The age of consent; can feminists work in fashion?; Nellie Bly

Angela Clarke has blogged anonymously about her experiences as a successful fashion agent.  In her new memoir “Confessions of a Fashionista”, she claims that in a world where teenage models are routinely called “fat”, extremely high heels are part of the uniform and women sniff cake rather than eat it, feminism and the fashion industry just don’t mix.  Angela joins Jenni along with Tanya Sarne OBE, who founded and runs her fashion label Handwritten, to discuss whether it’s possible to hold down a job in fashion and hang on to your feminist principles.

Nellie Bly was one of the first undercover women journalists who published a series of daring exposés in American newspapers at the turn of the twentieth century. Her adventures included a race to beat Jules Verne’s trip around the world. Matthew Goodman has written the story of this competition against another female journalist in his book Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland's History-Making Race Around the World. He discusses Bly’s career with her biographer, Brooke Kroeger, who is Professor of Journalism at New York University.

Single by circumstance rather than by choice - whether divorced, widowed or not finding the right person, do you actively work to alter the situation or simply accept the single life? To discuss Jenni is joined by Barbara Bloomfield, author of the Relate Guide to Finding Love and Georgia Elms, Chair of the Widowed and Young Foundation, whose husband died suddenly when she was 36 years old.

 

Barbara Bloomfield is also the author of the Relate Guide to Love Couples Therapy: Dramas of Love and Sex" to be published in June 2013.

Your respones to our item about singles and sex.

A government policy unit has suggested lowering the age of consent from 16 to 14. David Cameron has dismissed the suggestion and called it offensive but many young people do have sex before they are 16 and some argue that the law should be changed to reflect this. Jules Hillier, from the sexual advice charity Brook and the Human Rights Campaigner Peter Tatchell debate the issues.

Age of Consent Fact FIle

In her new book, ‘Consider the Fork’ the food journalist Bee Wilson looks at the history of the world through the objects we use to prepare the food we eat.  She invited Catherine Carr into her kitchen where she used the most ancient of technologies – the pestle and mortar – to make up a quick basil pesto.