Musings

Like the lady on Facebook this morning who sent out a plea for chocolate because she is editing, I feel the same way. Fascinating as it is to see one's own goofs and gaffes, editing soon becomes a chore. I'm up to Chapter 8, so there's a fair way to go. 

My routine goes like this  ~  Print out 10 pages, check, make the corrections, print another 10. I may be doing this for quite a while.It will be interesting to see how much the word count drops in this first edit. I have no plans to cut specific chunks; if the 128K length reduces, it will be a natural editing process.

Meanwhile I am keeping an ear to the ground on the sexual harrassment argument which has now ventured into odd waters. Some female on the Andrew Marr show yesterday, whose name I had never heard of and instantly forgot, said that women should not be decorative items for male enjoyment. This has all arisen from the Presidents Club evening that aroused such a storm of protest, claiming that women were groped and made to wear provocative dresses. Now, I wasn't there, and I don't know anyone who was. My knowledge of that event is all hearsay. At first glance the claim seems valid - women should not be groped and certainly not harassed or assaulted. 

But then one begins to wonder how far this goes. What frightens and upsets one woman may be flirtation or livelihood to another. I began to think of all the females who pose semi-nude in glossy magazines, who adorn huge posters on hoardings and on buses, in their underwear. They make a lot of money by doing so and become celebrities. They turn up at sporting events such as the Tour de France, Formula 1 and darts, to name but a few. What about cheer leaders? What about ball girls in tennis wearing skirts so short we can see the curve of their cheeks while ball boys wear sensible knee length shorts? Book covers frequently sport sexily clad females. The pop world so beloved of many has been semi-pornographic for years and I’m only surprised that no tales of sexual harassment has come out of that world as yet. The school girls these days wear pelmets instead of skirts and no one is making them do it. Some females enjoy "showing off their assets" and demand attention in this way. Watch anything on the box and there will be the female showing lots of bare skin and huge amounts of thigh. Advertising would collapse without sexily-dressed women to promote the goods. The thing is the attention comes sometimes in a way that some women don’t like and it is not always directed at the one who wants it.

I don’t know how this problem is going to be sorted, if it ever is.