Woman's Hour - Monica Lewinsky revisited, 'Teen-ternity' leave, Wigs, Late-life libido, Young climate activists

Episode Date: October 30, 2021

The details of US President Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky and the 1998 impeachment proceedings may be unfamiliar to some young women today. Impeachment: American Crime Story on BBC Two, aims to reframe the Clinton scandal from the perspective of the women it engulfed. Jessica Bennett from the New York Times and Sarah Baxter, former deputy editor of The Sunday Times discuss. The BBC Specialist Disinformation Reporter Marianna Spring who appeared in front of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee this week to present the findings from her BBC Panorama investigation into the rising online abuse against women. Should parents be allowed ‘teen-ternity’ leave? Suzanne Alderson on why she wants employers to allow parents to take leave to help teenagers who are struggling. Ahead of the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference, COP26 starting this Sunday, Zaqiya Cajee, a pre-loved fashion advocate and Mikaela Loach climate justice activist and fifth year medical student talk about how to engage people on climate change action and their hopes for the conference.The wig designer Angela Cobbin has written her memoir. My Name Is Not Wigs. She tells us about about becoming a theatrical wig designer for countless plays, musicals, TV shows and films over five decades.Your libido as you age with Scottish storyteller, Marie Louise Cochrane and sex expert Tracey Cox.Presenter: Jessica Creighton Producer: Dianne McGregor

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 Jessica Crichton. Welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast. Welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. In a moment, we'll hear from two young climate activists. Also, you would have heard of paternity leave and maternity leave, but what about teen-ternity leave? More on that to come in the programme. Also, why we need to discuss how getting older

can affect a woman's libido. We really do need to get to a point where talking about our libido is the same as saying, you know, oh, is your back a bit sore? You know, it's a normal function of getting older. And the more we talk about it in society and to our friends, the more normal it becomes. Solutions are there, but everyone's a little bit shy about asking about them. Plus, wig maker Angela Cobben, who has worked with stars from Judi Dench to Joan Collins. And we revisit Monica Lewinsky's affair with former US President Bill Clinton, which is being portrayed in a new BBC TV drama. But first, are you someone who's interested in environmentalism? Perhaps you're a young person who struggles to get others to take you seriously when talking about your interest.

Well, ahead of the 2021 UN Climate Change Conference COP26, which starts tomorrow, we wanted to find out how young climate change activists speak to adults who aren't interested, what the issues are and their hopes for COP26. Zakiya Kaji is 18 years old and an advocate for pre-love fashion. She set up Swap It Up, which encourages young people to use their creativity to protect the planet and encourage secondary schools to set up clothes swaps to fight fast fashion. She's also one of BBC Bitesize's new Regenerators, which is a brand new environmental initiative from BBC Education.

And Michaela Loach, who is 23 years old, and she's a climate justice activist, a fifth year medical student as well, based in Edinburgh, who is currently taking the UK government to court for their support of North Sea oil and gas. She was also on the 2020 Women's Hour Power List. I asked Michaela how she's feeling about COP26. I'm definitely nervous about what will happen, whether we will get anything resembling climate justice, whether we'll get the pledges that we need from governments globally, whether our movements will really be able to meet together, whether COVID will get in the way. There's so many different things to be thinking about, but I'm mostly just excited to be in a space with so many other brilliant

activists because it's been such a long time since we've been able to be physically together. OK, excitement for Michaela. Sakia, what about yourself? Are you excited and are you hopeful? I mean, there have been quite a few things that have been seen as both negative and positive in the run-up to COP. Just little announcements to do with the commitments that we're starting to see from countries. One positive thing, though, that's come out is that we've heard that the big polluters are not

going to be given a seat at the table during COP. So that is a massive kind of win. And so it's starting to see some positive things, which is making it seem a bit more hopeful. But there's so many more things that we need to do it's not just about who's at the table it's also about the things that we're discussing and we need to be sticking more to a 1.5 degrees increase in warming rather than the two degrees and preferably lower than that if possible but let's be realistic 1.5 degrees the IPCC report in 2018 showed us what would happen beyond that. And it's devastating. So it just our promises from governments around the world need to be more in line with that.

What would you like to see happen, Michaela? Oh, there's a lot of things I'd like to see. A lot of them I'm not sure if they're actually going to happen. But I think one thing that's really important I think that we need to talk about is a commitment to loss and damage so basically what that means is getting governments all around the world to just accept and commit to financing for the harm that's already been caused because we talk a lot about adaptation and mitigation but how horrendous is it that countries like the UK and the US and other industrialized nations have caused so much harm to so many countries all over the world that they've also previously colonized and then have this idea that oh we should be able to pollute

and you guys just have to adapt and maybe we'll help you a little bit with the finance of that but actually we'd rather not actually there's so much harm that's been caused already by the climate crisis i'm um i was born in jamaica my family a lot of my family is still in jamaica and that island has been harmed by the UK through colonialism historically and presently and also through the huge amount of emissions that this country emits and then how it's harming Jamaica I've been back in recent years and seen beaches that I went to as a kid disappear completely because of sea level rise that's a really real thing and it actually breaks my heart and it makes me sad because I wonder about my family like how long will they be safe and that's a real real. And I think that the harm that's already been caused needs to be addressed.

And there needs to be a commitment from governments like the UK, like the US, European countries and governments to paying back climate reparations for the harm that's been caused, as well as financing for this adaption or this mitigation but another thing that's important as well if if we want to actually have any sort of climate justice is we need the uk and all these other countries to stop it's like taking out oil and gas out of the ground such a simple thing when we're talking about the climate crisis we need to stop putting the emissions out not just talking about net zero which which is not real zero. And given that the UK government is currently trying to push 40 new oil and gas projects through, it's important that we actually call that out as they're hosting COP26. And instead, we try and challenge them to be a world leader in reality and stop oil and gas extraction now. And that's why I'm part of the pay to pollute court case. That's why I'm part of the Stop Cambo campaign as well.

