Woman's Hour - Karen Gibson 'Godmother of Gospel', the Price of Fast Fashion, Abuse in Gymnastics

Episode Date: July 18, 2020

Karen Gibson aka “Godmother of Gospel” who shot to worldwide fame in 2018 after she appeared conducting The Kingdom Choir at the Royal Wedding of Harry and Meghan – tells me about the Choir’s new single Real Love. We hear from the writer Caitlin Moran about her new film based on her memoir How To Build A Girl.We discuss why Black people are more likely to end up in the mental health system and be sectioned with Sophie Corlett of the charity Mind, the producer Tobi Kyeremateng, the psychotherapist Dawn Estefan and the co-director of Listen Up Research Jahnine Davis. Housing benefit discrimination has been judged unlawful and in breach of the Equality Act. Research done by the charity Shelter shows that ‘No DSS’ policies put women and disabled people at a particular disadvantage, because they are more likely to receive housing benefit. We hear from Shelter’s solicitor Rose Arnall, and its chief executive Polly Neate.As British Gymnastics, the UK Governing Body for the sport of gymnastics announces an independent review following concerns raised by several British athletes about a culture of mistreatment and abuse, Sarah whose four daughters trained locally in gymnastics and experienced varying degrees of abuse and Nicole Pavier, a retired member of the senior England gymnastic squad, share their stories.And Prof Dilys Williams the Founder and Director of CSF (Centre for Sustainable Fashion and Aja Barber a personal stylist and style consultant whose work focuses on sustainability and ethics, discuss the real price of fast fashion? Presenter: Jenni Murray Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Louise CorleyInterviewed Guest: Dawn Estefan Interviewed Guest: Toby Kyeremateng Interviewed Guest: Janine Davis Interviewed Guest: Sophie Corlett Interviewed Guest: Rose Arnall Interviewed Guest: Polly Neate Interviewed Guest: Karen Gibson Interviewed Guest: Nicole Pavier Interviewed Guest: AJa Barber Interviewed Guest: Professor Dilys Williams Interviewed Guest: Caitlin Moran

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. Good afternoon. Catelyn Moran's How To Build A Girl was a hugely successful book in 2014. How easy has it been to turn her memoir of her teenage years into a film? Sustainable fashion. How to keep up with the trends without contributing to the exploitation of so many women who work in the industry. The culture of abuse in the training of girls to be gymnasts. There was a lot of pressure to look and weigh a certain amount and I ended up with a severe eating disorder starting at the age of 14 and I didn't really get a good

handle on it until the age of 21 three years after I'd retired. What will be the effect of an independent review into the complaints that have been made? Shelter and the landlords who refuse to rent to anyone on benefits. What effect will the ruling declaring it an illegal practice have? And Karen Gibson, the godmother of gospel, describing the call that invited her kingdom choir to perform at the wedding of Harry and Meghan. I had told I was going to get a call, but I wasn't allowed to know what the call was about. So when I finally got it on the bus, I was very, very shocked indeed. And my response was not my finest moment. My response was something like, you're joking, right? And the person on the other end, very posh, I have to say, went completely silent.

And that's when I knew that they were not joking at all. And we'll hear part of the choir's new single, Real Love. The mental health charity Mind is asking the government to publish its white paper on the Mental Health Act because of their concerns about the need for reforms so that fewer people, particularly black people who are disproportionately represented, are sectioned. Why are black women and girls left hanging in the balance? Well, Dawn Estefan is a psychotherapist.

Toby Chermateng works in the theatre. Janine Davis is one of the founders of Listen Up Research. And Sophie Corlett is Mines Director of External Relations. What changes is she hoping for when it comes to how the mental health of black people is treated? Putting in place much more transparent criteria about who should be detained. So at the moment, black people are much more likely to be detained than white people. And there doesn't seem to be necessarily good reasons always for this.

The government figures say black people are four times more likely to be sectioned. Why is that? It's a really complicated picture but we also know that black people are much less likely to get services at an earlier stage so they're much less likely to get good services in the community when they do reach a crisis point they're much less likely to be referred to some of the community crisis responses so there's all sorts of yn llai anodd i'w ysgrifennu i rhai o'r ymatebion crisis cymunedol. Felly mae llawer o bethau yn digwydd ar safbwynt cyntaf. Ac wrth i'w ddewis, gallwch chi gael eu cymryd i fyny gan y polis, os ydych chi wedi'u cymryd ar y stryd, ac mae pobl â problemau iechyd meddwl sy'n gwbl yn fwy anodd i'w ddod o'r rhan fwy anodd, yn anodd ac yn anodd, find these much much more difficult uncomfortable routes in as opposed to you know being referred

by gp or by in a much more normal sort of a way dawn how much stigma exists around mental health in the black community and people don't want to be open about it or discuss it or seek treatment for it maybe i think there's a huge amount of stigma in black communities and I think that's really important to emphasize that it's not just one black community there are several communities under that around stigma there is a huge cultural distrust of the mental health system and it metas out services and culturally appropriate services for those communities and because those communities engage with services at a much later stage I think that that helps to reinforce the stigma and the fear of mental health interventions that are available to people right

