Woman's Hour - Lockdown Hair, 'Red Wall' Mums, Greek Goddesses

Episode Date: March 1, 2021

As the government announces plans for summer school and tutoring to help children catch up on their learning we hear from parents who think it’s more important to just let them go out to play with their friends. Recent polling suggests that mums in the “Red Wall” seats of the Midlands and North of England – areas which traditionally voted Labour but have switched allegiance to back the Conservatives – are against cutting short summer holidays after such a difficult year. We hear from the mums and from Deborah Mattinson from the political consultancy Britain Thinks and from Justine Roberts at Mumsnet.Throughout the course of the history of Greek mythology there have been many Greek goddesses. These goddesses tend to have exaggerated personalities and are often plagued with personal flaws and negative emotions , but do we know everything we need to know about these mythological women and what if anything can we learn from them today? Writer and classicist Natalie Haynes along with historian Bettany Hughes are talking about Greek Goddesses as part of this year’s WOW - Women of the World Festival running online from today until the 21st of March.Just last week Cara Delevigne posted a photo of her new darker brown hair on Instagram saying 'Blondes have more fun but brunettes ....' So are you like Cara embracing your darker locks? Is the nondescript colour often described as 'mouse' making a comeback bought on by lockdown three? To discuss the latest hair trends is the writer and broadcaster Sali Hughes.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. Another Monday, another week, another day of your lockdown look, if I can call it that. We have a lot in today's programme, but a key question surely of our times, and I ask as someone nursing the deepest and darkest roots going with no hint of irony of course bearing the surname Barnett how much of your identity is bound up in your hair with 42 long days to go until hairdressers reopen in England have you embraced your lockdown locks found a new you perhaps or are you utterly in despair tell Tell us, send us some photos, maybe some help. I, for one, cannot wait until the hairdressers reopen.

Perhaps you've got hairdressers envy, or hair cheaters envy, I should say. Do you know people who have cheated and had their hair done anyways? Or perhaps you found that your other half or someone in the home has got very good with styling your hair and making it look somewhere to how it used to. Our identity is bound up in lots of different things, but today we're going to talk a bit more about what's going on on top of our heads. You can text WOMEN'S HOUR on 84844.

Text will be charged at your standard message rate or social media at BBC WOMEN'S HOUR. Very good for those photos or email us anything you want to say on this through our website. Also on today's programme, we hear from women who live in areas that the Prime Minister has prioritised for levelling up. Those red wall seats that turned blue at the last election, the women we're going to hear from have strong views on how Boris Johnson is handling the pandemic, specifically plans for the summer and their children.

And what can we learn from Greek goddesses about how to live now? We hope to open your mind to that coming up on the programme, all here and only here, I should say, on Woman's Hour. But first, let's talk about someone who was just doing their job at the weekend. Her name, Sonia McLaughlin. She's a rugby commentator here at the BBC. And on Saturday, she did a BBC pitch side interview with the England captain and head coach after England's match against Wales. England, I'm sure many of you know, had lost. She was criticised on Twitter afterwards

and she posted, Toxic, embarrassing, disgraceful, appalling. That's just some of the feedback I've had. Imagine getting inundated with abuse for doing your job. In my car crying, hope you're happy. The BBC has defended Sonia. It says, We strongly condemn the online abuse experienced by Sonia.

Sonia has long been a key member of our Six Nations team and she absolutely has our full support. Joining us now is Maggie Alfonsi. She's an England Women's World Cup winner, of course. She retired in 2014 and now works as a pundit in the studio. Good morning. Good morning, Emma. I know that you shouldn't have had any experience that is similar to this.

We hope we don't live in that world, but we do. I wondered before we came to your own experience, what you made of Sonia and her interview first of all at the weekend and what what happened afterwards and maybe you could put our listeners in the picture yes so for those who didn't watch the game um basically England lost the game and the way the game was lost people say it was controversial so the first half there were two penalties that were given away so two tries that were given away, sorry, two tries that were given away, where the referee and the officials potentially made some wrong decisions.

So after the game, Sonia interviewed Owen Farrell and Eddie Jones, and her questions naturally were going to be challenging in those areas. So they're going to be about, you know, what were their thoughts on the referee decision, and actually what were their thoughts on the loss? They didn't necessarily answer the questions, but as a result of Sonia's interview, lots of people saw that as being not the best interview.

