"... which felt to me and feels to me now when I look back on it a little bit predatory and certainly, which led I think directly, to the sort of ladette Nineties, where women were supposed to be just like men. Now for me, feminism is not about women becoming more like men. It’s not about that. It’s about finding our space, enlarging our space, and the ways in which we work in the world in order to balance things out."
Said the actress Emma Thompson, quoted in "Emma Thompson: Sexual revolution encouraged predatory behaviour" (London Times).
Had I ever noticed the word "ladette"?
She likes sports, beer, cars, swearing, fighting, and sex in a stereotypically masculine way. She is crude, rude, often hygienically challenged, and cheerfully ignorant and aggressive. If you are a guy, she'll probably challenge you to a fight or a drinking competition, win both and then take an aggressive lead in anything sexual that happens, before kicking you out the front door the following morning or teasing you mercilessly if she lets you stay some more.
In short, she is a young woman with the personality of a Fratbro. She is the Lad-ette.
Despite (or perhaps because of) their masculine personalities, Lad-ettes are generally heavily sexualised and are not likely to let any males in the company forget they are female. They usually disdain the hassle of highly elaborately feminine clothing/hair/makeup, but don't often dress in a truly cross-dressing way; Tank-Top Tomboy is a common Lad-ette style....
And here's a Vice article from 2017 — "The Rise and Fall of the Ladette/How women taking their clothes off and getting shitfaced were celebrated and shunned in the space of just a few years."
A late-1990s and early-2000s phenomenon, it was an era in which women ruled supreme. A boisterous, bolshy, boozy free-for-all where you could get away with saying or doing pretty much anything... [T]he ladette was mouthy, up for a laugh, took her clothes off and could out-do any male companion in the drinking stakes....
"The 'ladette' liberated young women from the confines of a very conservative form of femininity because they could behave just like men," explains Professor Angela Smith of Sunderland University....
Nearly two decades later, ladettism eventually burnt itself out.... Post-2000, gender roles are much less likely to be set in stone. We perhaps therefore don't feel the need to define those who "act like men" as ladettes because, as Smith points out, "it's arguable there is a greater acceptance of different gender roles. It's much more acceptable to behave in a diverse way."
That was 2017, remember. In 2022, gender roles have made something of a comeback.
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53 comments:
"Feminism was invented by horny teenage boys." should be a tag.
Why buy the cow......?
The people our culture has looked to and listen to and spent a sizable amount of our freetime building up were living lives built on foundations of sand all along. Hmmm, where I have heard about building on a rock foundation and not trusting in the arm of the flesh before? Who'd have thought a dusty old collection of letters, recordings, and sermons passed down carefully across generations could have anything important to say?
The film she is promoting is not liked by the newspaper, but it's at 95% RT.
A ladette doesn’t sound like good marriage material. Not someone you’d bring home to show your mother, anyway.
People always overreacting to the new, either in uptight prudish opposition or in taking it to it's illogical extremely edgy limits.
Emma is not wrong. She'll be cancelled soon.
She has a new movie where she gets naked on screen at age 62. The premise of the movie is that she hires a Black gigolo in order to experience her first orgasm. A comedy.
Emma, welcome to the right circa 15 years ago. We have cookies.
The free-love/easy-hookup attituded pushed by the sexual revolution was always contrary to what the vast majority of women wanted. It was mostly of benefit to predatory men who enjoyed the elimination of a whole lot of social support to women who wanted to wait, as well as a few hyperaggressive or broken women. For the rest it was a hell of uncertainty, awkward hookups, stunted emotional growth, and eventually desperation.
The people our culture has looked to and listen to and spent a sizable amount of our freetime building up were living lives built on foundations of sand all along.
I'd say that we had a lot of cultural capital built up over generations which was systematically used up to keep society going while the revolutionaries were in charge. It allowed them for a long time to cover up the negative effects of their lifestyles. Now that capital has been used up, and the bills are coming due.
Count me a skeptical that young women getting drunk, rowdy, and taking off their clothes ever "goes out of style."
But what exactly is a 'woman'. . . . .
People just now discovering what many were warning of from the beginning.
Once upon a time, way back in my youth, I remember one aspect of feminism was speaking out against treating women like sex objects.
The "sexual revolution" was all about the sexual objectification of the human person, treating others (and oneself) as merely an thing for one's use and pleasure, rather than treating them as a person.
"I’m not sure how great the sexual revolution was... It made us more available, I suppose, for sex... but I don’t know. It also introduced something else..."
Hahaha she is almost there.
It is fun to watch these feminist idiots figure out how they gullibly and reliably served the patriarchy.
