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Weekend Woman's Hour: Fay Weldon, Self Harm, The Walton Sextuplets

Highlights include Fay Weldon, Labour's pink bus, singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge, dealing with the scars from self harming, and the Walton sextuplets. Presented by Jane Garvey.

Novelist, screenwriter and essayist, Fay Weldon on her life and new collection of stories. Is Labour's pink battle bus patronising and sexist or a great way to get women talking about politics? Harriet Harman and Anne Perkins give their opinions.
Yomi Adegoke and Emmanuelle Dirix on cultural appropriation: when does mainstream fashion and music labels taking inspiration from ethnic minority cultures become dangerous, offensive or patronising?
Ten years ago Mary Hamilton cut herself deliberately for the last time after almost a decade of self injury. She explains how she managed to stop.
Dementia is being portrayed in films, plays and fiction. But can it ever really capture the reality of the condition and help us deal with it?
Janet and Graham Walton describe what life was like for them as parents of the world's only all female sextuplets. Singer-songwriter and gay activist Melissa Etheridge.

Presented by Jane Garvey.
Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed
Editor: Jane Thurlow.

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58 minutes

Last on

Sat 14 Feb 2015 16:00
麻豆社 Radio 4

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Labour's Pink Bus

Harriet Harman has hit the campaign trail in her pink battle van - amid a storm of ridicule on social media. 聽Labour's deputy leader believes the van will help the party connect with women who did not vote in 2010. But Twitter users have attacked it as "patronising" and "sexist". 聽Ms Harman said she "signed-off" on the "eye-catching" colour scheme for the minibus, which will tour 70 constituencies across the UK in the run up to May's general election. 聽But does the ridiculing simply distract from the real issue 鈥� that woman voters especially among the working class are disillusioned with politics?

Fay Weldon

Novelist, screenwriter and essayist, most notably author of The Life and Loves of a She-Devil and The Cloning of Joanna May, Fay Weldon describes 聽herself as a chronicler of how society has changed, particularly for women. 聽The 聽ever shifting relationship between men and women: marriage, infidelity, divorce, contraception, abortion, motherhood, housework, and thwarted careers, are her enduring themes. 聽Now in her 80鈥檚, she鈥檚 collected together twenty-one of her own favourite short stories written throughout her writing career under the title of Mischief, and including a new novella 鈥� a science fiction-type ghost story. 聽Jane Garvey speaks to the deliciously mischievous Fay Weldon. 聽 聽

Cultural Appropriation

Cultural appropriation is the concept of mainstream fashion and music labels taking inspiration from ethnic minority cultures. But when does this become more than just inspiration? When does this become dangerous, offensive or even patronising? And why so often is it women of colour who are objectified more so than men of colour? Yomi Adegoke is a journalist for VPoint, an online news and opinion magazine and creator of 鈥楤irthday,鈥� a separate online magazine aimed at young, Black women. Emmanuelle Dirix is a lecturer in Beauty & Diversity in Fashion Media at Syracuse University of London.

Self Harm

Ten years ago Mary Hamilton cut herself deliberately for the last time after almost a decade of self injury. She explains how she managed to stop cutting herself and how her relationship with her scars and her history of mental illness has changed over time.
Hear Dr Jack Nathan, consultant psychotherapist for The Maudsley Hospital鈥檚 Self Harm Service; and Helen Sare, former self harmer and now volunteer educator for Selfharm.co.uk advising how best to help if yourself or someone you know is affected by self-harm:

Mary鈥檚 personal blog:

Project dedicated to supporting young people Selfharm.co.uk:

National NHS Adult Services based at The Maudsley Hospital in London:

麻豆社 Radio 1 The Surgery: Self Harm:

Portraying Dementia

Dementia is everywhere at the moment. It is not only in the real world, a condition that touches virtually every family, but it also features more and more in books, films and plays.聽 The novel, Elizabeth is Missing, inspired by the author鈥檚 grandmother, has a detective at its centre with dementia; Julianne Moore, nominated for an Oscar in her latest film, Still Alice, plays a woman in her fifties diagnosed with early onset dementia.聽 Jane is joined by novelist Helen FitzGerald聽 whose latest book, The Exit, features a woman in her eighties with dementia and Sally Magnusson, whose memoir, Where Memories Go is about the life of her mother and the way it is changed by dementia.聽

Watch Mr Alzheimers And Me, a C麻豆社 documentary which follows three young people who tell their very personal stories of living with grandparents who have dementia:

The Walton Sextuplets

In 1983 Janet Walton gave birth to six girls, making her the first and only mother of sextuplet girls in the world. Janet had been told at the age of 16 that she couldn鈥檛 have children, but fertility drugs enabled her to get pregnant. Now the girls are 30 years old and Janet looks back on the reality of parenting six children of the same age: extreme sleep deprivation, multiple feeding sessions, doing the school-run, building six bikes with stabilisers, the cost, teenage tantrums, boy trouble and flying the nest.

Melissa Etheridge

The career of American singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge already counts 2 Grammys and an Academy Award for 鈥業 Need to Wake Up鈥�, from the Al Gore documentary: 鈥楢n Inconvenient Truth鈥�.She鈥檚 a committed advocate for climate change and a famous gay rights activist, making headlines in 2008 when she refused to pay state taxes in protest against California's ban on gay marriage. 聽 She joins Jane to discuss her music, her role in campaigning for change and perform a song from her latest album.

Credits

Presenter Jane Garvey
Interviewed Guest Fay Weldon
Interviewed Guest Harriet Harman
Interviewed Guest Anne Perkins
Interviewed Guest Mary Hamilton
Interviewed Guest Sally Magnusson
Interviewed Guest Helen Fitzgerald
Interviewed Guest Janet Walton
Interviewed Guest Graham Walton
Interviewed Guest Melissa Etheridge
Producer Rabeka Nurmahomed
Editor Jane Thurlow

Broadcast

  • Sat 14 Feb 2015 16:00
    麻豆社 Radio 4

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  • Woman's Hour

    Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.