Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman's Hour: Greenham Common, 'Girlboss' & the magic of Mirrors

Episode Date: September 4, 2021

Forty years ago a campaign group called Women for Life on Earth marched from Cardiff to the Greenham Common RAF Base in Berkshire to protest against the British government allowing US nuclear missiles on British Soil. We hear from two women Rebecca Mordan, co-author of Out of the Darkness Greenham Voices 1981-2000 and Sue Ray who were part of the original movement and are walking to Greenham Common again this week.We hear from Fran Lebowitz the American writer, social commentator, humourist, very occasional actress and New York legend.‘Girlboss’ is used as a term of empowerment. It’s meant to refer to a new generation of confident, take charge women who pursue their own entrepreneurial ambitions but does this concept relate only to white middle class privileged women and what does it mean to successful women of colour? To discuss this is Otegha Uwagba the author of We Need to Talk About Money and Asma Khan the founder of Dharjeeling Express.Zizi Strallen is playing Mary Poppins in the latest stage adaptation in London’s West End. She performs ‘Practically Perfect’.We hear from two parents about what it’s like to be told your child has special educational needs and that they are not developing normally. Parents Lauren Gibson and Claire Walker discuss.Why are some mirrors more flattering than others? How often do you look in the mirror and are you able to judge your reflection fairly? We hear from the psychotherapist Susie Orbach and from mirror expert Dr Melissa Kao.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed Editor: Louise Corley

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.

Hello and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. In a moment, we'll hear from Fran Leibovitz, the American writer, social commentator, humorist, actress and New York legend. We'll also discuss what it's like as a parent to be told your child has learning difficulties. When they said it to me, even though I'd had concerns, it still felt like a punch. And my response was to kind of punch back and say, no, he's fine. It's lockdown. He's not seen any other children for nine months. Wonderfully, they said, well, you can gather evidence and we'll have a chat about it. Then I did start to see the differences. We'll delve into the mysterious and magical ways of the mirror and why some mirrors are more flattering than others. And we'll hear about the motivation for a group of women who 40 years ago this week

marched from Cardiff to the Greenham Common RAF base in Newbury to protest against the British government allowing US nuclear missiles on British soil. I think it was an incredibly visceral fear. It's not dissimilar to the fear that the youth very rightly have now of climate change that we should all have. It's not dissimilar to the fears that many of us share

about male violence locally, nationally, globally. And we've just committed as a government in Britain to spend 40% more on our nuclear weapons instead of our NHS coming out of Covid or our communities. So pour yourself a cup of what you fancy and buckle up. But first, described by the Washington Post as the funniest woman in America, Fran Leibovitz is an American writer,

social commentator, humorist, and New York legend. You may have seen her Emmy award-winning nominated Netflix series, Pretend It's a City, which was Fran talking to her friend and film director, Martin Scorsese, about life in New York,

where she's lived for over 50 years. It became cult viewing during lockdown as people craved city life. Fran, who is Jewish and gay, shares her opinions on everything from gender, technology, politics, parenting and more. If you're not familiar with her caustic wits, she'll be on tour in the UK next year and a new book, The Fran Leibovitz Reader, has just been released. Sometimes women say they feel invisible when they get older, but the opposite seems to be the case in terms of 70-year-old Fran. Emma spoke to her earlier this week from home. I think that's more of a concern of straight women

than it's ever been a concern of mine. But I know it's true because everyone says it, and, well, that doesn't usually make things true, but I know it's true because everyone says it. And well, that doesn't usually make things true. But I know it's true. This is probably also true of old men. But no one cares anymore, including me. Although some people have said to me, not just in a sexual way, the invisibility can be very liberating. It can be a superpower because you can walk around and not be noticed in a way.

When I was young, New York was, still is, but they were different kind of guys, was full of construction workers. I hated when I was a young girl to walk past these construction sites because they would yell at you, whistle at you, talk to you. And I did not like that. But some of my straight friends,

when they stopped doing it, when you're like 30, they were upset by this. So to me, I do remember thinking, great, that's over. You have a boldness that perhaps is lacking in the younger generation because you say what you think without worry. I think that's probably true. It never occurs to anyone young that you say anything just because you think it.

There's no idea that that's true. You know, they're so aware of a reaction from other people all the time. It's like being in junior high school your whole life to think this way about people. So there's definitely a lack of people believing me, which drives me crazy when I say, why did you say that? Did you say this in order to enlist? And no, I just said it because I think that's why I say it. Imagine the lack of problems we would have if people said what they thought. But hardly anyone does.

And so that's why no one believes me. It's interesting because you say it because you believe it. You say it because you think it. How do you actually form such clear views? Because that's very consistent in the work that I've seen when you are being interviewed. And even, you know, with, with, with your friend, Martin Scorsese, you talk so clearly and you seem to know exactly what you think. Have you thought for a long time?

No. I mean, the things I say, I don't think about. In other words, you know, they just come. The only time that I can recall, certainly in my adult life, where I was wishing I knew how to think about something was when COVID first appeared. I didn't know how to judge anything. I did not think about this because, you know, truthfully, by the time you're my age, or even it should be way before, most things are like other things. But this was like nothing I'd ever experienced in my life. And that is very unusual to have such a new experience at this age. You've mentioned New York. It is the place that you are synonymous with. I do love that you worked as a taxi driver for how long?

Less than a year, for sure. How was that? Horrible. But first of all, I hate working. And finally, I realized by the time I was in my middle 20s and I kept switching these bad jobs I had, I finally realized, Fran, you don't like to work. It's as simple as that. You, Fran, would have made a fantastic heiress. Like I have known in my life people who never had to work and they often complained about it, you know, and I think like, huh, honey, change places with me because I've never had the slightest problem thinking of what to do if I didn't have to work.

