Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour - Feeding Your Baby, Skin from Skunk Anansie, Body Hair Heirachy

Episode Date: February 2, 2019

Woman’s Hour joined forces with BBC Radio Sheffield for a series of programmes looking at how women are feeding their babies and how it makes them feel. Jane talks to their Weekend Breakfast presenter Kat Cowan who’s recently returned to work after maternity leave, following the birth of her son Cooper. Plus, we hear from other mums around the country, about what they went through whether they breast, bottle or mixed fed their babies.Skunk Anansie have brought out a new album 25LIVE@25 - a compilation of live recordings from the last 25 years. Lead singer, Skin talks to Jenni and sings live in the Woman's Hour studio.Januhairy is a month-long campaign urging women to embrace their body-hair - we ask if there's a hierarchy when it comes to women and body hair. Jenni talks to Karín Lesnik-Oberstein, Professor in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading, and the editor of new book called The Last Taboo – Women and Body Hair and freelance journalist Chitra Ramaswamy.Under the 'guardianship' system in Saudi Arabia women can be tracked and monitored via a large government database and an app called Absher. We look at the impact that can have on those wanting to escape domesic abuse.Presented by Jenni Murray Produced by Sophie Powling Edited by Jane Thurlow

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Good afternoon. A significant part of this week on Woman's Hour was devoted to feeding your baby and what impact your decision to breast, bottle or mixed feed has on you and your relationship with your infant. And as we passed the end of the month, we saw the end of the month, we saw the end of

the Janu Hairy Project. Why is a woman's body hair still such a controversial subject? When you're sitting on your own in your room, looking at your extremely hairy legs, it's very hard to then go, do you know what, I'm going to put on a mini skirt and I'm going to go out and I'm just going to throw caution to the wind. It does actually require bravery to do that, which I mean, is ridiculous. The young women who would like to free themselves from the strictures of life in Saudi Arabia and the technology that's giving more power to the male guardians who can control a woman's every move. And 25 years of the band Skunk and Nancy. I'll be talking to their lead singer Skin who recalls the day they were banned from a venue in America

accused of being Nazis. We go straight into a radio station at nine in the morning and it's basically like oh um we heard that you're a skinhead which you are you know you we. We heard the band was called Skunkanazi, which it isn't. And you have a song called Little Baby Swastika, which we do. You know, it's like pre-social media, you know, that nobody bothered to look at the album cover. And then, yeah, we were banned from the venue. Skin of Skunkanazi and what's more special tweet, we'll hear her sing live now this week we've joined

forces with bbc radio sheffield for a series of programs about the feeding of babies in the 21st century what do you decide breast bottle or a combination of the two and how does it influence the way you feel about it all we commissioned a survey from ComRes in which more than 1,000 women took part. The results showed that half of women between the ages of 18 and 40 who breastfed felt they let their baby down when they struggled with it. 66% who continued to breastfeed said it was one of the best bits about being a mother and 49% said it was one of the best bits about being a mother and 49% said it was one of the toughest. A third felt there was pressure from society to do it. On the other hand, three-quarters

of women who formula fed their baby, either exclusively or in addition to breastfeeding, say that they enjoyed involving their partner or others in feeding the baby, and 75% of this group also say that using formula gave them more freedom. Well, Radio Sheffield's weekend presenter, Kat Cowan, prompted the whole exercise. She gave birth to her son, Cooper, in March 2018, and wanted to hear other women's experiences of breastfeeding. She told Jane that she had a very easy home birth and the baby latched on easily. But that wasn't the end of the story.

Every time a midwife came round to my house, she would look at what I was doing and tell me that it looked fantastic. And obviously you can't, your breasts aren't see-through, you can't tell what's going in your baby and it all seemed fine. And then about five days after the birth, so I'd had a bit of a sticky night on night three, because that's often when your milk hasn't quite come in and your baby's fat reserves have started to dwindle and he was crying and had this squirming baby, obviously in hindsight very hungry and not happy about that. But I was told by the midwives that was totally normal

and still to just continue with the breastfeeding. And then we got to day five and at this stage he'd developed an infection around his belly button and his weight now had dropped two levels that they were not comfortable with. So we went from home to hospital and we were in hospital for three days. And it was one of the most, the toughest experiences of my life. I went in feeling relatively confident. And over the course of my time in hospital, I just felt my confidence was completely shattered. What was so difficult about it is I would feel during the day

I'd have breastfeeding support workers and midwives coming in saying, you're doing a beautiful job, everything's fantastic. And then at night I would have, I remember a nurse coming in saying, well, this baby's starving. And then I think it was on the second night I was there, a midwife came in and said, look, we've got to get this baby on formula. We need to sort this out now. His weight is a problem. We need to act right now. Was that the first time anybody mentioned bottle feeding to you? Yes. It'd never come up in my antenatal classes, in trips to the

midwife when I was pregnant. Bottle feeding had not been a thing. I just need to mention, I think, that the Royal College of Midwives, people might remember a conversation that we had on Woman's Eye with them last year, they did change their stance in the summer of June 2018. The decision of whether or not to breastfeed is a woman's choice and must be respected. This new statement recommends that balanced and relevant information be given to parents choosing to formula feed their babies whether exclusively or partially to allow them to do so safely and with support to encourage

good bonding the problem with that i'm sure well-intentioned message is that it doesn't always spread out to people doing the job on the front line the people you were meeting kat no and i suppose also the word choice because I because formula was only mentioned when things were really going awry with me it didn't really feel for me that this was an issue of choice it felt that this was a serious situation that I was in and I had to follow this this plan at the same time I would I remember one of the the support workers looking a bit confused when she'd seen formula on my tray that the next morning like why why has this been brought into the mix and so I just sort of sat there thinking well I don't don't know who whose advice I should be following either way I

felt like I was failing in some way if I follow the advice of this midwife and introduce formula, then I'm failing that person. And if I follow her, then I'm failing in the eyes of that midwife. What happened? So what happened was we finally discharged, his weight had gone up enough. And then I went on this kind of roller coaster of trying to reduce the formula. It went on for several weeks. And I was left at one point by the community midwife for a week. She said, you've been prodded and poked enough. I'm going to leave you for a week to reduce the formula to try and increase your breast milk supply. And I will never forget when the moment she opened the door and she saw