now. What's the significance of stereotypes like the strong black women, which we all hear frequently? There is a belief or a construct of pride and that black women should be strong and to be able to withstand all manner of ills and weights and pressures of society. And that's kind of seen as a badge of honour. I think in a sense it's a reclaiming of pressures that have been put on black women in society and it's our way of being able to say that we can cope with everything but actually it's really damaging for us as a community and us as women. Janine, you brought out research looking at child sexual abuse services. What did you find? I found that there are many different factors impacting,

one, the ways in which black girls and women are identified as victims, but also how they perceive themselves as victims of sexual abuse. There's something around the historical depictions and caricatures of the black woman and girl, not just being strong, but actually the caricature of the Jezebel. And by that, I mean, historically, black girls have been fetishized, objectified and seen as these overtly sexual beings. And by that, when we then think about child sexual abuse, it means if we already assume or if there is a narrative that assumes

black women and girls are already sexual and in some way it's just a part of their makeup, one, what does that mean when you're experiencing it? But also how do people then perceive you as that kind of deserving victim of sexual abuse? And then there's also the fact that there's been this legitimized access to black girls' bodies. I wanted to just share a quote, actually, from one of the young women who shared her experiences to say, well, first, no one cares about us. No one cares about our experiences. Do continuum of devaluation black girls experience into women into womanhood in relation to sexual abuse that actually when we think of the concept of value we don't think about black girls black girls don't come in that when we think about

what beauty means black girls don't fit within that because it's very much based on a Eurocentric standard of worth and beauty. So if we only view black girls as being sexual objects, actually it becomes an unconscious challenge then to really understand their experiences. And what impact, Janine, does that have on the development of policies? Well, I guess when we think about the development of policies, we have to think about research. And currently research continues to not represent the experiences of black women and girls.

So therefore the current policies, practices, the tools and assessments which we use to support and engage with young people who have experienced sexual abuse are predominantly based on the experiences of white British girls. So therefore, the impact is that black girls are still missing, that practitioners may lack understanding and awareness of the explicit challenges and experiences black girls face and encounter. And Toby, I know you did seek help at one point and hoped that you would have a black counsellor. Why did you think that was important? For me, it was really important to have a therapeutic space that replicated my experiences as a black woman,

that alleviated the pressures of having to explain misogynoir, anti-black racism, all of these things that adds to how I progress in the therapeutic space as well. And also having someone that was a reflection of myself and that adding to how comfortable I also feel in opening up in that space and talking about my experiences. How easy was it to find one, Toby? It took a long time. it took a couple of years and I think this is also you know really important because if I was to go through the NHS I obviously couldn't guarantee that I would get a black woman therapist and so I was having to go private and I

was having to pay and finance then became an issue for whether I was able to access the help and support I needed as well. And when I talk to other black women, it's a very similar thing for them. And we're all essentially just sharing names of like the three black women therapists that we all know who are already inundated with people. And so it's a real issue to have the access for a black woman therapist in particular. Dawn, from the perspective of the therapist what difference do you think it makes to your black clients that you're familiar

with their community with the kind of concerns they might have that we've been discussing i think first of all though i think it's's worth recognising that there is an ideological resistance to cultural specific services or interventions, kind of instead relying on a belief that everyone should be able to access the same universal service, which fundamentally ignores and highlights that there are cultural barriers to understand why BAME communities are less likely to access services or to consider that mental health is a culturally determined construct there needs to be a keener focus on the experience of black women and I think what we tend to do in terms of the very limited research that's available is that we focus on outcome and the experience is really important because I think it then will improve engagement with early intervention services and improve the experience of black women who come into the service.

Many women talk to me, they describe the process of seeing a non-ethically matched therapist as an emotional and educational labour, where their 50 minutes are being eaten away, explaining something that is or isn't there, or an emphasis on a suggestion of a problem in an area that there isn't one due to a lack of cultural understanding. And Janine just one final point from you I know you find the tag BAME really unhelpful why? Well I guess I question what it actually means who are we talking about in research? When we use the word BAME, it's very unclear if we are focusing or talking about one specific community or another.

So it means that actually we're at risk of communities falling through the gap or voices continuing to be further marginalised. It also doesn't acknowledge the fact that just the word black itself, black communities, the heterogeneity of being black, you know, and the different experiences. And it also doesn't necessarily acknowledge that, you know, there are some specific challenges which black communities experience, such as for black girls, adultification and how they're perceived as being less worth and, you know, less in need of nurture, less in need of protection. These are issues which explicitly impact on some communities

more so than others. So when we use the terminology such as BAME, we don't get to understand those different nuances and differences. I was talking to Janine Davis, Toby Cheramating, Dawn Estefan and Sophie Corlett. It's become common for landlords to put up notices saying no DSS. In other words, they don't want to rent their properties to anyone in receipt of housing benefit. It meant women and disabled people were often at particular disadvantage because they are frequently in receipt of benefits. Well, Shelter took on the case and a ruling from York County Court judged housing benefit discrimination

unlawful and in breach of the Equalities Act. The hearing took place virtually on Wednesday the 1st of July involving Jane. She's a single mother of two who'd been refused a property. Well she got in touch with Shelter's

strategic litigation team Rose Arnold with Shelter's strategic litigation team. Rose Arnell is Shelter's solicitor and Polly Neate is the chief executive of Shelter. How significant is this ruling? So advertising properties to rent and saying just no DSS, it's quite an archaic form. The DSS doesn't actually exist anymore but it basically means if you're on benefits do not apply to rent this property so it doesn't give people on benefits even a look in they don't even get in the door to view a property and it is actually condemning people to homelessness or it was until today which is brilliant. Well you're right I mean it is an arcane phraseology but nevertheless I saw it myself

