Woman's Hour - Clothes sizing, Afghan women, What's driving men who define themselves as incels?

Episode Date: August 16, 2021

Many bigger-busted women find it difficult to find clothing tailored to their chest size. The last time a national size survey was conducted in the UK was back in 2001, so why don’t clothing manufacturers take our bra sizes into account? Edaein O’Connell is a 32H, and has written about her struggle to find well fitting clothes. Dr Kathryn Brownbridge is a Senior Lecturer in Fashion and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University.City after city has fallen to the Taliban in Afghanistan including the capital Kabul. Blame is being apportioned for who is responsible - the Americans, the weak former government in Afghanistan or our own foreign policy. What seems certain is that women's lives will change dramatically. Lynne O'Donnell is a journalist who until yesterday was in Kabul. Homira Rezai lived in Afghanistan until 2006, aged 13 she moved to Dudley in the West Midlands . Pashtana Durani runs an education charity in Kabul.As the country reels from and mourns the loss of life after the Plymouth shooting last week, what is really driving men who define themselves as incels? Why do they claim to hate women as much as they do? Lily O'Farrell is a feminist cartoonist who decided to discover more about these groups. Joan Smith is an author, journalist and the co-chair of the mayor of London’s Violence Against Women and Girls board.Plus how do you feel about sweating? We spend on antiperspirants and deodorants – £54 billion a year – we put an awful lot of effort into pretending we DON'T sweat and certainly DON'T smell. Science journalist Sarah Everts talks about the research in her new book, The Joy of Sweat: The strange Science of Perspiration. Presenter: Emma Barnett Producer: Lucinda Montefiore

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Good morning, welcome to today's programme. As the world looks on with shock as the Taliban takes the Afghan capital Kabul and tells the BBC that the militant group is working to form a new government in Afghanistan, what is going to happen to women and girls? The Taliban may have waited nearly 20 years for US and UK forces to leave,

but no one can or should forget that during Taliban rule in the late 90s, women were largely confined to their homes and girls had no access to education. A spokesman for the Taliban has told the BBC that girls will still have access to education, but voices from the country are telling a different story and women are already sharing their fears. Today we will hear some of those voices, but I wanted to start today's programme by reading you a part of a very powerful Guardian article published this weekend

and penned by an anonymous woman living in Kabul. It's entitled, Now I Have to Burn Everything I Achieved. She says, As a woman, I feel like I am the victim of this political war that men started. I feel I can no longer laugh out loud. I can no longer listen to my favourite songs. I can no longer meet my friends in our favourite cafe.

I can no longer wear my favourite yellow dress or pink lipstick. And I can no longer go to my job or or pink lipstick and I can no longer go to my job or finish the university degree that I have worked for years to achieve. I love doing my nails. Today as I was on my way home I glanced at the beauty salon where I used to go for manicures. The shop front which had been decorated with beautiful pictures of girls had been whitewashed overnight. The number's to get in touch with me and share anything you have to say on this. As always, 84844 is the number you need to text.

We are focusing on what's happening to the women and girls of Afghanistan on social media. We're at BBC Women's Hour or email us through our website. Also on today's programme, as this country reels from and mourns the losses of life after the Plymouth shooting last week, what is really driving men who define themselves as incels? Why do they claim to hate women as much as they do? And sweat.

We spend billions a year on masking it, the sight of it, the smell of it. But one woman is on a mission to bring it back. All to come, she'll explain more. But first, city after city has fallen to the Taliban in Afghanistan, and there now is a scramble to leave the capital Kabul. Chaos at the airport with reports of at least two people who have died in the crush. Blame is being apportioned for whom's responsible, the Americans, the weak former government in Afghanistan, or here in the UK, our own foreign policy. What seems certain is that women's lives will change dramatically there.

Let's talk now to Lynn O'Donnell, a journalist who, until yesterday, was in Kabul in Afghanistan and was actually on the programme last week, but things have changed dramatically between then and now. Lynn, where are you now and how was it to leave? I'm in Holland, Emma, and it was a huge relief, to be honest with you. I've been working and travelling with my friend and colleague, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Masoud Hosseini, for the past three months. And we were in Herat, the big western city, a week or so ago, and we saw very clearly what was happening. We spent time on the front lines with militias and armed forces of the intelligence agency and it was very clear to us over the

days that we spent there, some of which we spent time trying to get out of the city, that the Taliban were on the march and that the fall of Kabul couldn't be much further off. And we were indeed on a flight out. It was wheels up just after nine o'clock Kabul time yesterday, probably the last flight out as far as we can determine. And the airport closed very soon after that. We feel very lucky. Well, indeed, because the scramble sounds absolutely horrendous and desperate.

Devastating, yeah. Not only at the airport, there are scenes along the roads to the airport. The Taliban have set up checkpoints. They now are searching cars, taking people's passports from them and burning their passports. It seems that all commercial flights have ceased and whatever tickets people might have had since yesterday just are no longer valid. It's a really devastating and desperately sad situation. And huge anger that the Afghan, not least president, has left himself.

