Woman's Hour - R4 Rethink: How might our relationship with our bodies and appearance change after the pandemic?

Episode Date: June 24, 2020

Rethink is a series of essays and discussions across BBC Radio 4, 5 Live and the World Service that looks at how the world might change after the coronavirus pandemic. Today's essay features the political philosopher Clare Chambers who considers how our relationship with our bodies, and our appearance has been affected by the lockdown. To discuss Jenni is joined by Laura Bates, the founder of the Everyday Sexism project, Kate Lister, Lecturer in the School of Arts and Communication at Leeds Trinity University, and Shahidha Bari, Professor of Fashion Cultures and Histories at the London College of Fashion. The American crime writer Karin Slaughter has sold over 35 million books worldwide. Her stories are violent and gritty and she writes frankly about the impact of violence against women and the long-lasting effects of trauma. She hopes people will see her books as an honest telling of stories we do not often hear about… survivors, fighters, mothers, daughters, sisters, wives, friends and rogues. She joins us to talk about her latest book, The Silent Wife.Presenter: Jenni Murray 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, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday the 24th of June. Good morning. In today's programme, a new novel, The Twentieth, by the American crime writer Karen Slaughter. Why has she been fascinated by the darker side of life since she was a little girl? With a reminder for anyone who's pregnant that it's considered perfectly safe to make sure you're getting good antenatal care, even if it means going into a hospital. And the third episode of the serial, Ian Rankin's The Death Watch Journal. But we begin with today's contribution from Woman's Hour to the Rethink series of essays and discussions across Radio 4, 5 Live and the World Service, in which

we ask how the world might change as a result of the international shock of the coronavirus pandemic. On Monday, we talked about architecture and planning, asking how COVID might transform our homes and communities. Today, it's how we see ourselves. As we've been forced to neglect our hair, our fingernails, eaten more and exercised less, and barely bought anything new to wear in the past few months, how will we begin to view our bodies and our appearance as lockdown is eased? Well, our Rethink essay on the subject is written and delivered by the political philosopher Claire Chambers. The pandemic focuses our minds on our bodies. It makes us profoundly aware that we rely on our bodies working well, on our heart's beat, on our blood's flow,

on our lungs' breath. It forces us to acknowledge the fragility of function. In normal times, many of us focus more on how our bodies look than how they work. Cosmetic surgery has become a mainstream practice, with new cosmetic procedures constantly being developed. Psychologists diagnose an epidemic of appearance-related anxiety. The 2019 Girls Attitude Survey found that the top three pressures faced online by British girls aged 11 to 16 were to look pretty all the time, to get more likes and to have a picture-perfect life. Will COVID-19 disrupt these worries about how we look?

Might it push us into valuing how our bodies feel from the inside? Could it let us care more about our health than our beauty? One theme of lockdown has been what to wear. A Japanese company made the news for its work-from-home pyjamas, comfy loungewear beneath, a formal shirt from the mid-chest up, the only part visible when video conferencing. Many of us are selecting our comfiest clothes, freed from the tyranny of the work uniform or the office dress code. During lockdown we find out where in our wardrobe our real friends are. Do you find that the clothes you're wearing to stay at home are

very different from the clothes you used to wear? Has your perspective shifted from outward appearance to inner comfort? Do you normally dress to please others, whereas now you need only please yourself? Does this feel liberating? Or are you dressing much the same as usual? Is that because you always dress for comfort, wearing the clothes that feel good to you? Or is it because your external appearance is still fundamental to your sense of self? Does looking good make you feel better? Contemporary culture encourages us to objectify each other and also to objectify ourselves. When we objectify ourselves we focus on how we look to others and how we compare to others. We think primarily about how we appear rather than how we feel. This self-objectification reaches its pinnacle with the selfie, the photograph we take of ourselves and then post online for others' approval.

The selfie enables us to objectify ourselves in the most direct sense because we can take our image and manipulate it digitally. Over 70% of girls filter the images they post online. We create the image we think others want to see. Lockdown offers us the chance to escape constant surveillance. It offers a period of invisibility, a space where we are not always on display. It offers an excuse for letting ourselves go, letting the grey show, letting the hair grow, letting the diet go. It lets us experiment to find out which things we do to our bodies make us feel good and which don't. Were our beauty practices really for ourselves or were they for others? After all, we long for our life to get back to normal, to have the luxury of worrying more about our looks than our lives.

