Anna Kavan

A damaging dream of Mad Men's Joan

When it comes to the ideal female body-shape the pipe cleaner is out, the hourglass is in – or at least it will be if the new equalities minister, Lynne Featherstone, manages to chisel out her will on the perfect body image.

"In the autumn the minister will convene the first of a series of roundtable discussions with members of the fashion industry, including magazine editors, models and advertisers, to discuss how to boost body confidence among the young," the Sunday Times reported yesterday.

One might think that one of the first steps to boost such confidence might be to abolish school weigh-ins and make puppy fat a normal rite of passage rather than the subject of a health warning via the National Child Measurement Programme. (Can any woman think of anything more likely to have produced a fear of being on the chunky side than turning up to school one morning and being plonked on a set of scales? If that's not going to make you skip your Dairylea dunker as a lass and develop a lifelong fear of bread, one wonders if a picture of Kate Winslet's thighs is going to do it.)

"All women have felt that pressure of having to conform to an unrealistic stereotype, which plagues them their whole life." Featherstone explained. "It is not just the immediate harm; it is something that lasts a lifetime."

And you might think Featherstone had a point – it is after all, pretty demoralising looking at image after image of Naomi Campbell after Keira Knightley after Eva Mendes and not feeling as though the jam doughnut you just stuffed in your mouth wasn't really so irresistible after all – but then Lynne goes and recommends that we now need a new set of curvaceous role models, to replace all the whippet-thin ones, like Christina Hendricks, who plays Joan in Mad Men.

So I'm sitting here, with my images of Joan, and I'm feeling a little queasy. I'm thinking even if I eat 12 doughnuts, my hips are never going to bloom out like that. What is she wearing, some sort of side bustle? Has she got pads on under there? There she is, Joan, with her immaculately coiffed red hive of a hairdo – while the Hill barnet looks like someone's just rubbed it very fast with a balloon. Joan's embonpoint is so formidable it could have your eye out – and the Hill eyes stare down at the Hill chest and command the Hill fingers to Google "conical bras – Madonna – Girlie Tour". Joan is encased in the best dress money can buy. The Hill wardrobe looks askance at the Hill wallet and sees a moth fly out.

It's time to get the point, Lynne. The Hill ain't ever going to look like Joanie. Giving the British woman Joanie as a role model is never going to make her feel good. At least Kate Moss's hair sometimes stands on end. At least Cindy Crawford's got a damn mole. If we're talking about images of unattainable perfection, Joanie, with her hips, bust and stature could take home a newly-invented Nobel for the accolade. Oh sure, she looks like she could pack a few Big Macs – although I'm sure Featherstone would warn us against those – but as an ideal she is quite as unattainable as any other. Her BMI, in fact, is precariously near that of a model's – at 5 foot 8 and 140 pounds it works out as 21.3 (according to Joanie's driving licence). In other words, she's the equivalent of an old-fashioned perfect 10.

Rather than replacing the old impossible images with new impossible images (as the creative director of Harper's Bazaar pointed out, the fashion industry exists to create the fantasy you'll never live up to) an equalities minister should throw out all notions of obsessing about feminine beauty and concentrate on helping young girls think about the size of their achievements rather than the flatness of their navels, and the scale of their ambitions rather than – in Joanie's case – the rather spectacular power of their bosoms.

Anna Kavan

Issue 188
Freak Out

Cult VIP
Anna Kavan: Undergound novelist who shot 'bazookas' in her veins and lived a life of multiple identities

By Emily Hill

It's time to cut this purposeless prince

In many ways, Prince Charles is like that other famous royal, King Knut, except instead of doing anything so useful as retiring to the seaside to order the tide to turn back, the Prince of Wales sits, enthroned at his desk, red in face and big of ear, emitting his own, personal vowel ‘aiiiiieeeeyyy’ as he searches for a felicitous phrase, writing letters, and striving, hard as he might, to reinstitute the feudal system. Last year, he wrote 2662 personal letters – an average of 51 a week.

‘Plough my way through a backlog of letters’, reads Prince Charles’s diary (as told to Craig Brown in Private Eye this week). ‘The first is to the Chairman of “Tesco”, suggesting that to replace his “fleet” of “lorries”, etc, for the good old-fashioned horse-and-cart would represent a tremendous saving on fossil fuel, as well as being infinitely better for the environment and perhaps he would care to drop round to Clarence House to discuss it? It’s so often the “personal touch” that swings these people round to a more enlightened point of view.’

