Latest news with #feminism
The Guardian
5 hours ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Chinese officials warn women comedians that men are no laughing matter
Chinese provincial officials have warned comedians against stirring up discord between the genders, instructing them to criticise constructively rather than 'for the sake of being funny'. The warning came from authorities in eastern Zhejiang province on WeChat over the weekend after a comedian referred to her allegedly abusive marriage in a performance that went viral on Chinese social media. Women's rights are sensitive territory in China – over the last decade, authorities have cracked down on almost every form of independent feminist activism. Zhejiang's publicity department chastised some comedy shows for becoming a 'battlefield' and simplifying gender issues into 'opposition between men and women'. 'Criticism is obviously fine, but it should be … constructive rather than revolve around gender opposition for the sake of being funny,' Sunday's WeChat article read. The department also offered comedians tips on how to discuss gender in their sets. 'Instead of mocking 'blindly confident men' it is better to explore the social causes for this mentality,' it suggested. 'Instead of blindly ridiculing 'materialistic women', it is better to reflect on how consumerism shapes gender roles.' The warning did not name a specific comedian, but called out streaming platform iQiyi's The King of Stand-up Comedy, and mentioned a newcomer dubbed an 'industry gem' online . Earlier this month, the show broadcast a performance by Fan Chunli – who goes by the stage name 'Fangzhuren' – whose set revolved around her allegedly abusive marriage. Members of the audience were moved to tears and many stood to applaud when she revealed she had left her ex-husband. Clips of her set spread across the Chinese internet, earning the former sanitation worker from northern Shandong province legions of new fans. The Chinese arts scene has always been heavily censored by the ruling Communist party, and authorities have tightened that oversight in the past decade. But Sunday's warning sparked some criticism online. 'Just saying the facts of what happened is provoking opposition between men and women?' one top-liked Weibo comment reads. 'Once something is discussed from a female perspective it is labelled gender opposition, isn't that too sensitive,' reads another. Women have faced backlash for joking about gender issues in the past. In 2024, retail company dropped its sponsorship of Yang Li, a comedian known for asking why men 'look so mediocre yet still have so much self-confidence'. Irked customers, mostly men, filled the company's social media with angry comments after Yang appeared at a promotional event. But this month, fans applauded Fangzhuren for telling her story. 'The environment changes people, and will prompt women's awakening,' she posted on Weibo. 'When I said in the village I wanted a divorce, I was … unforgivable,' she wrote. 'On the outside, when I talk about my divorce, the audience applauds.'
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Lifestyle
- Daily Mail
Fashion's most influential woman you've never heard of... and the designers who have been stealing from her ever since
Every time a woman puts her hands in her pockets, zips up the side of her pants, or belts the waist of her wrap dress, she owes a debt of gratitude to someone she has likely never heard of. That someone is Claire McCardell. She was once one of the most influential and famous fashion designers in the world. When she died in 1958, the New York Times ran her obituary on their front page and hailed her as the 'All-American designer for the All-American girl.' Yet despite having more of an impact on women's lives than Coco Chanel and Christian Dior combined, McCardell has been largely forgotten – a name familiar only to the fashion cognoscenti and design historians. Author Elizabeth Evitts Dickinson is determined to change that. She is seeking to reinstate McCardell in the pantheon of designer greats with her new book, ' Claire McCardell: The Designer Who Set Women Free.' Because, according to Evitts Dickinson, what McCardell did entirely reinvented the way women dress. Coming to prominence in the 1930s and 1940s, the designer recognized that women's lives were changing. They were living, moving and working in a modern world. McCardell turned up her nose at corsetry, high heels and delicate fabrics, and espoused a feminist philosophy that translated into designs she believed a liberated woman would want to wear. 'You have to design for the lives American women lead today,' she noted in an interview with feminist writer Betty Friedan in 1947. McCardell was born in 1905 in the quiet hamlet of Frederick, Maryland. The daughter of a banker and housewife, as a girl, she railed against the restrictions of female clothing that made climbing trees and stashing apples almost impossible. She majored in home economics for two years at nearby Hood College before making the bold leap to New York City to earn a degree from the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (now Parsons The New School for Design). A stint in Paris followed and convinced McCardell that American women deserved better than the poor imitations of Parisian haute couture that filled US stores. McCardell believed they needed clothes that reflected the pioneering spirit embodied by Charles Lindbergh, who she watched land at Le Bourget Airport on 21 May 1927 after his historic solo non-stop flight from New York to Paris. Returning to New York and its Seventh Avenue design district – the hub of American fashion production – McCardell secured a job at Townley Frocks, then one of the leading garment manufacturers. During her tenure she fought