Oh, yeah, off and out. It became pretty clear around about Thursday, I think, that something was afoot. I have friends and contacts who work for agencies of the former government, and they told me that the palace was emptying out, that even senior officials and people working there were organising their own tickets out. So basically I watched the fall, the collapse, the crumble of the government there in slow motion,

if you like, even though it felt like it was slow motion, even though everything has happened very, very quickly. But as shocked as I was when I arrived at Istanbul on my way to Holland yesterday to hear that the airport had closed and that the Taliban were roaming armed around the city, really no surprise. What is also seeming awfully and horribly inevitable is what's going to happen to women and girls. There has been some sounds, there's been a spokesperson from the Taliban as far as I can

understand, who said to the BBC, women and girls will still be able to be educated. But there's already very different noises coming from women who are speaking out, who have been educated and now feel, as I just quoted that woman, that their lives are about to go backwards 20 years and everything that they've achieved is going to be burned? Well, it's not only will happen, Emma, it's already happening. I spent the past three months travelling across the country and investigating reports that were coming out of places where the Taliban had already taken control. And I went in with my photographer friend, who I just mentioned to you, to a district in the Central Highlands that had been taken over by the Taliban for a few days. And while they were there, they made it very clear. They announced it from the mosque loudspeakers that they were going to round up girls and women of marriageable age and marry them off to their own fighters.

This is sex slavery. It's ethnic cleansing and it's happening. Whatever the Taliban say, and they have said, we've changed, education is fine, women can work, everything is going to be cool, it's not. They are liars, they are killers, they are drug dealers. They even stood outside of Kabul yesterday and said, we're not going to enter, and a couple of hours later, they entered. The place is closed down. Women are in fear. They're getting out their burqas

and they're staying at home. You cannot believe anything that the Taliban say. Let's remember that they are the biggest drug dealing cartel in the world. That's how they make their money. That's what's funding their insurgency. These are not people to be believed or trusted. In fact, it was very striking. I was going back over the words of George Bush, of course, who this started with in terms of the US action. And a few weeks ago, he said the thing he was most worried about, should Biden pull out fully, were women and girls. Yes, but it's not just women, Emma. It's journalists, it's people who work your job and having to find, you know, something else to do and a way to support your family. This is threat of death.

And it's very real. And Masood, my photographer friend who I mentioned, he's been attacked. His car has been shot up. He feels extremely lucky to be out of the country because this is the way people who represent freedoms as we take for granted are treated, have been treated and will be treated. This is a reality. Is there any way, and this might be a terribly naive question, but with the people that you've been speaking to, is there any way of some kind of resistance based on the learnings and the hope

and the teachings of what has gone on for the last 20 years there? Well, I think that we can take for granted that there is going to be resistance, but really 75% of Afghanistan's population is aged under 35. The mean temperature, temperature, the mean age in the country is 18. You're looking at the vast majority of people who have spent most of their lives or all of their lives living in an environment where they believe in democracy, they believe in being able to turn on the television and watch world news and programs

like Britain's Got Talent, hugely popular and important cafes and bookstores and music venues. You know, it's a normal place. Well, it was until yesterday. And so I guess what we can hope is that people will fight to hold on to what they feel losing. But I think it's going to be a difficult fight. And what we can hope is that it's not going to be a long one. And with support from the rest of the world, support from media organisations for journalists, for instance, from women's and human rights organisations for women

and the rest of the population, let's just hope that it's not a long fight. Do you think there is anything that people can do from your experience to try and reach out? Yes, I've just been talking about that with colleagues. I'll be moderating a discussion on the Frontline Club's online forum tomorrow about what we can do for Afghan journalists. As many people as possible should tune in and we'll talk about what can be done. I think media organisations have to really step up

and support our colleagues because we're all a tribe and we should be supporting each other. And now is the time that Afghan journalists really need us. How about, I don't know, the BBC maybe giving some jobs to people and bringing them out, visa support, money to help them feed their families while they're out of work in Afghanistan. There's an awful lot that can be done. And I think we should start thinking creatively instead of just chucking money at organisations like the UN, which has proved itself to be pretty inept. We should be thinking creatively of how we can really help Afghans as human beings rather than as lists of

numbers that might be collated by NGOs. It's definitely something more to think about and talk about there. And I'm sure will be happening in the coming days. You mentioned the Frontline Club there. If people aren't aware, they can go and look that up. Of course, a club for foreign correspondents, for foreign journalists working further afield. From that perspective, just with your experience of having been there, I mean, do you expect to go back to Afghanistan any time soon? Well, I hope so.

I think that when this sort of government collapse in the middle of a war happens, the argy-bargy lasts for a couple of weeks and then there's a bit of a settling down process. My plan has always been to go back in October, spend a couple of months. We just have to wait and see. We have no idea yet of what the Taliban are going to do,

how they're going to form a government, what sort of bureaucracy or rules or regulations they're going to roll out. I mean, they've been given political legitimacy by the deal that Donald Trump did with them bilaterally as a political organisation last year that has led to this. So do they want to hold on to that political legitimacy? Are they going to get recognition, diplomatic recognition from other countries? China has already given the impression that it will with rolling out the red carpet for the Taliban leadership

last month. What about Russia, Tehran, the Middle Eastern Gulf states? Who's going to recognise a Taliban government if it is a serial and habitual non-recogniser of human rights and women's rights? Is this the sort of partner that we want? And if they don't think they're going to get diplomatic recognition, what does that mean for the people who are already there and out of a job and the people out of a government job and know how to run a country and the people of Afghanistan

who've been left behind? There's a lot of questions that have to be answered and a lot of dust that has to settle yet. But yes, it's my plan. Short answer. Yes, I want to go back and I'd like to go back soon. Well, we wish you all the best with that. Very happy that we could talk to you again today, albeit in different circumstances and no longer in Afghanistan. Lynn O'Donnell, a journalist who until yesterday was in Kabul

