13 março 2008

The New Radicals

1. Beth Ditto

Who: Rock star

Why: Standing in the Way of Control, the Gossip's disco-tinted attack on the Republicans' attitude to gay marriage, hit the top 10 last year. Singer Ditto, 26, a self-proclaimed 'fat, feminist lesbian from Arkansas' was already notorious - the NME named her the coolest person in rock in 2006. She embraced fame, using her unique position to educate indie-pop fans about fat politics and queer theory. Which made a nice change.

She says: [on posing nude for a lesbian magazine] 'It was a radical thing to do. I got my period 10 minutes before, and I was totally bleeding. I was doing it with my tranny boyfriend, and I was totally bleeding - how radical is that? I'm a fat person, and I'm a femme. It felt good.'

2. Yo Majesty

Who: Rappers

Why: Yo Majesty are, they promise, 'the only openly lesbian rap group in the world'. The fearless trio, Shunda K, Jwl B and Shon B, come from Florida with partying on their mind and an album of songs teaching listeners how to love a woman. After 25 years of sexist, homophobic hip-hop, the wild bold sound of songs like 'Kryptonite Pussy' is refreshing to say the least, but they're more than raunch-rap and double entendres. When Yo Majesty (Beth Ditto's favourite group) aren't performing live shows, which typically culminate in a topless jiggle, Shunda works on her solo gospel project. Last year she explained that her goal 'is to win souls, whether I'm performing in a club or a church'. They recently signed to Domino Records (home of Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand) with a debut album dropping later this year. Expect to be moved.

They say: '50 Cent takes his shirt off in a show, why can't I?'

3. Corinne Maier

Who: Author

Why: In a culture of yummy mummies and giant designer prams 43-year-old Maier, mother of two, says the unsayable: having kids is overrated. Her book No Kid: 40 Reasons Not To Have Children, has scandalised France and topped the bestseller lists. The former economist rails against everything from giving birth and breast-feeding to sexless relationships and anodyne child-talk: 'In France, people go on too much about the glory of motherhood, and you're not allowed to talk about all the problems having kids causes. I thought it would be fun to take a dig at the myth that having a child is wonderful.' She's bold, funny and, often, spot-on.

She says: 'There are moments when I bitterly regret having kids.'

4. Louise Goldin

Who: Fashion designer

Why: Nominated by Style.com's Sarah Mower for her 'amazing knits', the 27-year-old Brit's latest collection strips knitwear of its cosy image. Citing the Russian artist Kandinsky and Spanish architect Gaudí among her influences, her electric-blue cashmere body-suits and crystal-studded, beetle-like breastplates prove knitwear has high-fashion potential. She's just launched her collection for Topshop, making modernist woollen costumes affordable for all. Just don't put them on a hot wash.

5. Sarah Silverman

Who: Comedian

Why: Silverman made her UK debut on the cover of Observer Woman's third issue (March 2006) so obviously we're biased. The 37-year-old Silverman wallows in taboos. Racism, menstruation, rape - all hilarious in her hands. 'People say I'm a nice girl saying terrible things,' she admits.

She says: 'I don't care if you think I'm racist. I just want you to think I'm thin.' And 'I don't want to belittle the events of September 11th - they were devastating, they were beyond devastating - but it happened to be the exact same day I found out the soya milk latte was, like, 900 calories.'

6. Emily Benn

Who: Politician-in-waiting

Why: Knocking on doors in the constituency of East Worthing and Shoreham and stuffing pamphlets into envelopes may not sound radical when your mates are binge-drinking in nearby Brighton but when you're the youngest-ever Labour Party candidate, and the granddaughter of Tony Benn to boot, radicalism probably comes naturally. We'll ignore the fact that, like her uncle, environment secretary Hilary Benn, 18-year-old Emily diplomatically describes herself as a 'Benn, not a Bennite'.

She says: 'Call me sad, but I'm interested in education, health and pensions - they're as important as global warming and supporting protests in Burma.'

7. Kristen Schaal

Who: Comedian

Why: Kooky with a capital 'kook', Schaal, 29, is best known for her performance as super-fan Mel in HBO's Flight of the Conchords. The creature she presents in her stand-up show is no less odd - she used to 'create moments where my character seemed to be on the wrong stage'. She was fired from South Park by Trey Parker and Matt Stone recently because, she says, 'they decided my ideas were too weird for them'.

8. Dr Clarissa Smith

Who: Academic

Why: She says she's 'a truly boring mother of two who has been in the same relationship for 20 years'. We say she's one of the few academics to take a serious look at the way women engage with pornography. As the author of One for the Girls, Dr Smith argues that if women are to have their own pornography we need to know what we like. 'We can't just dismiss it as disgusting. Otherwise we end up feeling the same old guilt and shame about our sexuality.'

