Civil rights with a pretty hat on...?

How, I wonder, would I be received if I were to put a book on the market tomorrow? Would people immediately presume to know what my book is about, how it has been written, and its overall quality as a piece of literature in general? I suspect they would. They’d assume that it was some Belle De Jour-esque thing, probably to do with men and relationships, written to a fairly low standard and somewhat simplistically. This is just a fact of life – we all imagine we ‘know’ a person on first glance due to stereotypes, even if we aren’t aware or willing to admit that we’re so judgemental.

When I walked into the room on Wednesday and saw that the people who’d be giving the talk were dressed from head to toe in bright red with shaven heads and wearing sandals and various beads about their necks I (and I’m ashamed to admit) presumed to know them already, as though they weren’t individuals at all; simply a religious collective. Looking at it from a different perspective, and imagining that they, ‘the Buddhists’, were to walk into a room fronted by a group of females in their early twenties whom, perhaps, resembled the cast of Hollyoaks, would they be so kind as to give the benefit of the doubt? Would they even stay to listen? I wonder.

I realised, you see, from listening to ‘the Buddhist’ Braziers, that image is fundamental to how you’re perceived in the world of writing as well as the everyday world, and that it can either work with you, or against you. This brings me to the idea of feminism (which is always fun) and something Katherine Whitehorn said with regard to women in today’s society. The concept of shame, she said woefully, is practically obsolete nowadays, as is so gracefully portrayed in the media every day. Is it really the case, as my flatmate Sofia said over pesto and pasta this evening, that women should not aspire to be equal to men as that would be setting their sights too low? I don’t know. But it did make me consider what goes into my writing, and whether what I write about would constitute a ‘shameful’ representation of modern women. Hmm…

-A