and now in Holland, made her way there with this scramble that is going on. And we can now talk, I hope, to Pashtana Durrani, who runs an education charity for women and girls in Kabul Pashtana hello hello there can you hear me properly yes I can thank you so much for for

joining me and for talking to all of us I think I must start by saying how are things today things are quite calm where I am I'm sorry I cannot disclose my location but they are much calmer than they are in Kabul right now so yeah So you're not there at the moment, I understand you don't want to say where you are but this is we've been talking about women and girls a focus on what's going to happen for them

in their lives and a fear of freedoms being taken away what is your view of that? I am not going to say that I'm fearful that our freedom is going to be taken away because all of us are educated enough to know that they are not entitled for that or they cannot do that. But of course, now that it's more like a dictatorship, we cannot question it back. It makes me worried about the future more in what in what respect in a sense that i want to see that if girls are getting education what

sort of education if girls are working what sort of work are like you know because they have been in the past they have been very weak when it comes to women rights right and now that i see all these uh different accounts reporting that we will let them work or let the girls study i just want to know what is the surety when a girl goes to school she will be safe there and she won't be slapped slapped left and right by the taliban foot soldiers that's the first thing and the second thing is about the general curriculum will the girls be able to study general curriculum would they be able to study the sciences technology engineering and mathematics will they be able to pursue them further apart from that what about the voting rights of women what about the political representation of the women so all these are different things that i am worried about that they might not want to address

of course you can say women we respect women rights and we respect educational rights and are different things that I am worried about that they might not want to address. Of course, you can say women, we respect women's rights and we respect educational rights. And then you can ask women to teach in a madrasa and teach girls the Holy Quran and nothing else. That's also sort of like, you know, part of women's rights and educational rights. But that's not all women's rights and that's not all educational rights. I suppose we were just hearing from a journalist who's worked in Afghanistan for a number of years that there is no reason to trust the Taliban, and that already where the Taliban has been, women's rights have been taken away. Exactly. I mean, like, you know, you have to understand the narrative of Afghan women.

You have to understand that the Taliban, of course, they are fishing for legitimacy. They will say anything and everything. But then again, the foot soldiers are not listening to their leaders. That's one thing for sure. I have seen it on the pattern. And apart from that, the Afghan women, they were not, I mean, girls of Herat are Afghan women. Why were they not sent to university?

The girls in Kandahar are Afghan women. Why are they sent from a bank to home to sit at home and send male male relatives to fill in for them so i'm sorry i if they there is a lot of like you know confusion but nobody can trust someone who says one thing and has a track record of you know not keeping their word i quoted an article written by an anonymous woman in Kabul's which was entitled now I have to burn everything I've achieved and already describing some some terrible scenes in the streets where men are saying fighters are completely, you know, fine and how you feel, but there does seem to be a sense of fear amongst other women and girls. Oh, yeah, definitely. There is a lot of worrisome, fearsome emotions that has taken a toll on all the women of Afghanistan. Just imagine you wake up one day and you are told that the flag that you have known is not yours

anymore the identity that you have lived all your life as a person is not yours anymore how do you feel about that you obviously will lose everything that you have and at the same time you are being stripped off of your political social mobility and educational rights so of course her fear is very much something that she should be feeling and with the women that you know have they gone back home are they are they being confined to their homes at the moment how would you describe some of the women that you're in touch with for now everyone is staying confined to their homes even if they're displaced they are staying with wherever they have taken refuge. Nobody is willing to go out today in Afghanistan. Not today.

And in terms of how you see this playing out for women, because, of course, with your charity work and your plans, what do you see the next few days, you know, playing out like? See, for the girls that I work with one way or the other i'm going to get them their lessons i'm going to get them started on their schools be it clandestine be it underground schools whatever works i'm going to do it i don't care what the Taliban have to say but if for but for a fact that one thing that i i know the track record is not very, what do we call it, something that we can rely on. So I wouldn't see that the charity work that we do would be acceptable to them or the digital literacy work that we do would be acceptable to them.

So you're going to try and carry on educating and advocating with women and for women and girls, but underground? Definitely, definitely. There's a question that's come in from one of our listeners that I wondered if I could just put to you, because it's very, very good to have you on the line. A question here, how can we, women who are safe and secure, listening to Radio 4, help those others in Afghanistan, our sisters? This has upset me today. The future for them seems so bleak.

Is there anything that you would say it could do to help? I think for them to pressurize their leaders into pressurizing the Taliban to accept the women's rights, educational rights are very important right now for them to support the Afghan women in their fight for educational rights and political rights. It's very important. Maybe start with a petition, maybe start with something that would help them pressurize all these different governments. And they can do it very easily. They can come up on social media, they can come up on TV channels. They can do all these different things by supporting Afghan women. Pashtana Durrani, thank you very much for talking to us. I hope we can talk again and catch up in a few days time or perhaps a bit longer as this plays out.