So driving a cab when I drove a cab, well, first of all, it's considered very dangerous because it was in the very early 70s, probably 71, 72. And New York was very dangerous then. The reason I became a cab driver was because I could do it. In other words, I know how to drive. You know, when I came to New York, I was a kid. I hadn't finished high school. I didn't know how to type. And so I thought I can do this. I know how to drive. Were you a rarity, a woman driving a cab? Or was that more of a thing? I kept hearing there's another woman cab driver, but I never saw her. This was very upsetting to the cab drivers, by the way, that I was driving this cab.

The stereotypical cab driver in the 70s was a working class Jewish guy smoking a cigar. And that was true. And these guys would look at me like with hatred, because I think they were thinking, is this what's going to happen to the profession? You obviously turned your hand quite quickly to writing after that. I know you did a few other things too, not least working for Andy Warhol's interview magazine and starting to write columns and all of that. You always thought you could write. But how did you feel people would take a woman being funny, being witty? How are funny women treated? Because you are Jewish and there is a great comic history there for you to draw upon. Did you feel you could be included in that as a woman?

I really didn't think about it. I skipped a lot of stuff. And in retrospect, you know, on the one hand, people say, well, that's not good. You should be more thoughtful, philosophical. On the other hand, it enabled me to just do stuff. I just didn't think about it. I mean, when I was a kid in school, like 12, 13, my mother said to me, don't be funny around boys. Boys don't like funny girls.

Unfortunately, by the way, that turned out not to be true. You know, when I was a kid, especially at large holiday meals with like my grandparents and my aunts and uncles, I very rarely got to the end of the meal because I would be told to leave the table. Leave the table. You're being fresh. You know, you're talking back. So fresh you know you're talking back so you know mostly the things that I was paid for when I got older I was punished for it when I was young also in school I was also you know thrown out of class all the time for making remarks from back at the classroom but I didn't really concentrate on the fact that I was probably getting punished more because I was a girl. Did your mom and dad ever find you funny, though, when you were older? Did they see what others saw?

Because, I mean, you've been called the funniest woman in America, Fran. I don't know. I really don't know. I guess they did. I mean, one of my father's friends said to me, so I guess you get your sense of humor from your father. And I said, my father's funny. I didn't know my father was funny.

He wasn't funny around us. So, you know, the distance between parents and children when I was young was so much bigger than it is now. Are you a feminist? I guess so. When it first became this big political thing, I was never involved in it. I've never been a political activist. I never thought it would work. It seemed ridiculous to me. And so not being, you know, notably self-sacrificing, I never thought, why don't you spend your life trying to do something that's never going to happen? And actually, for a long time, it didn't work. Probably in the last couple of years, it worked much more than it worked in the preceding, you know, 50 years. And it's astonishing to me that it's working at all.

And of course, it doesn't work perfectly and it never will. I always said and thought that it is more likely to be an end of racism. Not that there's going to be one, but more likely than an end of misogyny. And I really thought that because racism is a total fantasy. So it is possible that people will give up a fantasy. It hasn't happened. Racism is a fantasy of superiority. There's absolutely zero difference between races, zero. But there is a difference between men and women that are real, by which I mean biological. And this is something that fuels and enables misogyny. And so that I thought, this is never going to end. And so like when the Me Too movement started,

I knew almost every single one of those original guys. I knew them personally. I heard a zillion stories about these guys. I believed every one of them. But there were some of the stories I never heard. I never heard the real stories ever. And I knew some of these girls. And it's because women don't tell rape stories. It's too horrible. They don't tell them. They don't tell them to me anyway. Someone said recently, nothing really changes. Look, this is horrible. And I say, you know what? Harvey Weinstein is in jail. That's a huge change. He's in jail. This is someone who ruled Hollywood for 25 years. I mean, ruled like a king. This is really Gay rights movement. I was never involved in that. People are always kids coming up to me thinking, thank you, friend. Thank you for fighting so hard for gay marriage. I never heard of gay marriage. It was not a thought ever came into my head.

You know, I never heard of it. No one. And when I was young, this idea didn't exist. It never occurred to me that it would work. I was going to say with two examples there, I'm not saying we're there yet with feminism or equality or the end of misogyny, however you want to term it. But do you think you're too cynical? No, I think that it's a really surprising thing that it worked. I have to tell you, I think, in other words, even though I turned out to be wrong, I still felt like I was right. I don't think that all the progress of gay rights, which I'm well aware that perhaps you're not even supposed to call it gay anymore. Whenever you're supposed to call it, tell me what you want me to call it, I'll call it that. I don't keep up with the every single second. That in retrospect, you know, maybe it was a more likely thing to happen because it can happen to anyone, by which I mean, you know,

any family can have someone or many people who are gay. And so I never really thought about that before. So perhaps that's a reason. But it's an astonishing thing to me. I mean, it's so succeeded that even the right wing, you know, people, they stopped talking about it. They know they lost. They're still fighting the Confederate War. I mean, the Civil War, you know, that they're not willing to give up, you know, but this, they've even stopped talking about it, mostly. Can you imagine ever being married? No, no. The first thing, when I first started making my marriage, I thought, no, not me. Like, I actually thought it was horrible. I thought, who wants to be like street people?

To me, it seemed like a kind of a movement to free the masters. You know, I feel like I would never want to do that. And then when it became like really a big thing, you know, as long as it's not mandatory, I'm for it. It's OK. It's still something that, you know, in no way appeals to me. You know, zero. I see that it has this huge appeal. New York, we didn't vote for it. In some places, they actually had it on the ballot.