Cooper, she hadn't seen him for a week. And the look on her face was, it was very apparent that he'd lost a lot of weight. It was obvious to her. And she said to me, you've tried everything. You've done your best. You've been pumping. You've tried to reduce formula. I think it's now clear you do not produce enough breast milk for your baby. At which point? I completely broke down.

And I said, I'm a terrible mother. And she said to me, she said, you're not. And I said, well, I failed. I felt I failed on two levels. I had failed because I couldn't produce enough milk for my son, but also because I had been hell-bent on making that work, I felt I'd let him starve for a week. And it was just, it was really, really tough.

We should say that he's fine. He is fine. He is fine. He's huge. He's all right. You're back at work. Your maternity leave is over. This is really, really very recent in your life experience. But Kat, you have been talking to a range of women from the Sheffield area.

And again, I just want to emphasise you're going to hear a different sort of experience from each woman. They are talking about what they have done and why they've done it. This is all deeply personal to them. So we're going to start with Natalie, who's 34. She's from Healy in Sheffield and she's got three children. She's breastfeeding two of them right now. Her youngest is 10 months old and her middle child, who is three. Her first, Elias, is now five.

He was born after an emergency C-section, which left Natalie in shock, and he lost quite a lot of weight, actually, in his first couple of days. Breastfeeding got off to a bit of a shaky start, but advice to use a breast pump, in Natalie's case, made all the difference. I started to alternate having him on me, having a breast pump, having him on me, having the breast pump, and then the milk came. And then from that point, it was totally fine. It has been a very easy journey. It was just a very wobbly couple of days at the beginning.

I fed him direct from the breast and always gave him a little top-up afterwards with a syringe just because they taught me how to do that in hospital. And for those first just few days, that reassured me because I could see a little bit going in, and I needed that, I think, at that time. I think I think to be honest if I hadn't been able to breastfeed him after the birth I'd had I would have found it very difficult to find my identity as a mother and I think I could have really struggled mentally with that so I feel that the breastfeeding kind of saved me

because after the birth I just looked at him and thought my body didn't do that because I wasn't involved in that that was a surgical procedure and I felt very negative about it but then being able to breastfeed him I had all those lovely maternal feelings I could look at him and could see that he was mine and could see my body doing something positive for him whereas I'd felt it failed him at the very beginning with the birth so yeah I think it was fundamental to me actually really loving those early days of motherhood I really felt like I kind of found myself and it was a really positive experience I just felt this amazing bond and this wave of love that I'd never known before and I kind of found like yeah I'm a mum I was meant to be a mum and this is amazing and he's amazing and I think breastfeeding was a massive part of that I would say it's a massive

part of my life at the moment and a massive part of how I identify myself, I think, as a mother. I can't quite imagine not doing it. I'm doing it right now. Sometimes it drives me crazy. It can be quite restrictive. My social life has definitely taken a massive dip in the last few years. But I just feel it's so precious and magical and I really feel like it's a brilliant gift I can give my kids that I'm prepared to make any sacrifices for it.

That's Natalie. She sounds absolutely happy as Larry. And for her, it worked like a dream. I found talking to her, it was just, it was so interesting how those kind of thoughts of guilt and failure, which I heard time and time again, when I talked to a lot of women, she attributed them to her, to her birth. And it was actually breastfeeding for her that she felt saved her psychologically. I found that fascinating. It's a point of view, clearly, and it's her experience. Right, let's hear our next mum, as I say, a whole range of experiences. And this is Rebecca, whose experience was very different. She's 24. She's from Barnsley. Her son Jensen is one. She really wanted to breastfeed him,

but soon into her pregnancy, she realised that couldn't be an option for her because of various medical conditions. I'm a type 1 diabetic, I'm epileptic, so I was at the hospital every week and they said, look, what was your decision on feeding? So I said, I really want to breastfeed, and they said, unfortunately, you can't. If it wasn't for my epilepsy, they'd be so up for it

because it's so beneficial for my diabetes, it stabilises it. But because of the medication that I was stabilised on, they didn't want me to swap it and it could affect my son to be so drowsy, sedating. So they were just like, sorry, but no. How did you feel when they told you that i was so good really really upset before he was born i went to um antenatal classes and it came one of the sessions was breastfeeding and they asked me why i chose to bottle feed and i said well it's not really a choice you know I've got to bottle feed because of my health.

And they were just like, well, can't you come off your medication? Just stop it, and you can breastfeed. I don't understand why you need to bottle feed. And how did that make you feel when she said that? I could have cried. I just felt so. Because everyone else in the class were older mums as well, and I was the youngest, so that made me feel a little bit uncomfortable. And then the rest of older mums as well, and I was the youngest. So that made me feel a little bit uncomfortable.

And then the rest of the mums were breastfeeding. So it felt a bit like everyone was looking down at me. She's only bottle feeding because she's young. She can't be bothered. You know, and I just, I left. I didn't go back after that session. That's Rebecca. I mean, that is a miserable sounding experience for her.