Someone I do want to also make sure that you hear from today is Hamira Rezai, who lived in Afghanistan until 2006. Aged 13, she moved to Dudley in the West Midlands with her family and now works in medical research. Hamira, how has it been watching what's happened in Afghanistan over the last few days? Hi yes it's been absolutely petrifying it's been horrible the people I'm in touch with they haven't slept for days and everyone is worried about their families back home everyone's worried about their friends and there are you know a number of people that are at the highest risk of getting killed in Kabul right now because of their job and what they did in the past 20 years so everyone is yeah I personally feel numb I feel like sometimes I'm in a different dimension

I don't want to accept the reality but unfortunately we have to. Because of course you have memories of growing up under the Taliban. Yes yes I was born in 1993 I had a couple of years where when I was in Afghanistan I couldn't get an education because of my gender and it wasn't until I was 10 years old in 2003 with the help of UNICEF and the diasporic community we managed to have a school built there and that's when the whole school started and now from my district the gender or the ratio literacy rates between men and women is equal. So with just 15 years, we can see there's a huge improvement in terms of education and women's rights

in these districts that has just gone down the drain overnight. Let's definitely come back to that. But just because I think it's very important to hear your experience under the Taliban, and especially with now what we see happening, what was that like to suddenly be granted access to education? So I sort of grew up in that. I was born in that environment and it was something that,

that's all I knew. So I didn't realise that actually as a woman I had right to education. And all of a sudden when I was able to go to school and learn the same thing as my cousins who are male going around you know reading books during their free time and I was able to do that and even as a kid you feel so empowered because you feel like well actually they're not special anymore I am the same as them and as a child of course that is something that is you know it's so empowering because that is the feeling that you get when you for for example, have the same kind of rights.

Even in the UK, you have that feeling, you're feeling empowered, you're feeling that, you know, you're equal to men. And unfortunately, children in Afghanistan now, they have lost that right. And of course, though, we're hearing as we've just started to explore, some members of the Taliban told the BBC that women and girls will still be able to go to school. But the record of where they've already taken over would not speak to that. Do you have any faith it could be different this time around? Absolutely not. I think, like Lynn was saying, that we cannot trust and listen to a group of terrorists who have lied over and over again in the past 20 years 25 years uh you know in heros and in other cities where they've taken over they have prevented women from going to their offices they have prevented women they've stopped one from going to universities and

schools um women fear for their lives um just a couple of an hour ago I received some updates from Kabul where they're going house to house searching for women who were activists, women who are bloggers, YouTubers, any woman who had some role in the development of civil society in Afghanistan. They're going door to door targeting those women. They're going door to door and marking the doors with bright pink or bright color paints to ensure that this is the house that we need to come back to and to do something about them and unfortunately there is a very large number of people who are still stuck they're abandoned in afghanistan these are the human rights these are the civil activists human rights defenders apologies civil rights activists they're journalists who are at highest risk of getting

killed by the Taliban. As a civil rights activist myself, I'm in contact with a lot of my colleagues in Kabul and we have identified a number of them who are either in hiding or some of them are missing. Some of them are trying every way possible to be able to leave the country but unfortunately there is nothing out there and the international community have completely abandoned them and moreover because of my ethnicity being a Hazara that's an extra risk um because you know with the history we have a very complex history with the Taliban where they have throughout the years they have targeted and the Hazaras for their ethnicities throughout Afghanistan. So in the neighborhood, especially in Kabul, they're targeting Hazaras and women who had some sort of role and who were known in society.

And they're a high risk. I feel like in the next couple of days, there would be an increased number of death in these groups of people. It's just a perverse irony that the women who have come to prominence and come to the forefront, who have helped rebuild society, who have helped put those democratic institutions in place, helped raise up girls and women coming through, are now going to be the target. Precisely. And there is a women from Bamiyan to Kabul, and these are the women that I speak to. And all of a sudden, even within a couple of minutes, we both start crying. And when I say, what is the worst thing,

the worst pain that you feel? And they're saying it's not because the Taliban have come back, it's not because the government has given up on us, it's not because the international community have failed us, but it's because the 20 years that I've worked, it's gone down the drain. It's because the future of the children is bleak. It's because the rights of the children have, the rights that, for example, the Hazaras, the community gained in the past 20 years have gone. And a lot of Hazaras, especially women Hazaras that I speak to, they are fearing that there's going to be another genocide

where a very large number of Hazaras get massacred by the Taliban. It must be incredibly upsetting to be, I can't even imagine sitting here in the UK, albeit safe, of course, but being in touch with these people and remembering how it was absolutely um sometimes when i have all of these feelings and sometimes i feel like i don't have the right to feel all of these feelings because i'm not there because i'm sitting in my comfy and comfortable and safe home and and every other woman that have worked so hard in the past 20 years to get up on stone where this is to get women in every single field, from politics to music to arts to whatever,

mainly women, ensure that Afghan women in Afghanistan were there. They put Afghanistan and women in Afghanistan in the map, and now they can't do anything. Everything has been taken away from them. Is there anything, just to ask that question again from one of our listeners, is there anything do you think that listeners to this programme can do that you would urge them to do? I think in terms of emergency in the next couple of, even two days, the next 48 hours, like I mentioned earlier, there's a high risk individuals in Afghanistan who are stuck.

And I'm urging everyone to campaign for a safe or an emergency evacuation of these individuals, because these are the people who spearheaded the change in Afghanistan. And if we lose them, then there is no future for us. Thank you for talking to us today. It's good to hear your voice and also what you're hearing from people that you know who are there in Afghanistan. Hamira Reza who lived in Afghanistan until 2006. Messages coming in about this again. What can people do? People are asking if you think you can negotiate with a complete culture of ruling by terror force and violence

as exhibited by the Taliban. Julie says he's listening this morning in Croydon, good morning to you. Think again. It's no good wringing your hands and blaming politicians and suggesting negotiations will work and ruining the fact that women's rights are disappearing there. They're like China, have no regard for women's rights and they see any nation who have women in leading positions as politicians, ambassadors, chief executives, etc.

as weak and pushovers. The only thing that the Taliban recognise like China is power, force, ultimately violence to get what they want. Ultimately, the world battle will not be one with words, ideas and philosophies. It will be one with who has the biggest armies, who has the most ability to use force. It's been happening for a long time with the land grabbing and takeovers in China. We need to open our eyes and stop idealising.