And I think that's disappointing with how the rugby community reacted. Some are saying that they're not rugby fans. I think regardless of whether they're rugby fans or not, you know, she should not have received that abuse. She was just doing her job and she was having to ask difficult questions in difficult circumstances,

which is expected of someone of her calibre. And, you know, in terms of whether you think her gender played a role in that, what's your take on that? So some have said that her gender didn't play a role in it but I do think that was the case so you know I have received many sexist abuse and I was working on the round one of the men's six nations I was in the studio for Italy versus France and after the game I received a lot of sexist abuse and a lot of the sexist abuse isn't necessarily abuse saying that you know you're

working you should be in the kitchen you should should be doing female jobs. Actually, what they say is, as a woman, you know, your place shouldn't be in men's rugby. And I think that's a sad thing that Sonia's got, you know, a lot of the abuse has been very much around what does she know about men's rugby? She shouldn't be doing the interview. She's not qualified for the interview. So a lot of it is related to gender, even though some of the tweets don't necessarily state her gender, it still is very much has that tone about her gender. We shouldn't overlook the fact that in 2015, you were the first ever former female player to commentate on men's international rugby. I know that you are not a woman to be messed with, certainly on the pitch, and I'm sure off it, although this is our first time talking.

And thank you for coming on Women's Hour today. But did you have any reservations about becoming a pundit on the men's game? Most definitely. You know, considering the sport is a sport that I absolutely love. I've been playing it for the last 15 years. I have been named International Rugby Player of the Year alongside another legend called Richie McCaw. And I've won a Rugby World Cup with my England team.

I was doubting my ability to be able to speak on a sport that I absolutely know a lot about. So going into that Rugby World Cup in 2015, I did doubt myself. But when I went up there and I delivered, I felt really confident in myself. And actually, a lot of the tweets I got after that yes some were sexist um but most of it was very much just surprised to see myself on the tv talking about the sport and then after that I think I started to get a bit more negativity and I think over the last few years it started to get positive but now what's happening is because there's so many of us women now working in you know men's rugby men's football

men's cricket um what's great is that we're all out there but as a result of that you're starting to see more negative tweets and abuse aimed at our gender it's interesting i mean i can't believe that you would doubt yourself after everything you just said but but it's reality isn't it it is unfortunately um look even now when i go and do my work, I know that I'm very confident to talk about rugby. I know that I'm good at what I do. And I know many other women who work in the game are also good at what they do. But you still have that doubt because there's those out there who have small minded attitudes about women working in the men's version of the sport. I wonder, how is it in the studio? Because of course, when you're watching it,

and you know, I did watch on Saturday, often you are just presented, it is a men's game with, you know, a whole row of men, I mean, more socially distanced now, but you know, all together in the studio, men talking about men's sport. What's that like to sit there and disrupt that? I think one of the things that's quite clear is that when you're in the studio and you're with the other male pundits, it's important to recognise that it's the men's version of the game. So rugby is not a gender, it's not a men's sport, it's not a women's sport, it's just a sport.

So when I'm in the studio, I make it quite clear that I know the sport and actually I will have an opinion and I think that's been the challenge in the in the public setting that they've struggled almost to see a woman have an opinion on the men's version of the game so I feel very confident and it's important that people like me and many other women who work in the studio or who are commentators continue to call out negative abuse like this because we've got to have a platform and we've got to keep doing our job and keep doing it well so you support Sonia putting that message out most definitely I'm so glad she did it it's unfortunate that she's had to experience that and it's really upsets me to think that she's going through that um but what I've noticed through her putting her tweet out and through myself putting

my tweet out a few weeks back the army of support out there who are supporting her, many other women who work in the game, not just in rugby, but also in football, cricket and other sports, you're seeing the support, which is brilliant. And all I want to keep saying to many other women who work in the game is to keep calling it out because we need to keep calling it out to ensure that we silence those keyboard warriors. I mean, that's the other thing, you know, people listening to this may be thinking, well, just turn it off. Just don't look at social media. You know, if it is just a few who are noisy and they are distorting your view of your own work and yourself,

what do you make of that argument? I have to say to them, you try experiencing social media abuse and abuse that can be sometimes, you know, can be public if you're in a setting where you're at the stadium, you know, you've got the crowd around you. You can also hear people's comments if they choose to confront you on that. Have you had that? Sorry. No, I haven't. I haven't. But it doesn't mean it doesn't happen because I haven't experienced it. It's not necessarily the form of reality. And I have to say to people, if you have that, let's say, year after year, week after week, you know, every month, that takes its toll. That's why I think it's important to recognise to people that you can't just switch off social media. You can't just take yourself off social media because that doesn't solve the problem. Actually, we should be part of the solution.