But how will the virus affect our attitudes to our bodies? When our social interactions are almost entirely online, the pull of the image may become even stronger. We can continue to curate and enhance our virtual image, editing and refining it before we present it to the world. But perhaps the pandemic will situate us firmly in our bodies as biological and material things, emphasising their health and their function as their fundamental value. Perhaps the virus could pull us back from the appearance-obsessed visual culture that has caused so much harm to our mental health. Claire Chambers, I'm joined by Laura Bates, the founder of the Everyday Sexism Project, Shahid Abari, Professor of Fashion Cultures and Histories

at the London College of Fashion, and by Kate Lister, a lecturer in the School of Arts and Communication at Leeds Trinity University and the author of A Curious History of Sex. Kate how much would you say this period has brought a new way of thinking about our bodies maybe where function is more important than form? Well thanks for having me on Jenny. I think that to a certain extent it has. I think that everybody is going to have their individual experiences to relay about this. And from a personal point of view, it's been interesting to see how long your leg hair can grow or that you can have a Zoom meeting from your bathroom.

But the issues that we're dealing with here, they are much more embedded and much more long standing than three months have not been able to get to the hairdressers is going to do. I think the emphasis on beauty and performativity and the link between appearance and health are much more long-standing and much more entrenched in our culture so I'm interested in seeing how people react when those control mechanisms around their appearance are suddenly they're not there. And some people are flourishing and some people are freaking out and some people are barely noticing anything at all. So everybody's going to respond to this differently. Shahida, what's your view of this question of where maybe we may see function as more important than form?

I think Claire is entirely right that we have focused our minds on our bodies necessarily of course but I also think that her idea that we're not always on display as a kind of liberation I understand that but I also think that the the upset appearance obsessed visual culture that she was talking about is not just about how we show ourselves to the world it's also about how we see others and in a funny way what the COVID-19 pandemic has done is that it's made us realize how connected we are to other people even as we're in isolation my body is connected to hundreds of millions of others in this world all of us are vulnerable to this virus and so I think it's alerted us to our connectedness through our bodies in a funny way too. And Laura what's your view of this? Well I think the idea that women might

sort of suddenly be released from the body image anxiety that the world foists on us in lockdown is a wonderful fantasy but I think it is a fantasy because unfortunately we've still been subjected to the usual bombardment of weight loss pressure body shaming fat phobia it's continued unabated perhaps even amplified i'd say by social media here's a selection of headlines that have come out during lockdown do you have lockdown body how to lose weight without going on a diet want to leave lockdown looking better than ever how to lose weight in lockdown how to to tone up, lose your lockdown love handles. Many, of course, illustrated with pictures of chubby women holding measuring tapes around their waist.

So that shaming hasn't gone away. We've even had multiple articles about the worry that women might get saggy breasts if they dare to go a day without their bras in lockdown. The scrutiny of women in the public eye has continued. Every outfit Kate Middleton has been detailed in, has worn in lockdown, has been of women in the public eye has continued. Every outfit Kate Middleton has been detailed in, has worn in lockdown, has been detailed in one article. One celebrity who's recently given birth has seen her postpartum body scrutinised every single day when she goes out for her daily walk. So I think we have to recognise that these pressures which are served up to us and very specifically targeted at us on social media

haven't gone away just because we've been away from physically from the public eye. Kate from a personal perspective how much of a release has it been not having to worry about what people think of the way you look? Well do you know it's it's been I've really enjoyed it I've enjoyed um I've discovered a whole new wardrobe that I didn't know that I had. I thought I just had casual and fancy. And now I've discovered a whole different layer of casual. I didn't know was there before. And I think I have enjoyed it. Did you call them your wardrobe friends? The ones that you discovered?