When you are 20-30 promiscuity has allure as a female. When you are 40+? Have fun with that.
The Nuclear Family has been the best thing that has ever happened to women and children.
And you dumb ass Feminists have done your level best to destroy it.
Everything Feminists have done has been in service to predatory males. And you have spent the last several decade crapping on men who actually live up to responsibilities and take monogamy and vows seriously.
2 of the last 3 Democrat Presidents have been known Rapists.
That is the legacy of Feminism. Be proud of it.
Anthony said...
But what exactly is a 'woman'. . . . .
Nice one. Excellent delivery.
The feminist legacy is as a punchline.
Keep women affordable, available, and taxable.
Women, men, and "our Posterity" are from Earth. Feminists are from Venus. Masculinists are from Mars. Social progressives are from Uranus.
"I’m not sure how great the sexual revolution was... It made us more available, I suppose, for sex... but I don’t know. It also introduced something else..."
That's one small step for women. One giant leap for lady-kind. Welcome back to civilized society. Gentlemen, too.
TERF is about men not being women.
The most "sanitized for public consumption" version of the Lad-ette was Robin on "How I Met Your Mother" -- a scotch-drinking journalist who didn't want any kind of domestic life, but was still gorgeous and feminine and very straight. (That was the answer to the question behind every modern romantic comedy: How do we keep these two people apart until the end, when they're clearly perfect for each other? The answer, in this case, was that one wanted to settle down and have kids, and the other didn't.)
Then there's also the indie-movie Lad-ette -- most recently personified by the TV show "Fleabag" -- who's just a mess. She sleeps around, gets in all kinds of trouble (while being bailed out by a boring, straight-arrow sister or best friend), manages to keep a glamorous job while getting drunk every night, and always turns out to have some sort of troubled background that explains it all. We're supposed to admire her while feeling sorry for her -- which only works if you don't think about what an awful person she really is.
I think ladette is a Brit thing, see Ladette to Lady (2005-2010). I recall Prince Harry calling his fellow officers his “lads” in some interview, so it may be a bit of an upper class Brit thing. A humble brag.
"Now for me, feminism is not about women becoming more like men."
Fine. But all the political demands, all the forced careerism, all the Title IX obsessions, all the women-in-STEM fervor were about women becoming more like men.
"It’s about finding our space, enlarging our space, and the ways in which we work in the world in order to balance things out."
And "our space," the ways "we work" and "balance things out" are very, very special, therefore deserving special consideration, special recognition, special support.
Of course, ET is discovering a criticism conservatives, but really much of the older generation, made about the "sexual revolution," namely that it degraded sex and harmed women.
Fleabag immediately jumped into my mind.
"Lad" culture, from which the word Ladette is derived, revolved around the "laddie" magazines which were popular in the 90s, which were sort-of like Playboy without the full nudity... "MAXIM" is probably the best known example
The Lad-ette. Modeled after Marian from Raiders of the Lost Ark. It is PG, so they kept her clothes on, but otherwise...
I always liked (and still do) Emma Thomson. She's very pretty and has an easy gentle laugh. I think I mostly agree with her look here - but I may not fully understand it. And, the feminine version of "Lads" is completely new to me.
Back in the day, I did kind of enjoy the the "Lads" magazines. They were a nice way to kill time at the airport, once you'd gotten through a crossword puzzle. And they didn't look creepy to have with you. . . . . sexy, but just a step short. (thanks Will Cate - that gets it about right).
The lad-ette culture gave all the advantages to the men. So does hooking up. I can't believe young women have fallen for that line. Of course, the payback has come in the form of "Me too" complaints and Title IX investigations.
So, in both a literal and a figurative sense, both sides have gotten screwed.
If you want to have a happy life--no life is care-free--try conforming to conventional values. Don't rush into sexual relationships. Be considerate of the other person. Be loyal. Be faithful. Be forgiving. Be considerate. And expect that from your partner.
Traditional values don't work for everyone, but they improve the odds of living a satisfying life.
In the Nineties, in the earliest days of the internet, you could read British papers without the pay wall. The world really did seem to be getting smaller and more interconnected. "Lad culture" and "ladette culture" were big topics back then. British women were getting blind drunk and "shagging" a lot, just like British men.
I'd imagine that wave has passed now. Lad culture gets a lot of pushback for being (what else?) racist, sexist, and homophobic, and women may be getting tired of being ladettes, but Spaniards and other Europeans still have a lot of complaints about British lad and ladette vacationers and soccer hooligans.
Heterosexuals... populating the world for millennia.
Some time back a young woman at a southern college--possibly Duke--kept and published a diary about her sexual encounters.