for the inclusion of many of what we now consider staple features in womenswear. Pockets rather than purses was an essential ethos in the McCardell worldview. Not content with male-driven view that they made the female figure look fat, the designer argued pockets were a necessity for women whose presence in the modern American workforce was becoming ever more important. Closures were next on her list. Without a husband or maid, how could a woman, McCardell argued, fasten her dress? Without further ado she shifted the zipper on her pieces from the back to the side. That change embodied how the designer believed women should be allowed to dress – 'independent clothes for the independent working gal,' she proclaimed. According to her boss at Townley, her pleated 'monastic dress,' created in 1938, looked terrible on the hanger but, when belted at the waist with its spaghetti style ties – another of McCardell's innovations – it embodied functional elegance that made it an immediate bestseller when it hit the ready-to-wear racks. Four years later, McCardell bested her own record for success when, in 1942, she created the cotton 'Popover' wrap dress. It was marketed to American consumers as the 'original utility fashion' and sold for $6.95. The dress was originally made from inexpensive cotton, which McCardell later switched out for denim – a bold move and a novel use of a fabric previously considered the reserve of menswear. Thirty years before Diane Von Furstenberg repurposed the wrap dress into one made from jersey – claiming she had launched not just a revolution but a symbol of sartorial female independence – McCardell's 'Popover' gave women the benefit of looking good while still being functional. Lord and Taylor, the famed but now defunct department store, gave the dress an entire window display in its flagship store on New York's Fifth Avenue. One fashion journalist described the life-altering garment as 'so glamorous that Fifth Avenue and the farm united in their acceptance of it.' A staggering 75,000 dresses were sold in the first six months, earning McCardell not just fame but her place as the preeminent arbiter of female fashion. Cut off from the leadership of Parisian fashion houses due to World War II and facing the challenges of wartime shortages, she was allowed to flex the muscles of innovation without the backlash of the conservative male voices that still dominated American fashion. Trousers with pleats, and yes pockets, became de rigueur for a newly functional face of the female workforce, who also found in McCardell's love of hoods a practical replacement for hats which remained in place only with uncomfortable and unstable pins. Leggings and other sportswear separates quickly became part of the McCardell repertoire. Faced with a shortage of leather due to wartime rationing, she had the perfect excuse to abandon the high heel, which she had long thought impractical for a working woman. She pivoted to the ballet flat – soles made of rubber and the shoe made from a fabric matching her designs. Though she sparked a trend that still flourishes today, her rival Coco Chanel is the one who gets all the credit, despite the fact the French designer didn't launch her own version until 1957. Trousers with pleats, and yes pockets, became de rigueur for a newly functional face of the female workforce (Pictured: McCardell's trousers in a Neiman Marcus ad) Four years later, McCardell bested her own record for success when, in 1942, she created the cotton 'Popover' wrap dress (pictured) Thirty years before Diane Von Furstenberg repurposed the wrap dress into one made from jersey, McCardell's 'Popover' gave women the benefit of looking good while still being functional But, while McCardell thrived during the war with her penchant for utilitarianism, she found herself distinctly out of step with a post-war return to the whimsy of impractical glamor. In February 1947, Christian Dior debuted the 'New Look.' Padded shoulders, tightly corseted waists, high heels and impossibly full skirts, filled out a collection that was the antithesis of all that McCardell had worked for in her now two-decade career. Romantic and ethereal, Dior's designs captured a much-needed emotional rejuvenation after the deprivation of the wartime years. The post-war resurgence of French couture was still in full swing when, in 1958, McCardell died at the age of just 52. Buyers of the American fashion emporiums had returned to copying Parisian couture and American talent lay dormant for nearly two decades until a new wave of designers – such as Calvin Klein, von Furstenberg, Halston, Donna Karen and Ralph Lauren – emerged. But it wasn't just the mood of the time that contributed to McCardell's fall from favor. In truth, she contributed to the end of her own line for the simple reason that, unlike Chanel and Dior, she did not designate a successor. Head designer, Yves Saint Laurent, carried the Dior label to greatness following Christian Dior's death in 1957. But McCardell's label, whose ownership reverted to her Maryland-based non-fashion family, died just a few months after she did. As a consequence, few acknowledge McCardell's place as one of history's fashion greats. Does Anna Wintour even know her name? Maybe, but my hunch is probably not. For a woman who has championed fashion at its most exclusive, restrictive and expensive, Wintour would surely find little to admire in McCardell's functional utilitarian designs. But the reemergence of McCardell's name is a timely reminder that the history of dress is ultimately shaped by how the majority of women have lived in and loved their clothes. Because she may not have been embraced by the fashion glitterati, but McCardell's legacy is alive and well – and it's woven into the fabric of every woman's wardrobe today.