Yeah, my wardrobe friends, you know know suddenly you can go to work in sweatpants and there's a novelty to it you know and it's been interesting that seeing people they can't go to the hairdressers and they can't go to the beauticians and they can't go to the gym how people have reacted to it and there's been there have been nice elements of it I think but I think what it is is it's more that it's brought in this kind of blanket permission you know if you see people out and about and they've not got their roots done or you know they're wearing their tracksuits or whatever is everyone just understands or we know why don't we that's so it's brought in this kind of permission but i do completely agree with laura is that the idea of bodily control and how we present ourselves is far more ingrained than this but there are

bits of it that i've enjoyed i'm sure that there are other people have enjoyed them as well but if we're thinking about rethinking it is it possible as the pressure is obviously still on on social media especially on young women and and girls can we rethink it and say it's going to be different after this is all over or will it just be the same i don't i think that it's too ingrained i think that that there will be individual stories where people are going to do things differently they will have the botox will have worn off and they'll think well actually it doesn't look that bad or the gray hairs come through and they thought actually i'm okay with that but i think that we're not going to suddenly be released on july the fourth and it's going to be completely different we are ultimately a species human beings that value how we look and that is actually quite intimately linked to health

as well and i know that we can say that beauty and thing and the selfie culture is it can seem very frivolous and kind of frothy, but it is also related to how we understand ourselves and how we want to appear to other people. And that's really powerful and deeply powerful. Shahida, what have you made of what's been happening online in terms of us all still being observed? You know, when you're doing a zoom call and you're looking at the

inside of somebody's house and you're thinking oh what books has she got on her shelves what's she wearing today has she put her eye makeup on has has that changed in any way or has it got worse well I don't want to deny that the body image anxiety that Laura was describing I think that's absolutely the case but but from my own experience the funny thing that I've experienced from being in these zoom calls is I felt a certain kind of tenderness to my colleagues I'm watching them at home in their frayed jumpers you know with a with baby food on their sleeve or you know colleagues in there who are who are who obviously struggling as lots of us are and are wearing their favourite football T-shirt. I found it humanising.

And one of the things that our clothes do, of course, is that they demarcate the different portions of our lives. We dress up in our work clothes. Jenny, whenever I've met you, you've been wearing a scarf over your shoulder. I think that's your uniform that you wear for work, and it puts you in your work clothes. Not today, Shahab.

It's far too hot today to have a scarf over my shoulder. But most of us have some sort of work uniform that puts us into work mode and seeing people at home, well now those boundaries between our work selves and our home selves are really blurred and in fact many of us are juggling so many things. We're homeschooling, we're running the household and doing childcare as well as doing our jobs. And so I found it very humanising and moving to see my colleagues at home. Laura, it can create tenderness, this being shown online in a way that people have never seen us before. Yes, I think that's a lovely idea. And I hope that we'll be showing tenderness to the issues, I think, and a sense of compassion extended to each other for the issues specifically that lockdown has brought.

Because, of course, we can't look at this issue in isolation without taking it in context of the other issues like anxiety and depression. We know that mental health issues have been exacerbated by lockdown and we know that they often contribute to body image and weight issues. We know that women who have been going out to exercise have reported a massive spike in sexual harassment and assault. We know that women mothers are 50% more likely than fathers to have lost their jobs or resigned during lockdown and we know that people who are having financial struggles might not have the same access to healthy food. So I think it's really important to take into account all these different issues, which may be having a knock-on impact on the way that we think about our bodies and on what our bodies look like as well.

Kate, this whole business of your friends in your wardrobe and discovering that there were many more friends there than you thought you had. Helping us in the closet but but to what extent have you still felt you had to put on a performance for yourself and get dressed up a bit do you know what I I've had a real journey with this because to begin with I was just I thought well I don't have to get dressed I can just work from home I can have zoom meetings in the bath if I want to as long as I remember to turn the camera on what I found was that I struggled to get work done if I wasn't dressed for work so I've actually been getting up early when I know that I've got a full day's work to do and I put my makeup on and I do my hair and I put my work clothes on and that has really

helped I think that it's there are structures throughout the day aren't there and if they kind of collapse in on one another and you're absolutely right that it can lead to a tenderness and I've loved seeing the inside of my co-workers houses as well but I think that it is that level of performativity is actually really important to function I found it I've worked better when I've been dressed for work. I felt that I'm going to work even though I'm just going to the sofa. Shahid, I imagine you dressed up at, certainly at the moment and probably at all times during the day. But you know, for so many people, the idea of going out and buying clothes and feeling them and trying them on. That's all gone.