This is only a jot more absurd than Charles’s actual scrawlings – apparently known as ‘black spider memos’ in Whitehall because of his handwriting. He revels in his reputation for being a ‘stirrer’ and a ‘dissident’ and in February used an annual conference at St James’s Palace to declare: ‘I was accused once of being the enemy of the Enlightenment, I felt rather proud. I thought hang on a moment, the Enlightenment started over 200 years ago. It might be time to think again and review it and question whether it is really effective in today’s conditions.’

Shaky ground for the dimwitted scion of Windsor to be getting onto – for if the ideals of the Enlightenment seem out-of-date to Charles on the basis that they are over 200 years old, how on earth must he view himself, whose entire position on society depends on the retention of a thousand-year-old system of hereditary monarchy.

Why does the nation continue to have to listen to his gubbins? Last week, it was revealed that he is still on an income many times that of the much-maligned former head of Royal Bank of Scotland, Fred ‘the Shred’ Goodwin – and yet when Charles turned up for a walkabout at Glastonbury, at no point did anyone smash his car up or threaten to make him dead, like they did with the Shred before he went into hiding. Charles’ entertainment bill makes an MPs’ expense claims look like petty cash, but rather than the tabloids roaring, they all seemed to acquiesce to a Clarence House press mantra that the Prince of Wails was now a ‘cut price Prince’.

‘Thrifty Charles slashes his costs’, ran the splash on the front cover of the London Evening Standard. ‘Prince gets half as much from the state… and pays more tax’. In his latest statement of accounts, the Prince received a mere £1.664million from the taxpayer – down from £3.033million the year before. His spending on official duties was cut from £12.5million to £10.7million. Considering that a ‘greedy, overpaid’ footballer who just ‘lost us the World Cup’, such as Wayne Rooney, or the ex-England star David Beckham will cause far more excitement in Japan than balding, charmless Charles will, where was the interrogation of the idea that he needs any of this money at all - especially when the Duchy of Cornwall, creamed him in £17.2million? The list of Charles’s ‘savings’ should make anyone in their right mind blench.

Whilst MPs have become national hate figures after it was revealed that some had claimed for duck houses, wisteria removal and moat cleaning on expenses, why is no-one spitting about the fact that Charles spent £6.3million on staff costs alone last year, so the Prince could continue to getting his newspaper ironed by a valet? Staring at a list of his domestic help alone makes Sarah ‘Fergie’ Ferguson start to look like a slightly more useful human being.

Asked whether Charles couldn’t fund a few more of his overseas trips without the public purse, his private secretary, Sir Michael Peat sniffed, ‘There’s not a lot of slack in the income. We are already diverting 90 per cent. I suppose we could get the prince and duchess to eat one fewer meal a day.’ What an excellent idea. Now MPs are sleeping in the House of Commons after their second home allowance was scrapped, this seems pretty reasonable. Perhaps the Prince could learn how to boil an egg himself or open a tin of biscuits.

The continuing existence of the hereditary system is an insult – and not just because Charles is heir to the throne. Along with the House of Lords, it is a ludicrous anachronism. Last week, former defence minister John Gilbert told the House of Lords that if there were an elected second chamber, rather than a house full of former Blairites, hereditaries and wonks ‘you would get the sort of oik — and for Hansard’s benefit, oik is spelt OIK —that could not get into the Commons, Europe, the Scottish Parliament or the Welsh Assembly and probably not into a half-decent county council. That is the sort of oik you would have here. That is barmy.’ He then added that he had ‘no intention of standing for a seat in your Lordships’ House for the simple reason that I know perfectly well I would not get elected’.

Would Charles be elected if the position of Head of State went before the people on the death of the Queen? I think not. Charles has all the charm of a wooden post. With all the talk about sacrifices that have to be made during the recession, perhaps cutting the cut-price Prince might be amongst the most painless.

Terrible drivers of the world unite!

I am a terrible driver. When I was 18 I failed the test three times for putting my foot down through red lights, driving straight over roundabouts and crashing into wing mirrors, whilst fighting the urge to scratch my own skin off. However, Ozzy Osbourne's diary for The Spectator this morning is infinitely more amusing than any of that:

"I'm a much better driver than I used to be - mainly 'cos I ain't on a lethal combination of mind-altering drugs 24 hours a day any more. I remember on one occasion in the 1970s,l around the time my old band Black Sabbath was just taking off, I tried to calm my nerves before taking one of my many [- 19] driving tests by taking a fistful of sedatives then smoking my way through half a brick of Afghan hash. It relaxd me, all right: when I stopped at the first red light, I nodded off. By the time I finally woke up, a little red-faced bloke from the DVLA was whacking me over the head with his clipboard and shouting, 'FAIL!'"