And these are things I think we need to be highlighting in this time when the spotlight is being put on the UK. Yes, you've highlighted that very well there, Michaela. I do have a statement here from the Oil and Gas Authority. A spokesperson has said that we remain firmly of the view that the OGA strategy, which includes net zero requirements on industry, is the primary tool that the OGA has to hold industry to account on emission reductions as well as ensuring a pace on essential energy transition projects including carbon capture and storage. Now Sakiya I wonder, Michaela has highlighted a number of issues there but how much is this cut through into the general population into the mainstream how aware are people of the issues that they're facing in terms of climate change i think that uh the general population knows um a bit about climate change we generally will know the buzzwords but a lot of

people don't necessarily know what the exact sort of uh language being used actually means and exactly kind of what you just said there I imagine that there's a lot of people listening and have no clue what any of that means what that statement actually means and the language used around climate change climate change is something that's going to be affecting everyone so everyone deserves to know what we're facing and when language is used that we can't understand that puts a barrier in the way for people to actually access that and to actually be able to petition for change and to create change. If we don't know what we're facing, it's difficult to actually solve the problem. And so ultimately what we need to be doing is breaking it down to basics.

And I thought what Michaela was saying was very much breaking down. I understood everything. there's no um there's no language in there that I didn't really understand um and I'm sure there's still quite a lot of people might need to know a little bit more and to do with like why net zero isn't the goal that we should be going for because ultimately that's to do with the amount of carbon that we absorb versus the amount of carbon that we put out and that is completely like different in the sense of that trees are part which is to do with like deforestation and to do with reforestation planting trees is seen as a good way of kind of balancing out um the carbon

emissions but actually carbon emissions from fossil fuels is part of the long-term uh carbon cycle compared to the short-term carbon cycle the trees is part of the long term carbon cycle compared to the short term carbon cycle. The trees are part of the completed, although they are connected, it's completely different ends to each other. And so it's why it doesn't necessarily balance out in the way that it should. And so when it comes back to the language being used, we just need to be clearer so that more people can understand, that more people can access it and more people can get involved when you're talking about this Michaela from adults in particular what's the response what's the reaction is there skepticism I mean I am an adult I think I also sympathize with a lot of people from different generations who climate change was not the priority there.

And I think so often there's this division that's created between younger generations and older generations, as if like older generations were just doing nothing and just sitting around. In reality, like there's been so many other issues that have been going on, so many issues of injustice throughout the years and throughout generations, that the older generations have been fighting. Like there was apartheid in South Africa, the civil rights movement, there was a Thatcher government. Like all of these things are things that older generations were having to fight.

And for us as a younger generation, climate is the biggest thing that we're talking about. But it doesn't mean that people weren't fighting for that beforehand. So I think that we need to kind of address that divide that's put there, because I think that division doesn't actually help any of us.

What we need is we need everyone on board everyone from all different generations and age groups and professions and everywhere to be on board with climate and in my experience talking to people of different generations I organize those people from those different generations I do activism with people who are like in their 70s 80s 50s full-step from every generation and so many people have been doing this work for so much longer than I have, and many other young activists. And when I do speak to, I guess, some other people who maybe aren't as aware of climate issues, we need to also, I think, have sympathy for people who have been living through an age where the fossil fuel industry

have ploughed millions, if not billions of pounds into making people skeptical about the existence of the climate crisis or about climate policy and therefore i think what we need to do is have more grace when we go into all of these situations and work out like oh how can we actually communicate about climate in a way that will engage people who maybe um have been um forced to deny it or to um be skeptical about it and how can we actually connect climate to something that someone else already cares about? Because that's the best way to go into a conversation, not to try and force your ideals or your values on someone else, but instead think from what are their values and how does this connect to climate change? Because it will in so many different ways.

That was Michaela Loach and Sakia Kaji. And now, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen gave evidence to MPs this week as part of the government's plans for social media regulation. The committee is scrutinising the draft online safety bill, which places a duty of care on social media companies themselves to protect their users. For women in the public eye, online abuse is often a regular occurrence. Last month on Woman's Hour, we spoke to Amy Hart, a Love Island contestant back in 2019. She had just appeared in front of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sports Select Committee, describing the online abuse she's faced as a social media influencer.

Well, on Monday, Chloe spoke to Mariana Spring, who is the BBC specialist disinformation reporter. She was appearing in front of that same committee to present the findings from her recent BBC Panorama investigation, Online Abuse, Why Do You Hate Me? Chloe asked her first about the messages she receives. These messages, abusive messages, are worlds apart from criticism and debate and discussion. I expect that. I cover online conspiracy theories, the anti-vaccine movement, other forms of disinformation on social media. But unfortunately, it's triggered a range of really horrific threats, rape threats, death threats, people threatening to come to my house to behead me and harm me, comments about sexualized violence,

gendered slurs. And what really struck me and what inspired the Panorama investigation in the first place is that I am far from alone. Women across the public eye, whether that's politicians or influencers, but also women outside of the public eye, everyone from librarians to firefighters to teenage girls have got in touch with me to talk about their experiences of online hate. And it takes a very similar form to the hate I get, gendered slurs, threats, often very sexualised comments and remarks. Before we talk about your investigation, it's not that usual, is it, for a BBC journalist to go and give evidence? So, I mean, it is an important statement that your investigation is being looked at.

Yes, it's definitely an opportunity to talk about what the investigation reveals and what it tells us about the part that social media sites play in online hate targeting women in particular. The session itself is focused on online harms towards women and girls. And so I plan to talk about several of the findings from our investigation. One of them is to do with a dummy troll account that we set up in order to test the algorithms on the social media sites. The algorithms are the software that essentially pushes different recommendations

and suggestions to you. We set up this fake account called Barry based on accounts that send me abuse. It was predominantly engaged in conspiracy content, anti-vaccine content, but also in some misogynistic content and it posted remarks on its private wall so it didn't send hate out to anyone.