We didn't vote for it. If it had been on the ballot, I would have voted for it because I know a lot of people wanted it, you know, and I especially hated the people who didn't want it. But, you know, I thought, not me. No thanks. Her new book, The Fran Leibovitzovitz reader is out today and you can catch her on tour next year in the uk just buying my tickets now now lots of you got in touch about being an older woman liz said i'm 73 and never think of myself as an older woman except when i

look in the mirror still rowing on the river walking my caminos and generally getting involved in community activity i've got four lovely kids and four grandchildren. Laugh at yourself, enjoy nature, keep fit and keep your mind active. It's a great time of life. Now, girl boss has been used as a term of empowerment, referring to a new generation of confident, take charge women who pursue their own entrepreneurial ambitions. But since Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso coined the phrase in 2014, the concept has been derided by those who say it's been dominated by white middle class privileged women. But what impact, if any, has the movement had on you? Did you feel excluded from it entirely? Well, Asma Khan is the founder of Darjeeling Express and Ortega Uagba is the author of We Need to Talk About Money.

I started by asking, Ortega, who was Girlboss for? I think it was aimed at millennial women and certainly kind of relatively affluent ones and usually white ones. I guess a lot of the attitudes and the way it kind of encouraged you to live your life required you to have a certain amount of privilege. Certainly most of the icons who were held up as girl bosses in the media and in culture, like Sophia Amoruso or Audrey Gellman, who co-founded The Wing, or, you know, Emily Weiss, who co-founded Glossier, these are all white women. And often that's because, you know, the kind of secret sauce to being a girl boss

is having access to funding and investment dollars. And women of colour very often aren't able to access that. So as I think I was saying there, Asma, you know, venture capitalists are prepared to invest. But is it because they are already privileged, beautiful white women who come to them with an idea? And that's why they get the they get the funding to go off and become a girl boss. Absolutely. And I'm very uncomfortable with that word, because I think that the problem is that it is women taking on the persona of success in male terms. Traditionally, the whole idea of a boss and, you know, someone who's really bossing it around, you wouldn't normally associate with a female. It was always, you know, you would think that, you know, the boss is always a man,

you know, culturally as well. And then this kind of taking on labels and putting on labels on yourself, it is makes me very uncomfortable, because I think that it definitely excludes me accented in my 50s. You know, I, I see myself as successful, I would never call myself a girl or a boss. And, you know, this is the problem that it is an age thing as well. And it is very, very white. This whole idea that, you know, I'm, you know, I'm going to be in this privileged position, I'm going to be the top of the of the pecking order. It is what has happened with men all along, where success was seen as about you being at the very top. And I've always tried to tell people who talk about just the Netflix down. Because when there are buildings and you're having to break the ceiling, it is a very lonely place to be. I want to see women in my lifetime surpass what I did. I want to remove the hurdles. I want that generation coming after me, not even to see the hurdles I hit. They might say that it was a great idea and it's about empowerment and

it's about giving a younger generation that sense of go out there and you can achieve anything. The problem with being a girl boss and coming across as this kind of powerful, you know, female figure who's made it, it doesn't talk about the hurdles that they may have been through. It seems so easy. I got it. And, you know, yes, I've struggled a bit. But the thing is that women of color jump through hoops and go through so much more pain. We carry the burden, expectations of our culture, of, you know, a lot of other difficulties that no one sees. It is not an equal race between white women and women of color when it comes to business. I'm a living example of that. I was never shown a place after Netflix for a year and a half. Not a single landlord, almost all of them white, told me there was no suitable property for me. The first question they asked me is, do you have, you know, business funding? Do you have a business partner? I can't believe that.

A business partner? Yes. And I can't believe it's been three decades since I left India where everybody asks you, who's your suitable boy? I was asked the same question here. I had to wait for men to fail, for the pandemic to come, for me to be shown a site that was big enough for where I wanted to move. I was shown nothing for a year and a half. Atayga, I'm going to bring you in. What do you think about what Asma's saying? Well, I think Asma kind of touches on one of the core criticisms of girl boss culture, which is that it's a way of living

that is probably only possible if you come from a certain sort of background, if you look a certain way. So if you're white, you know, upper middle class, and what it doesn't really factor in when it kind of encourages you to, you know, to pursue these really high powered careers, that a lot of these careers, especially in the corporate world, are only really possible if some women, which is white middle class women, you know, make use of the labour of other less privileged women. So these are women, you know, who might be working, you know, in care. So, you know, nannies, housekeepers, cleaners, that sort of thing.

And these are often, you know, low paid, precarious and often very racialised roles. So, you know, how does, you know, a cleaner who is on a zero hours contract lean in and advocate for more? It's more likely that she'd probably be fired, you know, than is supposed to be getting a pay rise. So I think, you know, that is one of the core criticisms of of girl boss cultures that it doesn't really factor in the experiences of women of colour. What was your own experience because you set out on your own? Yeah and I set out on my own because I felt really marginalised working advertising as a young black woman and you know this is why I kind of do have some, I guess, understanding of girl boss culture, because this was kind of 2015, 2016 when I became self-employed. And in my early 20s, becoming self-employed isn't something that I really saw as a potential career path.

And it's not something that I would have entertained. But with the rise of girl boss culture, where there is a real emphasis on self-employment and how you can make it work, that I think did kind of open my eyes to to a new possibility and so I'm sort of like keen not to throw the baby out in the bathwater I mean it's a bit corny to say be your own boss but I am now my own boss and part of the reason that I felt able to make that leap was observing these examples and observing these stories and these narratives and these practical resources but you know I obviously still have to deal with, I guess, marginalisation and discrimination, but it doesn't feel as pointed as it did when I was working in advertising.