And actually, this has been quite important for us to start talking about it to ensure that it comes solve the problem. Actually, we should be part of the solution. And actually, this has been quite important for us to start talking about it to ensure that it comes to the forefront. And things happen, things change. Do you think part of the solution might be that men start commentating on the women's game? So men already do that. So in the women's game, especially Women's Rugby World Cup, we've had people like david flatman um we've had people like will greenwood uh gareth thomas uga monia has also done some involvement in the women's

game as well so there's so many people who work in the women's game so in a weird way you kind of go why are people criticizing women who work in the men's game because men have been working in the women's game and it's the same with football you know there has been men working in the women's game in terms of pundits and commentators so but no one criticises them so this is the thing and again we have to keep emphasising the fact that we we are out there we're talking on the men's version of the game and there needs to be that element of you know we know what we're talking about and actually the more of us are out there the more of a normality it will become. Thank you for talking to us today.

Maggie Alfonsi there, giving us an insight into what it's like being a woman commentating on a man's game after what happened to Sonia McLaughlin and all the best to Sonia. Now, the Prime Minister talks a lot about levelling up. What do women know in the seats that he's talking about? And those seats specifically he won over at the last election, made of his leadership so far? What do they make of his decisions during the pandemic? Today, we try to find out. For instance, the government is planning to run catch-up summer

school and tutoring to try to get children back on track after a year of lockdowns and remote learning. Sounds like a practical plan. But recent polling suggests that mums in those so-called red wall seats of the Midlands and the north of England, those areas that traditionally vote Labour but switched allegiance at the last election, quote, on account of Boris Johnson having de-snobbified the Tories, have a different view. Our reporter Melanie Abbott spoke to three of those mums, Lucy, Kayleigh and Cheryl. I'm Lucy. I'm from South Yorkshire. Yorkshire I've got an 11 year old son and a five-year-old daughter. I'm Kayleigh I'm from Manchester and I've got a one year old daughter. I'm Cheryl from Wolverhampton and I have three children three and four year old daughters and a 16 year old son. I think the kids still need to have their holidays because obviously they

are working from home and they still need that routine of having this term time and then having their own summertime. Lucy, how about you? You've got a boy of 11 and a girl of five. I don't think that it's a good idea because the teachers have been working throughout and they need the time off as well. Oliver has actually been going into school because he's autistic. That's your 11-year-old son? Yes, Annie, who's five. I've been doing one-to-one with her at home. Your daughter's a little bit behind in her spellings and things, you think.

Would she benefit from some tuition over the summer? No. You're very adamant about that. She's very, very stubborn. If she doesn't want to do it, then she won't. Personally, we actually moved when I was halfway through my GCSEs. So I only did a one year course and I had to do extra exams. And I still got two Bs, seven Cs and a D from a one year course. So I don't think that we should force teachers and children to go in during the summer.

If I could do it 20 years ago, then I'm sure they can do it now. Maybe you're exceptional though. Oh, well, absolutely. I'm amazing, but still. Kayleigh, your daughter is very young still, 13 months old. But were she of school age, what would you think of the idea of some extra summer school? I don't think it would be a good idea for children to then be forced to go in. What about if it was apparent that her education was slipping behind? I'd be more annoyed at the government for shutting down the schools in the first place, to be honest. I wouldn't really think, oh, you have to now work extra hard to catch up because of the government. It sounds like you think the schools shouldn't have been closed.

No, I don't think they should have been personally, because looking at the science behind everything and the statistics, it shows that children aren't really affected by this at all. Let me ask Lucy and Cheryl about that. Lucy first. I would prefer the schools to have stayed open and to shut everything else down, because you don't need to go to the pub, but you do need an education. You mean when they opened up pubs and restaurants and so on, maybe they shouldn't have? We went from, oh, you must stay at home, you must stay at home, to come on, I'll give you a tenner off if you go out for a meal. We all knew that it was going to go, for want of a better phrase, tits up again. The children are all over. I mean, they're not licking windows, but...

Are you sure about that? Yeah, they don't know how to social distance at that age. So the teachers should be getting extra support like PPE. Cheryl, where do you stand on that? I think the school should stay closed. I'd rather my child be at home safe than dead. My daughter's school, every week, there was a case of COVID in her class.