What was unsettling is that the guys were pigs. They treated her horribly. Why? They'd learned they could get what they want without even a fake attempt at being even slightly decent. Whose idea was that?
Dennis Reynolds: You're not listening. We don't want wild girls. We want good girls gone wild. It's important to see the transition, watch the process...
For some of us the Sexual Revolution has come back to bite us in the arse. Just today I had my five year check up for HPV related throat cancer...And, if I had to be honest, I wouldn't have change a thing.
I thought this happened in the late sixties, a few years after sex was invented. That's when famous actresses started appearing topless. As I understand it, nudity and sexual expression were supposed to subvert bourgeoisie morality and make us all better people. The cast members of Hair felt that it was a moral imperative to disrobe for the final scene.....Peter Hall was a hotshot director. His movie version of A Midsummer Night's Dream featured Judi Dench as Titania. Judi wore some kind of nude body suit with pasties. The bet here is that she now regrets that choice but thought it was a good idea at the time.....I think nude scenes with women are being phased out, but where's the harm.
The only person I ever knew, in my 69 years of life, who used the term "lads" as a synonym for young men or boys was a library colleague whose parents (grandparents?) were Scots immigrants.
Ladettes sound similar to "bovver birds" back in the dye.
Nah, it was the script that made it "a moral imperative to disrobe for the final scene"
in "Hair."
My wife and I met while we were in (very different) high schools and lived the sexual revolution with each other. We still do. Viva la revolucion!
To each xer own.
This graph shows the problem with "the sexual revolution". Women choosing men are all trying for the very few men they rate on the right side of their bell curve. The bell curve women us for rating men is slanted way to the left, with very few men on the right. As a result, those men on the right have no reason to not be predatory- they've got their pick of women who want them.
Assortive mating doesn't occur when women are choosing, and the society is monogamous. In order for women to get the man they want- many have to settle for being "the other woman". And, it gets worse. If the society is actually polygamous, women soon lose all rights. Polygamous societies aren't compatible with female empowerment.
Holding off sex until after the marriage ceremony is over is really the best thing for women if all women did it but for a few outliers. The outliers get a reputation- and become unmarriageable. If they all put out for the right side- well, most of them get unhappy. But then they don't become unmarriageable, since they're all the same. But they have to, from their point of view, marry down. Meanwhile, the rejected men who become financially successful become more attractive. And- they have their choice of YOUNGER woman. SO a woman has to choose while she's young- or she ends up with losers if she ends up with any man.
That's all very simplified. But true. There are always exceptions. For example, 44 years ago my wife settled for me despite at the time my future being up for grabs.It all worked out.
I think I was once on a traincar full of lads on their way to a soccer (football) match in Brighton. They were loud and vulgar, but very well-dressed, and grew serious when bragging about their clothes. Like ladettes then, but more fashionable.
Gee, I guess I am a '60s luvvah. I think of the sexual revolution as something liberating and enjoyable. The fears of sex from the past -- pregnancy, forced marriage, a baby before you were ready -- all those things were gone. Or nearly gone; greatly reduced.
So young men and women could enjoy each other and learn about the world. You still had to make choices; hopefully, intelligent choices. Did you love this person? Would you like to marry her? It was fun (usually!) finding out. And if you didn't, well, it was often a mutual agreement. Surprise, she didn't want to marry you either! Lol.
I don't see that the sexual revolution led to hook-up culture or degradation or men preying on women. I can't say the same about "feminism," which seemed to mislead a lot of young women. But freedom is difficult. The sexual revolution delivered greater freedom and then there are more choices. And they're not necessarily easy.
It wasn't the sexual revolution that led to the huge divorce crisis of the '60s and '70s. Or was it? I have no expertise; I think it had to do with people caught in a cultural transition. Too much freedom suddenly looked like what they had been missing, maybe. Freedom has its downsides in individual cases.
They treated her horribly. Why?
@Richard Aubrey, go read the autobiographies of Richard Feynman. Strange as it may seem, many women prefer the bad boys who verbally, and sometimes even physically, abuse them. Why feminists haven’t tried to work on women like that, to teach them how to respect themselves and demand respect from the men they date is hard to imagine. Perhaps they tried, but failed.
When I was in college in the late '70s, the braless, age when sex was free free free... hell yes we took advantage of it. They wanna give it free, well who were us males to deny them that?
Women wanna climb the later via couch... well then why not?
Reap what you sow.
If the feminist revolution really and truly benefited males, why are INCELs such a popular lifestyle choice for you people?
Big Mike asks why "feminists haven't tried to work on women like that [those who like bad boys], to teach them how to respect themselves and demand respect from men . . ."