It's really interesting that we're talking about this a day, two days after it was announced that Cheryl Cole's doing the R&B podcast on BBC Sounds and the backlash that that's had. That was a really curious choice because she's not an R&B singer. And, you know, in the UK, we have such a wealth of amazing black British R&B singers.

You know, you have Jamelia, you have Sade, we have, you know, Beverly Knight, there are all these incredible women who have a real connection to that music, into that culture, who the BBC could have picked, but they chose Cheryl Cole. Is this conversation now moving on? Have we moved away from the girl boss movement? Is it time that we start talking about and taking on board other people's experiences of life and their identity, their race, their gender, their sexuality? And is it all happening now because we've lived through the pandemic and we're now, you know, Black Lives Matter happened, Me Too happened.

So we're in a completely different world now. And the conversation has moved on. I don't know that I'd say that we're in a completely different world. I think there is still, you know, a huge amount of work to be done. I think the good thing, I guess, about the Black Lives Matter movement and Me Too in recent years, and even, I guess, with the pandemic, even though that's obviously been disastrous, is that it has, I guess, opened a lot of people's eyes to the level of inequality,

you know, whether it's racial or gender, and opened people's eyes to, you know, the experience of being, let's say, a woman or a black person in the workplace. Progress has been made and I think understanding is higher, but I also think we can't get caught up in that. And I also sometimes question the will of certain people to make some changes. And I think that is as important as them having an understanding of the need to make changes. And what's it going to take to change the situation so that people have feel that they don't have to fight as hard as they do? It's very important that, you know, we build alliances, that it's, you know, actually, it has to be a movement, you know, with empathetic men, this is not about us and them, you know, and I'm very uncomfortable always with, you know, white feminists, because I think that they don't get me, especially, you know, being Muslim, that complicates things as well. And I think that, you know, we need to build bridges with people who are, you know, like minded, read our stories, you know, listen to things like this. And we should not see this just as you know, I need to be successful and see it in very personal terms. I think we need to see it in much bigger terms that actually we're changing a culture, we're shaking the on the show, then please get in touch with us. You can email us via our website.

Now, the magical story of the world's favourite nanny arriving on Cherry Tree Lane is back in London's West End at the Prince Edward Theatre. The stage version of Mary Poppins, adapted from the stories of P.L. Travers in 1934, continues to be a huge hit around the world since its opening in London 17 years ago. Taking on the lead role of Mary, is Zizi Strellen, who popped in on Monday to perform Practically Perfect for us. I'm practically perfect in every way Practically perfect, so people say

Each virtue virtually knows no bond Each trait is great and patiently sound I'm practically perfect from head to toe If I had a fault it would never dare to show That was ZZ Strallon accompanied on the piano by Isaac McCulloch with Practically Perfect from the new stage version of Mary Poppins. Now, on Wednesday during Listener Week, you may remember Emma spoke to Lauren Gibson. She wanted to talk about the difficulties

of finding out your child has learning disabilities. How do you cope after hearing your child isn't developing normally? And what do you do whilst waiting for a full diagnosis we introduced her to selena begley the scottish partnership engagement manager at family fund to get some practical advice you can listen back to that via bbc sounds but we felt there was more to say so we decided to get lauren back on the program to chat to claire walker whose son was diagnosed with autism in May, because sometimes the best person to hear from is someone who's been through a similar experience to you. Lauren

started off by telling Emma about her son. I had concerns when he was about two. I raised it at the health visitor check that you have when they're two years old, because he was very quiet, didn't engage in the same way as my eldest son, didn't seem to be interested in playing with others. I raised it, but they said he was meeting what they were looking for. And then lockdown happened. He had no childcare at all for 10 months. And then he started at preschool, which is an absolutely phenomenal preschool. And within about five weeks, they rang and said, we need to have chats.

And that's when your stomach starts to leap. And they came around to the house because it was locked down and stood in the garden and said, he's not developing normally. And what it is, is he doesn't seek out to play with others. He doesn't ask questions. He gets overwhelmed and has huge tantrums and self harms, harms others, harms me. And a big, big thing is he has absolutely no concept of keeping himself safe um so i think you're familiar with having children when they're about 18 months isn't he you know you you know they're gonna fall over or touch something if it's hot but as they grow up you start to you can go to the toilet without taking

you with them with you and you can sort of leave them a little bit more in front of the tv where you take the washing or something like that but he doesn't have any concept of safety so where he regularly gets hurt at the minute he's got a black eye for starting school because he just stepped off a trampoline and then the ladder broke his fall with his face so for you i mean that moment if you thought something and then you had to have that conversation, and I know you wrote in quite a lot of detail to us about this, that led to you trying to find out what was going on? When they said it to me, even though I'd had concerns, it still felt like a punch. And my response was to kind of punch back and say, no, he's fine. It's locked down. He's not seen any other children for nine months.

His brother is very wonderful, but very charismatic, very confident boy. I said, oh, maybe his brother's talking for him. You know, I'm sure it's OK. So I said they they said wonderfully. They said, well, you can gather evidence and we'll have a chat about it. So I did 65 miniature videos uploaded to Dropbox for them because I wanted to show the wonderful boy that I see and wanted to show them that. But in doing that, I really started to look at his behavior. I'm a qualified teacher and I have a master's in teaching and learning. So I could look at it through a different lens. And then I did start to see the differences and the differences between peers and how he interacted with others and then the penny dropped about Christmas time that that he wasn't developing normally. Have you had a diagnosis of sorts?