I find a lot of parents are using the school as a babysitter. I think a year out of school or even 18 months is not going to harm them in the long run. I think a lot of the time they just don't want the kids to be at home. I hear a lot of parents saying, oh gosh, I hate the kids being at home. I can't wait for school to open. I'm thinking, but this is a pandemic. What do your daughters think about the homeschooling? My youngest one, who's three, she doesn't know the difference. Aisha, she's asking when she can go to school if people are still sick. And I say to her, yes, they are. What about your little girl, Lucy?

She likes being at home, but she hates homeschooling. If she's at home, she thinks she can play. Is it a bit of a battleground or do you just kind of think, well, she's five, I'll let it slide? No, I make sure she does it all. We just get it all done for half past ten and then she's got a day to herself. Does she complain while she's doing it? Sometimes. There's lots of huffing and puffing. There was some talk of having shorter summer holidays, but that seems to have been abandoned what do you think of that teachers need to have their holidays because they've worked all the way through it must be so

draining for them and also a bit scary they need time out you know and they're going home to their own families as well thinking am i carrying something home and passing it on to everybody women like you are known as the Red Wall mums, sitting in the swing seats that went from Labour to Conservative and helped to win that landslide election. How well now do you think the government has handled the pandemic? They can't please everyone and they've done the best that they could do. If they'd have closed everything down sooner, then they'd have been shouted at.

I at least said you can't please everybody. I don't necessarily agree with lockdowns anyway. It would have pleased me to keep everything open. That wouldn't have gone well for a lot of people. So I don't think Labour government would have done much better either. It's just what it is. I think they've handled it quite badly. I think we need handled it quite badly.

I think we need that woman in power. I think we've got more clear heads and we think more differently to men. The government should have stepped in earlier and said, right, this is what we're going to do. This is what people are going to get before shutting down. They spent millions of pounds on PPE that couldn't be used, giving contracts to their friends, breaking the rules themselves. Boris hasn't got a clue. He needs to comb his hair to look a bit more decent on TV. Last night on telly, he looked like he was a chicken.

So it doesn't matter what they're doing. Labour's going to complain. And I really don't think Labour would have done a better job. I'm joined now by Deborah Matteson from the political consultancy Britain Thinks, which carried out that polling we're talking about. She's also the author of Beyond the Red Wall, How Labour Lose, How the Conservatives Won and What Happens Next. And also by Justine Roberts, the chief executive of Mumsnet, who commissioned this polling that we're talking about. Justine, if I actually come to you first, very interesting to hear the voices of those women. They took part in the focus groups that you commissioned from, Deborah.

Tell us why you commissioned this. Well, we've been noticing over the course of the last nearly 12 months or so how effective our users have been by lockdown, how they seem to have taken a disproportionate share, really, as far as the gender stakes are concerned in terms of how they've suffered from being employed in the sectors that are most likely to have suffered job losses. They're more likely to have been furloughed, even from some of the other sectors where there haven't been so many job losses. And of course, they're picking up the bulk of the responsibility around child care and home

schooling as well so we think there has been a very gendered impact of the pandemic and what we wanted to do was to get the government to notice and to get the government to take action and of course as we all know the way to do that is to talk about the voters in the areas they most care about. So we went to Deborah with the idea of looking at mums specifically, both on mums debt and off mums debt in the Red Wall seats, to try and gather some evidence that might make government come up with some kind of women's strategy to balance up the inequalities that have come out of this pandemic for women. And Deborah, what did you conclude from what you heard in terms of that evidence? Are there specifics that you think the government will sit up and take notice of? Yes, I mean, the backdrop to this is actually the research that I did for my book, which was

pre the pandemic, where I think it's worth saying that, you know, in those Red Wall constituencies, I met a lot of people that had quite tough lives and very precarious incomes. But it struck me then, and this was before COVID-19, how very, very hard it was for women. A lot of the women I met were doing multiple zero hours jobs. They were carers, they were shop workers, they were caring for were caring for elderly relatives kids step kids grandkids and so on it was very hard and then of course when the pandemic struck it seemed fairly obvious that things were going to get worse and that's why you know it seemed a good idea to to partner with Mumsnet who had had a very good way of reaching some of those mums to understand what was happening we also also did a nationally representative poll. What we found, as we'd suspected, was that those lives that were already very tough were now so much harder when you factor in homeschooling, worrying about the impact of COVID on their kids, and even more precarious work. And a lot of them had no work at all. Their work had dried up through the pandemic. Or a lot of them were no work at all their work had dried up through the pandemic or a lot of them were doing work with literally kind of you know working at midnight because everything

else had to be done during the day and it was best summed up by one quote from one of the women we spoke to who said I feel I've lost myself a little bit I can't remember when I last drank a cup of tea that was still warm so this sort of terrible balancing. And we found in the poll that 65% of the women that we surveyed felt that lockdown had been much harder for women than it had been for men. So there's obviously something fairly dramatic going on there. And that bigger picture about levelling up, as it's called by the government, the idea of closing the gap of inequality that was already in ambition pre-pandemic. How do you think the women in these Red Wall seats are thinking that the Prime

