This article began as a reply to the Guardian’s call for responses on body image, but I had more to say than would have fitted into their 200-300 word limit.

For starters: I am overweight and I am not fucked up about it. Here are some of my thoughts on a lifetime of body-based bullshit – a lot of which I only started to realise and address when I joined a gym for the first time this year.

I’m going to focus on the body shape and exercise side of things here because food and loathing is in itself a subject which would take more word count to tackle than our lovely editor has time to read through. Suffice to say that due to being raised right I have always known how to eat healthily, and that ‘diet’ is a four letter word. I’ve sometimes felt a bit left out of the whole dumbass ‘detox fat flush carb starve blah blah fad’ being discussed around the water cooler, but I’m also profoundly grateful that self-hatred regarding food has never been my mother tongue. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not particularly confident about my body, but crucially it’s never been the main thing I measure my self-worth by. I can’t begin to express how grateful I am that I dodged that bullet.

I have always been overweight (to varying degrees), but I’ve also always been pretty active (my post-viral fatigue syndrome years notwithstanding). For the last few years I’ve been swimming around a mile a week (sometimes more), I do some yoga, and every couple of years I start working out for a bit. Often people do a double-take when they find out that I swim a lot. ‘But you’re a size 16. Does not compute!’ As Health at Every Size can tell you, fat and fit are not always a dichotomy, but nonetheless the cultural assumption is that a big person must be stationary.

However, since the beginning of November last year, I started exercising a lot (I’m unemployed/’freelancing’ and needed something to get me out of the house) and as I started to ‘tune up’ physically I found myself – despite wanting to move up a gear to the next bit – really dragging my heels about ever moving the exercising out of the privacy of my room. I found myself looking up exercise tutorials on YouTube and then trying to figure out how to supplement the equipment they used with something I had lying around. (Water bottles filled with sand instead of weights because owning weights is for, y’know, them… and I’m not one of them.) However, at a certain point I realised that there weren’t many workarounds left for the machines I was genuinely craving a go on – I needed an actual real-life gym.

Swimming (like I say, my physical activity of choice) does involve wearing a swimsuit, but this is one activity I was raised with, and something about being submerged once you’re in, about not ever getting sweaty, about not having to make eye contact with anyone else, made me think of it as the exception to the ‘exercise is scary’ rule. Gyms remained terrifying to me.

Previously known only as the Valley of Horrors

When I finally just bit the bullet and went, I was relieved to find out it was full of a range of shapes, sizes and ages, and I did fine on the machines. The guy who did the induction just talked me through how to use each machine, set a goal and left me to it. No hectoring, shouting, or close-ups on unflattering areas like they do on the TV all the time.

I realised later it wasn’t my own performance I was worried about (I know I’m pretty fit these days – I barely got out of breath), but an internalised shame about being a larger person being seen doing exercise at all. I realised I saw exercise as a ‘thin person’ activity.

I get that if you’re aiming to get fitter, thinner or both, then a gym sure as hell helps, but still I was reluctant. It didn’t seem to make any sense – but then I realised: all the shame and embarrassment I was feeling wasn’t about me, it was a response to a lifetime of others’ assumptions. Experiences like being laughed at if I got pink-faced after running somewhere, or always being picked last for the teams in PE (despite being pretty good at football back then – fuck you, my Year 5 class), or a school bully cackling loudly when she overheard me say to a friend “yeah, sure, I’ll meet you after dance club”. My own abilities didn’t put me off exercise – other people’s (conscious and unconscious) group shaming did.

In fact, avoidance of embarrassment has been seen to be one of the largest factors inhibiting girls in the UK from doing PE. The WHO’s own study has noted that:

It is important to recognise the significance of girls’ early experiences of physical activity and it is often within the context of physical education lessons where understanding of individual sporting identity is developed … what were initially regarded as lesser concerns for school governing bodies, such as specific uniforms for physical education lessons and the standards of showering facilities were shown to be significant aspects in girls’ actual enjoyment of school sports.

[...] in sports there are many occasions where the body is literally displayed and this has the potential for the individual to be exposed to negative emotional experiences of shame and embarrassment.

Can I get an amen, sister? I’m writing this a few weeks away from my 26th birthday, but I only very recently realised that I am still haunted by the memories of the Nelson Muntzs of my school years pointing, laughing or making bitchy comments.

Anyone who does any sports or goes to the gym will tell you: you will get sweaty – that’s how it works – but in my teens (and even before) how well you did at PE wasn’t half as important as avoiding the indignity of getting sweaty, red-faced or out of breath. As a chubbier kid, I was an even easier target for the standard crap.

In a world dominated by the RED CIRCLES OF SHAME from Heat magazine and the like – drawing attention to any perceived imperfections, sweat stains, funny creases and so on in even the most highly-regarded beautiful people – is it any wonder that the perceived embarrassment of getting hot, sweaty or out of breath is prohibitive to many people? The Surgeon General in the ‘States has drawn flak for suggesting that the extra haircare required might be a small contributing factor in putting many women off exercise, and in a world where a bad hair day for some celebrities can make it to the press, is it any wonder that the trickle-down effect has been to make ordinary women even more self-conscious about these things too?

Fat-shaming is not just a shitty way to treat people (duh) – it’s also utterly counter-productive. To be honest I only ever felt moderate embarrassment about my figure, but I felt acutely ashamed of my body in relation to exercise. I felt that because of my body shape, certain doors were closed to me. Ironically, most of those doors were ones that led to better fitness and possibly even changing my shape.