Your heart goes out to her. And we need to be clear about Rebecca's situation. We need to be clear that she was given advice based on the specific medication she was taking for her epilepsy, that that could cause issues for her baby. And of course, if you are in a situation where you are on medication, you need to get advice from your doctor specific to the medication that you are taking. Now not all the women who switch to formula either because they've had advice to do so or because they want to do so feel quite the same as Rebecca. Nazneen ended up at the Sheffield Children's Hospital with her son because of his weight loss. We walked in and we went into the assessment area and I just burst into tears and I cried and they were like yeah he's just hungry you need to feed him I'm like no really is he I didn't know um just cried a lot

and went home and then my mum marched me to the supermarket and bought me formula and made a bottle and sent me upstairs and to have a bath and fed him and that was that how did you feel about the fact you were feeding him formula? That, actually, I didn't really care about. I just thought, he's feeding, he's got to be feeling better, he's got to put weight on, and he was jaundiced as well, so that was fading. I just was like, why did no-one tell me?

Why is this a secret? Why did no-one tell me that this was the best thing ever? That's Nazneen, who fortunately had her mum. And there are actually times like that in your life when the one person you do want to see is your mum. She certainly came to the rescue there. Now, what would you say about that, Kat? I found her attitude just wonderful. It was very heartening to speak to a woman

who didn't mention the word guilt as many times as a lot of the other women, and it was just wonderful. I'd like to bottle some of her attitude and sell it. OK. Let's bring in the voice of Rizwana, who's 39. She's got a son who's two, who she's still breastfeeding, and it was clear that she'd been prepared for things to be rather different to how they turned out. I'm Indian, and my family are Muslim,

and in our culture what happens is when you birth for 40 days it's seen a time for you and your child and you don't do anything but bond with your child and feed your child and everyone else does everything else around you and there is it just it's kind of social knowledge that breastfeeding is hard and people sometimes people can't do it and there's no shame in not being able to do it and it's not seen as like the end of the world if you can't do it it's much more realistic and so that's why I think there's less pressure um it's definitely encouraged and it's definitely supported through family networks. But there's also no guilt or shame if you can't do it either. And in some ways,

it's a lot more respectful of female autonomy. Rizwana, now we had so much response to these discussions. Susanna Croslin said, my baby's now one and I stopped breastfeeding recently, early on. The pain of ductal thrush, who even knew this was a thing, made me cry when it was time to feed. We're told how lovely it is.

We're not told about the reality of how difficult it is. Never loved it. Was a joy to stop. Hannah said, I've bottle fed one baby and breastfed the next and there were highs and lows with both experiences. But the one thing that was the same is my babies were fed, loved, needs met,

healthy and thrived. And we'll hear more of your experiences later in the programme. And by the way, you can watch a video with some of the mothers we spoke to about feeding their babies on their plan versus the reality. That's on the Woman's Hour website. You can also find it on Twitter and Instagram at BBC Woman's Hour.

Now, it all seemed so positive last year when Saudi Arabia's crown prince announced that women would be allowed to drive cars. Then we heard about activists being taken to prison and reports of them being tortured. Then there was the young Saudi woman who applied for asylum in Thailand after escaping her family in Saudi Arabia. Now we learn around a thousand women attempt to flee Saudi Arabia every year, but a successful escape is nigh on impossible. The online newspaper Business Insider has been investigating the way in which technology is being used to enforce the country's guardianship rule, which requires that every woman must have a man who accompanies her or gives her

permission to travel. They've discovered a government app called Absher. Rothner Begum is the Human Rights Watch women's rights researcher for the Middle East and North Africa. Bill Bostock is a journalist at Business Insider. How does the app work? The Absher website and app is at first really innocuous and a very plain government website, much like we have in the UK with gov.uk websites

used to register to vote or check your tax rebate. The way it works in Saudi Arabia is men, under the guardianship system, give women permission to travel. They log on with a password. With a few clicks, they can say a wife or daughter can travel for one journey, two journeys between a specific airport, multiple journeys, or until the end of their passport term, which is five years. Rathna, it's obviously been in operation for some time.

Why have we been unaware of it? Well, actually, it came to the fore in 2012, because what had happened was some people didn't even know that it existed. The government had automatically registered all these women dependents to their male guardians. So couples had turned up to the airport and while both the husband and wife had turned up, he got an automatic notification saying that his wife was leaving the country. They had no idea that they were supposed to be getting these kind of notifications. This led to a campaign, a backlash by women's rights activists saying this is absolutely

demeaning and insulting. Why would men getting texts saying that they're the wives or the daughters were leaving the country? And that led then to a slight change to that system. So in 2014, the government said it would no longer be a default, as in a mandatory notification system, it would be an option. So what you now see is that the male guardians can decide to have a notification if their dependent decides to leave the country. So men can monitor if they so choose. But what we're really seeing is Saudi Arabia loves the use of modern technology. But what they're doing is modernizing, or rather using modern technology to reinforce what is old forms of patriarchy. So what's happening, Bill? How does the Guardian practically keep tabs on the woman for whom he's responsible?

