Natasha Walter
The feminist writer and broadcaster joins Mariella to introduce her newest book, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism.
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You’ll probably know feminist writer and broadcaster Natasha Walter from her regular columns and features in The Independent, The Observer and The Guardian or her appearances on Newsnight Review, but it was her 1998 book The New Feminism that established her as one of Britain's foremost feminist voices.
Born in London in 1967, Walters’ father was Nicolas Walter, an anarchist and secular humanist writer who (according to a January 2010 interview Waters gave in The Guardian) was once imprisoned for heckling Harold Wilson and who met her social worker mother in the peace movement; her grandfather, William Grey Walter, a neuroscientist. Perhaps unsurprisingly, following an education at the North London Collegiate girls’ school, Walter went on to read English at Cambridge and then went to Harvard as a graduate student on a Frank Knox Fellowship.
Her first job was at Vogue magazine, she subsequently worked as a reviewer, columnist and feature writer at The Independent, The Observer and The Guardian (becoming Deputy Literary Editor at The Independent), as well as becoming a regular broadcaster particularly on BBC2's Newsnight Review and BBC Radio 4's Front Row.
In 1998 her first book, The New Feminism, was published by Virago, and, popularly, suggested that the sex war had been won, visualising “that we are in the final stretch of a long feminist revolution that is taking women from the outside of society to the inside, from silence to speech, from impotence to strength." Her newest book (of which more below) revises this view, and examines the resurgence of sexism in contemporary culture, under the guise of ‘empowering’, ‘liberating’ activities such as stripping and pole dancing.
Walter has been a judge on a number of literary prizes, including the Booker Prize in 1999. She is a passionate advocate for the rights of women and children who seek asylum in the UK, and in 2006 she founded the charity Women for Refugee Women. She is also the author of the play Motherland which was performed at the Young Vic in 2008 and starred Juliet Stevenson. Natasha Walter lives in London with her partner and their two children. Her new book, Living Dolls, is published in February 2010 by Virago.
Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter
Empowerment, liberation, choice. Once the watchwords of feminism, these terms have now been co-opted by a society that sells women an airbrushed, highly sexualised and increasingly narrow vision of femininity. While the opportunities available to women may have expanded, the ambitions of many young girls are in reality limited by a culture that sees women's sexual allure as their only passport to success. At the same time we are encouraged to believe that the inequality we observe all around us is born of innate biological differences rather than social factors. Drawing on a wealth of research and personal interviews, Natasha Walter, author of the groundbreaking The New Feminism and one of Britain's most incisive cultural commentators, gives us a straight-talking, passionate and important book that makes us look afresh at women and girls, at sexism and femininity, today.
Read more about Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism at Lovereading.co.uk
