Girl Power

  • Mariella Frostrup: ‘At last I’m not pigeonholed, I’m just me’

    Confident, chic and impeccably connected, broadcaster Mariella Frostrup is probably the last person one would imagine feeling insecure or anxious. Yet, it is only now – at the age of 59 – that she of the trademark honey-blonde bob and caramel vocal cords admits to having overcome a lifelong case of Imposter Syndrome.

  • ‘A stranger on a train told me my son needed a darned good smack’

    One cold evening, long before Covid, my son Sam and I were returning home after another long day, running to catch the 16:58. Sam, then aged eight, was stressed, exhausted, hungry and overwhelmed. We were lucky enough to grab a couple of seats before everyone else piled onto the train. Soon the carriage became a solid mass of bodies pressed up against each other, everyone tired and tetchy and wanting to get home. Sam started kicking one of the passengers standing beside him. I asked him to stop,

  • Never mind FOMO, I just want more TOMO – time on my own

    On Thursday, my friends had dinner in Soho at our favourite Chinese restaurant. The one we’d missed most sorely during the lockdowns, when the usually teeming streets of central London were eerily emptied of crowds. Pre-Covid, we’d pack in there on a work night, each of us having hotfooted it from our respective offices, squeezing around a white-clothed table and sharing steaming dumplings. We couldn’t wait to return. Except, when the time came, something had changed. Most of us were working fro

  • Mindy Kaling: 'There's so much I love about my husband-less life'

    Best known for her roles in The Office and The Mindy Project, actor, writer and director Mindy Kaling last week announced the arrival of her second child, a son named Spencer. Here, in her latest book, she reflects on the perks and drawbacks of being a single parent over the past three years to her daughter Katherine, who she calls Kit. Times I wish I had a husband When I’m alone at a party. A husband is a built-in, permanent plus-one. That is extremely valuable. When I go to a party alone, I’m so stressed about all the conversation I have to make, trying to find things I have in common with everyone. OMG the new artisanal coffee place on Larchmont! OMG Fleabag! OMG the President! Eventually I end up excusing myself to go to the bathroom, where I play Donut County on my phone to relax. If I was at a party with my husband, we could choose to not socialise at all. We could stand in the corner ignoring everybody else. Our time could be spent constructing shopping lists or itemising all of our familial tax exemptions. ‘Hey, don’t judge us,’ we’d say. ‘At least we left the house.’ Then I would wrap my arm around my husband, who’d be wearing the outfit I chose for him, including the pocket square he found ‘unnecessary’, and together we would sip from our shared glass of top-shelf red wine that some sad single person had brought. Heaven! When I need to reach things. I am five feet, four inches and sometimes there’s a bottle of wine on the top shelf of my cupboard. When kids’ books mention daddies. As any single mother knows, this one can really suck. When there’s a dad character in a book, I want to explain it to Kit in a confident but economical way so it doesn’t get derailed into a long conversation about personal choices. Once, Daniel Tiger’s dad took him to the park with his new bicycle, and I started babbling like an obviously guilty criminal in the interrogation room at a police station. Daniel Tiger’s dad was so cute and affectionate, shouldn’t Kit have a cute and affectionate dad/tiger in her life? This would be undeniably easier to handle if I had a husband. I could just point to him and say, ‘That’s your Daniel Tiger’s dad.

  • Revealed: how women have been left psychologically distressed by the Covid-19 pandemic

    More than a third of British women have suffered psychological distress during the coronavirus pandemic, stark new findings from a large-scale study seen by The Telegraph reveal. In June, some 34 per cent of women were thus affected, compared to 24 per cent of men. The figure for April was even higher, with 40 per cent of women affected, compared to 26 per cent of men. Psychological distress was measured by criteria used across academia and healthcare, taking into account how much sleep someone is losing to worry, how well they are able to concentrate and make decisions, and whether they’re able to enjoy day-to-day activities, among other things. The alarming new data comes from a long-established longitudinal household study called Understanding Society, which tracks a representative sample of 17,450 women and men on a monthly basis. The project had been running since 2009 but this year researchers added new questions to see how Covid-19 was affecting participants’ lives. The findings are being analysed by researchers at the Universities of Warwick and Nottingham with a view to understanding how women in particular have been hit. The early signs are discouraging, and will prove worrying to gender equality campaigners. While the figures alone don’t explain what exactly is causing the poor mental health of so many women, the researchers agree it’s fair to assume the answers lie in the myriad ways in which their lives have been severely impacted by Covid-19, as highlighted by this newspaper’s Equality Check campaign. It is also clear that this impact has been significantly greater for women than men. In June, 55 per cent of working women said they were doing most of the childcare, while only seven per cent of working men said the same. Some 59 per cent of working women reported they were doing most of the home-schooling at that time, compared with only nine per cent of working men.

  • The pop band that inspired a generation of women

    Who-oo-oo do you think you are? A blummin’ inspirational girl power pop group, that’s who.