If she has permission to travel and she goes to the airport, what actually happens? Well, yeah, those SMS alerts that Roshna mentioned, they would be if a woman used her passport at an airport, a text message would come through between immediately at checking, you know, you hand over your boarding pass and your passport when you're checking in a bag, or there might be a bit of a delay. The way that the guardians and men check this is they can just log on to Apsha and they can see which permissions they've used, which they've given, rather. So it's very easy to see if,

I think a good example would be some Saudi women get offers to study abroad at foreign universities. They will then go and study. They will have permission granted on Absher to go to and from, it could be to and from Jeddah or Riyadh to London or New York, but then it could be limited to that. So the guardian could just scroll up and down the list and see which journeys are being made, or he would receive

these SMS alerts that Roshna just mentioned. So Roshna, how much has the technology actually strengthened the power of the Guardian? Well, in some ways, it's done two things. One, it's meant that the Guardian has complete knowledge of exactly where she's going and an ability to be notified just as it's happening. So if a woman was trying to figure out a way of getting out of the country,

maybe through another way without forming them, it was difficult, but now they know, or they can know because they have this notification system. On the other hand, it's meant that, you know, before what you had was what was a yellow piece of paper that you could use to, you needed before you could get the permission to leave the country. Now women who are trying to escape, who are trying to leave especially abusive families, they would steal the password of their guardian, get into the phone, change the settings and the notification, they would steal the password of their guardian, get into the phone, change the

settings and the notification, they turn off the notifications, and then they'd immediately get to the airport and try to leave that way. So in a way, it's allowed some women to find ways to escape out of the country as well. But what about now? I mean, if she is given permission to travel, what are the chances of her getting very far if she's trying to escape? I mean, that's the thing. If she is somebody who's trying to escape and the guardian is being an abusive person, this is a person who will not give any permission,

they will have turned it all off, they would have made all the notifications on so that if they did turn up at the airport, the authorities will know she's not allowed to travel. The other thing to note is it's not just about whether you can travel abroad because that's one aspect of it. You can't even obtain a passport without a male guardian permission. So they may not, you may not even have a passport to leave the country with. And even if you're inside the kingdom, right, so you're being abused at home,

and you want to leave the home because, you know, from physical abuse, you can still be arrested and returned by the police, or you end up confined to a shelter, where it's basically you can't leave until you've then reconciled with the family, or you choose to marry a man who then becomes your new male guardian. So that's the reality for the vast majority of women. There's only a few who are able to escape out of the system. Now, Bill, as Rafa said, the text messages that the guardians receive if the woman's traveling did cause controversy online in Saudi Arabia and the government did suggest it will be stopped. Do we know how that thinking is developing? Since that point, since that 2014 backlash was acted on, when we were reporting on the

Abshar, we saw Twitter was full of men and women saying it's ridiculous. I'm a businesswoman travelling to an expo in this city and my husband's getting a text. How regularly are they still happening? It's really hard to say because we still hear reports of them coming in every time people travel, but sometimes it's not as clear as it once was back in 2012. We did have this case that got a lot of notoriety, the young woman who went to Thailand. What impact is that case, the woman who managed to escape to Thailand, having on others who might want to follow her?

I think Rahaf's case, basically how she left was that she was with her family on a visit to Kuwait. They don't have the same restrictions. So she was able to board a plane and get to Thailand. But at that point, the Saudi authorities intervened and with the Thai officials were trying to forcibly return her back. What that showed and, you know, in her case, she did. She did successfully escape. And that was because she held onto her phone and documented everything live on social media. It is encouraging a lot of Saudi women to feel like they could do something similar.

There's a lot more women. This has been happening the last few years anyway. Women are trying to document their escape live on social media. But this is the first time we're really seeing a successful attempt. The only problem is that while we're seeing more women wanting to do the same thing, the truth is it's still just as dangerous, if not more dangerous. Because now families are also aware that women could do this, which means that they may be more likely to ensure that they've got notification

systems set up on their phone, that they don't give women the travel permission to leave the country, that they might not want to let them go out the country in the first place. So it might be even more difficult for women to actually attempt the same thing as Rahaf did. And there are no moves to end the guardianship scheme. We saw an almost sliver of hope from the Saudi authorities in April 2017 when the king decreed that they would review the male guardianship system, that they would end arbitrary restrictions on guardianship. But since then, we've seen nothing, really. I mean, there have been very, very small steps.

They've allowed women to drive, but inherently, the biggest impediment to women's rights in the kingdom, the male guardianship system, is still intact. I was talking to Rathna Begum and Bill Bostock. 25 years ago, a band called Skunk Anansi was formed in a club in King's Cross in London and became huge during the 90s. They disbanded in 2001, reformed in 2009, and they've now produced an album called 25 Live at 25. It's a collection of live performances to celebrate their 25 years in the business. Their lead singer is

Skin. Where did the name of the band come from? Oh, well, Skunk is just Skunk the animal, black and white animal in the jungle, nobody messes with a skunk because it may not be a big animal but it sprays you, you're done for I quite like that, it's kind of like being a bit clever about stuff and Nancy the Spider-Man is a character in Jamaican folklore, half man

half spider gets up to lots of tricks in the jungle with all the other animals, so it's, I mean at the time it was Britpop. So all these bands were like, they're this and they're something or one name words, you know, blow oasis and stuff. And so I guess we just want to be different and stand out a bit more. And how did Deborah become skin? That's a long story.

I mean, to be honest, when I was a kid, I was like super skinny, you know, oh, the days. And it was just, my nickname was Skinny. And that was not a good thing when you're kind of a Brixton black girl, because, you know, everyone's calling you Marga. And, you know, to be skinny is not a good thing. So it was a bit of a harsh nickname. And when I got into the band, it just got shortened to Skin.

It's kind of hooky, I guess. What prompted you to want to become a professional musician? Because I know you studied interior design at Teesside University. Yeah, art college, design college and stuff like that. Do you know, I started singing my second year. My first year I studied really hard and did quite well. Second year I kind of just like got involved in Students' Union and I joined a band there.