And what we found we created this profile across the five main social media sites and we found that after a week but particularly after two weeks and that on Facebook and Instagram in particular and this account was being pushed suggested almost exclusively misogynistic content and some of that was really disturbing memes about sexual violence about about rape. Some of it linked to the incel movement, which is an Internet subculture that essentially believes that men's dissatisfaction with life can be blamed on women. And it was just very disturbing to see. Facebook, which also owns Instagram, told us that they do try to not promote this kind of hateful content and that they prioritise the safety of their community over profit.

And they have introduced a number of new measures to protect public figures, women particularly, from online hate. But nonetheless, it was really, really shocking to see how quickly this Barry the Troll was engulfed in this world of misogyny and how much that could embolden someone like this to send out more hate or to get really swept up in some pretty nasty stuff on social media. Now, if people haven't seen your panorama, and I would urge them to seek it out on the iPlayer,

because it is, well, there's moments in it that are incredibly emotional and very worrying. I mean, there was one moment where you actually had a telephone conversation with a man who has trolled you. He agreed to be recorded. Just tell us about that. So I spent quite a lot of time trying to track down the different people who've been sending me abuse. And what struck me is that a lot of them are really quite normal. They'll use their real pictures and their real names. They have hobbies and lives and friends. They support football teams.

They go shopping in Ocado, all kinds of different stuff. And Steve, who was the troll who agreed to speak to me, is a van driver from the Midlands. And when we spoke on the phone, I think he did start to understand the impact of some of the gendered slurs that he'd been sending me. And he actually admitted at the end of the call, oh, I sort of wish I didn't really use Facebook because I can see how I end up having these really negative and nasty conversations. And I think that what this investigation has revealed to me has been twofold, not just the harm that is being caused to women in and out of the public eye by this kind of hate and this kind of hateful misogyny online, but actually to people like Steve or like Barry the fake troll,

whose lives are also being ruined by what they're seeing on their social media feeds and are behaving in a way that's just totally disinhibited. We talked, I mentioned in the introduction, about Love Island. You've talked about women, but race is also an element in this, isn't there? And you spoke to two women who'd been in Love Island, one a black woman, one an Asian woman, about the abuse that they've got. Yes, I did. Kaz and Priya both spoke to me about the abuse they've experienced. They've been overwhelmed with really positive comments, but they also have had some really, really nasty abuse that focuses on them being women.

But in Kaz's case, that focuses on her being black, and in Priya's case, on her being South Asian. And they found that abuse particularly disturbing, quite frightening, quite worrying. And exclusive research that was part of the programme by the think tank Demos actually revealed how having analysed 90,000 comments across social media, female contestants from reality television are subject to far more hate than their male counterparts. And that's obviously worse when it's combined with racism or homophobia or transphobia. And so it's really, in many ways, a useful microcosm to analyse. It allows us to see how the hate that women and men experience is different in volume, but also different in nature. It was very sexualised, focused on their appearance, focused on their gender. They were targeted for being women.

And you also spoke to the former Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, the former leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson, as politicians. I almost said you would almost expect it, which is a dreadful thing. But in the world in which we live, it does feel like a woman in politics puts her head above the parapet. They will get abuse, clearly not acceptable. But you also spoke to a doctor who'd been getting a lot of abuse because she'd just been encouraging people to have the COVID vaccine. That was what was most shocking was the universality of this abuse and how everyone from politicians to a frontline doctor

who uses Twitter to tell people to get the jab have been subject to similar kinds of rape threats, death threats, gendered abuse. I think when I spoke to Ruth Davidson and also Julia Gillard, they both made a point about how worried they are for how this abuse can deter young women from going into politics, can put them off public life. But actually, the doctor, Dr. Rachel Clark, who I interviewed, said the same thing, that she worries that young women online see this and expect this as a normal part of public life when they all agree that it's anything but normal. Tell us some of the responses. You've mentioned what Facebook have said, but Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, the police, just give us a sense of what people are saying.

So in response to our investigation, all of the social media sites reaffirmed their commitments to tackle online hate and say that they do what they can to remove it from their platforms and that they don't tolerate it. They say that they have different systems and mechanisms that they use to try and do this. They don't always suspend accounts. Sometimes they will, they don't always remove accounts. Sometimes they will suspend or restrict them. The police similarly came back to say that they take online abuse very seriously and that the investigation into the hate I receive is ongoing. But this investigation on the whole has raised serious questions about all of the systems in place to protect women, whether that's on social media, whether that's the police,

whether that's policymakers. And so it feels like an important step to be able to talk to those policymakers and to emphasise the findings from this panorama. There's a moment in the program where you get emotional because a UN researcher who's looking at this says she's concerned for your safety and you talk about how tiring it is. It's a constant worry. Are you okay now? It's not very easy to deal with. I really love doing my job. I think it's really important. But the fears for your physical safety are the most difficult. I worry about walking home. I worry about where I'm staying at night. And it might seem a bit bizarre and people probably think, oh, it's, you know, it's just happening online. Surely it doesn't translate offline. But the UN commissioned research actually shows that quite often it does. One in five of the women who responded to their survey said they've experienced stalking, harassment and other forms of hate offline that have been linked to what they're getting online. And it's really sad to speak to women from doctors to influencers to politicians to just teenage girls messaging me, telling me that they are really frightened that someone might hurt them.

You can watch evidence given by the BBC's Marianna Spring and Frances Haugen on the Parliament TV website. And if there's anything you want to get in contact about, email us via our website or message us on social media at BBC Women's Hour. Now, have you ever rediscovered something important to you? Well, one listener got in touch to ask us to discuss women finding their libidos later in life. We're going to have a frank conversation about this. So if there are any little ears around listening, you might want to just turn the radio down or perhaps catch up with the discussion a bit later via BBC Sounds.