Minister is doing? And do they have faith that their vote will be returned, if you like, in good kind? So, well, as you heard there from some of those interviews, I think that while they have some quarrels, I think, with some of the things that have been happening so far, they don't necessarily think anybody else would be doing better. You used a quote, you talked about Boris Johnson de-snobbifying the Tory party. That actually came from my book. It was from one of my interviews. And there is a sense that he has cast the Tory party in a different and more positive light. And I think to a degree, people still feel that, but they do have quite high expectations for this levelling up agenda. And again, we found in our poll that, you know, seven out of 10 felt that those regional economic inequalities are now being exacerbated by COVID. So there was a job to be done to begin with. There's now even more of a job to be done.

Justine, one of the other issues you've been looking at is the role of grandparents, who you say make up a third of the UK's childcare provision, and perhaps don't want to necessarily go back to that role post-pandemic. Tell us about that. Yeah, it's a somewhat surprising stat that's come out of some polling we've done with Gransnet, which is Mumsnet's sister site, which shows that grandparents are getting a bit reluctant to return to the childcare duties they had prior to COVID. And they're not, they're sort of dreading it largely. And of course, you know, parents rely very, very heavily on grandparental help. And that's one of the causes of stress over the last nine months is that's been unavailable largely.

So I brought it up actually, because also, I don't know if you saw this in yesterday's, one of the Sunday papers, Sunday Telegraph, said that the government's planning a listen to Nan campaign. So after that, you know, stay at home campaign, which which fell like a lead balloon on some people's ear, which featured just women doing the domestic, the bulk of the domestic labour, even if that is a reality in lots of people's homes. Listen to Nan is the new one where you might listen to your grandmother telling you to get the jab. What do you think your your members of Gransnet or people you've been talking to may think of that? Is that an empowering thing or patronising or where do you think that might come out? I think there is. I mean, what we've noticed quite strongly is one of the reasons why people of all age groups have adhered quite well to lockdown rules is because they are

concerned about the older generation. And so, you know, I think that has come through quite strongly that people think it's irresponsible to eat, whether or not they'll get sick themselves, which many people don't think they will. They are very concerned about that older generation. And I think, you know, it's not a bad route to take, certainly better than the last one, to suggest that that older generation, you know, we're all part of the same team seats. Thank you very much, therefore, for giving us a peek into the research. Justine Roberts, chief executive of Mumsnet. Let us know, of course, what you think. And Deborah Matterson from that political consultancy, Britain Thinks. Just our conversation just before that was around women commentating on the men's game,

the men's game of rugby, I should say, after a row over the BBC reporter Sonia McLaughlin at the weekend. Just wanted to read a couple of messages on this. Geraldine Cook says, I was trolled six years ago merely for suggesting that the women's game ought to receive more coverage in the press. Sonia says, excuse me, Kath says, Sonia's interview was great. The abuse came from people who can't cope with England losing,

bullies hiding on Twitter. And this one from Rich, she says, I can say as someone who's worked in the TV broadcasting of rugby that the addition of women as commentators, pundits and reporters on the men's game is a brilliant, brilliant thing. They're not commentating on men's rugby. They're commentating and commenting on rugby.

We've also been asking you about your hair. And just before we get to this discussion, let me come to some of your remarks here 42 days to go until hairdressers reopen in england a message here haven't been to a hairdresser since january 2020 it was a long bob now way past my shoulders i wear it up most of the time used to dye it every six weeks i won't go back to that but i would like a new style eventually when the rush is over amen to that an, I love this comment here. Oh, hairdressers, please, please come back.

They're essential. I'm okay with my greys, part of life, but honestly, I do miss being a brunette and I adore my hairdresser. You make us humans. Others saying, actually, quite like my new look. It's all for the better. How much is your identity bound up then in your hair?