in an estate agent's near me on Saturday morning. So it's still out there. It's still very much with us. Yeah, absolutely. So what we want to do, which is brilliant, this is happening now, we really need to publicise this as much as possible because landlords and letting agents need to know

that this has now been ruled unlawful. It is discrimination because it disproportionately impacts women, also disabled people actually as well, because they too are more likely to receive benefits. It just can no longer be tolerated. The figures are actually pretty stark. Just outline for anybody who isn't sure just how much the difference is between men claiming

housing benefit and women claiming housing benefit. So if you look at single women and single men in particular, there's about twice as many single women claiming housing benefit as there are single men. And a huge proportion of those single women, of course, will be mothers with children, whereas the vast majority of those single men will be exactly, will be mothers with children, whereas the vast majority of those single men will be exactly what you would imagine single men to be. So what we're really talking about here is often single mothers with children who are being made homeless by this type of discrimination. Rose, tell us about the woman at the heart of this. I know Jane is not her real name and she actively isn't courting publicity,

which is actually a rare thing in this day and age, but tell me a bit about her and her situation. Well, I was lucky to meet Jane two years ago now. I can't quite believe it's been that long. And she first heard about Shelter's involvement in challenging this type of discrimination when she read a news report about Rosie Keogh's case. Rosie was the first person to try to challenge this type of discrimination in 2016 and when she sent me an email Jane said she'd heard about Rosie's case.

She'd experienced this herself. And she just thought it was deeply, deeply unfair. Jane works part-time as much as she can. She's very responsible and has to very carefully manage her disability, which she does and has done for many years, whilst also being full-time single mum to two so she's a very very responsible person and she had privately rented for 10 years always paying her rent in full and on time and whilst in receipt of housing benefit she had

great references from her former landlords. She had enough savings to pay a deposit and she could even pay rent in advance. Her parents were supportive of her to help her with that and she even had a UK homeowning full-time employed guarantor which is her brother so she was really sort of the perfect tenant actually well seemingly um and i gather that she was offered an out-of-court settlement but didn't take it she's been so courageous and so brave there are lots of reasons why someone who is right um you know we we've been of this opinion that dss discrimination is unlawful for a number of years after we've done a lot of homework, a lot of research and some deep legal analysis. You know,

we were very confident that this was the case. But there are lots of reasons why cases might settle before they reach a hearing, as they did in Jane's case. And she was just really committed to the idea of not just standing up for herself, but standing up for other people. And we're just so grateful to her for that. Why, from a landlord's point of view, Polly, why might a landlord be a bit resistant to a tenant on housing benefit? I think some landlords believe that tenants who are getting housing benefits are much less likely to pay their rent. But actually, well, first of all, the whole point of housing benefit is to enable people to pay their rent. That's what housing benefit does. But also, we've actually done research about this, and we've found that landlords who let to people on housing benefits are just as likely to be in profit as landlords who have no housing benefit tenants at all.

And actually, housing benefit tenants tend to stay in their homes for a lot longer than the average private renter. OK. So, you know, they think it's gonna well it uh damage their pockets but it's not it's partly snobbishness isn't it that must play a part definitely i don't think the image of people on benefits that you get from things like benefit street for example i don't think that sort of stigma helps and actually part of why we at Shelter have felt so passionate about this campaign is that we see not only discrimination, but the gross stigmatisation of housing benefit claimants. We see this day in and day out. And as we said earlier, you know, a large number of these are single mums. And it just is, well, it's grossly unfair. Some of our listeners, I suspect, will be

landlords. And I guess they'll be saying that they have to worry too about their mortgage lender and their mortgage lender maybe putting pressure on them. Isn't that the case? No. So we've been working with mortgage lenders as well. So we've really tried to come at this from all angles. It's now extremely unlikely there's only a couple of very small lenders who still have no DSS clauses in their mortgages. And actually, if a landlord does have that clause in their mortgage, I would really urge them, well, they'll have to now because it's discriminatory. I would really urge them to go back to their mortgage lender and they will be told, oh yes, that doesn't apply anymore. Can I just ask, has this only really been a significant problem since housing benefit

began to be paid to the individual rather than to their landlord? Is that the issue at the heart of this, Polly? No, it isn't. So, you know, I can't say that hasn't caused problems for some landlords. So I do understand landlords' anxiety about that. But it really comes down to an individual's right to be able to demonstrate that they can pay their rent. Nobody's asking a landlord to let their property to somebody who is not going to pay their rent. And actually, if people don't pay their rent, of course, landlords can evict them. So all we're saying is that the fact that you receive housing benefits shouldn't just in itself stop you from even

getting a look in at renting a home, because what's happening is people are becoming homeless. And, you know, this is one reason, one reason among several, I must say, but it is one reason why we're seeing so many, particularly mothers with children, stuck in temporary accommodation at the moment. Polly Neate and Rose Arnold were talking to Jane. A star was born in 2018 when the Kingdom Choir sang at the wedding of Meghan and Harry.

