Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism

“I was startled by what some young women were saying to me about their inability to access dissent; their inability to hear voices that were presenting an alternative” – Natasha Walter

I’m half way through Natasha Walter’s new book Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism. It is a compelling read, laying bare the forces of sexualisation, objectification and raunch culture and their destructive influence on the health and wellbeing of women and girls everywhere. So much of the book echoes the findings of Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls. It is encouraging to see a coalescing of global concern around the pornification of culture and it’s wrecking ball impact on girls’ lives.

I really like this description of the book by broadcaster and commentator Bidisha, in  :

“The coolly devastating precision of her second book, Living Dolls: the Return of Sexism, is all the more potent for its patient description of a viciously misogynistic culture…. a call to revolution that kicks Nuts magazine right in the nuts… At this crucial moment in women’s history, Walter provides a crystal-clear enunciation of the hypocrisy, shallowness and misogyny of our age”.

Natasha was interviewed on ABC yesterday.  She was introduced this way:

‘Twelve years ago when British writer and campaigner Natasha Walter wrote her book The New Feminism, she was optimistic about women and their place in the world.

She’s less positive now…she argues that the new raunch culture where young women vie for a start as a glamour model, or choose a career as a lap dancer, is once again objectifying women sexually…’ You can listen to the interview here. 

The Weekend Australian also carried a lengthy piece about Natasha Walter a couple of weeks ago, titled Valley of the Dolls. Here’s an extract:

As she interviewed high-school girls who felt alienated by their peers’ sex-without-love ethos, it dawned on Walter that adults had stopped agitating on behalf of such vulnerable teenagers, who reminded her of her younger self. This, in turn, partly triggered her new book.

“I was startled by what some young women were saying to me about their inability to access dissent; their inability to hear voices that were presenting an alternative,” she explains.

Walter found no shortage of evidence to support her thesis that the values of the sex industry and mainstream sex culture are merging, and being falsely sold to young women as a form of empowerment. Read the full story here.