So what changes will the closure of shops have brought to our relationship with clothes? Well, I think it's going to have enormous repercussions for the fashion industry. I think one of the most interesting things about how the pandemic has affected the fashion industry is that, in a funny way, the fashion industry was a bellwether. In February, at the end of February, Armani shut down his Milan Fashion Week, and people were up in arms about it. And the reason that he did was because

the fashion industry is a global industry, and they knew that the Chinese market was down. And that's the high end, but it's a global supply chain at every level of the fashion industry. yn diwydiant arall ac roedden nhw'n gwybod bod y marchnadaeth Cymru wedi'i lawr. Dyna'r ddiwedd arall, ond mae'n gwaith cynllun arall ar bob lefel o'r diwydiant ffasio. Ac un o'r pethau sydd wedi bod yn fwyaf anhygoel i mi, wrth gwrs, yw bod llawer ohonom yn y wlad hwn wedi'i chael yn eithaf hawdd, byddwn i'n dweud, i fynd i mewn i'r cyfnod o'r cyfnod. Ond, dychmygwch, mae gweithwyr garmen yn Bangladesh, yn gweithio yn y cyfnodau sydd wedi'u llwyddo, ac pan oedd y ffactorau hynny wedi'u llwyddo, roedd y bobl sydd wedi bod ar gyfer cyfrifion mor ddifrifol wedi cael eu cyrraedd i ffwrdd the already cramped conditions in which they were working. And when those factories were shut down, those people who were already on very meagre incomes

were sent home without any kind of remuneration. And I think one of the devastating things at the moment is that we're seeing the garment industry having to take on the repercussions of large conglomerates who've been corporately irresponsible. I think we've got something like orders to the value of over US$2 billion that have been cancelled. And in Bangladesh, that garment industry accounts for 84% of exports. And there are about, I think, 2.3 million workers who will be affected

by that lockdown. So it's absolutely devastating for the garment industry. But it's reminding us that anything that you're wearing, pretty much anything that you're wearing, has passed through so many hands before it comes to ours and there's in such an interesting moment because we're so sensitized to touch but we will i think we've forgotten for a very long time that clothes are made by other people and that we're connected to those people and there's something really devastating about the way that this pandemic is going to deeply damage the global industry of fashion. I know, Shahida, that you've described the PPE crisis as an example of our obsession with adorning our bodies, directly weakening our ability to protect them.

How do you explain that thought? Well, my brother in March was working in a COVID ward. He's a doctor in a hospital and he was working, he volunteered was working in a COVID ward. He's a doctor in a hospital and he was working, he volunteered to work in a COVID ward. And on the second day, I phoned him. And it was one of the most upsetting phone calls of my life. And he said, we ran out of hand sanitizer and I've got a paper mask. And I just felt the absolute vulnerability of him on the front line.

But not just him. Another one of my brothers is a supermarket worker. And we've been talking about what will happen how we've been working at home but many people have not been working at home they've been stocking the shelves in Sainsbury's and running our hospitals and those people have been wearing uniforms and one of the things that's going to change for me

has changed for me really profoundly is the respect and dignity that I afford to people who've been wearing uniforms and carrying out the fundamental work of our everyday lives yn ddifrifol, yw'r rhestr a'r ddigniti rwy'n ei gael i bobl sydd wedi bod yn ceisio eu cymryd uniformau ac yn cymryd allan y gwaith sylfaenol o'n bywydau bob dydd. Ond mae'r pwysigrwydd PPE yn sgandal gwirioneddol, oherwydd rwy'n gwybod ei fod yn wych bod llawer o bobl wedi gallu gwneud eu hunain masgau, ac mae llawer o bobl yn Twitter yn gwirfoddoli i greu PPE, ond rydyn ni ddim wedi bod yn y sefyllfa hwnnw lle doedd gennym PPE, ac roedd yna tra been in that situation where we didn't have PPE. And there was once a rag trade in this country. And one of the reasons we weren't able to mobilize that rag trade and that garment making skill force was because we've systematically dismantled

the textile and fabric manufacturing industry in this country. So we were not in a position to be able to make PPE. And that's one of the things I think we're going to have to reckon with in the coming months after this pandemic. Laura, to what extent would you say that the burden of caring for yourself and others when exercise has been hard, healthy food can often be expensive, has the burden landed most heavily on women? Yes, well I think we know from a lot of research that's been undertaken that there has been a very disproportionate impact. Now of course that's not to disregard the massive disproportionate impact in other areas. We know that the virus has killed more men for example but if we look specifically at certain gendered impacts around people in the home, around caring responsibilities, multiple studies have shown that women's work and career has suffered much more,

