Women's Hour at Calm Down, Dear 2014

This is the day before our show Women’s Hour opens at Calm Down Dear Festival of Feminism. Today we have to figure out how to gaffa tape roller blades onto our feet, decide whether or not Emma Watson needs a mention, and actually learn our lines.

We’re nervous about headlining a festival about women – there’s a certain pressure to get it  ‘right’ – make sure we are saying the right things, or attacking the right things. That pressure has sort of helped shape the show – how do you sum up WOMEN in 60 minutes? We are not a separate species, number one, and the experience of being a woman and the particular pressures and prejudices that women face cannot be summed up in an hour, or 24 hours.

The angle we take for most of the show is that the way women are portrayed/talked about in the media – and therefore society - is just pretty funny and therefore shocking. But funny. Which is shocking. And that’s funny. But shocking. Mostly funny. We have to laugh right? But it’s pretty shocking. That’s how to show goes at the moment.

As the witch Emma Watson pointed out, there’s not a single country in the world where women are equal to men. There is of course a scale, but when that fact is true – not a SINGLE COUNTRY IN THE WORLD- there’s still a lot to say about the small things as well as the big.

We know that as far as women’s experiences go in the world, we have it easy. But that is not an excuse to ignore feminism in the UK. Feminism is necessary until all sexes and genders etc. are equal. Almost equal is still not equal. We also want to laugh at feminism. In the same way we like to laugh at people we admire (Dolly Parton, David Attenborough), to humanize and put a friendly face to them. And in the same way a child might pick on or laugh at a child they fancy in school. Because we are immature and don’t know how to process our emotions.

Please come see our show. There are naked women.