In her email, one of our listeners said, I rediscovered my libido at 59 in a long-term relationship during lockdown. We have two grown-up children and our sex life has been pretty non-existent for many years. But I confronted how I felt and we became close again. To my amazement, my libido returned. It was a bit overwhelming at first, but I was overjoyed to find sex again and it has become very important to me.

Another woman writes, I'm 58 and sadly I find my sex drive is just fading away. I love my husband very much and sex for him remains just as important and vital to our relationship. And so I feel like I'm letting him down, which makes me upset and saddened. I love to cuddle him, but that seems all my body is interested in these days. I wish I understood why and could do something to bring it back. Well, Chloe spoke to Scottish storyteller, Mary Louise Cochran, who performs stories and music based on tales she's collected about women and sex to help broaden the conversation. And author and sex and relationships

expert, Tracy Cox, who has written a book on this, Great Sex at 50, How to Age-Proof Your Libido. So how common is it for women's libidos to drop off around menopause? It is extremely common. And it is a fact that when you go through menopause, the three hormones that really help the sexual desire and sexual function all basically trickle down to virtually nothing. So that's testosterone, estrogen and progesterone. And they affect desire, they affect lubrication,

they affect sensitivity. So it is a fact that sex can become problematic post-menopause. But happily, there are solutions because most of those problems can be fixed. You just have to be motivated to go and see your GP, go perhaps to a menopause clinic and find out solutions. Because a lot of it is attitude as well, in that if you really want to continue having sex, you will find the motivation to go to your GP and go to a clinic and find some solutions. And we also need to rethink the way we think about sex, because we're all very guilty of thinking of sex as penetration. And if penetration is incredibly difficult for you, which it often is, you need to move into

full play focus sex, which in fact is a lot better for women, because of course, that's when we get our orgasms. Mary, let me bring you in on this, because I mean, it's twofold. Doctors are quite busy at the moment with the pandemic. So it's always going to be tricky, isn't it? And aren't we just a bit rubbish at talking about this generally? I mean, I'm wondering, you've collected stories on this, but generally we don't like to talk about this. Do we even with our friends? Well, exactly. And that's why I started my project Red Velvet Revelry, because I was at a point in my life where I needed to hear some happy stories about sex from other women. And in the circles that I move in, I didn't really hear those stories because we weren't able to talk

about them I mean I'm 53 I think people of my generation we do not have permission to talk about sex to our friends and even very much to our partners you know if we think even about the menopause it's not that many years ago that people didn't even really talk about that. That is something we talk about more. So will it help us all if we start to talk about libido and loss of it as we get older? Of course it will. I mean, when you talk about things to your friends, you normalise things. I do think, though, I mean, having written about sex for 30 odd years, it's so much better now than it was. I mean, no one mentioned menopause.

No one mentioned older people having sex. God forbid you would ever think about sex post the age of 50. And of course, we're all living longer now. So there's been a lot more attention paid to, you know, we are living longer, but menopause is still a fact and it does affect our genitals and it does affect our sex drive. So I think it is better. But we really do need to get to a point where talking about our libido is the same as saying, you know, oh, we should back a bit sore. You know, it's a normal function of getting older.

And the more we talk about it with, you know, in society and to our friends, the more normal it becomes. And the more we can talk to each other. Well, how did you solve the problem? Well, I went this way and I decided to do lots more, you oral sex or you know mutual masturbation or things like that solutions are there but everyone's a little bit shy about asking about them. Leslie who's 55 says I'm in a new relationship with a 59 year old man we're both sexually attracted to each other and loving sex I always have long may it continue. Catherine has also got in touch saying when I was 70 my libido totally stopped my husband was 75 and we both

agreed we were happy cuddling and kissing and neither of us wanted to have any more sex why is there this obsession to have a libido and sex in order to be happy it's total rubbish it's a wonderful freedom not to have sex anymore and I guess Tracey the point here is it's about if you've both got the same libido if both of you are happy not having sex that's fine but if you've both got the same libido. If both of you are happy not having sex, that's fine. But if you're different, what can you do? Well, I mean, that's the whole thing is that sexist marriages do exist and they're more common than you think. I think they are incredibly common post-50. And if you've got together with somebody when you were 18

and you've been together when you were 70, you'd probably be quite happy to kiss sex goodbye. But I think when you've got one person who wants to hang up their skates and the other one doesn't, then you do have a problem. And you need to look at options for that, which include low effort sex. Maybe you don't want to have penetrative sex, or you might be happy to, you know, do something sexual to them. There are so many solutions. If we just stop thinking of sex as intercourse and something that has to be a two way street. And, you know, there really are many, many things that you can do sexually together that don't involve penetration.

And that can be very low effort on one person's part if they don't have any desire anymore. This email's just come in. I'm now 81. My sex life has never been better. I've been with my current partner for around three years. He's 80. We talk a lot. We discuss what we like and what we'd like to do. We make love at least seven times a week. I'm exhausted just listening to that. That is impressive. Thank you for getting in touch.