And yeah, it all kind of went from there. That's where I got the stage bug. And then third year I went back to studying got my degree and I came back to London started singing in jazz clubs originally because I love jazz and but I just didn't I just knew it wasn't my my journey you know I saw myself like with a mic in the hand front in a rock band going but how did that interior design background then play into the work with the band and its look um i guess um you know when you've been to art school and design school into college first and then you know i think you're just aware i mean ace over here is actually um a graphic designer who's going to play the guitar exactly he's an actual graphic designer

as well so i mean between the two of us were kind of into that side of things into design into the look of the band you know we came up the ideas for the album covers and stuff like that you were often described as androgynous in in days really before that became yeah a thing for everybody to talk about how did you respond to that description of you oh with great pleasure I mean I it's because I shaved my head and that was a very very strange thing to do at the beginning of the 90s I mean there were very few shaven headed black girls in London you know maybe in other countries and it was just a bit weird for everybody but it suited me it worked and I think people at that time felt if you didn't have hair you were kind of trying trying to look like a boy or trying to be androgynous.

I just found a hairstyle that worked for me because I was too lazy to put, you know, by that time I'd had curly perm, I'd had straight, relaxed hair, and I was like done with that stuff. I was done. I was just like, femininity and being a woman doesn't have to all be kind of caught up in your hair.

I felt like it kind of, I shaved my head and it accentuated my face. I can't see whether you've got any hair or not now. Oh, okay. There you go. You haven't. I'm shaving my head, you know. Clearly fantastic woolly hat, which was required for today. Required attire for today, yeah.

You know, I spoke to Mel B recently, and she talked about the isolation. That was the word she used. She felt as the only black person in the room when the Spice Girls were really, really big. How does that compare with your experience? I mean, I would have to agree with her, really. I mean, the only black person, the only gay girl,

and the only woman at the time. especially when you're in rock music you know it's it's really perceived as like you know a white man's domain and so I you know I got used to it and uh you know luckily I had Cass in the band as well he's so he's there with his big dreadlock so you know sometimes I wasn't the only black person at the time. But, you know, I just kind of, this is what I want to do. I loved rock music. I mean, rock music comes from blues. You know, it's as black as they come. Everybody from Mick Jagger to Robert Plant will talk about their favourite guitarists and singers being blues guys.

So for me, it always felt, you know, like black music to me. It's just kind of, I guess, you know, with Cock Rock, it got kind of taken into a different vibe. And then Britpop accentuated that. How very rude. So, you know, I didn't make that term up. In America, I remember this. You were banned from a venue because they thought you were a Nazi band. How did that happen? We Nazi band. Do you know?

How did that happen? We're this thing, you know, we get off the tour bus. The venue had been changed like a few days before. And we thought, oh, that's weird to change the venue at the last minute. And then we got off the tour bus. We go straight into a radio station at nine in the morning, Breakfast Radio in Arkansas or somewhere like that. And it's basically like, oh, we heard

that you're a skinhead, which you are, you know, you we heard the band's called Skunk and Artsy, which it isn't. And you have a song called Little Baby Swastika, which we do. You know, when it's like pre social media, you know, that nobody bothered to look at the album cover or saw the album cover, they just Chinese whispers on those three things. I shouldn't say Chinese Whispers. You know, people kind of like taking a little bit of information and going somewhere else with it. And then, yeah, we were banned from the venue. And it was weird because it was a great little venue

we were supposed to be playing at, a legendary place. Got banned from there because they thought we were a Nazi band. And I'm like, no, Little Basic Swastika is an anti-fascist song, guys. And I'm black and so is the bass player. And it's like Anansi the Spider-Man. The Spider-Man. Now, we've got Ace sitting over here with his guitar all ready. You're going to play Hedonism for us.

Skin, you're going to sing it. You're standing at the microphone now. Are you ready to go? Yes. Go. Oh, oh I hope you're feeling happy now I see you feel no pain

But all it seems I wonder what you're doing now I wonder if you think of me at all. Do you still play the same moves now? Or are those special moves for someone else? I hope you're feeling happy now. Yeah. Skin doing the vocals and Ace on guitar from the band Skunk and Ansi and their album is 25 Live at 25 and it's out now.

And we had a very sweet email from Bryony Afferson who said, I had the best 14th birthday when I went to see Skunk and Nancy in Manchester. She asked for fans to get on stage and dance and sing with her, and I was one of the lucky ones. We crowded around the mic and sang Little Baby Swastika, and I asked the bass player for her sweat towel, which he gave me, and I still have it today. Although my mum insisted on washing it eventually. Love you, skin. And that was Bryony, who's from Barnsley.

Now still to come on the programme as January comes to a close, the history of what's been dubbed the last taboo, women and body hair. And a reminder that you can enjoy Woman's Hour any hour of the day if you can't join us live at two minutes past ten during the week. All you have

to do is go to BBC Sounds. Now on Wednesday we joined Radio Sheffield for a phone-in on feeding babies. Jane took your calls alongside Radio Sheffield's Paulette Edwards. The Women's Hour survey showed that there were, as I said, some extreme reactions to the experience of breastfeeding. Some said it was the best thing about being a mother, others that it was incredibly tough. Half the women polled who breastfed their babies said they felt they let their baby down

when they struggled with the method. They said things like, it was tough feeling like I was either letting my baby down or neglecting my other children. I felt judged by health visitors, nurses, midwives for stopping when I did. But the comments were often positive. One woman said it was a great bonding experience and gave me so much confidence that I could give my baby all he needed.