Karen Gibson, now known as the godmother of gospel, is their founder and their conductor. And this is their new single, Real Love. It's the real thing It's a supernatural kind of feeling It's electric and containing If you feel me, then can I get a weakness? Stand up, everybody in the neighborhood Stand up, in the palace, in the church, in the club Stand up, feel the rhythm of the beat of love Oh, stand up, jump around to the kingdom's sound

DJ, won't you make it loud Stand up, we're gonna bring heaven down Oh, oh, oh Let's set this party on fire With the power of love The spirit's lifting us higher And now everybody dancing on the floor The dark's born

A real love A real love Can you feel it? Can you feel it? Can you feel it? The dark's born Karen, that's got us all jiggling around. It's great.

Thank you. What inspired you to release it? We have always wanted to make a mark in the world and do something good for people who listen to our music. And in the event of COVID-19, we thought, well, what do we have in our hands? What can we do to make people feel better? So we thought, why don't we release this track it wasn't a new track we toured it last year in the uk and the us and canada and it had always gone down the storm so we thought why don't we release this track as a gift to the world and then why don't we give the proceeds to charity so that's how refuge came about you chose refuge why did you choose refuge

um we'd always been thinking about which people groups do we want to affect for good. And we'd thought of a few. Children's groups was one, mental health was another, and domestic abuse and violence was also one. So we settled on that in the end because of COVID-19. Because we know that the incident has really gone up during COVID-19, don't we? Of domestic abuse. That is right. How surprised were you when you were asked to perform at the Royal Wedding?

Very surprised. Very surprised. I had told I was going to get a call, but I wasn't allowed to know what the call was about. So when I finally got it on the bus, I was very, very shocked indeed. And my response was not my finest moment but what was your response you were on the bus yes yes I think it was the number 87 and my response was something like you're joking right and the person on the other end very posh I have to say went completely silent and that's when I knew that they were not joking at all.

How nerve-wracking then was it to actually go there and perform on the day? Actually I don't remember feeling nervous and I don't think the choir were either, we were just very very excited, really honoured to be taking part in such a prestigious occasion. And yeah, just wanting to give a gift, you know, a gift of song and of music. That's how we felt. But your life has changed somewhat, I think, since then. How has it changed? Things just went through the roof after the wedding. We had so many wonderful opportunities.

We performed at the Hollywood Bowl, the Invictus Games. We sold out at the Royal Albert Hall and all the work that I was doing before because I was working with lots of choirs here and abroad. All of that had to stop just to work with the Kingdom Choir. You're now known as the godmother of gospel. How long has it been a part of your life? Oh, for many years now. I'll give away my age. I've been singing gospel since I was about five, six. So we're talking over 50 years. So, you know, I grew up in the church, a black majority

church, and music accompanies everything. It's a very vital part of the service. So I grew up with gospel music in my ears, learning it orally, even though I'm actually classically trained. Gospel is my go-to, I would say. Now, Gareth Malone, I think, spotted your talent early. Why did you decide that you were going to make it your full-time career oh because I really love the power of music and I love the power of singing in a choral setting I used to think that I taught gospel music and then I realized that gospel music taught me because I could see the impact that it had on people's lives and um the And the events that I was being asked to do just increased and got more and more and more and more

until I realised this is really my vocation. I think this is what I should be doing. I think music chose me, to be fair. When I listen to your choir, I kind of imagine that every single person in it is a potential Whitney Houston, you know. Do you have to be a truly great singer to be part of a choir like yours? No, no, absolutely not. That's not what it's about. We always want to sing well, but it's about

the connection that we have with one another. Of course, in a choir like ours, you're going to have some people who are great, who are the lead singers ours you're going to have some people who are great who are the lead singers you're going to have some people who are better at harmonizing and staying in the background it's really about what we do together now i'm sorry to have to mention this before you go but you were on celebrity master chef i'm so sorry you didn't make it to win it. But how did you enjoy doing it? I tell you, it was very stressful at the time. Now that I'm out of it, I'm actually very happy that I did it because I was really facing my fears here. It was not faith-based and it wasn't music-based. It was about cooking.

I was so out of my comfort zone. But now I've done it. I'm really, really glad that I did it. And I didn't win, but I think I can call it a life win. I was talking to Karen Gibson. Still to come in today's programme, Kathleen Moran on the film she's made from her nearly true memoir of her teenage years, How to Build a Girl. And sustainable fashion Fashion, How to Stay Trendy Without Supporting an Industry that's been found to underpay and exploit a lot of women who make the cheap clothes that are for sale. You may have seen the Netflix documentary Athlete A,

which exposes the scandal in America of the abuse of young female gymnasts. British Gymnastics, the UK's governing body for the sport, has announced an independent review in this country of concerns raised by a number of British athletes about a culture of mistreatment and abuse. What is life like for a little girl who wants to become an Olympic gymnast and what's it like for the parents who share their ambitions and dutifully transport them to a daily demanding training schedule? Sarah, not her real name, is the mother of four daughters who were all keen gymnasts. Nicole Pavier is a retired member of the Senior England Gymnastics Squad. She now practices as a nurse. What did she love about gymnastics?

Everything as a little girl. I loved just being there, doing gymnastics, learning new things. I think it can teach you so much about discipline and being brave and being tough because it's not an easy sport to do but when you start to excel and learn new skills it can be extremely rewarding when you're in the right environment. So Nicole what did your training consist of from as early as primary school? I picked up the sport when I was six and was quickly moved into a kind of squad-type scenario. And throughout primary school, I would have afternoons off school to go to training, leaving school at lunchtime, training through the afternoon and into the evening.