that mothers are doing far greater share of the caring responsibilities of child care, of homeschooling, that their careers are more likely to be disrupted, that regardless of whether a heterosexual couple has children or not, women taking on many many more hours of domestic chores for me i think what this shows is that the ripple effects of this will be absolutely massive and we really won't see the true impact of them for months to come so we have to start thinking about them now in advance to mitigate them it's terrifying i think for many for millions of women, for example, that now the plans about schools opening haven't materialised as people might have thought that they would. We suddenly have a situation where lockdown is easing, many employers are expecting employees who've been at home or furloughed to come back in to show up full time. And many parents

don't have childcare available. So women are left high and dry. And we know it is often women where the burden of childcare will fall to them. And yet the government hasn't taken any concrete steps really to mitigate this, apart from Boris Johnson in one press conference saying that he's sure employers will be reasonable about it. Well, we know employers aren't reasonable about these kinds of issues. We know, for example, that 54,000 women a year lose their jobs because of maternity discrimination. So there's a real ticking time bomb here. And for me, it's these systemic issues we need to be thinking about. We have a real tendency and an understandable tendency to blame systemic issues on individual failings, to say that if there are issues affecting women's careers, it's just because women aren't trying hard enough or they're not stepping up or they're

not quite confident enough. It's the same for me for me I think with this body image issue the idea that women will have had a few months to rethink things and they'll come out thinking differently about their bodies as if it's just you know their brains they just need to change their minds for me these issues are ingrained and systemic we know that girls are five when they start worrying about the size and shape of their bodies we know that a quarter of seven-year-old girls have dieted to lose weight. So the enormous pressures on women, whether you're talking about body image or about their careers, are systemic and they need systemic solutions. Kate, there were a lot of jokes at the start of all this about a possible baby boom coming in nine months because everybody who had somebody was locked up with them

so far that appears not to be the case what do you suppose has been the impact of that fear of touching on people's desire for intimate contact yeah Yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right. The internet and social media has been absolutely awash with jokes about a baby boom coming our way. And sex researchers have been really quick to gather data about what's actually happening at the moment. The Kinsey Institute, and there's some British researchers researching it as well, and they found that 60% of people

are reporting they're having less sex than they were doing usually prior to lockdown. That includes couples who live together. But there has been a notable decline in most people's libidos. There's an article published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine actually found that 18% of men and 8% of women reported an increase in libido. But everybody else is there. They're reporting that it's much much lower than it was and the the debate now is what's causing that and it's generally thought that it's down to stress because for libido to be happy and healthy and for desire to be flourishing

the ideal situations are stress-free right and it's you know fear of job fear of security it's the general trauma that everybody's been going through of not knowing what's happening has massively massively impacted on that so if anyone's listening to this and they're worried that their libido don't you worry you're doing absolutely fine um but i'm kind of interested in what this is going to do to our thoughts about other people's bodies as well we've adapted so quickly to this idea of don't touch don't touch don't touch and don't touch, don't touch. And you might have found yourself doing what I do,

which is I watch old films and old programmes. And when they kiss, my first thought is, oh, no, don't do that. Social distancing. And it's become ingrained. And how are we going to get out of this and renegotiate that when we've spent several months teaching ourselves that to touch other people is dangerous and wrong. And Shahid, there have been lots of stories of people going off their intimate partner. Particularly, I've read about the husband who's got a scrappy beard

and nothing but tracksuit bottoms that he's been wearing for the past three months, why might there be less desire for the close relationship than when the public person has gone? It is not smartly dressed anymore. Well, Jenny, I didn't know that you knew my husband so well, but I don't know. I think one of the funny things, my husband has been wearing the same tracksuit pretty much on all talent days for the last three months.