Well, we, of course, asked you to get in touch with your stories for the phone-in. Michelle first. With my first, I said I was 19, so probably overwhelmed with life. But yeah, I had a really difficult time breastfeeding him. Didn't feel like I got an awful lot of support. So ended up stopping quite early on, probably around the month margin. And then with my second you know 11 years later it's a bit more life experience was quite okay kind of going into it thinking

I'll give it a try if it doesn't work out I'm not going to feel guilty like I did. Right let's talk about this guilt then if you don't mind because this is one of the things that came out of you know part of the big discussion we've been having this week is the effect on women's emotions when they don't get to do what they want to do however they want to feed their babies how did that show itself to you then michelle how did that affect you and your baby's relationship or your your life in general oh well do you know it's quite funny um because he's 13 hurting 14, and he's a big breastfeeding advocate. He watched the Dispatches show, which was wonderful. I don't know if anyone's mentioned it.

It was breastfeeding uncovered. Great title. But yeah, watching that, he was really involved in the conversation. He was like, was I breastfed? Well, you know, why didn't it work out? And I was saying, you know, I felt really awful. He was good. He was like, oh, well, don't worry. I'm fine. I'm here now all's well but yeah and it certainly did actually what was funny i was saying i had another son and you know breastfeeding went really well but on the

third initially on the third day where i really struggled which is quite often the time people do when your milk comes in i am I was struck with the same feelings again. They just, ooh, exactly. After all this time, which is incredible, isn't it? Yeah, when you're sitting two, three in the morning with a child that's not latching on and your wits end, it's a really dark place. Michelle, it really is.

Actually, I keep hearing that WhatsApp groups help, that a lot of women get together when they've got very new babies and talk in the middle of the night. Yeah, absolutely. It's the best. My local service were amazing. And, you know, on that first visit, they did say, you know, no matter what time it is, give us a call, we'll have a chat.

And I did. Six o'clock in the morning, gave them the phone, and they came to visit that morning. I said it was fine, everything went well. They popped in three more times that day just to check all was going well um which made a difference um now there is a breastfeeding group i'm still part of i'm still feeding two two years later um and they are brilliant they provide so much information on things that you know don't get mentioned enough, like the status, what happens when you get that, which can be awful, about the difference

with hind and foremilk, just a whole myriad of things that you don't know about. You're becoming a bit of an encyclopedia yourself, Michelle. Yeah. That's the sound of things, aren't you? Thank you for getting it. I did end up doing peer support training, which I think is so crucial too. If anyone is struggling, look up local peer support groups. They are wonderful. Chatting to other mothers,

they can really help you face some dark times. Michelle, thank you very much for joining us. To Derbyshire and Jessica. Hi, Jessica. Now, our earlier caller there, the one you just heard, well, was talking about the tough times through the night and first thing in the morning and you know a bit about that well exactly so go on tell me in front of the jumperoo at the moment

to entertain my seven month old so hearing yeah i wanted to ring in it's something i feel really passionately about so i always wanted to breastfeed and my mom breastfed my sister breastfed and there's always something that I had in my plan. A couple of friends had had babies that had tongue tie, so when I was in hospital, I did say to the paediatrician, can you have a really good look and just make sure he hasn't got tongue tie? He said, no, no, he hasn't, he's sticking his tongue out. And the health visitor also said he didn't. But we just could not get him to latch on at all.

They wouldn't let me go home from hospital because they said I wanted to breastfeed and he couldn't latch. Just getting quite a lot of mixed messages. So they said you're going to have to cup feed him, which is like a little medicine cup. It took about 45 minutes. And they can sip from a cup? Yeah, they can sip from a cup.

Yeah, I'd never heard of it before. The only problem with that is it's not very comforting for them and it's not something that you can do in the long term. So after being at home for a couple of days, I started pumping and talking up with formula. But it wasn't until his six- to eight-week check that the health visitor, the same one that said he didn't have tongue tie, came back and said, oh, said he didn't have tongue tie came back and said oh actually he does

have tongue tie but it's at the back of his tongue so at that point they said well our local hospital we have to have three assessments before they even consider having it snipped which would mean like potentially four appointments

by this time he's like nine weeks so we had to drive all the way down to birmingham right you're making it sound relatively easy jessica how were you feeling oh no it wasn't easy oh i was really really upset about it i was felt so guilty i was i was literally pumping every three hours then on a 24-hour cycle to then bottle feed him that milk and it was absolutely exhausting I it was horrible I think I got to the point where I just thought you know if I can get to eight weeks with Jebs and get him breast milk yeah in him then I'll feel okay but actually as soon as we had the tongue tie cut he latched on straight away and now we breastfeed but you know we didn't have

to go through all of that nine weeks of stress and you know i think now with knowledge i could sort of argue my case a bit more but of course professionals around you well you're so vulnerable um let's give the lad a name check because i can hear him in the background there. Sorry. Don't apologise. Teddy? Yeah, he's in his jumperoo, jumping around. But I think he loves breastfeeding now. But I think it's just that about the whole... And actually, looking back, I would be a lot kinder to myself.

I think that'd be advice I'd give myself. Well, make sure you keep this podcast, because when he's the Prime Minister in 30 or 40 years' time, he'll love to hear this. He'll listen to this, Jane. He's going to be a feminist. Don't worry about it. Oh, excellent. The work's gone in. That's one down, anyway. Good.

Yeah, exactly. Take care of yourself. Thank you, Jessica. Bye-bye. Oh, she sounds like she's been through the mill, doesn't she? But coming out the other side. She does, yeah. Well, it's a good time, actually, to talk to Eileen. Eileen's in the London area. She's a retired midwife. What's it feeling like for you?