Later on down the line in high school, I would get to the gym for half six in the morning, go to the gym for three hours go to school come back to the gym and train for another four hours so awful lot every single day yeah we'd have Sundays off and what Sarah did you have to take your girls to as far as their training was concerned? You mean the hours that they did? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, Nicole, that sounds a lot, but that's quite typical. And it's not even if they are on the elite track. I understand that medical experts say that they're only supposed to do about an hour a week per year of age.

But in gymnastics, they're typically doing twice or even three times this. So my 12-year-old, for example, was doing over 30 hours, including coming out of school. And Nicole, how would you say you were treated during both training and competitions? Coaches didn't see you as a gymnast they saw you as a number so they're not concerned if you're injured they're going to shout at you if you're too scared to do a skill and then you have the weight side of things as well and being a young girl going through puberty weight was a big thing that was brought up we'd be weighed every single day if we couldn't do something our weight would be thrown against us and that would be both in

competition and at the home gym so what impact did that have on the way you dealt with food really negative actually um i didn't deal with it well. There was a lot of pressure to look and weigh a certain amount and I ended up with a severe eating disorder starting at the age of 14 and I didn't really get a good handle on it until the age of 21, three years after I'd retired. you said that they were not very patient with you if you were scared of doing something what experience did you have of that what what sort of thing might you have been asked to do and no you didn't want to do it but maybe you were forced to do it so i was slightly scared of going backwards on beam and when i was younger a coach physically picked me up and forced me to do the ac pan oeddwn i'n ifanc, roedd y coach yn fy nghymryd yn ffysig ac yn fy forw i wneud y sgiliau sy'n creu llawer o trawm mewn fy meddwl amdano. Ac yn ddiweddar, yn fy nhymri, tuag at y diwedd, roedd sgiliau ar beam yn fawr iawn i fy nghymryd oherwydd roedd gen i ddau ffwrdd ar y pryd. Ac roedd fy coach yn sefyll yno a chyffwrdd arna i a fideo beth roeddwn i'n ei wneud a'i ddynnu i fy mab, and shout at me and video what I was doing and threaten to send it to my parents, tell me I wasn't allowed to go to school until I'd finished what was on my programme

and that I'd done what she'd said. What did your parents make of all this? Because you were coming home injured. They must have known. You're scared of what the coaches are saying to your parents and it becomes this whole cycle of manipulation. Your parents are manipulated by the coach. Gymnast is manipulated by the coach yr ydym yn ei ddweud i'ch rhieni ac mae'n dod yn y cyfnod cyfan o gyfnod, mae'ch rhieni yn cael eu gyfnodi gan y rhieni, mae'r gymnast yn cael eu gyfnodi gan y rhieni ac mae'r amser yn llawer

yn ymwneud â'r rhieni a'r addysg hefyd oherwydd rydych yn treulio 7 awr y dydd gyda'ch rhieni felly i mi byddwn i allan o'r tŷ o 6 amgylch a byddwn i'n dod yn ôl ar ôl 8 o'clock in the evening and I just wanted to have some time to myself and rest and recover from what was going on it wasn't until I became an adult that I really started talking to my parents about what happened. Sarah, what did you learn from your girls

about how they were being treated in training? A lot of it you don't know at the time firstly as Nicole has pointed out, the abuse becomes normal and you really lose perspective as to what is abuse and what is not. So, for example, if an athlete makes a mistake on beam, should they be given punishment exercises? You know, positive coaches say not, but that that is abusive practice. But that's perfect. That is normal in in gymnastics. And you learn to accept a lot.

The children also hide a great deal and they will hide injuries both from their coaches and from their parents they will not tell you a lot of what's going on because they know and they are explicitly told that if the parents complain in any way and and try to talk about it with the coaches the children are directly punished for that in the gym what in the end made you decide to pull them all out of it? Oh it had become just a campaign of abuse and I was you know I turned up once to fetch my children from gym I had three sobbing children they'd all been picked on in various ways My second daughter in particular, I think she just turned 13 at the time we pulled her out, she was trying to ask to move to a lower group. She was suffering greatly from Sever's disease, which is a growth plate stress injury. And she was on crutches in school,

yet being expected to go to gym and to train fully on this you know and and was in desperate pain there were so many things they were being shouted at screamed at belittled mocked you know screaming that you could hear in the street it was just awful and although it was very hard to pull them out it sounds like it ought to have been easy. But gymnastics was their entire life. We didn't have any other gym to go to. They all were in a different place about wanting to go or not. But it was the only thing that could be done was to take them all out.

Nicole, I know you left when you were 17. What lasting impact has the training had, both physically and mentally, on you? Physically, I am now a 20-year-old person who has had two spinal surgeries. And with my job, going into it with a bad back is not ideal. And from a mental side of things things I constantly struggle with my weight I never feel like I'm good enough because we were never good enough in the gym nothing we did was good enough for the coaches that were coaching us I'm left with a lot of PTSD from things that happened I have a lot of nightmares and a lot of anxiety around things I've just completely removed myself

from the gymnastics world because being a competition or going and supporting old teammates of mine that are still competing is just very painful and brings up a lot of hard memories. What, Sarah, would you hope will be the result of the investigation that's been announced? Well, first I hope that it's an independent investigation. And I have some significant concerns around that. That's certainly the

intention that it should be independent. Well, I see success as being a complete change in the top executive at British Gymnastics and the coaching regime that there is. I think that's the only thing that could give us confidence that things are going to change. I'd like to see a cap on training hours. I'd like to see the age lifted so that, you know, you're senior when you're 18, perhaps. Lots of things like that.