She says: 'You wouldn't say you didn't like Dickens having only read one of his books. The same goes for pornography. People who don't know anything about it dismiss it too easily.'

9. Gayle Chong Kwan

Who: Artist

Why: At first glance Chong Kwan, 34, makes work that resembles the organisms that thrive under teenage boys' beds. Take a second look and you realise that her amazing photographs and videos are intricately created from chocolate, cheese and plastic milk bottles. Her work is currently on display as part of London Underground's Platform for Art program.

She says: 'We are quite literally consuming and altering aspects of landscape to correspond to our ideals of paradise.'

10. Nellie McKay

Who: Songwriter

Why: She's attempting to change the world through pop. A fervent Peta activist, McKay, 25, is wildly pro-abortion: 'Babies are the problem,' she says. Her debut album, titled Get Away from Me after Norah Jones' saccharine Come Away with Me, was released by Sony in 2004, but it's her latest studio album, Obligatory Villagers, that opens with 'Mother of Pearl', an ironic feminists' theme tune. Accompanying herself on the piano, she sings lines like 'Feminists spread vicious lies and rumours', while a group of hecklers in the background respond, 'Lighten up, ladies!' 'They say objectification isn't funny,' she croons, to which the gallery responds, 'It's hot!'

She says: 'Creative expression should be explosive! It should have vitality and charisma, a sense of danger, of walking the precipice ...'

11. Anna Span

Who: Porn director

Why: In 1998, Span, 37, became the first British female porn director. Inspired by the idea that pleasure gives you power, Span opened her company, Easy on the Eye, to produce 'female-friendly porn' with, crucially, eye contact. Over the last 10 years the company has concentrated on realistic casting, soap opera-style stories, and scenes shot from the female point of view. 'I want to get women to start seeing their sexuality through their own eyes,' she says. 'My aim is to help women to start seeing themselves as sexual subjects rather than objects.' A member of Feminists Against Censorship, her titles include Hoxton Honey and Hug a Hoodie

She says: 'Sex is not just for men.'

12. Julia Lohmann

Who: Product designer

Why: Inspired by attitudes to animal welfare, Lohmann, 29, creates furniture with leather and tripe (tripe!) to explore our relationship with the origins of the materials. For political furniture, it's actually very comfy. Her recent work used Japanese fish boxes to comment on depleting tuna supplies.

13. Narina Anwar

Who: Campaigner against forced marriages

Why: Choosing your own husband may not sound radical - but in Narina Anwar's upbringing it most definitely was. Narina and her sisters were tricked by their parents into leaving Bolton for a remote Pakistani village where, after being virtually imprisoned for five months, they were presented with their future husbands. In desperation they plotted their escape: during a village funeral they disguised themselves as poor village girls and fled, running across fields until they could hail a rickshaw. Terrified they would be caught and killed, they finally made their way to Lahore where, in an internet café, they contacted the high commission.

Anwar now works with the foreign office, educating young women about forced marriage. Now 28, she was awarded an MBE at 23, the youngest Asian woman to be given the award.

She says: 'Being a good Muslim means standing up and speaking the truth.'

14. Clare Allan

Who: Novelist

Why: Clare Allan was recovering from a nervous breakdown, up to her neck in debt and hadn't had a job for 10 years when she sat down to write Poppy Shakespeare. 'First novel, set in a mental hospital, unknown writer' might not sound like the strongest of pitches in the current cookie-cutter publishing climate - indeed one marketing department blanched at the idea before it was picked up by Bloomsbury - but the book turned out to be one of the most exciting, original and humane debuts in years. At work on her second novel ('It's completely different,' she says. 'It would be too easy to do the same thing again'), Allan, 40, is also currently judging the long list for the Orange New Writers award. She worries that there are too many domestic dramas. 'I want to see writers with guts. But all we get are endless middle-class dramas.' Her favourite writers are Kurt Vonnegut and John Steinbeck.

She says: 'The world is in a real mess and novelists should be trying to make sense of it.'

15. Finn Mackay

Who: Feminist

Why: Finn Mackay, 30, is as likely to be an armchair feminist as she is to buy a copy of Nuts. She's a proper got-the-T-shirt radical-lesbian women's-rights activist, the likes of which one might have thought disappeared at around the time fashionistas started lap dancing for the fun of it. As a teenager in the early 80s Mackay left school to join a peace camp. In the mid-Nineties she was instrumental in reviving the Reclaim the Night marches, an annual women-only demonstration that seeks to highlight Britain's appalling rape-conviction statistics. In the 70s a woman had a one-in-three chance of seeing a rapist convicted. Today it's one in 20. Enough said.