Telegraph
2 days ago
- Politics
- Telegraph
I admit to being a ‘Terf': Tired of Explaining Reality to Fools
One of the things that makes me feel most patriotic – and such feelings do not come easily, trust me – is that I live on Terf Island. Baffled Americans who have swallowed the Kool Aid and recite things like 'Trans women are women, trans men are men and non-binary people are valid', while living in a country that chops the breasts off disturbed young women, look at the likes of me and my friends, who want kids left alone, and think it is us who have the problem. For them we are some kind of monsters. We, the Terfs of Terf Island (a misguidedly derogatory nickname that reflects the UK's important role as the centre of gender-critical feminism), want to protect the rights of women and children. And with support we are slowly turning the pernicious gender juggernaut round in just about every area. I can't remember the first time I was called a Terf. It was meant as an insult (trans-exclusionary radical feminist). Originally, the only bit that I felt applied to me was 'feminist'. I did not want to exclude trans people. I am not that radical. But I am tired. It's been a long old battle trying to explain that biology should not trump ideology. TERF: Tired of Explaining Reality to F---wits. To be labelled a Terf was an attempt to shut bolshy women down. Now, a new book, Terf Island, by Sex Matters campaigner Fiona McAnena, reflects the struggle by looking at the social history of the resistance to gender ideology. It's out on August 1, and is well worth a read. As the book highlights, our basic objections were (and still are) to men in women's spaces, men in women's sports, the medicalisation and sterilisation of children, and the erasure of the word women from language so that we became 'people with cervixes' or 'gestational carriers'. The idea that sex itself was changeable and just an undefined feeling in your head? We didn't buy any of this and we were seen as old, redundant, out of touch. Why wouldn't a bunch of awkward, often middle-aged women (which included lesbians) just go along with the shiny new creed where no one was born male or female anymore and everyone could be everything on a whim, the trans activists must have wondered. How mega exciting! (And how profitable for big pharma, big medicine, big shrinkery.) Who would not want to be modern and sexually ambiguous? As for stuff like rights and spaces and protections for women and safeguarding for children… who cares? That was from the dark days, before rainbow lanyards and flags. Yet Terfs just would not get with the programme. We committed the biggest sin of all. We simply did not believe that a man in a wig and stockings could be a woman. What's more, we organised – and held gatherings supported by the advocacy group Woman's Place. Networks were created. The Lesbian and Gay Alliance was formed. Court cases where women had been discriminated against for their 'gender-critical beliefs' were won. Bit by bit, Terf Island was countering the ultra-effective lobbying of Stonewall, which had wormed its way into many public sector bodies. In Scotland, Sturgeon's push to allow gender self-ID fell apart after we saw where that could lead – Isla Bryson, a rapist in a female prison. Since then, Labour, having idiotically signed up to the SNP's self-ID cause, has been coming round. We have had the Sullivan Review, the Cass Review and the Supreme Court ruling, all seeking to improve data collection, policy-making and definitions around sex and gender, rooted in biological fact. I've been maligned for years as a Terf, so excuse me while I celebrate the victories of grassroots groups of busy women against much of the establishment. Other European countries, Australia and, whisper it, some Americans are now paying attention to our push-back, particularly on puberty blockers and 'gender medicine'. Trump's slogan at the election ' Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you ' tapped into the unease many were already feeling. But cult thinking is hard to give up. Tim Roca, the Labour MP for Macclesfield, does not appear to have got the memo that his party has accepted that the word woman means biological woman. He found the Supreme Court judgment 'very depressing', even though it simply clarified the law. He described 'transphobes' as 'swivel-eyed' and 'not very well people'. It's going to be very hard for these people to row back. One-hit wonder Kate Nash has recorded a song that rambles on and then addresses people like me as germs. ('Exclusionary, regressive, misogynist (germ, germ)/Yeah, you're not rad at all.') A young posh duo called the Lambrini Girls perform a muddled ditty with the chorus 'Shut your stupid f---ing mouth you stupid f---ing Terf / There's a reason your kids aren't returning your calls, Carol'. I am afraid these people may think they are rad and out-there but they are missing what is going on. You know, in the world? The slow-motion car-crash of the tribunal of Sandie Peggie, who was cleared of misconduct after NHS Fife suspended her when she complained about having to share a changing room with Dr Beth Upton, a transgender medic, is revealing what happens when an organisation panders to the whims of a trans-identifying male. We end up with a nurse suspended for wanting to change in private. The Peggie case is covering NHS Fife in gender woo-woo that it can't shake it off. It has beclowned itself by putting gender ideology above common sense. This is the level of insanity that Terfs have stood against for years now. But it's changing.