I think people forget that gymnastics is, and women's gymnastics is about young girls, little girls, training ridiculous hours and having just too much demanded of them. I was talking to Sarah and Nicole Pavier, and British Gymnastics said they refused to comment on individual cases. cases, but Jane Allen, the chief executive, said, the behaviours we've heard about in recent days are completely contrary to our standards of safe coaching and have no place in our sport. It's clear that gymnasts did not feel they could raise their concerns to British gymnastics, and it's vital that an independent review helps us better understand why so we can remove any barriers as quickly as possible. And Jenny sent us an email. She said my son was identified as an elite gymnast, age six, and by seven was training 12 hours a week in an elite club, 45 minutes drive from our home

in Edinburgh. He missed mealtimes three or four days a week to get to training and all the abusive behaviour talked about rang so true. And he was only seven. One time I arrived to collect him and found him being prodded by the coach using a large stick. I completely identified with the struggle to withdraw. Your child had been identified as a potential international athlete and you don't want to ruin that chance.

But it was so definitely the right thing to do. And my son grew about six inches in the two months after we took him out, age nine. I think the intensive training was stunting his growth. And Bex said, I started judo at the age of four in 1971. Throughout my judo career to the age of 21, I was subjected to weight control and started refusing food at the age of four. I developed an eating disorder which still influences my life at the age of 52. I was also weighed as a child naked several times in front of male adults and this was common. The recent rise in coronavirus cases in Leicester drew attention to the poor

working conditions and low rates of pay in some of the garment factories in the city. It's prompted another call for changing attitudes to fast fashion and its production across the world. But how do you change the consumer's habit of buying cheap, throwing away and buying cheap again? Arja Barber is a style consultant whose work focuses on sustainability and ethics and Professor Dilys Williams is the founder and director of CSF, the Centre for Sustainable Fashion at UAL,

the University of the Arts in London. Are things really going to change now? Yes, they are. They are already changing. And you're right, though, we have been here before. The Leicester example is just an amplification of what we've already seen for a very long time. But I think we've got to remember that fashion is maybe the best and worst in society. Fashion is something that is such an important part of our self-expression.

It does create fulfilling work for huge numbers of people. But at the same time, this exploitation is historical. Modern day slavery is prevalent in the fashion industry. And there has been a lot of work for a long time to change it. But I think right now, this unprecedented pause means that we've got also an unprecedented opportunity to really re-evaluate how we represent ourselves, whether we do stand up in the things that we stand up for, and actually what is important to us. Well, we'll talk about what duties we have as consumers in a moment, but what about pressure on governments, first of all? What are you doing about that? I'm the SPAD, which is Special Advisor for an all-party parliamentary group

that was established in 2010, Fashion Roundtable of the Secretariat, and Baroness Loli Young and Catherine West run it. And it was established to create a level playing field for fashion because the problems for the people who are doing great things in fashion are that they are completely outsized by the guys that are not playing the right game. So we need to eliminate modern day slavery. So a lot of work has been going on in the all party parliamentary group to do that. And as you say, we do already know this, the Environmental Audit Committee created a report and interviewed factory owners, people from brands, people from NGOs in 2018, and came up with 18 really straightforward ways in which we could do things better. And it's not just about doing new

things, it's enforcing the things that are already legislation. The government's very good at looking at things like, you know, the hostile environment as far as people illegally living in the UK, but they're not doing enough around people who have illegal employment practices. It's right there in front of us. We've known about it for a long time. It's great that you're talking about it and we do have to keep doing so. Arjun, government intervention is important, isn't it? We need all parts moving. We need consumers to start really thinking about these things. We need the government to intervene. So it's a multi-level sort of conversation. I don't feel like you can put the responsibility in one direction or the

other. We need consumer change, but we also need regulation. And so I try and encourage my readership to really embrace all of these ideas of the conversation, because I think for so long, the fashion industry has felt very close to people. And I like to try and bring people into the fold that may not have been included before so that they can join the conversation as well and use their voice. What do you mean precisely by that, Aja? Well, for instance, I am a plus size person and I know that the conversation around, you know, plus size clothing is a nuanced one. You know, we talk about sustainable and ethical fashion and that is definitely the future. But if sustainable and ethical designers aren't being inclusive in their sizing, then who gets to participate and, you know, buying the ethical and sustainable options. So I really rally for the fashion industry to, you know, build a future that's truly inclusive, because until we're really dressing everybody and

including everybody, then we can't expect to progress forward and bring everyone along. That's a really good point, Dilys, isn't it? It's probably all right for me in a well-paid job to advise people to buy decent clothing from, well, I mean, of course, as a consumer, how can you be sure that they're decent when you buy it? But price is everything to a lot of people. I'll get to the end of this question at some point. Dilys, intervene.