I'm feeling quite enraged because I started my nurse training and then midwifery training after Bevan set up the health service. And all of this, sadly, is a result of the cuts in the actual support which is now given to mothers due to cuts in funding. As a midwife, we took great pride in the fact that we looked after the mother all the way through, that we made sure that the mother was comfortable in starting breastfeeding and that we didn't really leave her unless we were satisfied that she was able to cope. So I'm feeling quite emotional about this.

Nobody seems to understand, or people do understand, of course, but they don't acknowledge the massive life change it is to have a baby and how you need support. What about formula in that equation then, Eileen? Well, of course, if mothers really don't want to breastfeed, then, of course, I don't believe that anybody should interfere with that. Then they can have advice about formula. But most mothers actually do want to breastfeed.

And it's that initial care that makes all the difference. Now, apparently mothers are turned out of hospital after just a few hours. Well, how can you really say that their mothers had any support at all? In hospital, we always had a patient stayed in until they were over the birth, and then they got help and support about breastfeeding. And when they went home, even if they went home within a few days,

there was somebody at home, the district midwife, to call in and see and make sure they were looked after for about a fortnight afterwards. And before you go, I just want to ask you advice. Hannah's got into it. She says she's breastfed exclusively, loved it. The before you go, I just want to ask you advice. Hannah's got in touch. She says she's breastfed exclusively. Loved it. The bond you have is amazing, she says.

I'm currently trying to get him, though, on the bottle a little bit, and he'll not take it. Very stressful, she says. She says, I've been crying about it because I'm so upset. So it's kind of a slightly different perspective, this, isn't it? She says she'd like to be able to leave him with her parents for an afternoon so that she can have a bit of time doing other things but she says that she doesn't feel her health workers are talking about this part of it what would you say to her Eileen? Well her mother

has to be looked after as well and really after she'd been breastfeeding for some time she certainly does need to get out and actually feel like a separate human being as well. So I would say they should be helping her. And that maybe a little breastfeeding and then a little bottle feeding and changing a bit so the child gradually gets used to the bottle feeding. There are methods of helping. So I just feel very upset to hear people are not helping her. Eileen, Jessica and Michelle, and thanks to all of you who got in touch and told us your experiences. We were unsurprisingly absolutely inundated. Hannah emailed, since becoming a mother two weeks ago I've learned that successful breastfeeding really is a journey.

I struggled to feed in the first four days before my milk came in. I was sure that my baby was receiving nothing from me and I made a decision with support from hospital staff to try some formula as a top-up. A combination of nipple shields, pumps, sore nipples and sleepless nights over the following week or so, I am now solely breastfeeding confidently and pain-free. And then Claire said, I had a baby five months ago and I had planned to breastfeed. My milk never came in at all after giving birth, despite weeks of being told to keep trying, which meant hours of pumping, expressing, and offering my breasts to my baby. He lost so much weight that he ended up in hospital with dehydration. I felt like a complete failure.

A simple blood test, which I had to fight for, revealed I don't produce enough of the hormone prolactin. I'm currently having medical investigations to find out why, but I have no answers thus far. Now, as I'm sure you're aware we've said goodbye to January and if you've been dry you can now have a drink

and if you took part in January Hairy you can go back to the razor and the tweezers should you so choose. The idea of letting your body hair go the way that nature intended turned out to be somewhat controversial, which is surprising since shaving your legs, pubic hair and armpits

began to be a topic of heated discussion in the women's movement in the late 60s. Why does it continue to create a fuss? And what's the history of what a new book calls the last taboo, women and body hair? Well, Karen Lesnick-Oberstein is Professor in the Department of English Literature at the University of Reading and the editor of the book. Chitra Ramaswamy is a freelance journalist based in Edinburgh. What did she make of Janu-Hairy? Well, I have a kind of mixed response to Janu Hairy. On the one hand,

I think, well, hey, great. Anything that encourages us to do what we would like to do with our body hair is great. Or that, you know, at an awareness raising level, it's fantastic. However, I have got a lot of scepticism about any of these kind of initiatives, whether it's, you know, dry January or January hairy in the, you know, number one, reducing it to a single month makes the issue seems much smaller than it is. And, you know, to be specific about body hair, January is not exactly the most kind of radical month to be getting our hairy legs out. You know, I'd like to see August hairy next year. That would be cool. But on the other hand, as well, so many of these initiatives, I feel, put so much onus on the individual to kind

of police her own body or to make changes as though we exist in a vacuum. And it kind of ignores the wider sort of structural implications of this as a feminist issue. Karen, why were you keen to make women's body hair the subject of an academic study? The idea that body hair is either seen to be very trivial, some sort of cosmetic procedure that women do to make themselves feel pretty or to be seen as pretty by others, or the idea that actually not removing body hair is some kind of radical extremist feminist act. There's always the quite homophobic claims actually often about hairy lesbians or about political activists who are women and feminists often described as being hairy, unkempt. That alerted me very early on to the idea

that there was much, much more at stake in ideas about body hair and the body. The interesting thing is that it took 20 years for me to get it published. I corresponded with almost 40 academic publishers, and that seemed to make it clear to me that there was also a whole issue about actually what constitutes an appropriate study for academia, what kind of things are taken seriously enough to be seen as warranting academic study. And, of course, this has been a long issue for all study