Marie-Louise, I know that you had a kind of personal experience of rediscovery, if you like, with a kind of change of libido yourself. Yeah, well, I mean, as Tracy was saying, if you've been in a relationship with the same person since you were quite young, then you have a pattern of communication and interacting, which maybe doesn't change and develop, especially if you come from a kind of culture

which makes it difficult to talk about sex. When I found myself single and 50, I had to look at all the things that I had learned about what sex meant for me and what I I had to look at all the things that I had learned about what sex meant for me and what I was supposed to do in sex, and really think about it for myself. So when I entered a new relationship, then I was in a different place. And I was able to talk about things and ask for things and discuss things that I just couldn't with the best will in the world couldn't have done it before when I was younger. I to have different experiences I had to know that another way of doing things was possible which

is why I've been doing my project because I want women to hear about other women's experiences which either is similar to theirs or different to theirs so they can see that there is another option but you know as Tracy says I was definitely brought up with nobody over sex has 50. Why would you want to? And if your communication and your relationship has got lots of painful things that have built up over the years, then that affects your sex life. It's not all about the sex. It's not all about the menopause. I know you've been collecting these stories. You've been doing these performances. You've actually written a poem for us, haven't you? Would you mind reading it to us? It's called Ladies Who Like It. To say that you like it it's a bit of a gamble. To say that you like it requires a preamble

because sometimes you do and sometimes you didn't and sometimes you will and sometimes you winnie and sometimes you're wanton and wicked and wild And sometimes you want to be held like a child. Sometimes you'd rather a book from the shelf. And sometimes you can't even fathom yourself. The key to success in your intimate life, whether you're single, a lover, a wife, is freedom of choice in the acts of your choosing, giving and taking, not winning and losing? Well, that's my opinion, and yours may be other. So I welcome the chance to discuss and discover if it's only me who'd be rather excited to hear tales about sex for ladies who

like it. That was Mary Louise Cochran and Tracy Cox talking to Chloe. Next on Weekend Woman's Hour, we've got maternity leave and paternity leave, don't we? But what about later down the line when your babies have grown into teenagers? The teenagers can be difficult for all sorts of reasons. And the wait for help from child and adolescent mental health services can be very long. So if you're a working parent, should you be entitled to specific leave to help your child out? You could call it teenternity. That's what Suzanne Alderson did when her daughter went through a very bad patch. And she's now gone on to set up a charity called Parenting Mental Health.

Suzanne's daughter is happy for her to speak about her experiences to us. When she was 14, she was badly bullied at school and it had an increasingly poor impact on her mental health. And she declined to the point where she couldn't leave the house. She couldn't sleep, she wasn't eating. And so I took her to see our GP. And I have to say that we probably ignored this a little bit for about 12 months. We thought we could just get her through. It was something just part of being a teenager.

And then when she saw our GP and she was referred to CAMHS with a nine to 12 week waiting list, it was clear that we couldn't wait that long. She declined rapidly. And he suggested that we go back and see him the following week. And when we did, she asked if she could go in on her own. And at that appointment, she disclosed to him that she had a plan to end her life imminently. That was a very, very, very difficult time for us. And it was a start really of an extraordinary time. We didn't know what to do as parents. We didn't know how to support her. She was very fortunate because she was seen by CAMHS very quickly. But she did go on to attempt suicide.

And we found that we just were consumed by it. We had the person that we loved the most in the world, our child. And we just simply didn't know what to do. So it was an incredibly challenging time for us. She suffered with chronic depression, with anxiety. This was just really isolating, really challenging on us as people and us as parents and definitely on us as at the time my husband and I ran a business together and as employers and as functioning members of a team. So absolutely impacted on every single part of our lives. And so that's why I couldn't find any support really.

So I decided that if we made it through, I'd make it my mission to make sure that no other parent felt like I did, which was really ill-equipped to deal with it, really isolated and also very judged. I was reading your story in the Daily Mail article today and you were talking about how you went to a business meeting and you were trying to, you're trying to function,

you're running a business, you're being professional, but obviously, obviously your thoughts are with your daughter and it's very difficult isn't it for parents I mean you were you say yourself you're in the privileged position I suppose that you were running your own business so you didn't have to go to your employer and say look I need to take some time off and I guess what's tricky is not everyone is in that position are they? Absolutely I was was very, very fortunate. That's not to say, though, that there weren't challenges. And as you say, the Daily Mail article does talk about the meeting with a very nice client who clearly saw the challenges that I was facing.

I was absolutely consumed with keeping my daughter alive. So deadlines and, you know, suicide don't really work together. I mean, I just really at that time obviously didn't necessarily care about very much other than keeping her alive. But saying that I still had a team that I worked with. I still had a team I was responsible for. And I still had to explain to people why I was absent. And the judgment and the stigma around having a child with a mental health issue is enormous. And we talk about let's talk more about mental health,

but actually there's still a judgment in society that in some way you've caused this. As a parent, that was your responsibility to stop it happening. And so that was incredibly challenging. And I also think in the same way as young people's cognitive function declines when they struggle with their mental health,

the enormous stress of parenting a child with a mental health issue impacts on your ability to be present. And the people and the parents that I speak to and support with parenting mental health all want to be at work. They don't want to be at home looking after a teenager as if they're a toddler, you know, not being able to let them out of their sight, wondering what they're going to wake up to, being scared to go to sleep. But it's a real challenge. And absolutely, we see a number of people who've had to give their jobs up because they have to make a choice. And if you have a choice between working and your choice between keeping your child alive, and I sound dramatic, and it absolutely is

dramatic, then that's a very simple one. You have to give that up. As an employer, I see the other side. But I really hope that we can start to break the stigma down so that parents don't have to explain in detail. They're not judged by the fact that their child might be struggling with depression or anxiety or an eating disorder. And we can actually be more compassionate about the challenges that we face. Being a parent of a teenager is really hard anyway. Parenting a teenager with a mental health issue is off the charts difficult. We have to be realistic here. There's scales, aren't there? There's obviously what you're talking about, which was an absolute crisis situation for your daughter. There's also teenagers just slightly going off the rails. And maybe as a parent, you just think, gosh,