In an inverse-snobbery retaliation I’d decided that explicit, gym-type exercise was for horrible/vain/stupid people. When I started exercising, I started working through all the years of rubbish I’d accumulated in relation to physical activity – and my self-image has done far more of a reshape than my body has over the past three months (though the body’s coming along nicely, thanks for asking). While I’ve been really enjoying exercising under my own steam, I’ve also been exorcising the ghosts of schoolyards past.

Some of the things that kicked me into upping my exercise ante were finding friends of mine were into certain sports and realising that exercising was actually a pretty normal thing that pretty normal people do. Not everyone who goes to the gym is either a supermodel or a wanker. And some exercise can be pretty badass (I’m still looking for boxing lessons locally – I really want to hit things).

So, uh, morals. Well, the moral of the story is don’t be scared of new stuff, and if you are trying to get healthier then for God’s sake don’t worry about other people. You’re not at school anymore and no one gives a crap. That haw-haw Nelson Muntz kid from the playground isn’t here. They’re grown up, somewhere else, and would probably be embarrassed to remember they were that mean. That toned person sweating on the exercise bike next to you? They’re much more worried about their own abs than yours, and are probably mentally compiling shopping lists as they go. No one cares, and no one should be judging you anymore. This is about you and your body. You’re the one that gets to live in it.

Ladies and gents, I have a confession: I watch the crappiest, most sensationalist reality shows and ‘documentaries’ – as long as I think no one’s looking. However, my latest one is so bad and so compulsive that I’ve forced at least three friends to watch episodes with me. It’s car crash TV, it’s Two Minutes Hate strung out for 45: it is Channel 4’s Sorority Girls.

Described by one friend of mine as ‘hate crack’, Sorority Girls is a reality TV show based around five girls from American sororities doing the standard reality TV show whittle to find their perfect ‘sisters’ in the UK and form Britain’s first ever sorority. That’s right: it’s The Apprentice for female friendship. Didn’t realise you had to jump through hoops, sing songs and outperform others to be friends? Think again.

What Are Friends For

In the ‘Greek system’ of sororities (sisterhoods) and fraternities (brotherhoods), people in colleges in the US can apply to join a sorority or a fraternity (each is represented by various Greek letters) – a combination of accommodation and social activities which – they keep telling us – is where you make friends for life.

However, obviously not everyone wants to be friends with everyone – so there’s a selection process. In Sorority Girls it begins with an interview in which each potential new member (or ‘PNM’ – this thing has more jargon than a pick-up artist convention) is interviewed about themselves by the five, identically-dressed, rictus-smile-wearing members. Questions include “Can you talk me through your outfit?”, “Can you show us your best dance move?” and “Do you think we’re heading for a double dip recession?” Seriously, WTF? EXPLAIN WHY YOU WORE THOSE CLOTHES! DANCE FOR US, MONKEY! NO, HONEST WE’RE INTELLECTUAL!

If you get through this hoop, you’re allowed (gee, thanks) to pledge your loyalty to the sorority, and you become a ‘pledge’ – not to be confused with a fully-initiated sorority sister. YOU HAVE AGES YET TO GO. REPEAT: AGES.

At this stage, you get the hazing. Interestingly, Channel 4 avoided the h-word for the whole series. Fraternities especially are infamous for their often-dangerous hazing – usually mixes of brutality, alcohol and stupidity – and stories of student deaths are sadly all too frequent. However, though sororities are not completely free of violence, in the main their selection processes are known for being far more about judgement, humiliation, and policing each others’ behaviour. All for the grand prize of… being friends.

Don’t know about you, but I don’t want friends that’d do that to me.

Past and Present

Pledge Pin for pledges (non-initiated sisters)

By the 1970s (when my mother was at university in the States) sorority and fraternity membership was waning and seen by many as old fashioned and uncool, but from the mid-1980s onwards a revival has been going on, in much the same time period as the rise of the Christian right wing. Though religion and politics are never explicitly mentioned in Sorority Girls, the girls do seem to be preoccupied with furthering a socially conservative (chaste, sober, uncontroversial) set of values under the disguise of helping the pledges ‘develop’ and ‘improve’ themselves.

In The Club?

In the selection process of Sorority Girls, pledges are admonished for wearing too much make-up, for having two drinks in their hands at once, for having a hint of ‘attitude’, for being too loud, for being too quiet, for not getting on well enough with the specially-shipped-in frat boys, for getting along too well with the frat boys… In other words it’s the worst of Queen Bee girlie bullying behaviour. The worst put-down these girls have seems to be ‘that’s inappropriate’ – but at the same time, what is appropriate isn’t particularly clear. One girl got thrown out for questioning why, if fake eyelashes were banned, fake nails were still allowed.

It’s Mean Girls. It’s The Heathers. It’s high school crap, but in my experience, by the end of school (and certainly by uni) social groups had diversified enough that we were done with that shit. If the Queen Bees didn’t approve of me at age 13, they could try (and often succeeded) to make my life miserable. If they didn’t like me by age 17: Meh. Shrug. Fuck’em. I had friends and interests far away from their spheres, and likewise I think they’d often also either grown up or moved on, because all of a sudden we were all just people. Classmates with more going on in our lives than our clothes, deportment or how we wore our hair. I see most of the behaviour on Sorority Girls as a flashback to the bad old days of my early-to-mid-teens, and it depresses me beyond words that so many young women willingly submit to this – putting themselves through this self-esteem grinder – in the hope that they will be let into the club so that they too can become as composed as their frenemy tormentors.