around feminism and women. Deutra, it's a long time since the question of body hair rose to the top of the feminist agenda in the 20th century. Why do you think it continues to be such a hotly debated topic? It's interesting, isn't it, that it's almost become kind of swept up in the whole kind of body positivity movement. And this idea that we should all now be pursuing the kind of natural look, which ironically, you know, you often have to throw vast amounts of cash out to achieve. And then you have the kind of ancient and inarticulated workings of internalised misogyny, which mean that, you know, when you're

sitting on your own in your room, looking at your extremely hairy legs, it's very hard to then go, do you know what, I'm going to put on a miniskirt and I'm going to go out and I'm just going to throw caution to the wind. It does actually require bravery to do that, which I mean, is ridiculous. But at the same time, if you're looking for evidence of the actual misogyny out in the world, as opposed to the internalized stuff, you can see it all over the place. For example, there was a Swedish model in an Adidas campaign a couple of years ago who had hairy legs in a modeling shoot and received death threats and rape threats, I think, as a result. Karen, what do we know about how far back these debates about whether a woman should

shave her legs, armpits or pubic hair go? The claims which come largely from people who sort of want to support the idea that this is a natural thing to do in some sense, often have this narrative that there is evidence that this goes back to Egyptian and Greek and Roman times. The idea that there is evidence from graves, for instance, that they found shaving implements in the graves also of women, and so on. The idea that actually this is a very longstanding practice and is almost kind of natural, even if cultural, but also kind of natural thing for women to do, and that the long history proves that. On the other hand,

there's the entirely different narrative that this is very much a kind of commercially promoted enterprise that is linked certainly in Western culture, for instance, to the idea of the changing of fashions, that if women are wearing short skirts, they reveal their legs. So the legs then in a sense become exposed compared to when they were covered by long skirts. And that this initiated in the late 19th, early 20th century, the idea of shaving. And this was then picked up by shaving manufacturers and heavily promoted. And by mentioning that this is part of an Anglo-American narrative, I'm also pointing to the fact how this idea of a kind of neutral history, which is completely objective, never really works once you start thinking about ethnicity and nationality and culture and issues of gender. Chitra, how would you say the arguments about body hair play differently with different cultures?

I know yours is Indian. I definitely feel when I think back to, you know, the teenage brown hairy girl that I was and think about how obsessed with hairlessness I was, like so many teenagers of all ethnicities. However, there's something quite specific and different going on when you're a woman of color, that there are two kind of yearnings happening at the same time. You want to be desirable, you want to be hairless, and in wanting to be hairless, you are yearning for that very specific white westernized ideal. So when I look back on that and then I think about, you know, the absolute dearth of women who looked like me in advertising campaigns or shaving adverts. obviously, how the impact of that was that not only did I want to be hairless, but I wanted to be white, because you know, that that's what desirability meant. And I do think there's also a structural difference going on here that you know, if you're a woman of color, saying you're

going into a workplace, you're already going to be experiencing different or increased levels of discrimination. So if you choose to go in in the summer with hairy legs or hairy armpits or hairy chin or a moustache, you might be discriminated against or you might feel more vulnerable in a way that would be different to a white person. Karen, how have you found hairy women have been regarded in literature? And I think also some scientists, including Darwin, have had something to say about this. There's a very odd way in which Darwin kind of starts saying that sexual selection partially was initiated by somehow early women naturally losing their hair just spontaneously

and then men spontaneously becoming more attracted to those women who had spontaneously less hair. And therefore this led to hairlessness in humans overall, a higher level of hairlessness compared to the evolutionary branches that developed in parallel, for instance, in primates. And in literature, I think a woman with a moustache is generally a bad character. A very famous example is Wilkie Collins's In Wilkie Collins' Woman in White. One of the heroines, Marianne Halcombe, has a moustache, but she is seen as ugly. Her figure is seen as beautiful by one of the male protagonists when he first sees her silhouette, when he first meets her, and he admires her beauty until she turns around. And he sees her heavy male features, as they're described, and her moustache. And there's a very kind of amusing follow up to this that quite recently, I think about 15 years ago stick a moustache on the actress who was

playing Marianne Halcombe. It never ever occurred to them that maybe the actress had a moustache anyway. And in fact, they didn't end up sticking a moustache on her because they said they thought it would be too much of a distraction for the audience. I was talking to Professor Karen Lesnick Oberstein and Chitra Ramaswamy. And Ruthie on Instagram said, I'm increasingly aware of my moustache after my daughter pointed it out in wonder and awe. And I'm avoiding doing anything with it because it's just one more thing to worry about. And I would love to show my daughter that it's normal and healthy for women to have hair anywhere and everywhere. But I'm definitely on a journey of self-acceptance. Esther emailed currently in the bath shaving

my very hairy legs I've been struck down with a horrid viral infection and being able to shave and restore my smooth legs makes me feel clean restored and at one not for anyone else, just for me. Now do join Jane for Woman's Hour on Monday morning, if you can, at two minutes past ten, when she'll be discussing a new documentary which goes out on BBC Two on Wednesday and is called Behind Closed Doors Through the Eyes of a child. It follows four children and their families as they go through the emotional aftermath of domestic violence. Apparently 750,000 children each year see or suffer domestic abuse and that can affect them for the rest of their lives. So that's Jane presenting the programme on Monday morning from me for today. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Bye bye. around yourself and it looks like it's fastened. They're about to do something really stupid. Shall I take your suitcases?

Or really clever? No! You decide. This is the story of two men who burned a million pounds of their own money. Why? Why would you do that? How to Burn a Million Quid by Sean Grundy and Cara Jennings. Download the free BBC Sounds app and subscribe or visit bbc.co.uk slash sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started like warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.