No so we haven't so this all started in October when they came to the garden so where we're up to now is he's had assessments from paediatricians, assessments from health visitors and the SEN team at the local council have been into his preschool and assessed him So where we're up to now is he's had assessments from paediatricians, assessments from health visitors, and the SEN team at the local council have been into his preschool and assessed him. And I filled in lots of documentation. So we're on now what's called an ASD pathway, where they put all that together.

And he's due to have a meeting in the next few weeks where they get together and discuss whether there's enough evidence to give a diagnosis, that there's nothing wrong with him, or that they're going to watch and wait and gather more evidence from the school. So I'm very much like I said on the last time I was on that I felt like, oh, well, I won't tell anyone until I've got a diagnosis. But then you realise it's a long time to wait. And what do you do in that kind of interim where people are talking to you? And every time people have spoken to me, they're like, oh, you're doing well because it's less than a year.

People keep saying to me, well done so far so soon i can see i can see and sort of hear claire agreeing and i want to bring you into this claire because your son as i said was diagnosed with autism very recently yes he was diagnosed in may and that was after two years so um actually exactly the same so his around the time of his two-year check um the the I suppose the difference with my son was that he he's non-verbal um and that was always kind of like I couldn't escape that that was you know there was something going on do you mean so I I went to I went to his health visit and more about that than anything else. And I was kind of like, yeah.

So I asked the health visitor, she did his two-year check and that was where it all started. And we've only just got the diagnosis. So that's two years. And people to me were saying, yep, you've done really well because you've got it in two years

and you've got it before school. And we've now got a diagnosis and we've got an EHCP, which is like an SEN statement. That's what they used to be called. I'm just aware acronyms are being shared here. Oh, sorry. we've now got a diagnosis and we've got an EHCP, which is like an SEN statement. That's what they used to be called. I'm just aware acronyms are being shared here. Oh, sorry.

SEN, special educational needs for those who aren't in the know. But what I think is very striking about what you've both said, and Claire, perhaps you could comment first, is you're talking about almost a community you seem to have found a little bit saying, or people have said, this is very quick. Have you had to find your people, on this do you feel? Yeah and I think it's really important to reach out to people I'm not huge on social media but I joined Instagram to sort of like talk about what was happening with us and just sort of like share like a mini blog to sort of talk about it and I've connected with two or three really important parents that are going through it

and then I've joined a couple of Facebook groups and again absolute absolute lifeline really like understanding people that you can ask any any question you like to is there anything you'd say to Lauren at this point where she's up to that you've learned definitely look for the social media and contacts if they're there because again there might not be people in your local area um talk to me if you want me that's fine I'm here um bond made yeah ask for help if you need it somebody said to me very early on I think it's important like you say do you talk about it like you say there is this temptation to think I'm not going to say anything until I get a diagnosis I'm not going to say anything until it's official um and I know I did a lot of kind of oh well he might have something going on we're not too sure and we're having him assessed and oh well he doesn't talk very well

but we're sort of you know he did a lot of kind of apologizing and that's kind of grown into now saying oh well he has autism but I certainly talked about it gradually more and more as time went on and got more confident talking about it. And again, I think that's important. And to come back to you, Lauren, do you feel you've had to find some of those people because the people around you couldn't relate or you didn't know what to say? You've kind of had to separate out a bit. Yeah, unfortunately, yes. When you broach it with friends that you know sort of

already I think there's been a mixture of response some people have been phenomenal and some people have sort of they were trying to be helpful but in a way it invalidates your experience so when you say oh well he doesn't ask questions at all and they'll say oh I'm sure I'll grow into it or it didn't exist when we were young and we're fine or isn't he a bit young to know and oh I've also had a lot is well he doesn't look autistic so I'm sure he's going to be okay and whilst I know that it's coming from a place of help it feels like no I'm trying to tell you something deeply upsetting that I'm dealing with right now and I've had some amazing friends just

make this space for me to say to say how I'm feeling and say things to me like what do you need right now and sorry um no I can yeah it's just it is hard to put yourself out there because it feels like it's quite a hidden thing and you don't want to admit that your child isn't developing normally could i've done something different could i've noticed earlier should i pushed it more a two-year check there's all that feeling around it so it's hard to bring it up but then when i have done because i'm quite an open person and it's surprising how many other people are going through these things which is which is why you wanted to do this. Which is why you wanted to have this chat.

And the email you wrote. Which is why I'm here. No, but also the email you wrote was incredibly eloquent and really well put. And there were many things in it, you know, not just the limbo of not knowing, but this feeling of people saying awful things, even when they're trying to help. And then the silence around it and not shame per se, but the feeling that you can't say what you're what you're wanting to say this sort of secrecy of it yes and the feeling of people saying

to me oh well you need to be positive let's talk about something else and it's that feeling of I've spent all day pretending to be a children's tv presenter pretty much because I don't want to show my children how sad I am and trying to deal with my eldest who's there's only a 20 month age gap and he's noticing the differences and trying to minimize it and trying to manage it when you do see do see friends and family sometimes you just want to go but it's navigating when that's appropriate when it's not and finding that group of people when my friend said what do you need I said what I feel like I need is that NCT group support, those parents that you go through something together

and in the middle of the night, you can text them and say, my son asked a question today and they know what that means and they can share that joy with you. Yes, because there must be those moments. And Claire, perhaps you can also share on this. You must have those moments where there are breakthroughs, there are wins and you can also celebrate those, Claire, perhaps you can also share on this. You must have those moments where there are breakthroughs, there are wins, and you can also celebrate those, Claire, as well as having that space to say how you really feel.