I need to step back from work, maybe just take a few weeks off, dedicate some time to them, be there for them, be more present than you're able to be in everyday life. So we have to kind of acknowledge that scale. And it's important to say as well, that legally, you can request at the moment, can't you? Up to the age of 18, you can take time off work to be with your child, but it's limited to four weeks a year, and maybe in one or two week blocks, which is not necessarily going to help in this case. So are you an advocate for paid time off for parents with teenagers? Absolutely. We seem to think that when we get to the teenage years, all of our responsibilities sort of seem to go away, drift away,

and it must be something to do with, you know, them as a teenager. And we know that the teenage brain is growing. We know it's likely to look out for risk. It wants to challenge. It wants to become independent. And I think it's really important that we see the teen years as vital as when we have a baby, when we have a toddler. And so I absolutely think that we should support that. I think there's also a point here, which is when your child has a mental health issue, you need to address the way that you parent. You need to change the

way that you parent because the kind of authority top-down approach does not work. And so these are opportunities for us to become more connected, to build trust with our young people, to understand them more and for them to understand us. So I'm absolutely an advocate for paid time off for parents. But I think as well, we need to address the challenges of stigma around mental health and poor mental health, not only in young people, but also in that family environment. So we need to be able to talk to our employer. We need to be able to say, this is what is going on and know that we're not going to have people at the water cooler talking about what's going on for us and judging us as people. So I think there's a lot of work to be done in terms of the way we approach it. But I would also love to see this time being seen as a really

valuable one for our society. A really important part of our family time is when we have teenagers, how we help them to become purposeful, healthy, happy adults. And I think at the moment, we've got such a focus on the young years, which is so important, but equally the teenage years are vitally important too. Let me read you some of the messages. Rosalind says, trying to balance the needs of a depressed teen and work commitments mean you can do nothing right. As a carer, it's tough to be failing your child, yourself, and also that concern about failing your employer. Another one here, why should people with children get paid leave for

this, that and the other? Having children is a choice. What happens along the way is a risk you take when having children. People like me, childless by choice, are always left to pick up the slack, not to mention the predicament this puts employers in, having to try to fund not only the absentee, but also their temporary replacement. Do you want to respond? Absolutely, I'd love to respond to that. And I completely understand that position. What I would say is that society or the government organisation should support all of us through all of our choices. So, for example, if the listener liked ice skating and then fell over and broke their

leg, we would support that. I understand the challenge. This is a broader challenge than ice skating and having a child. But I think it's really important as a society that we would support that. I understand the challenge. This is a broader challenge than ice skating and, you know, and having a child. But I think it's really important as a society that we do support parents and we do understand that we all bring challenges, whether we've got children or not, to our role as an employee and that we deserve support because we are a compassionate society, I would hope. That was Suzanne Alderson talking about her daughter and you can find links of support on today's page of the Woman's Hour website. Lots of you have got in touch about this story. One person has written in to say, I have a now 21 year old daughter who has serious mental health issues since she was 16,

including self-harm and suicidal thoughts. In my experience, employers are sympathetic if they understand the severity of the issue. Once I mentioned the self-harm, etc., both my current employer and a previous employer just gave me all the time I needed and enabled me to take time off and have flexi hours to attend appointments with my daughter. We also got another email in as well. And they said employers seem to be expected to take on increasing levels of responsibility for financing parenthood. Whilst I understand some of the arguments for this in terms of the benefits to wider society. However, it seems that increasingly rights of parents are not being balanced by the responsibility of being parents. Sometimes extremely hard choices must be made in this life. I fear that particularly smaller business owners will be put off from employing women with children or even of childbearing age.

This would surely be a retrograde step. What are your thoughts on this? Well, you can get in touch with anything that you hear via the website or, as always, at BBC Woman's Hour on social media. OK, imagine the scene. You're watching a period drama seeing beautiful hairstyles on the screen. Do you ever consider that the gorgeous updos on that young female lead is, well, actually a wig? And who's making it? And who's dressing it? Well, you can get a glimpse into that world now through Angela Cobbin. She's a wig designer and an MBE, and she's written a memoir. Her book,

My Name Is Not Wigs, takes readers through her beginnings as a hairdressing student in the early 60s to becoming a theatrical wig designer for countless plays, musicals, TV shows and films over five decades. So what sparked her interest in wigs? I discovered a wonderful old book with a wonderful picture of this 18th century wig and I suddenly realised that was what I wanted to do. It literally clicked? It did click. I mean I'd loved all the Fidel Sassoon geometric stuff, all those wonderful things to do. But this whole idea of these wonderful hairstyles just grabbed me. And so how do you go from saying that's what

I want to do to making it a reality? Because my parents had been in the business years before they had all the right ideas and so I wrote off to firms and I got a place at Nathan's, Nathan Wiggs in London in Drury Lane, wonderful place to start. Just loved it, the whole atmosphere, suits of armour, all that sort of thing. Tell us about what it is like to work in the madness of a film set or backstage at a musical, because for most of us, we've never experienced. Well, a musical's wonderful, and it's non-stop. You're running up and down stairs,

running from dressing room to dressing room, round the stage, quick change, grab it all, go to the other side of the stage, stage right and left, dressing room round the stage quick change grab it all go to the other side of the stage stage right and left or even underneath the stage and by the end of the show you're like a limp rag you write a lot in the book about and i love this about your work at the royal opera house where you fitted 36 wigs in 35 minutes how does that even how i don't know to be honest i used to just race round and those wigs in those days had these awful sort of drawstrings at the back that you pulled in tight and then you had to hide the drawstring right up underneath.

Poor women, you know, they were going, the singers, they were going, ouch, ouch, you know, while you tuck them up. There were two of us to begin with and then my colleague dropped out and I seemed to somehow manage on my own. Tell us about some of the incredible names that you've worked with. Wow, we haven't got time, I don't think. Your highlights then. My highlights, I suppose, was meeting people like Pavarotti

and De Margot Fonteyn, wonderful dancers. All those sort of people in the opera world were absolutely glorious. Placido Domingo. I mean, I could go on naming masses. What about Joan Collins? I'm interested in Joan Collins. Well, Joan Collins was later on when I was working freelance and I was asked to make the wigs for a clandestine marriage. And I went to her apartment to do the fitting and she said to me I've got a short attention span so will this take long? Probably not what you want to hear is it? No however I did manage to do it but we were in a lovely bathroom which was all champagne colour

and very low lighting so it was a bit tricky. Difficult to get your measurements right. But we managed it and the wigs were terrific. But just for her, I didn't do the rest of the film. You've worked with other amazing people. Judi Dench? Well, she's wonderful, but she's very, very naughty when you're on stage with her. And I'm sure she's exactly the same when she's on film.