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Too loud', ‘too messy', ‘too much' … why should women be expected to shrink and shut up?
'I can be a bit much,' a friend said to me. A group of us were in a cafe discussing the first date she had scheduled for later that day, and she was worried about how she might come across. It wasn't the first time I had heard a woman label herself as 'too much', 'intense' or 'a lot'. I expect even the most feminist of women have found themselves wondering, like the newly single Jessica (Megan Stalter) in Lena Dunham's new Netflix show, Too Much, whether they would be better off if they just toned it down. Thanks to the lingering presence of 'weirdly archaic feminine ideals', says the author Amy Key, many women still believe that being 'a contained, neat person' will make them more desirable on a date, or at work, or in social situations. 'That is linked to the idea of the space that you occupy too,' she adds, whether that's the metaphorical 'space' that you command in conversations or the physical size of your body. The unspoken rule, in both cases, is that less is better. Trying to contort your body and personality to meet these ideals is 'such a pointless exercise', because in all likelihood you will fail if that's not who you are, says Key, whose memoir, Arrangements in Blue, is about embracing long-term singleness. 'But it's really hard to not give those ideals authority.' Often, in her experience, others will: she has been told that if she lost weight or stopped doing certain things, then she would be more likely to attract a partner. The comedian Helen Bauer, whose forthcoming Edinburgh show, Bless Her, is about learning to love yourself, thinks concerns about being too much all come back to society's 'creepy' fascination with youth. From a young age, Bauer, who describes herself as 'big and loud', noticed that boys and men were drawn to 'youthful, small women who are quiet and waiting to be told what to do'. When you start interrogating that desire, she says: 'It just gets so gross so quickly. Why do you want them small?' Bauer remembers first feeling she was too much as a child. When her sister had a period of being selectively mute, she remembers people saying it might be 'because Helen talks so much'. Like most hang-ups we have as adults, fear of being too much often has its roots in childhood experiences like Bauer's, says Lucy Fuller, a psychotherapist. If an exuberant child is consistently told by adults to 'pipe down' or 'be quiet', it 'very often puts them in a place of shame', says Fuller, and this can continue into adulthood. It is usually young women who bring concerns about taking up too much space into therapy sessions, she says. Men, on the other hand, 'can sit in their ego more confidently' due to cultural norms. The correct feminist response to all of this, of course, is to embrace being exactly who you are and not worry about fitting into patriarchal boxes. With women's rights 'teetering again all around the world, I'll be as much as I need to be, and a little bit more, in the face of that', says Deborah Frances-White, host of The Guilty Feminist podcast and author of Six Conversations We're Scared to Have. Poppy Jay, the co-creator of the podcast Brown Girls Do It Too, says the number of times she heard the expression 'too much' from Indian relatives growing up 'is unreal'. But now, like Frances-White, she wears her 'too much-ness' as a 'badge of honour'. There are always going to be people who think her podcast – which is about sex and relationships – is too much, 'but I'm going to be 40 in a month, and the older you get, the fewer fucks you give'. When it comes to her own dating life: 'You should see my Hinge profile – it is too much,' she says, but she likes it that way. 'This is the way you weed out the weak links.' That said, she admits that she does dial parts of her personality up and down in different situations. Most people 'can't handle 'too much' girls, so if you want to get laid or you want to get somewhere, especially in work spaces, the sad reality is, you do have to code-switch'. 'I genuinely think the majority of men are just looking for women who will take care of them and not challenge them,' adds Jay. They'll have sex with a 'too much' woman, she says, but they won't marry her. Not all men, of course. But men like Felix (Will Sharpe), Jessica's new boyfriend in Too Much, who are actively drawn to loud, confident women, are 'few and far between', thinks Jay. She and a friend have a mantra, she says, only half-jokingly: 'Get them to fall in love with you and then show them the crazy.' Paradoxically, a certain amount of 'crazy' or 'messiness' can be seen as cool, with raw, messy aesthetics being popular with gen Z on social media. But there are unspoken parameters attached to this, thinks Key. Although plenty of people enjoy watching a 'messy woman' on TV or on social media, she says, some of this comes with an attitude of: 'I'm going to consume this as content and find it funny and relatable but I wouldn't want to be in a relationship with you.' Key also points to the stock fictional character known as the 'manic pixie dream girl', often the high-spirited love interest in film and TV, who has the same traits as someone who would be perceived as too much, but isn't viewed that way because of her other stereotypically