And it has been driving me mad. It's a designer tracksuit, I should say. But still, it's been driving me mad. And I've been joking about how maybe we have a duty of care to our spouses if they're the only other person you're seeing to dress up. But I sort of think that maybe, I also gave him a haircut like many people. I cut my husband's hair I gave I've given him three and I have to tell you I haven't got any better each time but um it sort of amused me to see him wandering around with this absolutely awful haircut and I kind of think there is

something there's a kind of there's a kind of joy to be taken in that moment you know we're it's such a strange moment and we have to find our pleasure where we can and I'm sort of encouraging him and me to dress up wildly when we want to by the same token I know that this is such a stressful moment and if you're slumming it if you can't be bothered to get dressed up I think it makes total sense to take care of yourselves and I think there's a lot to be said not just for clothes that make you feel comfortable right now, and they may not be the sexiest clothes, and they may have an impact on your relationship,

but a lot to be said for clothes that make you feel good about yourself, clothes that give you pleasure, clothes that give you comfort in a funny way. So whatever that is, wear it. And I do think relationships can bounce back from those sorts of things. Certainly when my husband gets out of that tracksuit and puts something else on, I'm sure the spark will reignite, Jenny. I do hope so, shall I?

When he's got a nice suit and a tie and a lovely shirt on, you'll fancy him again. Can I just ask each of you, starting with you, Laura, what insight you're hoping we will keep from this terrible time? Laura. Well, I think one of the things that's been the most eye opening for me has been just how different each person's situation is, that it's almost impossible to generalise, although generalisations have been made. A good example, I think, is that the second half of the social media joke about a wave of post-lockdown babies is that they will all be first children. I think that's a really good example, you know, where some couples might have had a huge amount of time for couple time. Others will have found that they've had almost no time to themselves at all.

While some wags on social media joked that King Lear might have been written in lockdown and we'd all be writing the next great novel and learning three languages, some parents, mums particularly replied that they'd be lucky to do one solo wee during the entire period. It's entirely different to be quarantined in a big house with a large garden than it is in a high-rise flat with several children in a very small space. So I hope that it will help us to get away from a one-size-fits-all approach and that it'll help us to recognise the complexity of the impact of decisions that are made at government level. I think that the huge spike in domestic violence early on was a very good example of this. It was an afterthought for those women living in those situations. This was an absolute horror story to suddenly be locked in.

But for the people in the room making the decisions who were vastly disproportionately very privileged men, that didn't necessarily occur to them at the beginning. And so I hope it helps us to think about those complexities. And Kate, what do you want to take away from it i suppose i'm really interested in just how much it's made me value the importance of touch and just being around people because i you know i'm i'm facetiming my mum more than i ever ever ever have before i speak to her every single day but i miss her like crazy because she's not there in person and the importance of that touch and of being around people, that's been a real eye-opener for me of just how valuable that actually is.

And Shahida, sorry to rush you, Kate, but Shahida, briefly, what do you want to take away from it? I think we might be in isolation, but we've realised that we're not isolated, that something that might have happened in China will have an impact on our lives in Britain and on the lives of millions of other people in Bangladesh. And there's no way we can ever recover from that. We are connected to each other and we have to build a world post-pandemic that respects that connection. Shahida Bari, Laura Bates, Kate Lister, thank you all so much for being with us this morning.

Now, don't forget, Rethink is happening on Radio 4, 5 Live and the World Service. You can catch up on the whole collection of lectures and discussions on BBC Sound. And then at nine o'clock on Radio 4 tonight, Amal Rajan and his guests will discuss how social transformation comes about. And then on Friday, the subject of Women's Hours Rethink will be what do we need from our leaders in this pandemic? And there'll be an essay from the musician Brian Eno on how female leaders have served their people. Now, still to come in today's programme, Karen Slaughter and her new novel, The Silent Wife, and the third episode of the serial Ian Rankin's The Death Watch Journal. On Monday we reported that some doctors have expressed concerns over a possible rise in stillbirths and harm to babies because some pregnant women may have avoided

getting help during the pandemic. We spoke to Dr Maggie Blott, a consultant obstetrician and lead for obstetrics at the Royal Free in London, who speaks for the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology. She's concerned that women must come forward for their antenatal visits and get any help they need. During the peak of the pandemic, we noticed very quickly across many, many maternity units that we were not seeing the same number of women presenting with symptoms of reduced fetal movements, abdominal pain, vaginal bleeding, and they just fell away completely. We were concerned that not seeking help may actually