You talking about this is really important because we need to bust the myth that cheap is good value. Yes. There's so much evidence that, you know, we see it around us. We see the waste around us. People buy a three pound top, then they buy another and another and another. But we think we're getting a good deal. But actually, if we bought less and better, we could create ways in which people could be paid properly and we could create ways in which we could feel better about what we're wearing and also to diversify what we wear how we get it there's an incredible rise in the number of people who are buying things that they know are great things they're wearing them for a

while and then when their own wardrobes are not actually satisfying them they're passing them on the second-hand market is incredibly buoyant and is a great way to have fun as well my kids wrap up their clothes they wash them they put them online and and then um they sell them and and then they've got some money to to do something else so my kids do that too but they're not averse to spending not very much money on something they might only wear once i mean i'm getting mixed messages from the younger generation to be honest yeah i mean it's hard because we're all tuned into novelty. We all respond to the imagery that's in front of us. And yeah, fashion is fun. It's got to be about enjoyment. But I think it's about diversifying that enjoyment and also actually just eliminating the they are making amazing things that actually are kind of challenging the status quo. And that's what fashion is about. It should be about challenging norms.

So there's plenty of people doing that in lots of different ways. Aja, there's something really important that you know about the Pay Up campaign, hashtag Pay Up. Just explain what that is and what's going on. So it's a campaign started by a group called Remake. And basically, the garment workers of the world have been sort of left holding the bag during COVID-19. When the pandemic started and the world began to go into lockdown, garment workers pretty much everywhere, though Bangladesh has been the loudest, and I understand why. But garment workers everywhere saw this thing where brands were basically going, oh, well, we're closed.

So we're not going to pay for that order. And these are multi-billion dollar brands. We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars who are essentially leaving some of the world's poorest workers unpaid. And as we know, there's already an issue within the fashion industry with people making fair wages. It's something like 2% of people within the industry that make garments actually make a fair wage. And so if we already have the vast majority of makers living, you know, on starvation wages and you take away the wages, what have you got left? You have starvation. And so there's been this great movement online. I've amplified at times,

and basically to put the pressure on the brands who have specifically not said anything about whether or not they're paying garment workers. And I think Remake has done an amazing job of bringing this conversation to the mainstream so that people could truly understand that these brands do have power. And when they choose to engage in one of these actions, they really end up hurting and harming people. Yeah, I think this sounds like a fantastic initiative and it has really concentrated my mind. I confess I hadn't really thought about that aspect of all this. So I'm really grateful to you and fellow campaigners for doing exactly that. But Dilys, how many of us honestly do think about the women

working in who knows what kind of conditions who are probably at the bottom of the pile here? Yeah, I mean, I think more and more people are thinking about it. And certainly, you know, as a woman, I know that, you know, some of the wealthiest men in the world are men that own fashion companies, and some of the most poor women in the world are the women that are making clothes so I think it's also for us to kind of take that on and if you look online and I mean Aja's campaign is is really brilliant fashion revolution labor behind the label it's not difficult to find out what the backstory is just as we know the backstory about all sorts of other things in our lives it doesn't take long and it's incredibly revealing but it's also incredibly exciting when you find an

organization that there's some designers we're working with called Birdsong, another designer called Away From Mars, where they kind of crowdsource ideas and you can co-create the designs that you want them to be producing. There's amazing things out there now that just weren't available a few years ago. I think right now in our society, we're having a really big shift where people are starting to look at where money flows. And it's very easy for everyone to look at Jeff Bezos and say, he's got way too much money. But what people aren't looking at is the people that own the big fast fashion brands and realizing that they're billionaires as well. But they're billionaires from a system that largely exploits a large amount of the makers.

And that's something that we need to sort of start holding people accountable for. Arjababa and Professor Delius Williams spoke to Jane. You may have read Kathleen Moran's memoir How to Build a Girl in 2014. It's the more or less true story of how she, a 16-year-old Wolverhampton girl, struggled to get to grips with what she describes as the incredible unfolding that comes with puberty. She transforms herself and sets off for London to become a journalist writing about popular music. She's now written the screenplay for the film of the book. Her character, Johanna Morrigan, who changes her name to Dolly Wilde, is played by Beanie Feldstein, a young American who made

her name in Booksmart and Ladybird. How much of a gamble was turning such a successful book into a film? Well, I mean, I was very lucky. I hear terrible stories about women in the film industry being sort of given terrible notes and being made to compromise themselves. But I had three incredibly strong female producers who sheltered me from all of that and just kept telling me, go as mad as you want, go for it. If you want to have a wall full of historical heroes like Joe March and the Bronte sisters and Sigmund Freud who come alive and give you a teenage heroine advice, absolutely go for it. And so I was like, right, OK, I will go for it. How free were you to write the screenplay your way? Because it's a little bit rude from time to time.

I mean, it's much less rude than the book. The book opens with her, almost like a musical number, masturbating in bed next to her sleeping five-year-old brother with pillows put down the side like the Berlin Wall in order to make it appropriate. And that was seen as super racy when it came out. I remember doing an interview on Newsnight and being asked, why did you open a book with a teenage girl masturbating? And I went, well, it's a very relaxing way to kick things off.

And the presenter looked really scared, like I might start doing it at that point. So I realised that it was causing an impact elsewhere. But I keep saying to people, like, it's just a really good hobby for a girl to have. Like, you know, it relaxes you. It doesn't make you put on weight. It means you're more able to cope with the stresses and vicissitudes of the following day. It's a perfect hobby for a teenage girl to have. And nobody this time balked at that idea? Oh no, God, at one point we'd worked out a whole musical number for it to open with her masturbating in a library with a fantasy parade of things, love objects such as Aslan from Narnia and the

Three Sailors from the musical On the Town that she would be thinking of while she was having her happy time in the library. But in the end, turns out, you don't have the budget for that. So it had to be more impressionistic instead. Now, Beanie Feldstein, who plays you, obviously is American and was very successful in Booksmart.

