we’re all just people, penis or no penis. Rather, it’s that I believe there is a benefit in certain, under-confident women asking themselves what a specific man — a brash, entitled, blustering, arrogant man like Howard — would do in a similar set of circumstances. Because, by having that behavioural counterpoint, we might realise how much more we can demand and how much we actually have to offer.

Polly wears Jonathan Saunders dress, POA (jonathan-saunders.com). Shoes, £375, Jimmy Choo (jimmychoo.com). Elizabeth wears blazer, £1,170, and trousers, £340, Stella McCartney at selfridges.com. Shirt, £225, Theory (theory.com). Stan Smith trainers, £67, Adidas (adidas.co.uk). Picture: Amelia Troubridge

In their book, The Confidence Code: The Science and Art of Self-Assurance — What Women Should Know, published last year, the journalists Katty Kay and Claire Shipman argue that women are socialised from a young age to be good and are expected to mature faster than boys, to be less competitive and aggressive. Pliant behaviour in girls is rewarded at primary school and this is underpinned by evolutionary biology.

Success, it turns out, is a function of confidence just as much as competence. When Hewlett Packard conducted a review of personnel records a few years ago, they concluded that their female employees applied for a promotion only when they believed they met 100 per cent of the qualifications listed for the job. Men, on the other hand, were happy to apply when they thought they could meet 60 per cent of the required criteria.

‘Women feel confident only when they are perfect,’ write Kay and Shipman. ‘Or practically perfect.’ As a result, men earn more than women, dominate almost every power structure you care to mention (politics, FTSE 500 companies, the media) and can choose to have children without their career or bodies being affected.

So now in every situation where I feel I am starting to question my own competence, I ask myself what Howard would do. And it works. I don’t write cringeing emails. I outline my ideas at work with more confidence. When someone asks me to do something I don’t feel like doing, I say, ‘F*** you, d***head, who the f*** do you think I am?’ (Well, OK, I don’t quite say that, but the point is, I could.)

That’s not to suggest I’ve abandoned all pretence at femininity. Of course I haven’t. I heartily concur with Polly that one of the most joyful and potent ways a woman can assert herself is by dressing how she wants. She shouldn’t ever feel guilty about this, or feel that it’s somehow a betrayal of feminist principles. Because if so many of us are feeling this lack of confidence — and judging by the response I’ve had over the past few weeks, we most certainly are — then we need as many tools at our disposal as possible.

And that can mean Being More Howard or wearing a pair of leather trousers. Whatever works, quite frankly. The irony, of course, is that Howard Pink is not a real man. He is a fictional construct. I invented him. So it turns out that the capacity to think like him was my gift all along. I just needed to own it — possibly along with a pair of leather trousers.

Paradise City is out now (Bloomsbury Circus, £16.99). Portraits by Amelia Troubridge, styled by Orsolya Szabo. Hair by Steven Bayerbach at Factory using Kevin Murphy. Make-up Charlotte Gaskell at LHA Represents using Lancome skincare and makeup.

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