You know what makes me cry tears of bile and want to run though the Daily Mail newsroom with a starving Alsatian? This enduring bloody myth that women should be each others’ best friends because they’ve all experienced uterine outpourings. If you haven’t already seen the pictures of the BET awards, the one that’s been bandied about the most is that of Beyonce, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian, the four of them forming their own perfectly paparazzied front row. And according to the Daily Mail this shot of shit-all is noteable because – get this - the women sit on either side of the men and, shockingly, “made no effort to stretch across to chinwag”.
Whoa there! This vapid bumbling from the Daily Mail is the equivalent those hilarious paper sanitary bags you find in toilets, the ones featuring laydees with crinolines and parasols. Not only does this statement drip with incredulity because two random women have not formed an unbreakable friendship, like tit-adorned magnets, but it’s also agog because said women didn’t indulge in that quaint girly hobby of gossiping.
First, why are women expected to be friends simply because they are, well, women? Please explain it because it’s making my frontal lobes ache. I mean, can you imagine making friends with every woman you ever met just because you match anatomically? God knows what that’d mean for the female nurse who carries out my smears. Or the woman doctor who once provided me with a rectal rummaging. By now we’d have some weird polygamous partnership and more kids than an episode of Grange Hill.
It’s the equivalent of expecting all blonde men to forge bromances or for all wheelchair users to live together in collective harmony. Ah, but then again, this is women that the Daily Mail is talking about. That’s right, simple creatures who are so easily delighted by each other’s company that not forming friendships defies the laws of physics.
Then there’s this patronising notion that when women do make friends they’re capable of little more than small talk and charming flickers of gossip, or “chinwags” as the Daily Mail daintily labels this interaction. Personally, the last time I talked about kittens, doilies and matching underwear was...oh hang on...never, unless you count this post. And God forbid that women should indulge in conversation more complex than about the height of their Laboutins. Can you imagine how the Daily Mail would have reacted had Bey and KK been discussing the possible discovery of the Higgs Boson at CERN? I went to CERN last year and am now relieved that Daily Mail wingnuts didn’t bar my entrance, bind me with American Tan tights (30 denier) and pitch me into Lake Geneva as punishment for my audacity. That’ll teach me for not producing delightfully tinkling laughter while in the presence of menfolk.
It’s not just the Daily Mail that does this though, is it? It’s anyone who mutters the eye-bugging line, “Oh you know what women are like when they get together!”. Er, do I? Well, I know what I and my friends are like and it’s not quite what the rest of the world would have you believe. Well, we don’t giggle over the word ‘penis’ anyway. As for the other three-point-something billion women who are also rolling their eyes at this lunacy, I’m afraid you’ll have to ask them.
My friends and I, though, do despair about the Daily fucking Mail and how it goggles at the award winning, wildly-successful, ball-busting Beyonce simply because she hasn’t succumbed to the apparently genetic impulse to “chinwag”.
Tell you what, I could teach the Daily Mail hacks a thing or two about chins but I’m afraid it would involve less wagging and a stout right hook. I wonder if that’s something women are supposed to talk about too? Something tells me it’s not.