There are also elements of the induction on the programme which appear to be cult-like brainwashing (regular sleep disruption, fake kidnappings, physical trials, deliberately bringing people emotional highs followed quickly by lows) as well as possibly encouraging a kind of Stockholm Syndrome. One ritual involves the girls holding Greek letters made of ice to their hearts until they’re melted – ‘as it burns you, so Sigma Gamma will always be burned onto your heart’. At one point (in front of their families) the would-be members pledge their commitment to the sorority above family, and by the end, cheerfully chant and praise and dance at the drop of a hat.

A "sorority rush" queue on Purdue University's Panhellenic Association Sorority Formal Recruitment day. Apparently even if you can pronounce all that in one go without stumbling, you *still* don't necessarily get in.

Also, let’s talk about males and double standards. Fraternities are famed for their heavy-drinking, womanising, loud & loutish behaviour, while sororities are famed for their bitchiness and ladylike reserve, but at the same time – despite their apparent lack of shared ground – sororities and fraternities view each other as safe and approved. By definition, it seems, frat boys are ‘nice boys’ no matter what their (individual or group) behaviour says to the contrary.

Frat boys were drafted in at one point in the show to ‘kidnap’ the girls (sling them over their shoulders and run off with them), get the girls drunk and hit on them. The girls who then seemed to enjoy their company too much were admonished for their ‘obscene’ behaviour. However, the one girl who wasn’t a fan of the frat guys and didn’t mingle with them was told off for being ‘cold’ and ‘unfriendly’.

In another stupid task the girls were taken to a town centre and told they had 20 minutes to find a ‘date’ for an event that evening. Regardless of attraction, they needed a man because they had been told to go find one – fast. Some of them already had boyfriends, and some of them had to ‘make do’ or bargain that they’d buy the guys lots of drinks. This was not about any woman’s happiness or enjoyment so much as about proving to the other women around them that they were desirable to the opposite sex. The one pledge who made the cardinal sin of taking one of these dates back to the sorority house was in a lot of trouble: you’re not supposed to be sexually available, only sexually desirable.

This worldview sees women as gatekeepers of virtue who are whores if they say ‘yes’ and unfriendly if they say ‘no’- leaving them to walk a tightrope of chaste, respectable (never flirty) friendliness upon pain of losing their ‘friends’ if they are not representing the sorority well. Oh, yes – you’re always representing your sisters. Your actions are never yours alone but a representation of the whole group, and therefore anything you do is up for analysis (‘you’ve let me down, you’ve let the sorority down, but most of all: you’ve let yourself down.’)

Friendship Is Magic

The final episode of Sorority Girls revealed the final five UK ‘sisters’ of Sigma Gamma, and rang especially hollow. The grand prize each girl had won was…. four ‘friends’. Four friends who had been selected by committee. Throughout the process the most interesting and lively girls were often cut. The American ‘sisters’ cited Kate Middleton and Jennifer Aniston as their ideal sorority sisters, and that blandness carried through. Nothing against Kate Middleton and Jennifer Anniston personally – I’m sure you’re nice – but these are women who are often photographed but rarely heard, and best known for marrying much more famous men. Surely you/I/we can all do better than that?

So, Sorority Girls: hard to tell how much was TV producers deliberately creating a young version of The Stepford Wives (surely they didn’t look that dead behind the eyes on the first take) and how much was ‘real’, but I’m pretty sure any sorority would never want yours truly, and likewise I would never want them.

So why the hell can’t I stop staring?!

'Dude, WTF? It says here that she eats tofu. Eeeeew. Let's hire someone else.' (photo: photostock)

I am currently job-hunting. I also have a unique name. I also blog and write for a variety of places.

For any potential future employers reading this, I would like to add some SEO keywords to do with how great I am:

• Hannah Eiseman-Renyard punctual
• Hannah Eiseman-Renyard well-dressed
• Hannah Eiseman-Renyard great communicator
• Hannah Eiseman-Renyard fully housetrained
• Hannah Eiseman-Renyard 10,000 blog hits in a week
• Hannah Eiseman-Renyard pretty eyes

However – jokes aside, I do feel somewhat vulnerable.

Subtle like a foghorn (Photo: imagerymajestic)

For any kind of artiste trying to make a name for themselves; being easy to find is usually a good thing. As a job-hunter it’s more of a mixed blessing.

Also, as of April last year I’ve had a weird and unexpected civil rights/zombie thing going on. I was happy to put my name to the whole fiasco because I care about civil rights and I reckoned I was well-placed to draw attention to it. The bank holiday weekend of the royal wedding was the first time I put my name on this blog, and for a few weeks I became an unofficial spokesperson for my fellow arrestees. If it ever came up in an interview I would hold my head high and say the police gave me crappy lemons & I made civil rights lemonade.

And while I'm confessing stuff: sometimes I spread hoisin sauce on toast and call it lunch

As I said – I consciously put these things into the public sphere because I thought they had merit, and I don’t particularly want to work for anyone that would have a massive problem with any of them – but at the same time: I am unemployed. I am unemployed in a recession and I would seriously like to get employed again as soon as possible.

'We've read your stuff but we still like you' Aww... thank you, fictional colleagues. (credit: photostock)

Some people would say I should just not have this stuff out there if I think it could affect my employment. To some extent they’re right but I would argue back that the same way I keep my personal life out of the office, the office should keep out of my cyberspace. My blogging won’t affect my ability to hit deadlines and punctuate well – so why should it matter?