mean that women are missing some opportunities to protect themselves and or their babies. There are anecdotal reports, and I stress anecdotal reports, that there may be an increased incidence of complications in pregnancy, such as late miscarriage or possible stillbirth. So there's a lot of research going into that area at the moment. And what we're trying to do is really encourage women to come forward for their antenatal visits and if they have a problem to contact their midwife or their maternity unit to seek help. Antenatal clinics are still physically up and running then are they? They are so we're recommending that women have at least six antenatal visits during their pregnancy. Face-to-face visits are important so that women can have

their blood pressure checked, we can measure their tummy to make sure their baby's growing properly, and address things such as ultrasound scans and blood tests. Some visits can be done remotely by telephone or video conferencing if all that's required is a discussion, but we do still want to see women for their antenatal appointments to make sure that all is well. But are hospitals safe? Yes, they are. They're very safe. Social distancing has been fully implemented in the antenatal clinics. The antenatal clinics that were full of women everywhere have gone.

Antenatal clinics are smaller in size. They're socially distanced. All staff wearing PPE, face masks and so on. And women are screened when they enter the clinic. And they also are asked to wear a face mask. So it is very safe to come to the hospital to be checked up. And don't forget, if ever you miss the live programme, you can always find us on BBC Sounds.

Now, Karen Slaughter is an American crime writer with whom you may well be familiar. She's just published her 20th novel, The Silent Wife, and she's so far sold more than 35 million books across the world. In The Silent Wife, she brings together two characters from previous novels, Will Trent, an agent in the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and Sarah Linton, who's a paediatrician and medical examiner. They begin to investigate the case of Daryl Nesbitt, who claims

to have been wrongly accused of a sexual attack and murder of a young woman. They begin to uncover the actions of a serial killer who has a particularly gruesome modus operandi. And Karen joins us from Atlanta. Karen, what prompted your fascination with crime from what seems to me to have been a very early age? Well, you're absolutely right. I was around eight or nine years old when we had a serial killer in Atlanta killing children. And I lived about 40 minutes away from Atlanta, but it was very terrifying as a child to realize awful things can happen to children. And that, I guess, started me down my life of crime. What writers influenced you as you began to think about becoming a writer yourself? you know, probably weren't the best influences for me, though I do love a good incest story. But later, you know, I had a teacher who, when I was around 13, realized that I could one day be

a writer. And she started giving me books by Flannery O'Connor, Patricia Highsmith, Daphne du Maurier. And that was really eye-opening to me because I lived in a very small southern town where I was very weird. It was unusual for girls to be interested in crime and dark things, and I didn't quite fit in. And she told me, these women didn't fit in either, and look at where they ended up. And that was such an important lesson in role models for me and something I try to duplicate with my own career to encourage other women to write and to believe that it's possible that you can be successful in this business. There is a lot of graphic violence and forensic detail in your work. And I have to say, the crimes in this novel are particularly gruesome, and I won't go into detail of what they are.

To what extent do you make up details or use real-life crimes? Well, to no extent do I make up details. Everything I write about is based on something I've read in a police report or an autopsy report or gotten firsthand from a police officer. I want to be very careful when I write about violence, especially violence against women, to not titillate or try to entertain. You know, I really want to show there's nothing sexy about non-consent. There's nothing titillating about rape or sexual assault. That's very important to me. But I want to ground it in a reality. And this in particular, one of the things that I use is based on a case from the 1980s where a serial killer in Australia was

kidnapping backpackers and using this method. So it was something that I thought was important to write about. And it ties in with The Silent Wife. You know, there's a particular subset of men who really, really hate women. And we see it a lot manifested within the incel community where, you know, they say women are awful and horrible and terrible. And why won't they have sex with me and so I wanted to really write about that because it's something I think we're seeing in society we're seeing this manifestation of a deep-seated hatred toward women and you know I think it we

need to remark upon it we need to talk about it and try to do the best we can to stop it. A lot of the women that you write about have been sexually attacked in their past, but haven't told anyone about it. Why is that important to you? I think you've worked with women who've been raped in the past, haven't you? I did in college. I worked at a rape crisis hotline. And I remember very clearly that I never had a call where it didn't start with the words, I should not have. I should not have had that drink. I shouldn't have trusted him. I shouldn't have met him at the bar. I shouldn't have walked through the parking lot. I shouldn't have fought back. I should, the only, I should was, I should have fought back. You know, that it's so all of