Have you embraced any new looks that you found yourself sporting? Or are you utterly in despair? Or perhaps you're a bit jealous of those who have cheated because we also know that many have. The writer and broadcaster Sally Hughes is on the line. Good morning. Morning, Emma. How are you? Well, you know, as someone with the name Barna,

I have made the joke already, but the roots are deep right now. They are. I hear lots of complaints about roots a lot on social media. It's a very powerful comment, though, that just came in about hairdressers make us human. And I thought I'd start by asking you, just before we get to the actual identity side of this, just a word on the beauty industry and the hairdressing industry in all of this. We've just been talking about the government and its response to the pandemic. It's an incredibly important role that these people play in our lives. It's a hugely important role in our culture, but also hugely important for

the economy. The beauty services industry is worth over £8 billion to the economy, which is obviously incredibly important that we get that money back in the tills. And at the moment, we're looking at the not unlikely possibility of losing about a quarter of our hair salons. So it's really important that we see their doors open again. But also, as you say, important for us, important for people's feelings, important for people to have that moment to themselves, I think. Do you think we will see more people embrace their natural hair colour, their greys, whatever they've been hiding under the bottle of dye?

I have certainly seen talk of that. I've certainly had some readers say, do you know what, I might stick with it. I've come this far into the kind of salt and pepper zone. I might just see what happens and see if I can live with it. But there are also loads of women who are gagging to get their roots done or who have been doing their own roots and are unhappy with the results. I certainly expect there to be lots of colour correction appointments at hair salons. I was wondering, was it very lockdown one to have your hair done at home by someone else and now everybody I feel I mean this you tell me you're the one who has the the view of this across perhaps the country and with the people that you speak to

through your journalism but it's the idea that we're sort of so nearly there now you're just letting it stay how it is perhaps without trying to do more harm yourself yes I think people think well you know I've looked not very good for quite some time now I've pushed through the pain barrier I might as well leave it in the hands of a professional but actually you know colour correction appointments can be much more expensive and much more laborious than just waiting and getting a normal colour appointment. So you might as well, I think if you've come this far, live with the roots and then get a professional to sort it out. Or not, or live with it. That's perfectly fine.

But I wouldn't start trying to become your own hairdresser at this late stage. You've just prompted a terrible memory. But as someone who has dyed their hair, I'll share in the hope of others sharing. Since I was about 17, dyeing it blonde, how it had been when I was younger, I once went in a pool that had too much bleach in it, although certainly that's what I was told,

and it went green. And I had to go to the hairdressers, and I'm sure you all know this, Sally, but apparently the only way to sort it was with tomato ketchup. So I sat in the window of a hairdresser with a whole tub of ketchup on my head, marinating.

Yeah, I mean, you wouldn't have to do now there are lots of other ways around it but certainly but certainly the acid in tomato ketchup does help to color correct that greenish tins you talk about and it's a bit of an old wives method which works pretty well it just means you have to sit in ketchup which is not so great yeah i mean i absolutely stand and i have to say i've never wanted to eat ketchup really that much since because i thought well if it can get bleach out of your hair, what else is it doing in my stomach? And mousy brown hair has been in the headlines because last week, Cara Delevingne posted the model a photo of her new darker brown hair on Instagram saying blondes have more fun, but brunettes dot dot dot. And people saying, actually, maybe this is the new new colour what do you make of all of that?

Well it's interesting because I think we are going to see a change in the colours people choose to colour their hair so I'm not sure that hair colourant will go down hugely but I do think we'll see a little bit of a shift in the colours people are asking for so by far and away the most common hair colourant the most common artificial hair colorant is blonde. So there's been a huge trend for blonde in recent years, particularly very pale blonde and balayage and things like that. And I think that lockdown has really highlighted, no pun intended to women, that actually it's quite a high maintenance color to be if you're not halfway there. If you don't have a little bit of blonde in your hair it's quite high maintenance to look after blonde so I do think we'll see um a bit of a trend towards brown and mid-brown colours I don't colour my hair at all and I do have mousy brown hair um and I it's funny how the sort of negative connotations that

mousy brown hair have um have developed over the. It's just brown hair and it's perfectly fine to have brown hair. Have you been doing anything, you know, whether it's hair or otherwise in the beauty field that you would normally rely on others? Have you learned a new skill, do you think, during this time? I mean, you are a high-end kind of reviewer and user of all of this stuff. I mean, it's my job to know how to do this stuff anyway, so I can't say I've particularly acquired any new skills. But I think lots of other people who don't work in the beauty industry have learned how to, you know, remove their own gel nails, maybe become better at home manicures. Certainly, I think that lots of people have been experimenting with makeup looks that had

