Not All Lingerie
By DONALD McLACHLAN
As things are, women may climb well over halfway up the professional tree and then get stranded on a branch called the women's pages or women's features, or write a regular column of views like Anne Scott-James or Monica Furlong, perhaps the most agreeable consum- mation of all. Yet circulation-wise, and from the advertisers' point of view, they are decisive figures, helping to form as they do consumers' fashions not only in clothes, cosmetics and hair- dos, but also in interior decoration, cooking, health, child-rearing and holidays—to say nothing of morals and what used to be the pri- vate intimacies of married and unmarried life.
As for stamina—the ability to survive long hours, intense competition, hurried writing, bullying by telephone and the elbowing of cameramen—I know of few ordeals faced by the male reporter to compare with the scrim- mage at the Paris and Rome fashion shows. Indeed, I expect next spring to see a picture of one of our leading fashion writers hurrying down the Rue Matignon with a heavily bandaged ear.
Anyhow, I have made my point; women could do the job and they should not be confined to the duty of entertaining other women. If no proprietor has the nerve to appoint a woman as editor, then let him bestow a consolation title like associate editor, assistant editor-in-chief, or assistant editor (F).
These thoughts come readily because we are now in the pre-Christmas season. A number of Fleet Street ladies (with titles ranging from Women's Editor and Women's Page Editor to Assistant Editor and Women's Features) have been good enough to tell me about its problems. I assumed in my inquiry that this would be a boring season for them, coming round as it does in the autumn, with fixed demands and conven- tions, a predictable consumer boom with well known preferences. Not a bit of it : everyone declared that she tried to be—and succeeded in being—original in her treatment of Christmas themes.
There is no period of the year—except perhaps the threshold of spring—when the editorial and advertising interests more effortlessly coincide. One or two people I talked to seemed to think this wrong; but it is only wrong if the articles next to advertisements of toys say that all toy quality is excellent, or if the wine expert refrains from pointing out that wine from Cyprus and Dalmatia may be sold as 'Chablis-type.' There may be a little trouble this year over the tobacco advertising: the cigarette firms are said to be delaying their bookings to two weeks instead of six months in advance because the situation at Christmas is both morally and com- mercially unpredictable. Otherwise, the familiar pattern is repeating itself. Travel first, ski-ing for some and sun for others; then toys and books; then jewellery, scents, men's ties, pens and linen, and boxes of cosmetics and soaps. Food and drink a bit closer to the festival. Small and original gifts from early December onwards, chiefly from the stores; 'frivolous lingerie' appears to be dateless.
The only sure sign of resistance to the com- mercial side of Christmas came from the women's editor of the Guardian. I quote these salutary sentences: 'Though we always have a few "gift" articles, especially on toys, we do not give gifts a great deal of coverage. I prefer descriptive or reflective articles in the Christmas mood to appear in the week before Christmas. . . . I have no real evidence, but my feeling is that our type of readers do not want great Christmas coverage. They tend to be people who worry about "the spending orgy" in relation to the Christian ethic, and to the hungry millions throughout the world.'
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