these women instantly blame themselves. They never said he should not have raped me. And we were trained to answer it with that, that affirmative. He should not have raped you. He had no right to do that because it was something that never occurred to them in all of the thought process that they were having about this. And, you know, from a very early age, I was aware of violence against women. My grandmother was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of my grandfather. And we would see her at Sunday lunch and she would have a black eye or a cut lip. And there was a joke in the family that she was just very clumsy. And I didn't realize until I was older that she wasn't clumsy. My grandfather was doing this and we never, ever talked about it. And not talking about it only protected him. And that's made me very conscious in my

writing. And when I've, I've dealt with victims of, of sexual assault or violence, that it's something we have to talk about because if we don't talk about it, there's the ability to soften the language around it. You know, you often see in news reports that a woman has been murdered, but we don't really get the details of it. So we can just tell ourselves, oh, that was an outlier. That was something different. She was a different woman from me. That's not going to happen to me. And it gives us this false sense of security that we are safer than we are when, if you look at statistics, almost a quarter of a million women in America every single year report some sort of sexual assault. And we don't really remark upon that.

I mean, if you if you're talking about pandemic levels of abuse, that right there is a very startling number. I know you have a great passion for libraries and work very hard to keep them open. How threatened are they in the United States? Well, much more now. But I mean, I would say that you also are experiencing the same thing in England. My good friend Neil Gaiman is a big proponent of helping libraries over there. You know, it's very strange that the first thing politicians do when they look at their budgets is say, we don't need libraries. Because in America, most of them are attorneys,

so they know that they needed libraries. Law books are very expensive. Without libraries having them, they would have not probably graduated from law school. But at a very base level, it's just a cheap investment in children, because children who do not learn to read fluently by a certain age will never be fluent readers. And if they are fluent readers, they'll do better in school, they're more likely to go to college, they're more likely to have a higher paying job, and they end up returning more money to the community via taxes. And so it, you know, if you think about we can put one dollar in a library and get five dollars returned to the community, that's simple math. And that's not even going into the pleasure of reading to the

mind expansion of reading. You know, a kid reading about Harold has a purple crayon says, oh my gosh, I have a purple crayon too. I'm not the only kid in the entire world. I mean, it teaches us not to be selfish. It teaches us to have empathy and sympathy with other people. And denying kids that I think is a sin. I was talking to Karen Slaughter. Lots of response from you on rethink on the question of our bodies and how we view them. Diana on Twitter said, so important that girls love their bodies from the inside out, not the outside in. Kate, again on Twitter, said, I've loved not having to think about office-appropriate wear and rediscovering my slightly eccentric style.

Also on Twitter, Sarah said, I don't bother with proper work clothes. I've got a sundress on that I would almost never wear to work today, but I find wearing proper shoes rather than slippers helps me focus. Kath said in an email, I, for one, am relishing the respect of my body's space. No wandering hands, no slapping of bottoms, no longer than necessary hugs.

I think the social distancing has made me more equal to men at work and more respected. Melanie said also in an email, women spending so much time on how they look means they have lost huge hours from their lives when that valuable time could be put to learning, developing skills and doing healthy, valuable activities that would feed a good sense of themselves. Spending loads of time on how you look is a self-defeating exercise because you get caught in a cycle of low self-esteem. And Mish said in an email, I'm glad to put away all my office clothes while I'm working from home. I'm not doing my makeup, but always wear earrings, do my hair and put on my lippy. I can face the world and those unexpected video calls

with the armour of red lipstick. I just wouldn't feel like me without it. Now do join me tomorrow, Thursday morning, when I'll be discussing Michaela Cole's new drama, I May Destroy You. It's had rave reviews on Twitter and in the newspapers. The story centres around a writer called Arabella who is drugged and sexually assaulted but has no recollection of the assault except in flashbacks and has to piece together what happened to her. How realistic

and effective is the way the story is told and what questions does it raise about consent, relationships and the portrayal of a woman's everyday lived experience on the screen. And I'll be talking to the Ukrainian chef and food writer Olya Hercules about the food of her childhood. And we'll discuss how to cook the perfect beetroot leaf rolls with buckwheat and mushrooms. Join me tomorrow, just after 10. Bye bye. I'm Sarah Trelevan, 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.