Ways to Support International Women’s Day 2023

Even if you aren’t aware now, you will be on 8th March when your entire Instagram feed consists of the following:

  1. Groups of girlfriends on a night out
  2. Celebrity women, probably Beyoncé, perhaps the Kardashians
  3. Someone’s mother doing amateur modelling in the 80s

All will be unified by something resembling “my women #IWD”. Once upon a time, International Women’s Day became nothing more than an opportunity to show your otherwise apathetic followers that you too are a girl-power loving, feminist queen. For one day a year, if you don’t post anything with the eponymous IWD hashtag, you are a woman hater and may as well join an Andrew Tate fan club. With the stakes this high, chances are you will come across a post of a girl you know full well to have famously and consistently slandered her friends, now aligning herself with the upper echelons of feminism. Herein lies the fallibility of ‘clicktivism’ and why a hashtag does not make you a supporter of International Women’s Day. Instead, you can show your support all year round and avoid becoming victim to an, albeit annual, micro internet trend.

Despite the above, there is obviously no problem with honouring your friends online, IF you are going to love them on the other 364 days as well. University can be a tricky time for comparison, when others are getting internships and job offers, and you seem to be faced with rejection after rejection. Excitement for them can sometimes be overshadowed by your own disappointment but it is really important, both for them and for the longevity of your friendship, if you can give them the praise they deserve. Equally, when you’re enshrined in success, don’t forget about those that are not having the best luck.

If we consider feminism to be the raising of women to reach an equilibrium with men, then it is essential that women are bolstering one another along the way. Not putting other women down to elevate yourself and being nice to your friends are things we should be doing every day, regardless of whether you are posting about it. The International Women’s Day campaign theme for 2023 is #EmbraceEquity, a hashtag with an impact. This year there is a push towards equity for inclusivity amongst all genders, with an emphasis on the fact that feminism that isn’t intersectional, isn’t feminism.

LGBTQ+ women are subjected to a double burden of sexism and sexual-orientation discrimination. A 2021 University study, conducted by Stonewall, showed that nine out of ten LGBTQ+ students have a positive or neutral Uni experience. As a reader of The Gryphon, the likelihood is that, in one way or another, you contribute to Leeds student culture. Think of your words and actions as the microbiome of the university environment and continue to make a conscious effort to make everyone’s Uni experience the best it can be; be vigilant, call out offensive jokes, challenge stereotypes and confront bias. Although LGBTQ+ experiences tend to be far improved than they once were, there is still a long way to go, so if you are wondering whether we still need International Women’s Day, the answer is YES. And if your annoying male housemate asks, “when’s international men’s day?” you can tell him it is the 19th November.

Send Nudes by Saba Sams review – “10 short stories that are brilliantly crafted and subtle in their delivery.”

‘So she left, walked home through the park, with an image in her head that wouldn’t shift: her body as a nut cracked open.’ This is one of a hundred stunning lines from 25-year-old author Saba Sams’ debut novel, Send Nudes, a collection of 10 short stories that are hard to put down, brilliantly crafted and subtle in their delivery.

Send Nudes chronicles the lives of several Generation Z women who have just come of age and explores their reactions to the absurd situations they find themselves in. These situations come about within the patriarchal society they live in, such as in Here Alone where Emily finds herself being used to make her date’s ex-girlfriend jealous. She is ignored and left discarded like a plastic wrapper, finally finding comfort through food, a pleasure she indulges in with hesitation. 

It is not only patriarchy that Sams pays attention to, but also the ills of capitalism and its resulting inequality. In Today’s Square a working-class girl is promised a holiday by her mother, but the onslaught of COVID and financial difficulties render this impossible. These characters go from point A to B rather easily and their actions show a resigned acceptance, but a whole load of internal monologue complicates things.

Sams is interested in how modern technology – smartphones, social media, selfies – distorts women’s perception of themselves. See the title story, Send Nudes, where the protagonist struggles with her appearance, or Tinderloin, in which a Tinder match has disastrous consequences. Her characters don’t fit into the standards expected of young women and they suffer as a result. They are rebellious without meaning to be, and different without wanting to be. An important message from the collection is that only very few women fit into these standards of beauty and behaviour, and the toxicity and self-hate from this is inherently damaging. 

The best story in the collection, by a mile, is Overnight, a truly harrowing depiction of sexual assault, told through flashbacks at a rave. The relatability of the settings – a rave, a party, and school uniform shopping – make it all the more horrifying. The fine-drawn nuances of this type of scarring situation are so confidently rendered and stay with you for days.