Yeah, I read somewhere that SEN parents know how to celebrate the little wins better than anyone. And I think that's completely, completely true. As I said the other day, only recently, my son kissed me on the mouth for the first time. And he's four. And I know lots of parents, that happens when they're eight months old. But for me, it was just like, oh, my God,

he put his arms around my neck and kissed me. And it was like, for a socially awkward child, that was massive. What did it feel like for you? Literally, I burst, I sort of teared up. I was like, oh, my God, look. I was like, quick like quick quick take a photo he's kissing me he's actually kissed me he hasn't done it again since but um but yes yeah I think when you yeah when you've got a child who's a little bit different um those little things become

absolutely massive but there's something really magical in that and And yes, there are hard days. I'm not going to pretend there aren't, but there are also days when it is just wonderful and fascinating and completely magical. And my son is one of the funniest people I know. I laugh out loud at him most days. Lauren, we're getting messages saying thank you for bringing this up and creating this space. You're at a slightly different stage, of course, to Claire, but how are you feeling now as you go forward with this, Lauren? I'm feeling really positive. I'm nervous he starts school in two days. And all his triggers in one in the classroom setting. I'm very, very nervous about that. But I'm so pleased I did write in and it just came from a place of wanting to be heard and wanting to share

and just sitting here thinking, I can't be the only one. Lauren Gibson and Claire Walker. And on Thursday's programme, we heard from parents of disabled children who say they find themselves being blamed or under suspicion when they ask for help. You can listen back to that on BBC Sounds. And your emails came in. Francesca said, I feel very grateful to have heard your discussion about SEND today.

I have a six-year-old son who's been diagnosed with PDA. It's a little-known condition under the umbrella of the autism spectrum. It's been an emotional struggle, but we're very lucky to have support in place. It was good to hear your guests, and remember that we're not alone. We've all had horrific moments at Softplay that we can laugh about later. Now, 40 years ago this week, 36 people from a campaign group

called Women for Life on Earth marched from Cardiff to the Greenham Common RAF base in Newbury in Berkshire to protest against the British government allowing US nuclear missiles on British soil. Realising that marching was not enough, many stayed at Greenham to continue their protest and were joined by thousands of women from all over the world to form the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp. They stayed there for almost 20 years in what would become one of the longest and most famous examples of feminist protest in recent history.

Well, last week, another group set off from Cardiff to commemorate and follow the roots of the original protesters. Rebecca Morden is one of them. She was taken to Greenham by her mother, aged five, and is the co-author of Out of the Darkness, Greenham Voices, 1981-2000, a book which shares the recollections of many of the women who lived at Greenham Common, including Sue Say. First, Rebecca Morden told Emma where they were during their walk.

We are optimistically telling each other, reminding each other we are over halfway through. We're just sitting on the Greenham divisors right now. We've pulled away from the march to join you. Everyone's very excited about it. And we'll catch up with them on the little blue dot as they walk all the way today to Marlborough. I feel bad we've pulled you away, but you'll catch up, I'm sure. You're hoping to get there by Friday. And how many of you on this walk? It fluctuates every day. So there's a core team of

about 20 people who are doing the whole thing um and from all different backgrounds ages it's a really lovely mix but there's also women people come every day so sometimes we just have maybe a few people who come and walk sections with us and then some days we have another 50 people who all turn up and walk the whole the whole of a day or say i'm going to do the next three days with you or two days. And we've got a lot of people who obviously want to walk, a lot of Greenham women as well, who want to walk Hungerford to Greenham and do the whole last day. So that's going to be a bit of a party, I think. But the climate of fear to go back to 1981, to actually remind people who maybe don't know anything at all about this or have forgotten.

And I know that's important to you to try and paint that image. There was such fear for some, wasn't there, about nuclear when this began? Absolutely. I think for all, I think it was an incredibly visceral fear. It's not dissimilar to the fear that the youth very rightly have now of climate change that we should all have. It's not dissimilar to the fears that many of us share about male violence, locally, nationally, globally. And we've just committed as a government in Britain to spend 40% more on our nuclear weapons instead of our NHS coming out of COVID or our communities.

There's an awful lot of the green and women we're addressing in that height of the Cold War that actually is really, really, really important for us to kind of be inspired by today. Women inspire women. So that's kind of why we're all here. Let's bring in Sue Sagan. You're one of the original women from Greenham. You were 18, I believe, when you went. What motivated you? I was 18 when I went. I joined mostly, I think, because both my parents belonged to CND.

And I'd been a sort of active part of that. My dad was a conscientious objector and actually my mum was a Wren in the war and beyond. So I had quite a balanced sort of view of, you know, to have an army to protect people, to support the UN and to go in for crisis situations. Yes, I was fully with that but the idea of pushing a button miles away and murdering generations of people just was completely unacceptable to me and that was that was my motivation however when I got there I realized that I was a lot more naive than I thought I was I thought I was a very sussed 18 year old who knew it all. And I got there and I suddenly realized arriving at Yellow Gate and talking to the women there, I realized I knew absolutely nothing.