She will get up to all sorts of tricks and pranks and drive people wild, you know. And she remains almost this sort of angelic, it wasn't me, you know, that sort of thing. I can remember her pinching my arm, the side of stage, waiting to do a quick change, hoping that you're going to scream all around. And you daren't. No no you just can't tell us how you go about making a wig because these wigs here are absolutely beautiful and i was saying to you before we came on air that one of the wigs which is a a short slightly wavy auburn wig the thing that is incredible about it is is the the hairline at the front on a sort of cheap i'm

thinking about the halloween wig i'm wearing to a party on Saturday night. Hideous it is, very, very cheap. But it's on a sort of just coming out of a cap, if you like. But there it looks like real little bits of hair coming out of skin. They are pieces of hair. And this is on quite a fine stage lace. It's a stock wig, so it's quite old. It's seen a bit of service. and it can go into other styles it didn't have to be in this style but I thought I'd just show how you know the Jean Harlow of the 1930s used to look but this is a redhead of course those listening can't see it you'll see it on social media and the hairs go in one at a time wow on the front hairline they go in one at a time so how long does that take it depends on on who's knotting it. If I'm knotting it, it probably takes me quite a while.

I'm very particular about how it's going to look. Fronts can take maybe a day. If you're going in to measure Joan Collins to make a wig, from start to finish, how long are you spending on a wig? Myself, I'd probably be spending about 10 days, two weeks. But I mean, if it was someone like Joan Collins, she had wigs which were 18th century and they had wire frames that were built to go on the top so that the hair is then dressed over that. So that takes quite a bit of doing.

I presume that's a skill as an actor to be able to balance or not? Well, it's all to do with balance, yes. But you get the balance right and it just sits. But it also is tied with a very fine ribbon under the chin. Do you have a favourite wig that you've created or the perfect wig? Is there such a thing? I don't think I have a favourite wig, no. I think I'm always trying to make a really good man's wig so that he doesn't

look as though he's wearing one. I mean, I've made them for Les Miserables. I made one for Alfie Boe. Very often actors will listen to their fans or their friends and not listen to the person who knows what they're talking about. Is that an ego at all? Well, he's a lovely chap, but for some reason he'd combed his own wig into what can only be described as the mullet look. And I was so shocked when he walked out on stage. But I went in and I did say to him, look, you just kind of, oh, they all said it looks great like this. I said, no, no, no, no. You can't be seen with it like that. You've always been very good at standing up for yourself.

I love the fact that your book is called. My name is not Wigs. Because? Because when I worked at the Royal Opera House, when I first went into the ladies dressing room, all I could hear was Wigs, Wigs. And in the end, I just thought I can't have that anymore. I went in, I said, I'm sorry, my name is not wigs. And I think this is something that happens throughout the industry. It's makeup, wigs, costume, but we've all got names. And it takes nothing to learn someone's name.

That's right. You're quite right. And that was Angela Cobbin there speaking to Chloe. And finally, Monica Lewinsky is a name that many people will know, but a whole new generation of women who were children at the time are now learning the details of then US President Bill Clinton's affair with the White House intern back in 1998. And that's because of a new BBC TV drama called Impeachment, which chronicles the scandal from the perspective of the women it impacted. So how would Monica Lewinsky's story be considered now?

I spoke to Jessica Bennett, who is New York Times editor at large, covering gender and culture and author of Feminist Fight Club, a survival manual for a sexist workplace. And Sarah Baxter, writer and former deputy editor of the Sunday Times. But first, let's hear a clip from Impeachment, where Monica Lewinsky, played by Booksmart's Beanie Feldstein, meets Bill Clinton, played by Clive Owen, for the first time. Didn't mean to catch you off guard. Mr President, sorry, I was just... You don't have to apologise for doing your job. I'm Bill. I know. I'm Bill. I know.

I'm Monica. I like your sweater, Monica. Thank you. I guess I should head back. You can come in here for a second if you want. I'm just kind of hiding out. First, Sarah. Well, it's quite a cringe listening back to that imagined scene,

but I expect it was something very like that because Monica Lewinsky was a young woman in her early 20s working as an intern in Bill Clinton's White House. And yeah, they ended up having a relationship and which then was leaked by enemies of Bill Clinton to be used against him. But it ended up embroiling Monica Lewinsky in an absolutely global scandal. And she was still very young. Bill Clinton went on TV and told the American public, I did not have sexual relations with that woman. But he had a very different definition of sexual relations to the rest of us. Because by my definition, oh, yes, he did. And the rest of the world agreed. But it put Monica Lewinsky in a very difficult spotlight. It did. And I mean, the scale of this scandal was unprecedented.

Her name, her face, it was absolutely everywhere for months, for years even. She's actually referred to herself as patient zero of internet shaming. And of course, she's revealed that she suffered from PTSD as a result of the experiences. What was the narrative at the time? What was it that she was going through? And why was it so different to anything we'd seen before? Well, this was way before the Me Too era had come about. And at the time, of course, it must be remembered, Bill Clinton was not only the president, but married. And she was very much seen as the sort of vixen who set her cap at the president. Famously, she was revealed to have flashed her thong at him as a signal that she was available. But of course, a lot of young women become obsessed with their

boss. And when they're the most powerful man in the world, you know, that has its own attraction. But frankly, all the blame was laid on her. It was actually called the Monica Lewinsky scandal, not the Bill Clinton scandal. And these days, of course, you look at that and you say, well, hang on a moment. He was the president. He was the most powerful man in the world, let alone, you know, your boss at the office with you. What an abuse of power that was. And yet women, including feminists, rushed to defend Bill Clinton against this young woman who, as the series makes clear, thought that she was in love with him. Jessica, one of my first thoughts was, well, where were the feminists? Why were they not