It shouldn’t. But it almost certainly does. And (though the zombie horse has clearly already bolted/shambled) I can feel myself beginning to self-censor with other things. Unlike many female bloggers I have not (yet) had the pleasure of receiving actual abuse – but I am starting to feel the scrutiny of the prospective employer. Though I am not yet deleting anything, I am starting to get nervous.

For example – I am currently brainstorming (and quite excited about) an idea I’ve had for an article on people’s attitudes to ‘the C-word’ (as it is coyly referred to). I think it could make for a pretty rich cultural study. I started drafting a survey and got over 30 friends lined up to answer it – but then I remembered that I’m a job-hunter. With a very Googleable name. And then I just pictured someone receiving my very impressive job app, rubbing their eyes in disbelief at the sheer sparkly quality of my CV, and then Googling my name…. and finding ‘Hannah Eiseman-Renyard c*nt’.

And then I took some time out from the C-word article planning and started writing this.

I admit full responsibility that in most instances when my name is on a thing it’s either because I’ve put it out there or because I’ve allowed someone else to – but – call me idealistic or stupid – I still can’t quite resign myself to actively trying to hide my online presence. What would the point be in a blog which is 50% writing showreel if I can’t put my sodding name to it?

I don’t have any answers. I have a kvetch and a plea. I am a good worker but I’m also a (relatively) well-rounded human being with interests outside of work. I promise my occasionally colourful out-of-office life will not intrude on what I do in the office – so pretty please can we all draw a line under online presences and also… giveusajob?

38 Degrees has put up a petition (they’re good at that) telling him to listen to his voters and stop calling them zombies.

Dear Simon Burns,

We’re citizens, not zombies.

We have a right to be treated with respect by our MPs and to expect a reply when we get in touch.

Every British citizen has a right to be heard in our democracy. Thousands of us write to our MPs, because we care. Because we value democracy. Because the decisions you take affect us.

It’s your job to listen.

However, being a loudmouth and a zombie – I thought I’d troll the slimey sod. (BTW the Zombie Rights Campaign in the ‘States has also put in their two cents’ worth.)

My email to Simon Burns MP

Dear Simon Burns,

I am a zombie. A politically active one at that.

Your use of ‘zombie’ as an insult to politically engaged citizens is childish and ignorant, not to mention extremely offensive to zombies.

It’s our job as zombies to eat brains, it’s your job as an MP to listen to voters. Stop the petulant name-calling and do your job.

Yours,

Ms H Eiseman-Renyard
(deceased)

Today I got the news that we have been granted permission for that Judicial Review. Needless to say I am delighted. Official press release below:

Judicial Review of Preemptive Royal Wedding Arrests

Fifteen people who were arrested preemptively on the day of the Royal Wedding have been granted permission to challenge their arrests by way of Judicial Review. The claimants, who were arrested from different locations across central London, had not committed any crimes. Those arrested included people on their way to peaceful protests, as well as people the police merely suspected of being on their way to protests. None of the claimants were charged and all were released almost as soon as the public celebrations had finished.

“It is our view that the treatment of our clients was unlawful under common law and was in breach of their fundamental rights under the European Court of Human Rights articles 5, 8, 10 and 11,” said a spokesperson from Bhatt Murphy. “The apparent existence of an underlying policy that resulted in those arrests is a matter of considerable concern with implications for all those engaged in peaceful dissent or protest.”

Those arrested include members of the ‘Charing Cross 10’ who were on their way to a republican street party, the ‘Starbucks Zombies’ who were arrested from an Oxford Street branch of Starbucks for wearing zombie fancy dress, and a man who was simply walking in London and was stopped and arrested by plainclothes officers because he was a ‘known activist’. The arrests have been dubbed ‘precrime’ in many circles.

The arrests, all said to be to prevent anticipated breach of the peace, are part of a trend on the part of Metropolitan Police of using increasingly heavy-handed tactics against peaceful protestors, which manifested itself most recently in the threat to use rubber bullets against students protesting against the rise in tuition fees. Such tactics create a ‘chilling effect’ which dissuades others from protesting in the future.

The use of such tactics, which on the day of the royal wedding appears to have gone so far as to include a policy of carrying out preemptive arrests in order to intercept and prevent public protest and other dissent, raises questions of constitutional significance with regard to the role of policing in a democracy. The granting of permission for a Judicial Review means that those tactics will now be subject to the full scrutiny of the High Court in a 5 day hearing some time in the next year.

Bhatt Murphy is a leading civil liberties firm which specialises in police misconduct, prisoners’ rights, deaths in custody and immigration detention.

Conversely the easiest reviews are of things absolutely you hate. Imagine, then, my Schadenfreude-laden/masochistic delight when I discovered a book so bad I could start a rant about something on almost every single page. (In fact, I frequently did start said rants because chewing the ear off a nearby friend was preferable to wading through more of this grandiose-uncle’s-speech-at-a-wedding prose.)

So – who wrote this absolute stink-bomb of a book, I hear you ask? Albert Pierrepoint. And I’m absolutely allowed to be mean to him because he killed lots of people. For money.

Also – it’s a massive misinterpretation of the beautiful and proud celebrations of el Día de los Muertos – but since today is November 2nd, the Day of the Dead – and I’m looking for a handle – I think we’re ready to roll:

Put this book out of its misery

Pierrepoint, Britain’s last hangman, used a system of variable drops to snap the convict’s neck instantly – killing them as humanely as possible. I only wish he’d found a method for dispatching his sentences as painlessly.