How happy were you to have an American being a Wolverhampton girl? Well, it's interesting. We obviously wanted at first to cast a British actress. We wanted to find an unknown because if you're a big 16-year-old actress from the Midlands, chances are you won't have had any big roles before because they tend not to write films about those kind of girls. So we did a whole sweep of the country, but we couldn't find anyone because I didn't realise when I was writing the script that I was writing something that was virtually uncastable because she has to start off as a innocent, funny, clever 16-year-old girl, go to London, go through this massive transformation where she turns into this kind of swaggering, cape-wearing bitch and then goes through this huge revelation and comes out the other side of it.

And that's a massive role for someone to play, particularly if they've got no experience. So we started looking to America and when one of our producers saw Beanie in Lady Bird, it was really obvious that she was a future star in the making. And Beanie was so keen to reassure us that it wasn't a problem for her being American. As she pointed out, quite rightly, most British actors would find a Wolverhampton accent difficult. It is a niche accent. So she was just like, I will just study this like I study everything else.

And she to give her credit, she is a grafter. She moved to Wolverhampton for two weeks to study the accent, which was another advantage of casting someone from America because if you ask a British actor to go and live in Wolverhampton for two weeks, they'll probably say no because they know where it is. But she didn't know, so she was like, yeah, that'll be fun. And apparently it's really screwed up her algorithms on her computer. She keeps getting sent offers for hotel stays and two-for-one meal deals in Wolverhampton while she's sitting in L.A.

Now, the clothes and hats she wears when she decides to. I keep saying she, but it's you really. I know that. When she decides to apply to be a journalist, quite extraordinary. What did you look like when you did it? Pretty much like that. I mean, in the film, she wears a top hat and I wanted a top hat, but I could not find a top hat because the only places I could go were Jumble Sales. And astonishingly, not many people were throwing out top hats to Jumble Sales in Wolverhampton in the 1980s.

So that was my one bit of wish fulfilment. But otherwise, how she dresses is how I dressed. I would wear a frock coat and a frilly blouse. I wanted to look like a highwayman, a dandy highwayman, Doc Martens, bright red hair. I was aware that I would have to construct a persona in order to go to London and be part of this man's world. Because if I went as I was, which was a brown haired girl with her hair in plaits and NHS glasses, who was still a virgin and didn't really know anything, that they would treat me differently. So I was like, no, I'm going to construct this persona as a fabulous, fast talking dame anything, but that they would treat me differently. So I was like, no, I'm going to construct this persona

as a fabulous, fast-talking dame slash highwayman that they will respect. Now, the depiction of the journalists working in the music industry in the 80s, pretty much all men. How ghastly were they in real life? Oh, it was a mixed bag. I mean, some of them were so lovely that I married one of them so one of my co-workers from the music press at the time is now my husband and father of our two

children but interestingly it was often the writers who were the most sexist and rock and roll and everyone thinks one of the reasons why I wanted to do the film is every other depiction I'd seen of rock stars in movies was just wrong they always make them in tight leather trousers drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels being kind of like sexist and weird and falling over and troubled and that wasn't the rock stars that I met in the early 90s in London they were all lovely working class boys very well read who looked after me like a sister I was so protected by them when I went on tour with them and that was why I wanted to create the character of John Kite, who's played by Alfie Allen in the movie. But it was the journalists who were often more rock and roll

and sort of often darker. So, yes, that's why there's some baddies in there that are writers. What will your family make of being represented on screen? It's very different from being portrayed in a book. I very carefully made them all a bit different to who they are in real life, in a way so cunning, I hope that they won't realise who they are. And also I have the massive advantage that none of them

want to watch any of the films or TV shows or books that I write because, as they point out, they're all about you. We don't want to... We have enough of you in real life. We don't want to watch you in a movie or read about you in a book. So I would imagine they'll continue to draw the curtain, a polite curtain across what I do and simply tease me over Christmas about what a big posh London idiot I've become. How to Build a Girl will be released on Amazon Prime Video next Friday. Now across the summer we'll be running a series on how to change your life for the better. We began this week with how to change your job or career

and the former Financial Times journalist Lucy Kelleway explained why in her 50s she'd chosen teaching. I wanted to be afraid again, if that doesn't sound too masochistic. You know, I didn't want to be complacent anymore. I wanted to be afraid. And my goodness, I was. I had arrogantly thought that I did have those skills that we've been talking about earlier. I can chat away. I'm not, you know, do audiences and that sort of thing. But to realize how much you do not know, to look at 32 strange teenagers, you don't know their names. In my case, couldn't work the IT, absolutely useless. I was then teaching maths. I was sort of forgetting the equations because I was in such a panic of

how to explain them. You know, there are so many little things that go wrong. So it was frightening, but I wanted to be frightened. And the amazing thing, and I'm sure this applies to everybody who changes career, if you start learning again, you feel alive again. Next week, it'll be how to be a better friend and we'd like to hear from you. How have you done it? Or maybe failed to do it? Send us an email or a tweet.

We'd love to hear from you. Have a lovely weekend from me for today. Until next week. Bye-bye. 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.