We need to get real. From Julie. Messages also coming in that I hope to come back to about this as we have a laser-light focus on the experience of women and girls in Afghanistan as well as what's going on as a whole. And it's a story, of course, that we will keep with and make sure that we bring you those voices. Now, I just say a new focus that has come from a science journalist,

Sarah Everts, has a book out, which is called The Joy of Sweat, The Strange Science of Perspiration. And of course, as some of us try to have a summer, perhaps this has been on your mind. And I wanted to start, Sarah, before welcoming you with the quotes that often goes along with the word sweat when it comes to women. Horses sweat, men perspire and ladies glow. Is that the case, Sarah? Where on earth does that come from? I think that that comes from the patriarchy, frankly. But yeah, it's interesting because we all actually sweat pretty equally to men and any differences are kind of a volume issue more than actually the floods coming out. Okay, because it's this idea, especially that women couldn't ever be seen to be

exerting oneself. And perhaps we also a bit more focused on the fact that we shouldn't smell either. Oh, certainly not. I think for most of human history, we've been a little bit embarrassed by our body odor. Even, you know, you go back to the Roman era and, you industry, their marketing strategy has uniquely been to manufacture humiliation about our body odor and any sign that this thing that's keeping us alive, that this thing actually that's responsible for humans becoming dominant on earth, our ability to control our temperature in almost any situation, that this thing should be, you know, something to be ashamed of. And, you know, this strategy called whisper copy that has been used throughout the 20th century to sell products, relies on telling women that you stink, you are going to be gossiped about behind your back.

And that if this happens, you're going to fail to get yourself love and affection. Back in the 1919s, it was, of course, finding a husband. But now it's also, you know, expanded to include finding a job. I mean, it's extraordinary. Fifty four billion pounds a year on antiperspirants and deodorants. Just when you put that out there and you think about that and how much effort, not just women, women and men, but of course it's been marketed in very specific ways to women, have put into getting rid of the smell of themselves and others around them. Just take us back to basics. Are you a particularly sweaty person? Is this why you want to write a whole book about sweat? Why do we need sweat? Yeah, so it's true, right?

I am a science journalist, but I also am somebody who sweats a lot. And I always sort of felt mortified by the floods coming out. When I do a workout, I'm already dabbing myself during the warmup. But I also happen to know because of my science background that evolutionary biologists count bountiful sweating as like a human superpower. It's actually one of the ways in which we, you know, supersede all of our other animals. We are extremely good at cooling off. And so I thought, okay, I really need to find some more serenity rather than shame in all the sweating that I certainly do. But in terms of how it actually works, we have about two to five million sweat glands on the surface of our skin. And when our body temperature rises, obviously they open up and everything pours out. But how it cools us down is that the evaporation of that water is cooling down the blood rushing by.

And so when you get too hot, all your veins push up against your skin, which is why people who are light skinned turn red. And all the hot blood coming from your interior swooshes by and then gets cooled by the evaporation. And if you think about humans, we have a lot of real estate off of which we can evaporate sweat. If you think about a dog, they pant. And that's because their little tongue is the only naked thing off of which you can evaporate water, which in that case is saliva. Whereas we have millions of sweat glands and a huge amount of surface area to do that. And it's how we managed to effectively live in any part of the world. If you think about our human predecessors, when we needed to hunt on the savannah, most of the things that we wanted to eat sprint way faster than us. But because we can sweat and cool down while we're

in action, we could chase that animal until it effectively sprinted away, but then it would have to stop to cool down because heat stroke is a terrible way to die. And then we could follow up by chasing it again and again and again while, you know, we were cooling down on the go. So tell me how sweat and body odor works together, because you can be listening to this thinking, well, I'm fine with sweating, but I still don't want to smell bad, in inverted commas. Well, there is another. So that sweat that cools us down comes from the watery parts of blood. So it's pretty much blood minus the big stuff. That's why it's salty, right? But at puberty, a whole other kind of sweat gland appears in your armpits and is responsible for morphing it into stink zones from the teenage years onwards. And that sweat is actually more waxy. You know, it's similar to earwax more than, you know, the salty stuff that floods. And, you know, the good news is it comes out of

those sweat glands odorless. The bad news is the thing that turns that sweat into stink is all the bacteria living in your armpit. So they eat that sweat and metabolize it, which is a scientific euphemism for poop. They metabolize it into stink. And the way that deodorants and antiperspirants work are, antiperspirants are effectively antiseptics that are killing all those bacteria in your armpits, at least for a short time,

to stop them from eating your sweat and making it stinky versus antiperspirants that cut off the buffet. Sorry. No, you don't need to apologize. We've got to talk about this openly. That's your whole point, right? But are you now not using any form of deodorant? No, of course I am not. I keep being asked whether I'm an armpit activist. And although I kind of really like that and, you know, in a way I am, I do still use products because I exist in this society. And also, you know, not all BO is amazing. I went to a sweat dating event and, you know, where you find love in the armpit and certainly some of the armpits i sniffed were not not appealing okay i've not been to one of those so you you go around and