There is no ghostwriter and oh boy does it show. I’m not entirely sure there was an editor, either. In describing his childhood, every conceivable detail is named: two pages on the embarrassment and ‘indignity’ of not being allowed long trousers when he was a boy, half a page on the way his aunt took the lid off a bottle of gingerbeer. I wish I was kidding.

I’d already seen the movie Pierrepoint when I spotted this book in a charity shop. I’d read that Pierrepoint came out as an advocate against the death penalty in his later life, and that (at one point) he lived in my old neighbourhood. These two factoids were enough to get me reading – but once I was reading… oh dear.

I know ‘it sent me to sleep’ is overused, but seriously I’ve been using this a sedative for a fortnight or more. I’m barely a third of the way through it. It’s turgid, dull-dull-dull and just screams “look at me using big words and gazing at my own navel ’cause now I’m a writer.”

The interesting bits – i.e. his attitudes to life and death, and taking another’s life, and why the hell he was drawn to that kind of work – he seems unwilling or unable to engage with. Only that it’s about dignity, but most men don’t understand, and ladies never understand. And he is forever grateful to his wife for her ‘discretion’ in never ever mentioning the fact that he was, y’know, bumping people off for money on the side.

If I were to attempt psychoanalysis I’d say that Albert Pierrepoint was a man who desperately craved the status – or in his own words the ‘dignity’ – which he perceived in adulthood and seriousness. Given that being a hangman was by definition a very serious job, and his father had been one too, I think he saw it as a way to responsibility and adulthood. I do not think Pierrepoint was a particularly perceptive or self-aware man. I don’t think he had many easily-articulated answers for why he did what he did – and therefore he was especially quick to dismiss others’ questions as their not understanding it. Well, they didn’t – and neither did he.

The past is a different country. A weird, emotionally-repressed one with extremely long sentences.

Congratulations on the wedding. How’s married life treating you? As per your instructions, in lieu of a gift, I will be making a donation to charity. I’ve chosen a legal aid charity. There’s some self-interest in that choice, but I’ll get to that later.

I don’t mean to put a dampener on things, but I would like to bring to your attention that on the day of your wedding (and even, in various incidents, the day before your wedding) the Metropolitan Police force arrested over a hundred people pre-emptively on the suspicion that they may, in the future, breach the peace.

People who had not broken any laws were detained at your grandmother’s/grandmother-in-law’s pleasure.

This is illegal, and constitutes an abuse of police powers.

These people were not a cohesive group and did not have cohesive aims. Some of them were protesting the cuts, some were republicans, some of them (myself included) did not have any stated aims at all, we just looked unconventional. All these people had in common was that the Metropolitan Police thought they looked like they may, in the future, breach the peace or cause a public nuisance.

When they were arrested some laughed – initially, some cried, some were fairly uninteresting in their behaviour, though they were dressed a bit funny. (That’s me in the bridesmaid’s dress – look, I made an effort!)

In this massive, sweeping abuse of police power people were arrested for possession of signs, possession of pens, and possession of their own credit cards.

If this sounds laughable that’s because it is – but it’s also deadly serious. The police are there to make the country safe for all the people they serve, not to silence the first sign of possible dissent. You, as heirs to the throne, are more than aware of the freedoms this country has fought for, and surely appreciate that this cannot continue unchecked.

On the day of your wedding, indeed for your wedding, it got nasty. Really nasty: retired anthropology professor Chris Knight was detained for 25 hours and his house and car were searched multiple times; pacifist protester Charlie Veitch was moved to an undisclosed location and denied his right to a phonecall or a lawyer; two transgender people were sexually assaulted by the police; at least two people were arrested on spurious grounds after filming others’ arrests, and more cases are coming to light as the days go on.

Whilst I’m not saying that these sweeping abuses were your fault, they were absolutely done in your name. We even have a policeman on video saying so in as many words 57 seconds in to this video here.

Therefore, I would be most grateful if you, the happy couple – and heirs to the throne – could let the Metropolitan Police know that you disapprove of these illegal and abusive actions.

Sincerely,

Hannah Eiseman-Renyard

My friend Chris Farnell runs a zombie blog, and had heard there would be an event involving zombies for the Royal Wedding. As Chris lives in Norwich and I live in London, he asked if I would go along to take pictures and report for him. I had heard that Queer Resistance were some of the organizers and that there would be a gay zombie wedding as part of the celebration. I wasn’t sure on any of the finer details, but it sounded like fun.

I heard the event would be 10:00 – 12:00 at Soho Square. I had noticed that the Twitter hashtag #RoyalZombieFlashmob wasn’t moving at all that morning, but I didn’t think much of it.

Me, dressed as a zombie bridesmaid, about to go out reporting

I got zombied up in a bridesmaid’s dress, headband of white flowers, dark circles around my eyes and some ‘blood’ (lipstain) running down my chin & from a wound in each arm. My housemates said nice things about my costume and told me to have fun. I left my house in Archway at about 9:45.

On the way my mother rang and asked what I was up to. I told her “off to report on a zombie flashmob for the Royal Wedding”. She was tickled and said it was nice to see the tradition of alternative celebrations was still going strong. “Don’t eat any brains I wouldn’t eat, Kiddo.”

En route my friend Mary, a journalist with more than a passing interest in zombies texted saying she’d heard that the organizers had been arrested the night before, and be careful.

