Well it’s been a busy week for both of us. We’ve been furiously writing things to get attention and boost our pale, flimsy egos. It’s also been a busy week for sexist wordsmiths. As usual, we’ve been spoiled for choice as to which pustules of brimming hate to tackle. We do wish they wouldn’t make it so easy for us to lampoon. Come on The Press make us work a bit. Maybe next week eh?

 

10) Beware: Flashers

You have to hand it to the Express, despite being a pus-filled cavity harbouring right wing gargoyles, they do look out for us and are always keen to warn us of show-offs, sex pests and deviants. This week they are keen on ‘exposing’ flashers. But not the kind of flasher that dolefully flops out his wilting member as you’re trying to enjoy a Boots Meal Deal prawn and mayonnaise sandwich in the park. No, the Express wants to warn us of women who flash innocent passersby. And by women who flash, we mean famous women getting out of cars or advertising clothes on a beach. And by innocent passersby we mean jaded, dead-eyed bottom feeders with zoom lenses trained exclusively up these famous women’s dresses.

 

 9) Insert pun about physicists and colliding and tits (I’m tired)

 

Ah, The Sun, always trying to improve the lives of women. This week, they’ve helpfully paid a model with massive tits to straddle a space hopper and bounce up and down, in order to review the structural support of a variety of High Street bras. They’ve even included a video! As most women do, in fact, make their daily commute on a space hopper, this couldn’t be more useful to women everywhere. And all this comes a mere three months after they enlisted Page Three model Rosie Jones to test lots of bras on a trampoline. It’s only a matter of time till they get someone off Emmerdale to test microwaves with their minge. That’s it, I’m canceling my subscription to Which? magazine quick sharp.

 

8) Model doesn’t have a wardrobe malfunction

Taking a brief respite from Susanna Watch, the Daily Express have, instead, been hiding behind a windbreak with their binoculars, perving on the ‘ample chest’ of a model on holiday. ‘A wardrobe malfunction appeared to be just seconds away’ they flapped, excitedly – just SECONDS away!!! It’s nice to know that nip-slips are no longer required; the mere thought of a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ is enough to fuel an entire article. Why will no one publish my think piece about Fox Mulder’s trousers almost falling off? It never happened, but I thought about it potentially happening for most of 1995. The Independent turned it down flat, and the Guardian never even replied.

In other Express news, heat and Hayfever MISERY sweeps Britain – stay indoors.

 

7) Dear Working Class Women, we hate you, but we’ll masturbate over you. Lots of love, The Sun xx

Misogyny AND animal cruelty? Just add some classism and bingo you have a hate-filled hat trick.  This perfect example of misanthropy running naked through a tabloid editor’s dreams is served up courtesy of the Sun’s tribute to the Grand National. Sticking a thin frock of prose over metaphorical thighs rubbed raw with a yearning for tits and arse, it’s on to the wank pics.

And what wank pics. Women with breasts, women with hats and, finally, women with breasts as well as hats; it’s a salutary reminder that our sole reason for existing in Sun world is to gratify its readers’ desire to knock one out whilst feeling somehow superior. Never mind the horses who are shot or that these are people, there are wanks to be had. And that, gentle reader, is what matters.

 

6) Girl child has hair

Oh Daily Mail, can’t you wait till this child has stopped soiling herself before you get pervy about her hair? She’s less than two years old, you creeps. If I was Kim Kardashian, I’d feed her semolina, eggnog and Flakes before going outdoors, in the hope she’ll vomit all over predatory photographers – that’s what I’m having for breakfast now and, let me tell you, it ain’t sitting well.

In other Mail news, heat and Hayfever MISERY sweeps Britain, and is set to continue until OCTOBER – stay indoors and panic until winter.

 

5) Kate Middleton’s subversive home improvements

Yet more dreary guff emanates like stale arse pong from the Express this week as they speculate on an order of pink paint to Sandringham. Oh Em Gee is Kate about to drop a GIRL? Oh gee wizz maybe. Or MAYBE Kate has an evil plan to make her next son gay. Because we all know that pink is for girls and actually chemically toxic for boys. It’s a well known fact that as well as condemning boys to become fey woofters, the pink ingredient (oestrogen), robs boys of the capacity in later life to grow chest hair, understand allen keys or drive a manual car.

 

 

 4) Kate Middleton non-story no. 35,667

For a fun teatime game, why not cut out a selection of headlines from the Daily Mail, mix them up with ones from Viz, and ask your mother-in-law to guess which is which? It can be most testing; the above headline, for example, is reminiscent of a Viz article about Rowan Williams actually being an owl. But, perhaps Patsy Kensit is right and the Duchess of Cambridge IS our generation’s suffragette – perhaps Patsy knows more than she’s letting on? Maybe the Duchess sneaks out of Kensington Palace every night and does a massive shit on the steps of Parliament? I know she’s never said anything whatsoever about feminism (she’s never said anything whatsoever about anything) but, hey, deeds not words and all that.

 

3) A right bloody farce

Golly and gosh, why don’t we pat the party just teeming with sexists on the back for backing the biggest no-brainer woman’s issue ever to stalk our land. According to the Express, UKIP are trying to ‘address the myth’ that they don’t do anything for women, and they really are sticking their necks out on this issue. Because they CARE about us ladyfolk, they don’t really think we should clean down the side of white goods more often, or breastfeed under table cloths, or stage a mass exodus back to the kitchen. No, this is for the good of British womankind and our cash-stretched fooves and is absolutely not an opportunity to poke the EU in the eye with a poo-smeared finger.

 

2) When an Argos voucher just won’t do

The Daily Star have raised the present stakes: ‘Happy Birthday darling, here’s my friend’s vagina!’ It sort of takes the shine off the slippers and Dairy Milk I gave my beloved last year. But, then again, I’d be so disappointed to receive my boyfriend’s friend’s nob for my birthday. I don’t even like my boyfriend’s friends. And I was hoping for a Magimix.

 

1) The Rape Apologist Jackpot

Take a complex story, give it to someone who may or may not have developed opposable thumbs, and this is the upshot. The Sun, like a toddler excited about its most recent bowel movement, has found a single study that shows the brothers of rapists may also rape.

Onto this speculation, it’s made a series of remarkably definite statements, including the fabulously rape-apologist-friendly: offenders could be ‘born and not bred.’ The opportunity to feature a grimacing Jimmy Savile family snap is not passed up and makes the story, along with a picture of his similarly gurning brother. Never a paper to shy away from trivialising a serious issue, especially one that disproportionately affects women, or from deploying tasteless hyperbole, there is mention of sex beasts and serial fiends. Go team.

The net result? The Sun looks like it’s mounting a DNA-based apology for rape -‘sorry guv, it’s my dad’s fault’ – and the world has a flimsy piece of faux-journalism it needs about as much as Rupert Murdoch would welcome an empathy enema.

***

And thus we bring to a close this wearisome collection of predictable blah. We have to be off, Iris is attending a wedding reception tomorrow and has to find some control top tights which won’t induce an organ entrophy, but will make her look like Scarlett Johansson and Flora has hit upon the business idea of upcycling discarded gussets into cosy bedding for small domestic pets. It’s all go. Have a lovely weekend poppets.