Altogether, these socially relevant themes, combined with deadpan dialogue and a fluid prose style give the collection a visceral energy. It is the kind of book that people will fangirl over, and rightly so.

In Britain, Sams is part of a generation in which the female artist has taken on a renewed importance. Last year we saw the release of critically acclaimed albums from female musicians: Arlo Parks, Joy Crookes and PinkPantheress to name a few. In literature also, we are seeing a similar situation, where the poster girl is Sally Rooney.

Sams’ style of writing is almost identical to Rooney’s. In this area, Saba Sams has brought nothing new to the table. But innovation in prose style is not what she is after; it is content in which she has made remarkable strides. She has significantly widened the picture from Rooney’s obsession with bourgeois romance troubles and middle-class professionals moaning of how awful life is whilst professing themselves to be avid Marxists…

Stories should reveal something to the reader by taking them into the depths of a character’s inner life, a place which said reader cannot access otherwise. Sams does this down to a T. Her stories are rich in narrative and reach peaks that warrant further exploration. Her short stories leave the reader pondering over their conclusions. 

But the peaks also show something else: that many of the stories have the potential to grow into novels. Sally Rooney’s Normal People began life as a short story. Saba Sams should realise this and soon release a novel – a form in which I expect she will fare greatly.

Student life under the Taliban: Education at risk

The Taliban’s advance to power has meant many things. Repercussions have been felt around the world as foreign powers rush to evacuate at risk citizens and international diplomacy has been tested as leaders grapple with questions of what the 20-year occupation in Afghanistan was for. And, crucially, was it worth it?

No thanks Estrid, we’ll reclaim our own body hair

‘Hey friend,’ the email read. ‘I’ve got a super-smooth surprise for you.’

It was from Estrid, one of the many ‘revolutionary’ feminine hair removal companies springing up recently. You may yourself have spotted their pastel-pink razors plastered across Instagram or creeping into your DMs.

The offending email was infantilising, playing on Gen-Z terminology to hook in a customer – “we’re like you!” the email screamed. Between liberal rainbow and heart emojis, they denoted themselves as a ‘female-first razor brand that celebrates inclusivity, body positivity, and equality’. They even offered a free razor, all for the low price of an #ad on your personal Instagram account. Now that all sounds good in theory, doesn’t it? But how exactly do they fit into a new era in which empowered personal choice shapes consumerism?

Image credit: Harper’s Bazaar 1922

Though body hair removal has been practiced by women for centuries, only more recently has it become a ‘necessity’ through social stigmatisation. The first female-specific razor was introduced to the market in 1915 by Gillette – the Milady Décolleté. Beneath this flowery name lay the new implication that body hair was unsanitary and unsightly, with shame functioning as a vehicle to further this new industry. Thus, the war against female body hair was born.

Feminine razor and hair removal companies have built their empire by creating a problem and inspiring insecurity. Women shouldn’t be hairy, they told us. Women should be smooth, sleek, sexual. This message stuck, for the most part, until very recently when self-empowerment and body positivity movements changed the game. Body hair removal brands now occupy an uncomfortable space, and have quickly changed tack, with new businesses bubbling up to fill the emergent market gap.

Image credit: Fern McErlane

Gillette now gleefully crows ‘Say pubic!’ on their social media, openly celebrating hair-down-there, and shares ‘feminist icon’ Ruth Bader-Ginsburg quotes. It’s a far cry from the ‘embarrassment’ of female body hair that they previously shilled. Estrid’s Instragram account is flush with carefully curated, aesthetically pleasing images, and memes likely created by an underpaid intern. They do raise valid points surrounding the necessity of vegan, cruelty-free, and sustainable products (something that in my opinion they should focus more upon). Yet, there is no admission from Gillette, or any other brand in the industry, of their part in creating the body hair stigma that they now “fight” against. In the era of real body positivity movements, it cloys of corporate desperation. More importantly, there is an unspoken unwillingness to take the blame. Should we let the same businesses that shamed and politicised our bodies now encourage us to choose for ourselves? It’s important to remember that as appealing these new brands may be, they’re not your friends. They’re selling you something, be it a product, or an idealised lifestyle (attainable only by using said product).

So, to these companies, my takeaway message is: back off. If we want to seek you out, we will. You don’t get to offer us a choice that was our own to make in the first place.

(But thanks for the free razor.)