I got to Soho Square at maybe 10:45. Nothing much was going on. As I arrived a few journalists and photographers who were already leaving took my picture and interviewed me. They said it was a “damp squib of a story” and nothing was happening.

I heard from a couple of other stragglers that the organizers (apparently a guy called Chris Knight and some about five or seven others, reports differed) had been arrested the day before for ‘attempted breach of the peace’ and a large stage guillotine had been impounded. Apparently the plan had been to execute some royals in effigy.

The only other zombie for a while

Within Soho Square there were maybe twelve people there for the demo – one dressed as a crusader with a colander on his head, a couple of people with crowns made out of gold paper and everyone else dressed in pretty normal, boring clothes. I heard a few chants of “one solution: revolution!” Three film crews were milling about, bored, more photographers and journalists milling about, and a pretty obvious police presence. I decided to hang well back and stayed on the other side of the square to where anyone else was.

Journalists kept approaching trying to interview me about my aims and objectives as I was pretty much the only one who looked like a zombie. I was a bit embarrassed, given that I’d come to report on it too and had no idea about aims or anything else – I just happened to have dressed up. I explained I was mainly there to report on it too. Lots of people took my picture. I couldn’t really find anyone to speak to myself. Apparently I was the story. Whoops.

Zombie wedding cake. Plainclothes police officer in blue hoodie.

After maybe twenty minutes the people who I’m lazily referring to as anarchists (probably republican but other than that I have no idea what their aims/objectives/sympathies were) cut a ‘zombie wedding cake’ – I finally came in closer to get a picture. Eventually I stood on a bench to get a decent shot past all the other press, but I noticed that many cameras were trained on me, not the cake, as they were there to report on zombies and I was the only one who looked like a sodding zombie.

The maybe-anarchists handed out slices of cake (chocolate sponge with some jam on top – very nice.) They kept saying anyone could have some cake, “even plainclothes police officers” – and they took great delight in pointing one guy out. He was slouched on a park bench in a hoodie (hood up) with his arms folded.

“The main thing we’ve been doing is plainclothes policeman-spotting. They‘re the ones that look shifty and uncomfortable” – Martin Wheatly, freelance photographer with Sinister Pictures

There was a hell of a lot of wandering around aimlessly, talking to bored journalists and posing for bored photographers. No one seemed to really know what was going on – we’d all turned up to see a thing which, as far as we could tell, wasn’t happening.

This is Amy Cutler, a phd student and creator of Passenger Films. She is awesome.

Two more cheery zombie enthusiasts joined us – I later learned they were Ludi and Erich. They got some snazaroo facepaint and brushes out of their bags and, with a plastic Starbucks cup full of water, Ludi started to paint Erich up as a zombie.

Ludi paints Erich. Photographers swarm.

Photographers surrounded us. This was the most interesting thing they’d seen so far.

While we were getting talking (and complimenting Ludi on her blood-spatter paint effect on the back of Erich’s head) a scuffle broke out towards one of the side entrances of Soho Square. I went by to take a picture or two but there wasn’t much to see: a line of cops blocking the exit with blank expressions on their faces and some of the maybe-anarchists saying that cops had taken their friend for no reason. One guy seemed to be waving his flag in their faces and the mood was turning.

I’ve since found video footage of it here:

It gets nasty: police take one demonstrator. We make a swift exit.

On the corner of Oxford Street and Soho Street there was a Starbucks (55-59 Oxford Street, to be precise). We agreed it was a shame to get all dressed up with no place to go, so maybe we should go for a coffee. I was a bit wary about staying so nearby, but the other zombies (rightfully) pointed out that we were just being consumers now so there shouldn’t be any problem.

A family of zombies just outside Starbucks

We ordered coffee. We saw two women and one man, zombied-up, heading in to Soho Square with two small children. We ran out to get a picture of them and warned them it looked like it was getting nasty. They had American accents and one of the kids had a sign which said “princesses are pigs.”

As we went back inside the Starbucks we saw three or four (memories differ) police vans indicating left to turn into Soho Square. We took our seats by the window again and rolled our eyes that this was completely silly and disproportionate and the cops must be really bored today.

At around 11:45 about three or four cops came into the Starbucks and asked us to come outside. We picked up our stuff and followed them out. They lined us up outside the window of Starbucks and informed us we were being stopped and searched. We asked under what grounds – they said Section 60. This meant nothing to us so we asked what it was – they said they had reason to suspect we were going to disturb the peace.

I have since looked up Section 60 and it relates to having cause to suspect a person is carrying a weapon. This was clearly not a risk from us in the first place, and was even more clearly not a risk once they had searched our bags and found nothing more incriminating than cameras, bottles of water, facepaint and books.

Zombies being stopped and searched under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994

For the record, the numbers I noted down were:
EK 477
EK 244
EK 125
EK 113.
According to Wikipedia this means that they were constables from Kentish Town.

I said if dressing like a zombie was a breach of the peace then I breached the peace every hallowe’en. The police in question clearly knew it was a bit ridiculous, and made quite pleasant chit-chat throughout. Constable Loughlin (EK477) who was searching Erich, upon hearing his accent asked “you over here on holiday? You enjoying it? Shame today’s a bit cloudy, isn’t it?” The officer searching Amy made chit-chat about the book in her bag (A Million Little Pieces) “Have you read that book?”

We asked if we could go now. They said they had to still hold us as the way we were dressed indicated that we may disturb the peace. We kept pointing out that we’d just been drinking coffee in Starbucks. They said that this was true but we might go on to meet others and create a disturbance elsewhere.