you sniff each other's armpits oh you so you effectively wipe off everything that you have and uh then go through some calisthenics dab yourself with a little cotton pad put in a jar all the jars are put out and everybody sniffs through them ranks a top five and if I found you you delicious and you found me we're a match I did this in Moscow and you go to a vodka VIP all you can drink cocktails lounge to you know find out if the optics match up the The premise is that, you know, you're going to smell the body odor of your lover, whether it's a one night event or a lifetime together. And so it's going to be a make or break moment, might as well triage. But yeah, we all, we all smell and we're learning so much interesting information from that body odor. And so certainly, you know, I do, you know,

apply some products, but I also don't, you know, I don't think poorly of people who have, you know, an armpit malfunction, right? You know, a day where, you know, it just is like that. And I also think that, you know, there's a lot of stigma about looking sweaty um we like to be in control of sweat you know maybe in a gym maybe in a sauna but certainly nowhere else and you know that just really is a shame because your your body is just trying to keep you alive um so you know let's all like dial down that shame well there's a message that's come in here which you'll i'm sure appreciate saying sweating is good i stopped using antiperspirant after breast cancer diagnosis and I use a salt stick, which neutralizes the smell, but I still sweat. Win-win. So different strategies

coming in. The book is called Joy of Sweat, The Strange Science of Perspiration. The non-armpit activist, Sarah Everts, thank you very much for talking to us about your own sweat and your own experiences and also, of course, dating and the certain smells you may experience, which you may also want to get in touch with us on 84844. But I did say we were going to explore some of the psychology, if we can, behind what happened last week in Plymouth. Jake Davison, the 22-year-old man who shot and killed five people, including his mother, on Thursday last week before turning the gun on himself, has since been connected to the activity of incels. Incels are members of misogynistic online groups, to give them their

full name, of involuntary celibate men who blame women for their sexual failings and have been linked to a number of violent acts around the world. Prior to the shooting, Davidson had also posted hate-filled online runts about single mothers and about his own mother in particular, calling her vile, dysfunctional and chaotic. Lily O'Farrell is a feminist cartoonist who was and has been verbally abused online by incels because of her work. Two years ago, she decided to try and discover more about these groups, which has led her to actively engage with some of the teenage boys who were attracted online to this in an attempt to de-radicalize them as she puts it i'll talk to her in just a moment i'm also now joined by joan smith the author journalist and co-chair of the mayor of london's violence against women and

girls board who's researched and written extensively on this subject and i know that very much so because we were only speaking a week ago today, Joan, about the connection between terrorism, violence and misogyny. And then, of course, this incredibly tragic and violent and awful event took place on Thursday, Joan. Yes. And I think the awful thing about it is that it wasn't surprising. So as soon as I heard the news on Thursday evening that there was a shooting incident going on, I thought it didn't take a lot of thinking about to imagine that the kind of person who would have committed this, that he'd be an angry young man. And it became clear pretty quickly that his mother was among the victims. And again, that wasn't a surprise either,

because we know that misogyny is at the heart of so much extremism. You've just been talking extensively about Afghanistan. And of course, there you have tremendous inequality, which breeds a terrorist organisation, which absolutely has hatred and control of women at its heart. And we see this over and over again in different manifestations. But it all comes back to the low status and the contempt that some men have for women. And we were talking about this because you've been working on a project with the government to make,

almost formalise these links in the way that we are policing and making sure we're safe in society. But to almost take a step back, because you have looked at this in such detail, what is it about this culture, this incel culture, that is spreading and so appealing, it seems, to a certain group of young men? It's been going on for about seven or eight years, going back to 2014 when there was a mass shooting in Isla Vista in California, and a young man called Elliot Rodger killed six people. And he's become a kind of hero to some of these disaffected young men.

And I think there is about it a kind of horrible mixture of male entitlement and assumptions about women and girls and I'm sure it's influenced by pornography and things like that but it's basically a very old-fashioned idea that men are entitled to women's bodies and you know that has been going on for thousands of years. What's happened now is that there is a forum i.e. the internet where these men can actually echo each other. And I don't think it's organised in the way that other terrorist organisations are. It's a much looser grouping than that. But these young men are reinforcing each other's ideas about women.

And the question is, which of them is going to escalate to violence? That's the really important thing that we have to look at now. Let's come back to that, and especially what you think the authorities should be doing, and come to Lily. Lily, you've engaged, you've spoken to some of these young boys, young men, and what have you found? Yeah, so the majority of incels are very, very young and they are radicalised online by older men who groom them through platforms like gaming

platforms you know alt-right internet meme accounts and the stage the radicalization process happens very on with their teenagers and those are the trolls that I have so the majority of them are American and they're about 15 16 year old boys who will comment on my cartoons or direct message me and I take that opportunity I have taken that opportunity to learn as much as I can about them learn their dialect learn their meme images that represent their ideologies and try to kind of get them out of this isolating very lonely very hostile world and the process is as radicalization works you know you start off early on and it gets more and more radical and I'm trying to catch them before they get to what I call the black pill which is where

which is where Jake was in Plymouth and that's that's the most kind of incel place you can be that's the most radical you can be what is the black pill so there's this thing called the manosphere which is a corner of the internet which you know uh is men's rights pickup artistry alt rights and incels and those are all encompassed in that bubble and the red pill is like the first uh it's like graduating into the manosphere so once you're red pilled is how they say it it's basically realizing that men are the bottom of the food chain and uh female oppression is a myth and women are oppressing men and once once you take the black pill, which is much further down the line, it's very nihilistic and they call it like Duma. So you you're doomed.