desirable characteristics. She may be 'super-annoying, but is in a slim white cisgender body so it's kind of fine and acceptable', says Key. Jay agrees that certain groups are afforded the privilege of behaving in a way that is too much, whereas others can't. As a south Asian woman, she says that when it comes to the workplace, she could never behave the way that some white women do in TV shows such as Too Much. Though she makes fun of the way her relatives have wanted her to 'be obedient, fall in line', she recognises that the motivation was often to make sure that she would fit in and be given opportunities. Tobi Green-Adenowo, wheelchair dancer and founder of the Disabled Power Network, knows that, for some people, just the fact that she is a black woman and a wheelchair user will have already put her in the too much category. She has got used to people using phrases such as 'Here comes trouble' simply because she has had to make a certain amount of requests relating to her access needs. For a long time, she used a manual wheelchair rather than a powered one, because the latter's bigger, clunkier presence was another thing that made her feel she was taking up more space than she should. Though she is a lot more confident now, like Jay, when it comes to work opportunities, she sees the way she presents herself as a balancing act. 'You still want to keep those professional relationships with people, but you do also want to express to them that perhaps they've got biases that they may need to change,' she says. 'Sometimes I have really bad anxiety over it … How do I approach this without getting blacklisted?' Frances-White accepts that she will always be too much for some people – she sees it as the cost of being a 'dynamic force', which is what makes her good at her job. 'The trick is to know how to dial it up and down – and when to do that.' As well as that, I suspect a lot of women who think of themselves as being too much need to stop being so hard on themselves. Fuller says she finds it sad that if a social interaction hasn't gone well, many women look for supposed flaws in themselves, rather than examine the behaviour of the other people involved. Yes, you might have been seen as too much by a certain person or group, 'but if you were with another group of people then that might not have been the case', she says. She encourages her clients to challenge those beliefs about themselves. Back at the cafe with my friends, one of the women I was with responded to the friend who was concerned about her date. 'Women always say to me, 'I'm too much' when they're going on dates with men. But what if you're not too much? What if these men are just not enough?'
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Too loud', ‘too messy', ‘too much' … why should women be expected to shrink and shut up?
'I can be a bit much,' a friend said to me. A group of us were in a cafe discussing the first date she had scheduled for later that day, and she was worried about how she might come across. It wasn't the first time I had heard a woman label herself as 'too much', 'intense' or 'a lot'. I expect even the most feminist of women have found themselves wondering, like the newly single Jessica (Megan Stalter) in Lena Dunham's new Netflix show, Too Much, whether they would be better off if they just toned it down. Thanks to the lingering presence of 'weirdly archaic feminine ideals', says the author Amy Key, many women still believe that being 'a contained, neat person' will make them more desirable on a date, or at work, or in social situations. 'That is linked to the idea of the space that you occupy too,' she adds, whether that's the metaphorical 'space' that you command in conversations or the physical size of your body. The unspoken rule, in both cases, is that less is better. Trying to contort your body and personality to meet these ideals is 'such a pointless exercise', because in all likelihood you will fail if that's not who you are, says Key, whose memoir, Arrangements in Blue, is about embracing long-term singleness. 'But it's really hard to not give those ideals authority.' Often, in her experience, others will: she has been told that if she lost weight or stopped doing certain things, then she would be more likely to attract a partner. The comedian Helen Bauer, whose forthcoming Edinburgh show, Bless Her, is about learning to love yourself, thinks concerns about being too much all come back to society's 'creepy' fascination with youth. From a young age, Bauer, who describes herself as 'big and loud', noticed that boys and men were drawn to 'youthful, small women who are quiet and waiting to be told what to do'. When you start interrogating that desire, she says: 'It just gets so gross so quickly. Why do you want them small?' Bauer remembers first feeling she was too much as a child. When her sister had a period of being selectively mute, she remembers people saying it might be 'because Helen talks so much'. Like most hang-ups we have as adults, fear of being too much often has its roots in childhood experiences like Bauer's, says Lucy Fuller, a psychotherapist. If an exuberant child is consistently told by adults to 'pipe down' or 'be quiet', it 'very often puts them in a place of shame', says Fuller, and this can continue into adulthood. It is usually young women who bring concerns about taking up too much