I have since seen footage (3rd and 4th videos) that James Newman, a man filming our stop and search, was searched and arrested himself. He was searched under Section 60, and arrested on the grounds that his own credit card with his name on it may have been stolen property. I wasn’t aware that any of this was happening at the time.

At this point I wanted to use my phone to text or call a friend, update the Twitter hashtag on the flashmob, etc., but an officer told me to put my phone away. I have no idea, looking back, whether that was something they had a right to request or simply a police officer’s personal preference. Either way, from 11:45 we were incommunicado.

I asked what we could do to prove that we were bored now and wanted to leave. The police seemed pleased to know we had changes of clothes and makeup remover with us and said that would count in our favour, but no, we couldn’t go yet. The stop and search process was apparently still going on, despite the fact that they’d finished searching our bags and pockets, and had given each of us our little stop and search forms.

There were five zombies: myself, Amy, Erich, Ludi and a girl we didn’t really get a chance to talk to, who the Guardian article identified as ‘Deborah, 19’. There were five zombies lined up along the Starbucks window and sixteen police officers.

Various press buzzed about photographing this. We kept being asked if they were “your friends” despite most of them having clearly visible press badges on lanyards around their necks.

Zombies are informed we are about to be arrested for breach of the peace

Then the police got news on their walkie-talkies, evidently from some superior who wasn’t there, that we would be arrested. They apologized, and informed us that we had to stay there until their colleagues arrived who would arrest us.

After maybe ten minutes more police officers in high-vis jackets arrived and handcuffed each of us. The handcuffs had a big black plastic separator between each wrist. We were cuffed with our hands in front of us, one hand facing left and the other facing right.

From looking at the Guardian online video (7:30) I can tell you that Amy’s arresting officer was definitely number ST 4519. Erich’s and my officers’ numbers are less clear, but it looks like Erich’s officer was number ST 4826, and mine was ST 4514. The area code ‘ST’ followed by a four digit number indicates that these police were Special Constables from Whetstone.

We were loaded into a police van which sat there for a long while. Deborah, 19, was loaded into a different van.

The van door was open and various journalists poked their heads through the door, including the Guardian journalist. We were told we’d be taken to a police station, though it took them ages to find out which one.

All the arresting officers (one per person) were cheery enough and amused by the situation. Every officer we dealt with was perfectly pleasant – they pointed out to us that Prince Harry was still single and played AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ in the van – but the fact remained that we were being arrested for wearing fancy dress (or, in my case, for wearing misapplied Max Factor Lipfinity lipstain).

It took an hour and fifteen minutes to get across London. During that time we went past Hyde Park and probably saw more of the crowds than we would have otherwise.

Two and a half hours after the handcuffs have been removed: marks still visible

On their walkie-talkies the police kept referring to us as ‘prisoners.’

In the van we agreed to wait for each other outside the station and go get a coffee or a drink afterwards. Deborah, 19, (we realised later) had not been around for this conversation.

The fifth zombie: Deborah, 19

We arrived at Belgravia Police Station near Victoria at about 1:15. One by one we were booked in. Skip the next few paragraphs if you know the drill, but we didn’t, so this was a new one on us: pat-downs, shoes (including flip flops and the undersides of feet) checked, pockets and bags gone through. All my jewelery was confiscated as I apparently may have self-harmed with my two silver rings, hoop earrings and watch. As they took my watch I asked if there was a clock in the cells. I was told there wasn’t, but I could ask an officer what the time was.

The officer booking me in wanted to know if I “needed” my glasses. “Are those just reading glasses, or do you really need them to see?” I found myself channeling my middle-class uppity very well: When the officer failed to spell my name I did it for him in phonetics (“Echo, India, Sierra, Echo, Mike, Alpha, November…”); when I was told I could have literature on the arrest/on stop and search I insisted that I wanted it; when they asked how I was I glared and replied “bored”, and I insisted that they let me take a phone number from my mobile for my one call. When they asked who the phone number was for I replied (truthfully) that it was a friend of mine who is a journalist and is very well-connected.

For the record: I was bricking it – but I’ve been raised with brilliant, informed, left-leaning organizations like Young Quakers and the Woodcraft Folk all my life; I did debate soc in sixth form and at uni; I regularly email my MPs and others for Avaaz/Greenpeace/Amnesty etc.. As such, I am probably in one of the top percentiles of obnoxious people who know their stuff. Had I not had such middle-class bluster and composure, I’m sure I would’ve just capitulated to feeling guilty, and like a criminal, from the start.

I asked how long we would be kept in until. The officer kept saying “until it’s over” or “until it’s died down.” When I kept asking for something more specific, a ball-park figure, c’mon, he shrugged and said maybe 7:00 PM.

We were each photographed with our arresting officer. Front, side, other side, and from behind (I have a remarkably distinctive derriere). We were then each shown into our cells.

For those not in the know: police cells are really boring. There is nothing there. Mine was a tiled room, which was cold despite the sunny day. The ‘window’ was glass bricks so you couldn’t see out of it. There was one bench with an uncomfortable wipe-clean gym mat-type mattress on it, with a pillow made of the same. There was a stainless steel toilet with no seat, no toilet paper, and no sink. I had to ring the little bell and ask for toilet paper, and had to ring the little bell to be allowed out to wash my hands in the sink outside the cells when I was done.

