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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.

Lady Gaga presents an extremely empowered vision of sex and sexiness. Hers is a million miles away from the cynical, soulless titillation of your average Britney Spears video; of …Baby One More Time, say (in which Spears, who was 17, dressed as a schoolgirl and beseeched whoever to “Hit me, baby, one more time…”). It’s the opposite of the sex offered in most R&B and hip-hop videos, in which unnamed, interchangeable bikini-clad models dance for the slathering delectation of the male recording artists. Because men dance for Lady Gaga.

Gaga owns this version of sex and she’s not asking you to approve it. She’s a complete pop icon – but she’s no pin-up. She hasn’t bothered constructing a version of herself designed to please a straight male audience. Lady Gaga doesn’t do pretty, or available, or submissive, or obviously glamorous. Instead she does scary, she does theatrical, she does brave.

And these are my thoughts exactly. Perhaps a pop princess like Spears is indeed presenting an oversexualised image and encouraging young girls to dress/dance/act in a provocative manner. Lady Gaga I think not. To me, Lady Gaga represents a different kind of sexuality, one which in my eyes is certainly not run of the mill heterosexual. And perhaps Mike Stock wouldn’t feel comfortable watching a Lady Gaga with his children or mother, but I certainly would.