She says: 'Radical feminism isn't so much radical as common sense.'

16. Rebecca Gomperts

Who: Pro-abortion campaigner

Why: One of the few public faces of the pro-abortion movement, Gomperts, 42, is a Dutch abortion doctor (and mother of two) whose organisation, Women on Waves, operates a ship that sails to countries where terminations are illegal to offer women contraception and abortions up to seven weeks. In 2004, when the group sailed to Portugal, the vessel was blockaded by two warships. The disproportionate response ensured that abortion was a key issue in the following year's election. Abortion is now legal in Portugal, up to 10 weeks.

She says: 'I make the impossible possible. When people say you can't do it I become determined to make it happen. If I don't, who else will?'

17. Charlie Little aka Charliegrrl

Who: Activist

Why: Since 2006 Charlie Little, 24, has been sneaking into news-agents and stickering lads mags and newspapers with slogans such as 'Sexism: Don't Buy It!' and 'Misogyny: Hard To Spell, Easy To Practise'. Meanwhile clothing such as Playboy merchandise is surreptitiously ruined with permanent marker pens, and shopfronts and billboards are the target of graffiti. Charliegrrl has even been known to photograph men leaving sex shops and lap-dancing clubs and post their photos on her blog. She favours direct action and encourages a DIY ethos by providing free stickers and leaflets on her blog to download.

She says: 'When I walk around and see pornographic images of women I think it's a sign of how unequal we are and how much men dominate our whole lives.'

18. Wendy Shanker

Who: Campaigner for fat rights

Why: 'There are lots of people in this country having fat sex. Just because we don't see it, doesn't mean it isn't happening.' So says Wendy Shanker, a fat-rights activist and the woman who has spearheaded a blubber backlash across America and beyond. Sick of being either a) taunted, b) ignored or c) euphemistically referred to as voluptuous, Wendy Shanker's book The Fat Girl's Guide to Life - as she says, 'I was hardly going to call it The Nice Overweight Girl's Guide to Life' - is full of witty, straight-shooting advice on everything from interfering doctors to well-meaning relatives. Proud to call herself a radical, she's since been joined by an army of bloggers with names like Big Fat Deal, Fat Chicks Rule and Fatgrrrl ('Now with 50 per cent more fat!')

She says: 'I can't help myself. The minute I walk down the street I'm causing waves by being fat.'

19. Katie Horwich

Who: Artist

Why: Every day for six years, Katie Horwich, 27, has painted the clothes she's wearing (from her polyester Boots tabard to a festive 1950s dress) on to the Sun's topless page-three girl. She says it's both a comment on the ubiquity of pornified imagery, and an instinctive motherly attempt to cover up the models' extremities.

She says: 'I am doing something creative with this ugly side of our culture which nobody seems to want to criticise any more. I'll stop when they stop running contests like Page Three Idol, where teenage girls thrust themselves in to be rated and voted.'

20. Sian Berry

Who: Green Party candidate

Why: Four years ago she started giving out fake parking tickets to the SUV drivers of north London. Then she staged a school-run protest where campaigners dressed up as lollipop men. Next she sent two Bin Laden lookalikes to Number 10 with a fake canister of nuclear waste and a card that said 'Thank you very much for the present of nuclear power'. Now Berry, 33, is taking on the Ken'n'Boris Show by standing as the Green Party candidate for London mayor. She's already persuaded Livingstone to increase the congestion charge for 4x4s (having said he didn't think it was workable). And she would like to see free insulation for every home that needs it, solar electricity on 100,000 London rooftops by 2015 and a price cut on all bus fares. Where once green politics had all the charisma of a wet Shetland jumper, Berry puts male journalists, in particular, in a spin. 'Environmental Viagra' one swooned.

She says: 'You don't have to be political to change the world but you do have to change the politicians in charge.'

21&22. Dunja Knezevic and Victoria Keon-Cohen

Who: Models

Why: Beautiful, glamorous, well-paid, they make unlikely trailblazers. True, Dunja Knezevic (26) and Victoria Keon-Cohen (21) might usually be spotted looking exquisite in campaigns for Levi's, Topshop and Marks & Spencer. But lately they've been speaking out against the modelling industry and campaigning for union recognition.

These two know many of the industry's secrets: excessive working hours, pressure to be thin, sexual harassment, lewd behaviour, exploitation. 'If a model sprains her ankle,' says Victoria, 'or her scalp bleeds from an allergic reaction or she is photographed naked because the stylist has spoken secretly with the photographer to undo her shirt at the exact moment the shot was taken, she has nowhere to seek help.'

