Thanks to everyone for your support, enthusiasm and contributions to making Subtext such a fantastic magazine and experience.

Sadly, we just don’t have the time to keep Subtext going – and doing half a job was stressful and frustrating when we really wanted it to be great.

Hopefully, I’ve fixed up the website so you can’t buy Subtext online anymore. However we do have a few archive copies in boxes in my front bedroom, so if you want one get in touch gillcourt@gmail.com

x

We have loved every single second of production, your contributions, your emails, all the amazing ideas and work which have made feminism a fruitful part of our lives. We love you.

To make sure the last issue is something you can treasure forever we’re asking you to submit a few lines about what you’ve enjoyed reading, looking at, thinking about. How you gave a copy to a friend and fanned the flames of feminism; how you had your first piece of writing published; how an article led you to start a group or join a group. Anything.

We’ll try to include as many as possible in the print.

Please email info@subtextmagazine.co.uk with the subject line: Goodbye Subtext Contribution

During his campaign Milliband E  first suggested a third of the Labour cabinet would be filled with women and then went on to back Harriet Harman’s call for 50% of the roles to be given to women. I find that kind of exciting and promising.

However, mentioning this on a friends facebook page I was reminded by someone else that Blair had run with the same sort of line in his campaign without getting the final results. Sigh.

Regardless, this isn’t enough to defeat my hope that Milliband will get the ball rolling on equality policy by giving 11 seats of the Shadow cabinet to the cadre of obviously qualified women in the party. And I have no doubt that the women of the party will play a large part in making sure this happens.

For one, the party has been lucky enough to have Harman as a standing leader while the campaign for a new leader ran, a woman who has pushed forward policies inline with her right on, Equalities Minister thinking bringing maternity leave, gender pay gaps and prostitution laws to the attention of the house. She has taken her flak from the mainstream press for that (nicknames anyone?) but she’s paved the way for other women to speak out and acts as a supportive figure for their opinions.

Sexism is not such a scary word anymore and Yvette Cooper does a fantastic job telling the voters exactly what the Conservative/Lib Dem coalition are doing to women with their austerity measures – namely, fucking up their lives and rights.

And more importantly, the women of Labour recently submitted a letter to Ed Milliband reminding him of his promises, and if they’re all as committed and hard working as they appear to be in this video at the Guardian I can’t imagine this will be the last time they’ll mention it.

Call me naive, but I call myself a feminist. Women are more and more reaching for their rights and we will have to succeed.

In the ebb and flow of that argument we can find someone actually providing something fashionable for fat bodies rather than treating them as a point of discussion on health – namely Beth Ditto’s collections for Evans. I must admit, I was not a fan of the neon spewed first collection. Big cat faces are hard for anyone to wear. But her Autumn/Winter collection is amazing.

The clothes map out a series of outfits, glamorous, kooky, comfortable and all without big cat faces on (I hated those cat faces). More importantly they offer fashion at  different body size.

Enough with making do with fashion brands in plus sizes that don’t take into account the way bodies actually look and feel at different sizes and more of this deep understanding of what you need and want if you are dressing in the forbidden plus sizes of the high street. As always, my attention is drawn to the time spent on creating waist bands on tights and leggings that are comfortable — hell at any size.

“Are you an aviatrix navigating new gender roles in goggles and lipstick, a flapper winning the vote in pearls and crystals, a cowgirl breaking wild horses in a western shirt and gingham neckerchief, or a lady striding defiantly into the gentlemen’s clubs with a pipe and a pocket watch?“

Well, it’s quite possible we’re not any of those exciting things, but I’m sure we’ll be damned if we don’t want to celebrate them. Looking at the calendar of historical events you may not be shocked to see that women are sadly lacking – it’s something we all wax lyrical about a lot so it’s lovely to see something this fun with a bit of feminist flair cocked towards appreciating women’s work and groundbreaking action.

Even better, the two designers that set up the company 10 years ago and run the show today are both women, have a workshop filled with women and celebrate an irreverent kind of fashion that doesn’t demand serious contemplation and contempt for fun.

See the full collection Here.

Watch this programme on the iPlayer about Spirfire Women

I found a similar dearth on SEXISM

But having a look at WOMEN is a nice way to pull in your news. Or at least to set as a background to tune the news noise into something you might plaster on a wall.

Click on the images for clarity and close ups.

The small ads in pregnancy magazines are suddenly full of these strange postnatal accessories, designed to shield onlookers from a supposedly offensive, unsolicited flash of lactating boob. Many of them are all-enveloping “nursing shawls” that make it look as if you are trying to smuggle a suitcase. The UK’s Baby BuBu Breastfeeding Covers, for instance, are enormous body aprons, while the Bebe Au Lait Hooter Hiders Nursing Cover is a giant tent with a rigid neckline

As a non lactating non mother I can’t say what my personal experiences are as a breastfeeder, however I am lucky to have lots of confident friends who happily wapped out a bap to feed their young in cafe’s and parks. And so I can’t imagine why anyone would feel the need to cover up something that rarely needs covering up – I can’t remember a time when I saw someone breastfeeding that I also saw a mass of breast, but then maybe I don’t spend a lot of time staring.