Obviously, because if those women didn't exist other--often jealous--women wouldn't be able to bitch and moan on behalf of all women.
I've seen it often enough, even to the extent of first wives hating the other woman, who stole her asshole away.
Those crazy southern preachers in the 60s were tight all along. Reaping the whirlwind, now we are.
The trailer to her new movie:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IKwoURKDh-A
It looked fun, to me.
I watched a movie Diane Keaton w/Jack Nickleson and thought she was quite beautiful.
I think it was As Good As It Gets.
Howard said...
If the feminist revolution really and truly benefited males, why are INCELs such a popular lifestyle choice for you people?
Going back to the graph link I posted above- all women (who all think they're higher on the 1-10 scale then they are) throw themselves at the men they perceive as the right end of the attractiveness scale. So none of them go for the 3rd board on the chess team, they all think themselves worthy of the quarterback.
I went to weird HS. We did have chess team groupies. Only two of them during my 3 years there, but we had them....
"Ladette" is obviously formed from "lad," but I was surprised to learn recently that "gigolo" is a back-formation of "gigolette," which is a French term for a prostitute (also a cooked rabbit shoulder or chicken thigh).
Big Mike. Difficult question. Decades ago, read a piece in a Detroit paper about a nursing student carrying a B+ in her third year. Killed in a driveby while she was sleeping with her drug dealer boyfriend.
There was a reporter's name on the piece so I called. WTF? She said, kind of wearily, "The appeal of the heel." Something more to that than the rhyme scheme.
It's a big deal on various discussion boards. Used to be, you had to be a hard-ass guy just to get through the day; convince a mule it's best bet is to haul the plough again today. Shoot a wolf. Slaughter a pig. Intimidate a couple of guys looking at your apple orchards. And that's the frontier farmer.
So such qualities are desirable. But only bad boys have them any more.
Whatever.
The woman in question wasn't attracted to these guys but something about exploring the sexual world of the college.
Emma Thompson played Elinor Dashwood in "Sense and Sensibility," Beatrice in "Much Ado about Nothing," Katherine de Valois in Kenneth Branagh's "Henry V," Miss Kenton in "The Remains of the Day," and Grace in "Dead Again." All terrific movies I really enjoyed 25-30 years ago. There's a moment in "Sense and Sensibility" where she portrays just overwhelming relief and happiness, her character overcome by the emotions she's been holding back all movie long. Thompson was the queen of the costume drama for quite a while, and I really respected her as an actress.
Then I saw her in an interview. Unserious. Cussing. Poorly put-together. Just the exact opposite of her screen personas. And I know she's a human being and you have to relax, but to create unforgettable characters like that, you have to take acting seriously. Maybe she did/does, but that's not how she came across in the interview. She came across as a ladette, with sort of a "beats working for a living" attitude.
Never meet your heroes, I guess. They might turn out to be a ladette.
Not sure old system better. My mother 1 of 4 sisters all marrying right out of college in fifties. My mom had 6 kids. 1 sister had 5 including 1 adopted. Happy marriages. 2 sisters had a kid apiece. Unhappy marriages. But Irish RC 'til death do you part era.
It’s about finding our space, enlarging our space
Emma Thompson is hauling nine yards of loveliness in a six-yard wagon.
The ringleader of the "ladettes" was Madonna. After her "Sex" book was published she was a cross between girlie Barbie-doll dress up and...commercially sexually adventurous in public...
Madonna recently jumped on the NFT bandwagon just as the market was burning down, selling pricey images of trees growing out of her vagina:
https://neilakellymakeup.com/nypost/2022/05/11/madonna-nft-porn-is-latest-filthy-attention-grab/
The other female trend setter of the 1990s was "Heroin Chic" Kate Moss. She led a generation of mentally-ill-in-public female actors, models, and musicians. Cutters, anorexic, signing about their own recklessness, cruelty, depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. Foreshadowed by the nutcase Liz Phair --- egad!
Honorable mention goes to Fiona Apple and her song "Criminal", as she commented on dirty rotten female behavior. However, credit for self-awareness and recognition that this was evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_(Fiona_Apple_song)
All are evidence of late stage cultural decadence and a precursor to dysfunction and extinction. Breed and grow healthy babies who will also reproduce or die off. So said all world religions, as later scientifically described as natural selection by Charles Darwin.
ET may be a great actress, but a great beauty? No sale.
Gone Girl (the book at least) has a passage about the female main character complaining about having to live up to this notion of acting like a man. Thought that was interesting.
I recall the sexual revolution about taking off the aprons.
And the Pill.
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