They have persuaded Equity, the actors' union, to form a models' committee, giving them similar status to dancers, directors and stagehands. They want models to have the same employment rights as most other workers - proper breaks during shoots, health insurance, accident cover. And they believe the police should investigate some practices. Dunja cites clients and photographers sleeping with girls who are below the age of consent, and under-16s pressurised into doing nude photo shoots. 'It's not recognised as sexual harassment because it's normal. Models don't know any better because it comes with the job.'

They say: 'This industry has long acted as if it's crazy and wild and glamorous and that the law doesn't apply to it. We've had enough. We are determined to change things.' www.kcandk.com

23. Marisa Carnesky

Who: 'Show woman'

Why: Her Olivier award-winning theatrical shows use visual illusion to look at wider political issues, including the cultural displacement of women through migration. As the 'Jewess Tattooess', Carnesky, 36, covered her body in tattoos and chopped her male magician's assistant into pieces, exploring the history of illusions in warfare, and framing traditional magic-show tricks around questions to do with violence.

She says: 'I think culture can change opinions by asking new questions. I'm just one of the consciousness raisers.'

24. Jocelyn Samson, aka J D Samson

Who: DJ

Why: Born in Ohio to a gravel-miner father and party-planning mum, JD Samson, 29, grew up to look like a mustachioed Orlando Bloom. One third of all-female group Le Tigre, who mix radical-feminist politics with electro pop, she says her androgynous look is not cross-dressing but about 'challenging notions of gender identity'. 'One time in London there was this girl in the front row who was shouting, "You're a boy!" I had such rage about it, but not doing anything gave me a lot of power.' Passionate about raising the visibility of butch lesbians, Samson co-authors calendars with pin-ups of lesbians in everyday settings.

She says: 'It's important to me to create a place to be for feminists, queers and political people who want to have a good time where they can feel safe and dance and enjoy themselves. If I have the power to do that then I want to.'

25. Joan Wasser, aka Joan as Police Woman

Who: Musician

Why: Wasser, 37, is known for her outspoken and explosive political outbursts at gigs. Her song 'Happiness is a Violator' is dedicated to Condoleezza Rice - 'the person I hate most in the world' - for saying she had no choice but to go to war. Other stunts include leading cheers of '**** Bush' at festivals and calling for the return of lefty assassins.

She says: 'I'm ready for more freak flags to be flying because diversity is the most beautiful thing there is.'

26 & 27. Laura and Kate Mulleavy of Rodarte

Who: Fashion designers

Why: Self-confessed nerds, at 25 and 27 the sisters' Rodarte label is taking the fashion world by storm. They still share a bedroom in their parents' Pasadena cottage, make huge, feathery dresses and say lovely whimsical things like: 'Our collection was about a manor, a portrait and a rose.'

28. Marjane Satrapi

Who: Graphic novelist

Why: Iranian novelist Marjane Satrapi, 38, has risked danger and controversy with her autobiography Persepolis - an uncompromising portrait of growing up as a Muslim woman in Iran.

Outspoken, critical and hilariously funny, the hugely successful Persepolis was an Oscar nominated animation, to be released on 25 April.

She says: 'It's a universal story. The background is Iran, but this is about everybody: family, love, exile, adolescence. If America could make war in Iraq, it was because public opinion was so scared of Iraqis. They had been dehumanised. From the second you can identify with people, that's much harder.'

29. Emma Rice

Who: Theatre director

Why: Emma Rice, 40, is drawing plaudits for her bold, brave theatre. As artistic director of Kneehigh Theatre she reworks myths, fairytales and now films, tearing stories apart to reimagine them from a woman's viewpoint. In Rice's sympathetic reworking of The Red Shoes, the girl condemned to dance to death does not have her legs chopped off, but is released to start a new life, and in Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus Rice showed a girl who grows wings and escapes a brothel to fly to freedom. Kneehigh Theatre's reworking of Noël Coward's Brief Encounter is at the Haymarket Cinema until 22 June.

She says: 'My work is about what it is to be a woman in this world.'

30. Ann Coulter

Who: Right-wing American commentator

Why:Love her or loathe her, we have to admit that 46-year-old Ann Coulter's got balls. Variously described as the Republican Michael Moore and the Paris Hilton of postmodern politics, with her ironed blonde hair and up-to-the-armpits legs, she's the poster girl for the Right. Whether it's on feminism, 9/11 widows, the death penalty or Middle East politics, it's said that she's too politically incorrect for the politically incorrect. One thing's for sure - few conservative men would attract the same kind of hostility. Not that we feel sorry for her.

She says: 'Liberals hate me because I understand them more than they understand themselves.'

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