Caroline Flack: Misogyny claims another victim
Yesterday we heard that the incredibly sad news that television presenter Caroline Flack had taken her own life at her London flat. Caroline had been cruelly vilified in the press and social media during the last few months of her life following the start of a prosecution in which she stood accused of assaulting her partner. She was due to appear in court again in early March.
The coverage of the criminal proceedings had taken the scant facts around the alleged incident and turned them into a torrent of bile.
However, this was nothing new for Caroline.
This was just the latest manifestation of the media’s tendency to kick her for her apparent “failures” to live up to expectations of who women are and how they should behave. They always focused on who and what she wasn’t rather than who and what she was. What she hadn’t achieved rather than what she had accomplished.
The standards by which she was judged related wholly to her relationships with men. The press had long portrayed her as unlucky in love, a hopeless romantic. At 40, she had “failed” to secure a man and “failed” to produce children. Keep up Caroline, you’re falling behind. You’ll be left on the shelf. You’ll end up a spinster. Tick tock. Tick tock.
Imagine that this is how you are defined. Despite the fact that for nearly 20 years, you have consistently secured work in a tough, competitive and fickle industry. Despite the fact that the diversity of your talent and your hard graft have secured you an enviable professional reputation. Despite the fact that your kindness and humanity have reached through the television screens and created a nationwide affection for you.
The Mail on Sunday headline today read "Shock and grief for Caroline Flack, the troubled romantic who never did find true love". I wanted to be sick when I read that.
Your ultimate worth as a human being, how you are defined after your death - will hinge on whether you could keep a man. That’s pretty shit isn’t it?
Our media’s emphasis on her “shortfalls” was fuelled by a widespread hatred of women who don’t conform to “traditional” (i.e. patriarchal) expectations of femininity. This misogyny is thriving in a neoliberal society which has sold women a load of crap about formal equality. In theory, we have equal rights. In theory we can’t be discriminated against at work or receive lower pay than our male colleagues doing equivalent jobs. In theory it’s illegal to be physically violent towards us. In theory, since 1991 our husbands have not been able to rape us and face no criminal sanctions for doing so.
But theory and practice are completely different things. Every day our worth is evaluated on whether we’ve ticked the items off an arbitrary life checklist. Boyfriend? Marriage? Children? The criteria over which we have the least control are the criteria that carry the heaviest weight for our value as human beings. Never mind about educational achievement. Sod professional accomplishment. The hobbies and interests that enrich our lives? Bugger them too.
It saddens me that the young women around me in my family and those I teach in my job at a university may already be worrying that they have failed. These women are future doctors, engineers, civil servants, politicians, criminal justice professionals and voluntary sector leaders.
The truth is, they are not failing. In continuing to frame women’s identities around so-called feminine “ideals”, we are failing them.
Sadly Caroline is the latest victim of a misogynistic society with a persistent patriarchal hangover. Caroline Flack - television and radio presenter, actress, dancer, daughter, friend, colleague and all-round decent human being.
But it’s not too late to assure the women in our lives that in our eyes at least, their importance isn’t contingent on "catching" a man and propagating their genes. That the things we love and admire about them are the things they are passionate about, their vocations, their interests and their kindness.
Before you ask a young woman in your life whether she’s got a boyfriend yet, why she is still single, when she’s going to "settle down" - stop. These little and seemingly insignificant questions fuel the raging fire of misogyny and sexism. We need to extinguish these flames before they consume more amazing women like Caroline Flack.