There's nothing, there's no way out. And it's basically realizing that it's very kind of, you know, involved in eugenics and looks, but they realize that if you're born with genes that aren't traditionally conventionally attractive, like a strong jawline, white, blonde hair, blue eyed, because there's a big alt-right crossover, then you're doomed to fail. You won't have any success in life, jobs, love, family, friends. And the way out of the black pill, there are two options. There's this thing that they call L.D.A.R., which stands for lay down and rot.

So you're like, well, there's nothing I can do. Or you try and change society. And by changing society, that's nothing I can do. Or you try and change society. And by changing society, that's when you become violent. And you did what Jake did. Have you had any, quote unquote, success with trying to engage and perhaps change these men's views of women? Honestly, I have. The success rate, as you can imagine, is not high, but it depends where I'm catching them on the radicalization process.

And because they're quite young, I think that they are able to be slightly moldable, if that's the right word. And they I had one 16 year old who approached me being quite aggressive, you know, with threats and things like that. And we talked and he wanted to debate. And we talked about the patriarchy. And I tried to discuss with him about how his isolation and his mental health were all products of the patriarchy and not the fault of women as incels believe. And, you know, we sort of left it, you know, agree to disagree. And then six weeks later, he returned to me and said, I've been speaking to someone, I'm going to to meet up with her how can I be a better man for her and it was an amazing moment of really cathartic and you know I think it's a gradual process there's never going to be a 360 out of any kind of radicalization process whether that's

religious extremism or incels but if I can get them to understand that women are individual people not a group that you know work as one and that you know I'm not and that men aren't the bottom of the food pill and that the products of patriarchy are what making you feel the way that you're feeling with you know women aren't the enemy we're on the same team we're in it together it's a it was a fascinating insight I'm sure you'll agree Joan that that you know Lily's trying to have some of these conversations how big is this problem jane well they they incels have been responsible for the deaths of about 50 people um as far as we know in america united states and canada um exactly two two years ago um now there was a young man in

his 20s who um was uh looking on incel sites and so he went he went out and killed nine people in Dayton, Ohio, in a mass shooting. And one of the victims was his sister. And he had actually been excluded from school several years before because he put up a list in the school toilets of girls he wanted to rape. So there's often, you know, as Lily's just been talking about, there's a kind of process of radicalisation and becoming more extreme. So I think, you know, it's been around for a few years. It's not an organisation in the way that something like Islamic State was, but it's a kind of loose affiliation of disaffected young men. And the really important question is why they are in this state. And if we go back to Jake Davidson for a moment, what's fascinating and horrible about him is that he grew up with what we call adverse childhood experiences, family breakdown, a violent father, and yet he killed his mother. And that tells you

something about the way in which boys absorb messages from the wider culture, that if there's something wrong with their lives, even if they have a violent father or male relatives, that the fault lies with women. And I think that's what we have to understand and address and catch early. And that is what hasn't been happening because the extent of misogyny, all these problems are seen as disparate and separate, you know, domestic violence here and terrorism over there and, you there and other things not related. That's what we have to bring together and understand that misogyny is at the root. Well, there's also a message coming in to say, please do mention the fact that two men were killed by the shooter, by Davidson in Plymouth last week.

And not to forget that, because, of course, when we're thinking about what's actually happened here, it's obviously very important to remember all victims. But how that plays into it, Joan, and also with further surveillance, I mean, what do you think about this moving forward? Do you think the government, the police, the authorities are going to shift resource in some way? Well, I think they certainly need to because it looks as if Jack Davidson's mother was trying to get help and, you know,

signalling that there was something very wrong and she didn't get it. But I think that what has to happen is that extreme misogyny of this sort has to be recognised as an ideology. I'm not talking about everyday sexism in the street. I'm talking about men who are going on forums and talking about how much they hate women, how they want to kill women, damage women and rape women, all of that. I think that has to be recognised as a symptom of radicalisation

in the same way as we would think about people who are looking on Islamist websites or neo-Nazi sites. And I think that, you know, there is a possibility, Lily has just talked about the possibility of intervention. Now, if Jake Davison had been referred to the Prevent programme, which is a counter-terrorism programme, and had people talking to him, talking to his friends and relatives, looking at his social media sites. It's just unthinkable that he would have been given his gun licence back. He obviously needed help. You know, I don't excuse these people at all, but this was a very depressed and angry young man.

Had those interventions been there, we might not be in the terrible position we are today. Joan Smith, thank you very much for those insights and for coming back on, not least just after we'd had that conversation and in light of the detail we went into, you can catch that full conversation that Joan and I had about her research and the government project from last Monday's programme on BBC Sounds.

Lillio Farrell, thank you to you. I hope we could talk again, actually, in a bit more detail, not least about just your work and your cartooning, but also what you've been finding out with more of these men and those conversations. So do come back and talk to us again. Lillio Farrell there.

And messages just coming in. You know, I realise that this message is coming into Women's Hour, but so much violence against women and girls is happening everywhere. How did we get to this point? How are we failing half the world's population? Surely all these men had or have mothers. Well, in light of what we just talked about, Jake Davidson, that's a very sobering message.