previously kind of confounded them.'ve they've kind of got their technique down perhaps because of all the free time and all that time staring at themselves I think people could have lived without having to look at their faces day in day out as we all are on zoom we are indeed well Sally Hughes thank you very much for for taking us into this world and perhaps making us feel like we're nearly there which which we are. We're nearly there, we think. We are nearly there and your hairdressers and your beauty therapists need you to come back. Well, believe me, we're waiting. A lot of us are anyway, getting in touch this morning. Sally Hughes, thank you. I've been listening to you since my days of sporting dark, clear, patra hair is this message. I went blonde 15 years ago and I've used lockdown to accept that I have silver hair and I

like it. It brightens up if I sit in sunshine and I'm confident now in this new stage of my life. No name on that message. One more here. I got so fed up of my child's crazy lockdown looks that I decided to take out the kitchen scissors. The result was a bit of a mess, if I'm honest. Not bad in some places, but at the back of the neck, the scissors just didn't cut the mustard.

He's gone into work this morning. I'm sure he's going to get a ribbing. Text here from Ruth, who's got in touch. She's listening in Cheshire. Good morning. I lost my hair because of chemo for breast cancer in 2019. It's returned with a wild curl. Chemo curl is a thing, apparently. So lockdown and dealing with a whole new type of hair has been challenging. But I'm embracing the wilderness. Ruth, how lovely to hear from you and lovely to hear that. Now, what can Greek goddesses teach us about ourselves today? These goddesses tend to have

exaggerated personalities, often plagued with personal flaws and negative emotions. But what are the lessons we can glean? Natalie Haynes is a classicist and author of Pandora's Jar, Women in the Greek Myths. Bettany Hughes is a historian and author of Venus and Aphrodite, A History of the Goddess. And together they're talking about Greek goddesses as part of this year's WOW Women of the World Festival, which is running online from today until the 21st of March. Welcome to both of you. Bettany, I thought we could start with the basics. If you know nothing about Greek goddesses, who are we talking about? Who created them? How many? Tell us. Well, the short answer is there are tons. So there are at least 70 or so Greek goddesses that we know about. But the thing is, what you have to remember is in the ancient Greek world, there was no

separate word for religion. So gods and goddesses and demigods and spirits were everywhere and in everything. And the reason for that is basically, these weren't just things that you worshipped. What the ancients did is they thought, what really matters in our world? What do we really care about? What are our hopes and fears and ideas? And then they gave those notions a name and a face and they called them a goddess. So Venus, for instance, is basically the incarnation of desire of all kinds. So political, polemical so so they're they are everywhere in the ancient world and your book focuses on venus and aphrodite do you think we've romanticized them or what what could we learn from them oh totally i mean i always think it's hilarious with valentine's day just gone if venus could see that sort of pathetic blonde creature waffling

around on valentine's card she would, everybody would say, that's you. She'd go, no, what? Because she was the goddess of sexual love and of war as well. So she was incredibly feisty and ferocious. And I think we can learn from them. I mean, they're around us every day anyway. If you think about it,

the red roses that I'm sure you were flooded with, Emma, are Venus's flower you know the symbol the female symbol that appears on sunlues that's Venus's astrological sign you know venereal disease is Venus's disease the disease aphrodisiacs so she's kind of with us in our lives but more importantly I, and the ancients thought this too, they help us work out how to live. And basically, Venus is the goddess of mixing things up. So she teaches us what we do with desire, how we can make desire not our enemy, but our ally and fundamentally, how we can live together and use love, not just for gratification, but for symbiosis. Let's talk about Pandora, Natalie uh good morning why not why wouldn't we hello there let's bring i feel so bad i've been watching i feel like such a bad feminist because i've been watching you on the webcam just going your hair looks lovely what's wrong with you your hair and sally's like oh i don't dye my hair what's wrong with you your hair looks perfect it's mousy brown it isn't it's perfect what's wrong with you all

as long as as long as it's clean i'm learning that's all right at the moment. Do you know what? Let's set that bar low and just stumble over it. That's what I like to do. Well, let's stumble into the box, actually. It's not a box, Pandora's box. It's a jar. It's not a box. I feel like I'm going to be saying this for the rest of my life. Pandora doesn't have a box until Hesiod, who is one of our earliest Greek writers, is translated by the Dutch polymath and scholar Erasmus roughly 2,000 years later. And Erasmus makes a mistake. He takes the word pithos in Greek, which means jar, and he translates it into Latin pixis, which means box. And within an incredibly short time um you start seeing paintings change to

reflect that mistranslation so before that point pandora is shown either with no receptacle at all which is the case in every ancient world um depiction of her visual depiction of her that we have she is never shown with any kind of container she is always shown in the act of being created she's sculpted from the clay of the ground by Hephaestus, the blacksmith god. So fake news went viral quite quickly. It absolutely did. Erasmus has form for this, I should tell you.