Anyway, when in doubt – crowd source. After a  quick tweet to my followers I found a flurry of wonderful replies.

“Now that feminism has reclaimed the territory of traditional ‘housewife’ and empowered it…”

It’s a pity that came up in the press release because they had me at ‘practical advice’. I would just have enjoyed the book, maybe I would have said that it’s useful for anyone to have lying around in case the Internet breaks and they need to fix something.

As a woman with a penchant for vintage clothes combined with a skill at spilling food and drink all down the front of them and with a want for eco-friendly care of my belongings the older way of doing things is sometimes exactly what I’m looking for. Added to that I’m a serial sucker for prim looking things for my bookshelves and, my, Home Economics is prim looking all delicate fonts and illustrations anyone with an eye to past times style would be happy to leave it out for people to have a look at. It would have been fine. But they’re telling us we need this as part of our feminist day.

This is not a feminist bible (though, if we do put one together lets find out who did they design on this). Time isn’t enough to make doing the household chores twee and fun, particularly for those of us who have to wash our own clothes and floors. Particularly when you find that most cleaning and caring roles inside the home and within industry are filled by women. At the end of the day I can safely say it isn’t feminism that makes me want to wash things, its health and hygiene. So where does a book get off telling me that traditional feminist roles being played out in the most traditional of ways is reclamation of anything?

You’d be forgiven for thinking that feminism had better things to be doing, arguing too and fro about prostitution, objectification, lack of care and support for those suffering domestic violence and the many myriad ways violence against women shows itself and what to do about them. You’d think when it comes to the homes feminists would be embroiled in working to make sure refugee and asylum seeking women have somewhere safe to stay that isn’t a prison.

Well, look at you being wrong. Every other feminist you know is secretly swatting up on table manners and ‘the happy way of doing things’ as well as curiously studying how to fold them big old men shirts properly. Oh wait, are you reading that new feminist politics book? Now I see you were using to create a straight line you clever thing.

Hilarious rib poking aside, this book is a practical and slightly scientifically flawed repackaging of age old adages and soft focus advice from yesteryear very much pitched at the heterosexual female keeping the home and family clean and upright.

The introduction pays brief service to the interesting ideas behind flicking through now yellowed and unused home economics text books – homemade eco-friendly cleaners and an ability to mend and reuse your own clothes among them. It also makes the great point that many of today’s time saving implements freed women from slaving at the hot stove and the steaming laundry. But that’s not enough at all to try and crowbar feminism into what is a jovial little book with a few nice tips on removing stains and putting an end to food waste but little else.

But here, take an old adage from my book ‘not everything has to be feminist your feminism will be enough to keep you safe, sometimes’. So buy it, enjoy it, love up the vintage olden times glory but don’t buy or repeat throw away marketing pitches aimed at soaking up another segment of the audience know as “women”.

In the meantime if you know any good books which look at how modern kitchen implements freed women from the kitchen let me know, and if there aren’t any pay me to research and write it.

We haven’t given enough attention to the Big Bum Jumble just around the corner, it’s not only going to be an amazing day of size acceptance and fatshion but it’s also going to be a fundraiser for the fatty olympics.

Here’s a quick run down of what you can do and how you can get involved.

You can donate your large clothing still in good condition to the Big Bum Jumble to make somebody’s day – DONATE

You can attend the Big Bum Jumble and make your own day – ATTEND

You can tell as many people as possible and spread the Big Bum Fun far and wide, perhaps get some other Big Bum Jumbles in the mix – FLYERS AND POSTERS

Dear Supporter,

I’m delighted to tell you that on Friday the Home Secretary, Theresa May, announced that she would extend the current No Recourse pilot project until March 2011. This enables women trapped in violent relationships by the ‘no recourse’ rule to access protection from which they would otherwise have been turned away.

Even better, she said that she would then be working on a permanent solution. The Home Secretary made this pledge despite the cuts climate, saying “some things are too important”. This is great news.

We will, of course, continue to try to work with the government to ensure that the project addresses some of the weaknesses in the current pilot, but this announcement is a major step forward that will give hundreds of women safety over the coming months, and beyond. Definitely something to celebrate.

Thank you to everyone who supported this campaign – especially those who came to the mass lobby of Parliament back in November, or wrote to their MPs on this issue.

Sincerely,

Heather Harvey
Stop Violence Against Women Campaign Manager

Background on this campaign
Many women come to the UK, often legally, in the hope of improving their lives. They may come on temporary work permits, student visas or spousal visas. Some women come to the UK to marry. The ‘no recourse to public funds’ rule says that a woman in this position – even if she’s married to a British citizen – is not entitled to certain state benefits, including housing benefit and income support. But these are the benefits a woman must be able to claim to get a place in a refuge if she needs to escape violence. In December, the last government launched a pilot project to help these women. Active campaigning led to the pilot being extended until August 2010 and we’ve been keeping up the pressure ever since for a permanent solution. Read more