Indeed, keep your messages coming in on 84844. A question for you now, I said we were coming onto other things, is whether you find clothes difficult to fit your body. And I ask this because of properly fitting you. In spite of the average UK bra size being a 36DD, many bigger breasted women finding it difficult to find clothing actually tailored to their chest size, which then follows on for the rest of their bodies. Aideen O'Connell, who's a 32H cup size, she finds herself in this position. But the problem is broader and has got worse. But there is hope on the horizon, perhaps with technology. Dr Catherine Brownbridge,

a senior lecturer in fashion and design at Manchester Metropolitan University, has been looking into this. But let me first come to you, Aideen, what's your issue? What's it always been when you're trying to find clothes?

Basically, I'm a proud member of the big busted brigade and it's just impossible to find clothes that fit and flatter I specifically remember being 17 years old and looking for a dress for my dead which is the equivalent of the stool formal in England and that nothing I just remember crying and crying and crying in dressing room nothing would fit my chest zip side zip nothing was moving and it's just even to this day I still struggle with it and it was particularly this summer when I was looking for like tops for

summer and stuff like that everything is backless strapless crisscross like you can't wear like you have like you can't wear a bra like every it's made for women clothes are being made for women who just seem to be able to go braless all the time. I am not one of them. I think I give people a fright if I go braless. But yeah, it's a real struggle. A lot of people will be able to identify with that. Catherine, let me bring you in because it's an odd thing where we seem to have gone backwards with progress on this because clothes did used to fit women more. Yeah, I think that's probably true, actually. And one of the reasons why we're going backwards on it is because clothes are so cheap now.

We have fast fashion. You know, we had masks. We went through a period of mass production. Now we went through a period of fast fashion. And I've just I did a little bit of digging on this, actually, over the weekend because I thought it'd be useful to put it into context and I found a really interesting diary entry from the 1960s of a student and she made a note this is Pat Pryor on a social history of everyday life and she'd made a note that she spent four pound ten on a pair of trousers that was in 1961 and I found a kind of average wage for early 1960s was £133.60, which works out that she spent 3.1% of her earnings on just one pair of trousers. And that kind of today would mean that you've been spending something like £1,300 to £1,400 on just a fairly ordinary pair of trousers. So in terms of what we're actually spending on clothes now, it's very, very little.

So it's difficult to kind of get the kind of, the amount of research and development that we need in order to improve sizing. So it's a problem that I've been working on for a very long time. And do you think there's technology coming down with AI and all sorts of things, artificial intelligence, that might mean that we can buy less, but what we buy actually fits us? Yeah, so the good news is there's some really interesting technologies coming out, particularly the virtual reality reality 3D technology, where you can actually start to fit virtual clothes on virtual bodies, which given a few years, we should actually be able to take individual bodies and then fit clothes directly onto that, which hopefully will give us more opportunity to mass customize

sizing so instead of having people having to fit their bodies into the clothes that are out there at the moment we'll be able to reverse that process again and fit the clothes onto your body so you don't feel like your body's wrong it's the clothes that are wrong not your body yeah well adina will be music to your ears won't it because of course you know the idea of tailoring has gone out the window for most people but then you've probably had to invest in and having things altered yes definitely and actually when i wrote the article for the sunday times i was reading a lot of the comments and everyone was saying, you know, get a tailor, get a dressmaker. I've had to do it lots of times, but I just think like it shouldn't be like that.

Like when I look in comparison to my friends, let's say, who can kind of go into a shop and they can wear whatever they want, whereas I can't. I have to really think. And I think women who have a larger chests will relate to this you have to really think when you're shopping and when you're online shopping it takes a lot longer because you have to search for specific shapes you have to see if there's a disc if there's no of this and it's just really frustrating and I think like and I understand where people say you know go to dressmakers and that's the way to go like I don't think it should be I think it's quite unfair and it's unfair on women that we do have to deal with that all the time. And even, you know, it's happening the same, maybe back in the 1960s.

If I was born in the 1950s, I would have been flying it because it was like the bigger the food, the better. Yes, but I suppose just because it's time running out here, sorry to say, but I think also it's fascinating that if it gets better, this whole process for more women, and of course, you know, we're also talking women at the larger end. We will be able to buy perhaps fewer clothes. And that, of course, will add to a greater level of sustainability.

Thank you very much to both of you for joining us on something that people will have been incredibly frustrated by, I'm sure, and resonate in some way. And just to go to Susan here, who's messaged in to say a flicker of hope from Lynn O'Donnell, who was our journalist who'd just been in Kabul, mentions a generation of Afghani young people who have all been educated. That is crucial weaponry. Susan, thank you for that. Thanks for your company today. Back tomorrow with you at 10.

That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. Hello, I'm Pandora Sykes. And just before you go, I wanted to tell you about a new podcast, Pieces of Britney, my attempt to piece together the life of Britney Spears and the forces that have forged it. A huge fan. Yeah, absolutely. A fan of not just the performer, but the person. I think that a lot of people were rooting for Britney to fail.

And there's this sort of assumption of, you know, this is what you wanted. This is what you're going to get. In this eight-part series for BBC Radio 4, I've spoken to cultural thinkers, lawyers, psychologists and key players in the entertainment industry to get their perspective on Britney's remarkable story and enduring legacy. I used her as an example of somebody

who really got what was required to do that kind of work. We're also using drama to help us look behind the headlines and the conflicting accounts to imagine the woman underneath. Join me for Pieces of Britney. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies.

I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World

Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.