He mistranslates the word spade in the phrase, he likes to call a spade a spade. But in Greek, the word is scafe, and he should have said, he likes to call a canoe a canoe. He just makes a mistake. This is just extraordinarily useful knowledge i have blown your mind you have so if you want to describe somebody being very blunt you have to say oh they like to call a canoe a canoe and then just just front it out with a really solid blank expression until they give it i talk for a living and this is going into a script as soon as possible and i'm on thank you away from the jar or the box but we now know it's a jar what what should we know about pandora I talk for a living and this is going into a script as soon as possible. Game on. Thank you.

Away from the jar or the box, but we now know it's a jar, what should we know about Pandora? And should we learn anything from her? Yes, you should. Here's the thing. Pandora is often described, even in, for example, Hesiod, one of our earlier sources. I'm so much enjoying your,

I can't believe this has just come into my life face. I can't tell you. Even Hesiod says she's gifted by all the gods, all the gods contribute to Pandora. She's created to be given to mankind as a kalon kakon, a good bad thing. And so all these gods and goddesses contribute to her appearance. And Hesiod said that's why she's called Pandora, to whom everything is given, pan meaning all the things, andorra, things are given to her. But's the thing it's an active version of the verb in greek not a passive if it meant all given the girl with all the gifts her

name would be pandosa what it actually means is pandora is all giving it's usually an adjective before the character of pandora which is applied to Earth, who is all giving to us. So even when we think of Pandora as just being gifted, we're robbing her of the agency that she has to make our lives better. So if ever you were looking for an instance of saying, this is how we reduce women's agency, just with a linguistic flicker, that's only one letter, a r for a sigma, that's all it took. Oh, interesting. Bethany, do you think then just building on that theme that there is a kind of injustice in how these Greek goddesses' stories have been passed on? I mean, no doubt. So I think it's brilliant you described history as fake news, kind of

history is generally fake news because women and goddesses, they've been suppressed and neglected and rewritten through the story of mankind. I mean, you know, like it or not, women have always been 50 percent of the population and we occupy about 0.5 percent of recorded history. And exactly as Natalie is saying, you know, this thing of Pandora, the first created woman being the Kalon Kakon, the beautiful evil thing. For centuries, people have said, aha, well, that's obviously right, because women just simply are beautiful and evil. They're evil because they're beautiful. They're beautiful because they're evil. So you have to really dig deep into the archaeology and into the archives to find a much richer, more exciting, frankly, more hopeful story. I was thinking about you asking about Venus and what she's given to us.

So Venus is often shown in the ancient world bearded. So she's a woman with a beard and her kind of many times great grandmother was this incredible potent goddess called Inanna. And Inanna was thought to prove that every person had both male and female within them. So they were both woman and man, which is why Aphrodite sometimes has a beard. We're talking 4,000 years ago, but there was that notion in society that we could be both male and female at the same time. And then we lost that notion for centuries. So it's very worth digging back.

Can I read you a little poem about Inanna that was written by the first named female poet in the world i've got very little time but if it's quick go really quick she is lady of blazing dominion clad in dread riding on fire red power flood storm hurricane adorned battle planner foe smasher if that is not a feisty goddess i don't know what is bethany hughes thank you very much to you natalie haynes thank you to you for also equipping us, not just with knowledge about Greek goddesses here, but with some very important corrections.

And if you're interested in their talk for the Women of the World Festival, it's happening on the 10th of March at 8 o'clock. 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 Matthew Side. And just before you go, I wanted to tell you about my new podcast. It's called Sideways. Each week, I'll be telling you stories that I hope will make you see the world differently. We've got a story about a rebellious pilot who changed the way we fight wars.

We'll hear how a misunderstanding about probability led to a group of mothers being wrongfully convicted of killing their children. We'll meet a tribe described as the most selfish people on the planet. I'll be revealing the true story of Stockholm Syndrome. And we'll also hear how a change in our sexual behaviour 2,000 years ago revolutionised the way we innovate. So if you want to hear about the big ideas that are shaping our lives,

please come and join me by listening to Sideways 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.