trying to protect, support what Monica Lewinsky was going through? I think that they knew that Bill Clinton had been relatively good on women's issues. And this was tarnishing that. And so they didn't come out to defend. You know, there was a famous interview in the New York Observer where, in fact, they're mocking Monica Lewinsky. They're talking about the way she looks. They're saying, oh, well, who wouldn't want to have an affair with Bill Clinton. And much like that clip we heard, it's pretty cringy to read. But I think that there was this sense that this would pass and that, you know, they should put their stock in the person who is going to be better. And as Sarah said, you know,

this was before Me Too. This was before we had a more sophisticated understanding of power dynamics at work. Now, having met Monica Lewinsky, Jessica, is the portrayal of her in impeachment accurate, would you say? Oh, you know, it's a drama. It's a Ryan Murphy drama. So there are certain flourishes to it. I think she would say so. She was a producer on the show. And that was really important to her and to the show because they wanted to get it right. And they wanted to show it through the perspective of these women. But how could they do that without actually advising the women? So I think she would say that it's, you know, emotionally honest, but there are certain things about it that are a little dramatized.

Of course, as you might expect. Sarah, how important is it that Monica Lewinsky is able to almost reclaim her own narrative? She was a producer on this very drama series, so she's able to inform the scripts. I think it's been psychologically very important to her. She sort of came out in a sense publicly about five years ago with a TED talk where she did talk about being that sort of patient zero of internet shaming. And for years, she couldn't get a job. People regarded her as that woman. She actually went into a semi-exile in London, where in fact, I met her once at a party because over in London, she felt a little bit safer. She was doing a course at the London School of Economics. One of the things to remember, of course, is that while she was slut-shamed, she was actually a pretty smart woman who had been clever enough to be an intern at the White House

and do a master's at the LSE, etc. But it became very hard for her to be anything but a subject of sexual ridicule. So telling her own story was important. I think it's interesting that Jemima Goldsmith was a producer on that programme. I think they knew each other from those London days as well. And of course, as Jemima Khan, she became globally famous for being married very young to the, you know, Pakistan cricket star, now Prime Minister of Pakistan. And I think they bonded over that global spotlight, often very uncomfortable on very young women. And as grown women, they've tried to shed that

and get some agency back in their lives. That seems to be something that we're doing at the moment where we're reassessing women's stories for a modern day lens. I think we've seen that, haven't we, Jessica, with Britney Spears and everything that she's been going through? Yeah, I think we are living in a cultural moment where, you know, one, we have a little bit more wisdom. And so we are looking back on things. And in retrospect, you know, noticing how maybe they weren't covered so fairly. And I think in particular to these cases that, you know, were in journalism, Monica Lewinsky was patient zero for internet shaming in the sense that she was one of the first stories that was ever leaked on the internet, on the internet site Drudge Report, before even the magazines or the tabloids could get this story.

And I think that we have more women working in media now. We have more young women who are looking at this from a little bit more modern, sophisticated lens. And so, yeah, we're looking back on people like Britney Spears or Monica Lewinsky or Whitney Houston, you know, so many of these pop stars who were treated pretty unfairly at the time. And through a modern lens, it's almost hard to believe the way that they were spoken about and written about. So, Sarah, do you feel this new generation that are being introduced to Monica Lewinsky, perhaps for the first time, how would they view her now compared to how she was portrayed in 1998? I think they'd view the power dynamic as very different. And certainly that sort of global

shaming of her as totally unacceptable. And yet, you know, it carried on until really recently. I mean, the singer Beyonce wrote a song about he Monica Lewinsky'd all over my dress. And Monica Lewinsky rather wittily pointed out, she said, shouldn't that be Bill Clinton all over my dress? How come she was the person in that song, famously because of a blue dress with some DNA stains on it? It's really, really one-sided and biased. And of course, it wasn't just Monica Lewinsky was hurt by all this,

but Hillary Clinton, that dogged her campaign right up to 2016, where she was standing as a presidential candidate. So that whole scandal went on to have a huge impact. And I think when young women look at that today, they think, oh, my goodness, is that how un-sisterly women were at the time? And yeah, I have to say at the same time, Monica Lewinsky was an adult. She was a very young person. But she did always say it was a consensual relationship with Bill Clinton. She didn't try to sugarcoat it in that way. And no doubt, you know, there are elements to it that you could say, well, you know, she really shouldn't have done that. But she didn't deserve that global shaming and pressure on her and almost exclusively on her as the woman at fault in the whole saga. Jessica, how would Monica be treated now if this happened in 2021? Well, I think we would call it the Bill Clinton affair for starters. And I think we would immediately start talking about the power dynamics of the president of the United States having a relationship with an intern who was half his age. I think we'd have some more sophisticated conversations about why this occurred.

Should it have occurred? Did it break policies? Even now, when we talk about how she's reclaimed her story, she's still talking about the same story. Impeachment is still, as she would put it, reliving the worst experience of her life. So, you know, what is progress? Maybe progress would be if Monica Lewinsky didn't have to produce shows about that same experience in 2021. That was Sarah Baxter and Jessica Bennett. That's all from Weekend Woman's Hour. Thank you for your company.

Join us again on Monday. Thanks for listening to the podcast. I'm here to tell you about Deadhouse. Deadhouse is a trilogy of immersive audio horror shorts by Darkfield and BBC Radio 4. Each of the three episodes, Bethlehem, Salem and Xanadu, takes a different look at the separation between mind and body, placing you in the centre of disconcerting environments that feel unnervingly real. So, if you like original horror, put your headphones on, close your eyes,

and meet yourself in the Dead House. Subscribe now on BBC Sounds. 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.