So it was it was really it was an education. It was the start of my education as to the place that women have in the world and learning that actually I could say no. And we're not going to do this and we're not going to have violence and we are going to look after each other and we're going to look after our planet and I think that was the start of my education. Hold that thought for a moment Sue, we're going to hear a clip of some of the women explaining their reasons for staying at Greenham. This is in April 1983. I was lucky enough to hear about the camp almost when it first started and I just came down really to see what was going on and became emotionally involved and the Women's Peace Camp to me was there to look death in the eyes and find some hope and strength to be able to

fight what seems to be the ultimate threat to our destiny. Well, there is times when I say, oh, it's a miserable day, but there's no real times when I say I don't want to stay here anymore. You know, because although it's miserable, as you can see, we're sitting around here and we're talking and we're laughing, and it's like you just create your own energy. I mean, sometimes it's hard to get up and begin the daily toil against crews, but it's great. I really enjoy being here. Part of the reason for being here is to show that people can do things for themselves.

Ordinary people. We're starting to call ourselves common women now, not green and women. Which puts over the idea of being very ordinary and ordinary people can do something about it. And we are making the government think again. We'll come to that in a moment. But life there, apart from the education, and I know you got a lot of that sitting around the fire, talking to women from all sorts of backgrounds, but it was pretty hard as well. You know, no running water, freezing cold winters.

You did have to sort of stick it out, Sue. Absolutely. However, as you will probably discover when you have a group of women, you become very creative. We made our own showers. We supported each other. We helped each other to kind of find different ways of approaching things, working together. It's incredible how actually you can make things work very well. We had sort of groups of women who sort of focused on what they were best at. Some women were really good at organizing the processes of camp. And so they set up sort of focused on what they were best at. Some women were really good at organising the processes of camp.

And so they set up sort of food tents and showers and sort of facilities. Other women went and cut the fence. Everybody found what suited them and they did that. And together we formed a whole protest as a whole load of individual women doing it their own way. I wanted to get back to Rebecca as well, though, because I said you were five when you went. What are your early memories of going to the camp with your mum? Oh, I have...

So my mum would take food and supplies and do things like night watch, where local women would sit and guard the tents. The women living there could have a really good sleep and stuff like that. Cruise watch so that the army couldn't get away with moving the missiles around things like that she was part of the telephone trees which of course are the dinosaur version of social media and things um so she was very active um and so i went to go there under several different circumstances i would go there either on a quiet day to take food or supplies and hang out

and then it was brilliant because i could just ask this was a group of grown-ups that to me I was like I could ask them anything so you could just go around and talk I'm sure I was real pain but actually I never got that impression they seemed like those lovely women who could ask any question in the world to you know just sit and talk to you about it you know it was it was really I just loved the education of it and the openness and then of course I can remember the really really really busy times like I was there for Embrace the Bass and I can remember you know the sound of 30,000 women singing the same songs and holding to his hands and looking up in the moment that they knew that they'd encircled the bass and this this powerful feeling going around and a cheer and me just looking up at my mum and the woman on the

other side of me and them smiling down at me and just thinking oh my god this is all women and I'm going to be a woman one day this is so cool well though you mentioned singing there let's hear an excerpt from some of the singing You can't forbid me to think. You can't forbid my tears to flow as you can't shut my mouth when I sing. I can see you, Sue, on our video call. You're smiling quite broadly there at that. The singing was all part of it. It was what kept us all going.

Women made up songs. We picked a tune and everybody would just have a go and we'd just add lines and add things it helps to lift your spirits when you are working together on anything and i think that that was something that filled us with you know enthusiasm because you it does get a bit flat when i first went there we had actual structures we had benders that we lived in. I lived in an ambulance. That was cosy times. But then they made it illegal to have structures on the common, illegal to have fires on the common. And it just got harder and harder as we tried to sort of adapt to how to live without those luxury items, as they turned out to be.

I mean, I was going to say, because, you know, in one sense, you're talking with smiles and warm memories and wanting to help, I know Rebecca feels strongly about this as well, help people remember this huge women's movement from around the world. But the reception to you was mixed. I've even got a message here that's just come in, soap dodging hippies with zero understanding of global politics. Rebecca, what would you make of that? Because that's one of the ones I can probably read aloud. Yeah, there's a lot of strong feeling, and there always is, around social justice and change. Obviously, messages like that are quite naive. Well, Thatcher called the green and women eccentric as well,

didn't she? And the tabloids certainly put it in other ways. Yeah, and it's really interesting because, obviously, I think it's naive to say that a group of women living somewhere, drawing thousands of women around the country, getting discussions about feminism and nuclear proliferation across the dinner tables of every house in the country, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of damage to both the American and the English governments across nearly 20 years, it would be naive to say that was not a massive thorn in the side of the establishment and that it didn't change the relationship

between men and women and it didn't create a dialogue nationally and internationally around what we should do with our nuclear weapons and how we should handle ourselves and our militaries. Clearly, you can't say that just one group has responsibility for changing those things, but it would be foolish to say that a massive campaign such as the like the largest female led campaigns such as suffrage didn't have a huge impact on that um and there's also you know that

you mentioned the tabloids i think it's really interesting that the tabloids particularly were incredibly virulent about lesbianism at the camp and things like that particularly focused on that but of course up to that point there wasn't even a public discussion around the fact that there were lesbians even. Now, that's a genie that couldn't go back in the bottle. One of the ripple effects of Greenham is that, you know, we are much more open about the fact that women have same-sex relationships as well. It might not have been reported faithfully at the time, but suddenly it was something that one of the Green green women said to me, I saw lesbian on the telly on a tent and I saw in the papers and I thought, oh my God, I'm not the only one. I'm going to go there. There's some of my people. So it brought women

together for a lot of different ways and taught them that their primary relationship didn't have to come from men, which is, you know, you can never go back from that. It's radical. Rebecca Morden and Sue Say speaking to Emma. Okay, here's a question for you all. How often do you look in the mirror? Another question, how judgmental are you when you see your reflection? And why do some mirrors feel more flattering than others? Well, Krupa Paddy spoke to psychotherapist and author Susie Orbach and to mirror expert Dr. Melissa Cow all about this. She started by asking what makes a bad mirror? What we call it a bad mirror where it's actually accentuating your imperfection if you