space into therapy sessions, she says. Men, on the other hand, 'can sit in their ego more confidently' due to cultural norms. The correct feminist response to all of this, of course, is to embrace being exactly who you are and not worry about fitting into patriarchal boxes. With women's rights 'teetering again all around the world, I'll be as much as I need to be, and a little bit more, in the face of that', says Deborah Frances-White, host of The Guilty Feminist podcast and author of Six Conversations We're Scared to Have. Poppy Jay, the co-creator of the podcast Brown Girls Do It Too, says the number of times she heard the expression 'too much' from Indian relatives growing up 'is unreal'. But now, like Frances-White, she wears her 'too much-ness' as a 'badge of honour'. There are always going to be people who think her podcast – which is about sex and relationships – is too much, 'but I'm going to be 40 in a month, and the older you get, the fewer fucks you give'. When it comes to her own dating life: 'You should see my Hinge profile – it is too much,' she says, but she likes it that way. 'This is the way you weed out the weak links.' That said, she admits that she does dial parts of her personality up and down in different situations. Most people 'can't handle 'too much' girls, so if you want to get laid or you want to get somewhere, especially in work spaces, the sad reality is, you do have to code-switch'. 'I genuinely think the majority of men are just looking for women who will take care of them and not challenge them,' adds Jay. They'll have sex with a 'too much' woman, she says, but they won't marry her. Not all men, of course. But men like Felix (Will Sharpe), Jessica's new boyfriend in Too Much, who are actively drawn to loud, confident women, are 'few and far between', thinks Jay. She and a friend have a mantra, she says, only half-jokingly: 'Get them to fall in love with you and then show them the crazy.' Paradoxically, a certain amount of 'crazy' or 'messiness' can be seen as cool, with raw, messy aesthetics being popular with gen Z on social media. But there are unspoken parameters attached to this, thinks Key. Although plenty of people enjoy watching a 'messy woman' on TV or on social media, she says, some of this comes with an attitude of: 'I'm going to consume this as content and find it funny and relatable but I wouldn't want to be in a relationship with you.' Key also points to the stock fictional character known as the 'manic pixie dream girl', often the high-spirited love interest in film and TV, who has the same traits as someone who would be perceived as too much, but isn't viewed that way because of her other stereotypically desirable characteristics. She may be 'super-annoying, but is in a slim white cisgender body so it's kind of fine and acceptable', says Key. Jay agrees that certain groups are afforded the privilege of behaving in a way that is too much, whereas others can't. As a south Asian woman, she says that when it comes to the workplace, she could never behave the way that some white women do in TV shows such as Too Much. Though she makes fun of the way her relatives have wanted her to 'be obedient, fall in line', she recognises that the motivation was often to make sure that she would fit in and be given opportunities. Tobi Green-Adenowo, wheelchair dancer and founder of the Disabled Power Network, knows that, for some people, just the fact that she is a black woman and a wheelchair user will have already put her in the too much category. She has got used to people using phrases such as 'Here comes trouble' simply because she has had to make a certain amount of requests relating to her access needs. For a long time, she used a manual wheelchair rather than a powered one, because the latter's bigger, clunkier presence was another thing that made her feel she was taking up more space than she should. Though she is a lot more confident now, like Jay, when it comes to work opportunities, she sees the way she presents herself as a balancing act. 'You still want to keep those professional relationships with people, but you do also want to express to them that perhaps they've got biases that they may need to change,' she says. 'Sometimes I have really bad anxiety over it … How do I approach this without getting blacklisted?' Frances-White accepts that she will always be too much for some people – she sees it as the cost of being a 'dynamic force', which is what makes her good at her job. 'The trick is to know how to dial it up and down – and when to do that.' As well as that, I suspect a lot of women who think of themselves as being too much need to stop being so hard on themselves. Fuller says she finds it sad that if a social interaction hasn't gone well, many women look for supposed flaws in themselves, rather than examine the behaviour of the other people involved. Yes, you might have been seen as too much by a certain person or group, 'but if you were with another group of people then that might not have been the case', she says. She encourages her clients to challenge those beliefs about themselves. Back at the cafe with my friends, one of the women I was with responded to the friend who was concerned about her date. 'Women always say to me, 'I'm too much' when they're going on dates with men. But what if you're not too much? What if these men are just not enough?'