want to put it that way and we see that come down to three points is the angle of the mirror, the tint of the mirror and the lighting surrounding the mirror. So the angle of the mirror, the tint of the mirror and the lighting surrounding the mirror. So the angle of the mirror is the most flattering is when the mirror is actually slanting away from you. So they lean on the wall with a slight slant with the bottom nearer to you and the top away from you. This actually magically elongate your legs. I love your use of the word magically. Yes. So it gives you the proportion that you probably like to see. So that's a bit more flattering. Then the tint, you probably know a normal mirror has got a green tint because of the iron it has inside. That's probably the most unflattering way because it gives you that green tint. So we're looking at a rose tint, which is probably the best

because it gives you a sun-kissed complexion, which again is flattering you. Elongated legs and a sun-kissed complexion. Yes, go ahead. And then it is then the lighting that is surrounding where you stand in front of the mirror, if you have a very strong light above you, like a spotlight right above you, it's shining down on you. It's casting the shadow down.

So where your jawline, you know, all your eye bags are all accentuated, which and probably accentuating the wrong places on what you're wearing. So the best lighting will be a dispersed light. So imagine sunlight is very dispersed. So it actually softens all those imperfections. So ideally, you want a light that's actually in front of you from the mirror. And we do see a lot of some of the fitting rooms that have got it right. They actually have lights, two strips of lights either side of the mirror. It softens all the imperfection and also lets you look a bit clearer on yourself.

We live in an age of social media, Melissa. I want to understand whether the same principles apply to taking a selfie. Yes, actually. Now we have a lot of, you know, those selfies taken with a ring mirror that actually go around your phone that is trying to create that effect as well about the lighting. So the light actually comes from behind your lens. So it's giving you the dispersed light. The best selfie is where you actually angle your phone a bit lower down. You want to angle your phone from waist down rather than top down. So you don't want to have a tall person taking your phone at eye level. So you want to lower it down to your waist level or lower. So to give you

again that elongation. It's so technical. I just stick the camera up in front of my face and click, click, and there you have it. And a really important question here. In your home, where should the mirrors be? Actually, I have put some tricks for myself, too. I actually put a mirror near my front door. My front door has got a lot of windows. So it's a foyer. So I do have some dispersed lighting there, which is good. And I have this heavy mirror, so I didn't hang it. So I put it on the floor. So naturally you would lean the mirror onto the wall. So again, giving me that angle. The only thing I don't have is I didn't have the orange mirror or the rose tint. I have a normal mirror, but I get the angle right and

the lighting right. Well, I have a great tip. I'm slightly worried about that now. Thank you very much, Melissa, Dr. Melissa Cowell there. I want to move on to Susie Orbach, who joins me in the studio now. Susie, let's go back to basics here. Why do we look in mirrors? I think sometimes we look to confirm that we're okay. Sometimes we want to fix ourselves as these mirrors, sometimes to avoid those things that are called imperfections. But mainly we have an internal mirror. We all have an internal eye. And we look in the mirror to check out that what we're projecting is what we wish to project. But the problem is the minute we're engaged in the mirror, we're already throwing a particular view about ourselves onto the mirror. I mean, not only are we seeing ourselves in reverse, but because of our mood or our longing or our delight that day, we project that onto the mirror.

So there's no such thing as a mirror that isn't a mirror that has an engaged person involved in it. So it's almost as if we're trying to confirm or correct our own self perceptions. I think so, yes. I mean, I think it's quite, if we watch others in the mirror, we always giggle because of the faces that people make and the way in which they'll strike a position. I mean, now it's very much with youngsters, even four and five-year-olds who are playing to camera the whole time. And that is another kind of a mirror, isn't it? So what is a healthy relationship with your mirror? I think it probably is checking on yourself that you feel

as comfortable as you can before you go about your day. It's not checking every mirror that you ever see and it's not being petrified when you see yourself on Oxford Street or in a public place and you see this person coming at you that isn't you but is somehow related to you. So I think it's getting dressed and brushing your teeth. You probably look at yourself when you're brushing your teeth.

Getting yourself together and just looking, and that is it, until you need to fix yourself up again. One academic whose work I followed who decided not to use a mirror for a whole year, and she got married in that year, and she had to develop an internal strength of recognising that she existed in space, that she was a physical being, she was an energetic being rather than a flat surface, which is what, of course, a mirror is. But it's pretty hard not to look in a mirror, isn't it? Yeah, I think it is quite hard because we're surrounded by them. And I think not only mirrors, we're surrounded by Zoom. And many, many people are not turning off self-view. So instead of looking at each other as we are at the moment, they're looking at themselves, which surface. And none of us are surfaces.

We have the most mobile of faces and eyes and cheeks and smiles and eyebrows, everything. And so when you catch yourself in a mirror, it's a frozen millisecond, which is not expressive of who you are. And so it's a really major distortion. I knew there were bad mirrors out there. Susie Orbach and Melissa Cowell. Karen emailed in to say, I realised the other day that I have lots of mirrors around me. I have them to bring more light in and like to see various angles to life. But recently, I wondered if it's another reason. I'm an identical twin and my formative

years and adolescence were spent with my sister. Am I creating the identical person I'd grown to have around all the time? That's it from me and Weekend Woman's Hour. Don't forget to join Emma on Monday at two minutes past 10. And remember, you're gorgeous. Don't listen to what the mirror's telling you. 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.