As we were evidently well-liked and clearly no threat we were given, variously: the books from our bags, cups of tea and blankets. Some of us were given ‘lunch’ (imagine your worst school dinners, then make it neon and inedible – seriously, I’m not fussy and I only managed about three spoonfuls) – some of the later book-ins weren’t fed as they’d been booked in after lunchtime (despite the fact that we’d all been detained since 11:45).

The officers also eventually gave me the literature I’d requested on the arrest*, but there is no getting around the fact that it was incredibly boring, we had no idea how long we’d be there for, what time it was, or whether we’d be charged.

(*Amy has informed me she overheard officers saying that they’d better let me have the literature on it “What, cell 9? Yeah, you’d better. She looks like the type that’d cause trouble if you don’t.” Thank you for telling me this, Amy. It makes me very happy.)

As it was, my copy of the procedures book had the relevant pages ripped out. I requested another. I read it, but it was virtually no use as it kept referring to other documents, laws, bills and statutes which I had no access to.

Mary Hamilton (@newsmary on Twitter) - was my phonecall

When I got bored/worried enough I demanded my phonecall. I had written down my friend Mary Hamilton‘s number on the leaflet I’d been given, which is just as well as the police claimed they couldn’t find the copy they’d made of the number when they confiscated my phone and everything else.The officer insisted on dialing the number, and wanted to know who he’d be speaking to. I replied “I’d hoped I’d be speaking to her.” When it went to answer phone he handed me the handset and I left her a message. I asked the officer the time and he said 2:00. As I went back to my cell I checked with him again – no, whoops, it was 2:30. While it’s hard to tell what’s an honest mistake and what’s deliberately dicking someone about – since they’d already tried to confiscate my glasses, I was not inclined to assume the best of them.

Not being able to track the time in an empty room is a very strange, dislocating experience. Other things I did to keep myself entertained included yoga, sit-ups, singing (tiled room = amazing resonance) and attempting to sleep. The matt/pillow/blankets smelled musky and lived-in.



3:45PM - released without charge from Belgravia Police Station

At 3:45 we were released, one by one. We were told we were not being charged with anything and “it’s [the wedding is] all over now.” They advised us where the nearest sink was and told us to we should wash our faces and go home. I got the distinct impression from the officer doing this particular procedure that he thought I should be grateful. My friend Chris (of the zombie blog fame) has pointed out our release was almost exactly the time that Kate and Wills got into a cab and left the final public celebrations.

We didn’t wash our faces. Myself and Amy were let out first and we waited outside the police station for the others. Erich and Ludi turned up, but no Deborah, 19. We made enquiries and found out she’d been let out first, and had presumably just gone home. She was probably feeling the same mixture of shame, anger and harassment that the rest of us were, but without peers to laugh it off with.

Four zombies released without charge. Note the hazchem sign

The four remaining zombies went to the nearest pub for a drink. We swapped contact details and spoke about what we could do, given that it was clearly an unlawful arrest. We bounced ideas, but nothing is confirmed or sorted yet. However, we did learn that we are all pretty damn politically-informed, and pretty damned uppity.

Erich, wonderfully, turns out to be Erich Schultz, the director of the London Independent Film Festival, where Robert Carlyle, ‘King of the Zombies’ was the head of the jury this year. (Too good. Just too good.)

We all laughed about the fact that we all had been to demos where we had anticipated trouble – where we wrote legal aid phone numbers on our arms, left ID at home, etc. but this wasn’t one of them. This, we thought, wasn’t even a demo: it was a picnic with fancy dress.

We went on to Regent’s Park where some friends of mine were having a (non-peace-breaching) picnic. The friends included my phonecall Mary Hamilton, who interviewed us there and then on her iPhone. The interview with me is here:
In retrospect, I would like to retract my statement about people “clearly antagonising” the police. I have since seen footage from up close of what actually happened. From across the square we could just see people getting wound up and loud, and we knew it’d be smart to get out of there fast.

The interview with the other three zombies is here:

So, what now?

We (four) are looking at our options. If Deborah, 19, wants to get in touch then please do. We were stopped and searched using legislation designed to prevent football hooliganism, and the police used the powers of arrest as an arbitrary method of dispersal. We were released without charge as there was nothing to charge us with – but they were clearly hoping we’d crawl away, chastened and grateful that it was over. However – and I can’t emphasize this enough – we weren’t doing anything illegal. This was police harassment.

This was pretty mild police harassment as it goes and almost every officer we met was perfectly pleasant – but this does not undo the overall shittiness that our right to free assembly was revoked and we were illegally arrested and detained simply because the police didn’t like the look of us.

We are looking into things such as Black and Green Cross, various legal aid, Liberty, maybe even the Twitter joke trial people.

When it comes to battles to fight, I never imagined mine would be the right to dress up like an idiot, but this is the one that’s happened to me and I’m not going to let it slide. Being arrested and detained for nearly four hours is not an expectable, acceptable, or legal consequence of wearing some fake blood.

Metropolitan police: you have messed with the wrong zombies.

Q: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: THAT’S NOT FUNNY!

I love live comedy, honest I do. I spent two weeks at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last year and I’ll be there for the full three weeks this year. Some of my best friends are (very good) comedians. However, as a scene: live comedy has a problem. I haven’t been an aficionado for many years, so maybe it was always there – but if recent articles are anything to go by; it seems to be growing. Increasingly, the search for ‘edgy’ material is translating into a scene where the recoil laugh – the I-can’t-believe-you-just-said-that laugh – is the only one aimed for. The targets are ‘soft’ – minorities and marginalized groups – and the jokes prod at the same old prejudices. The numbers of times I come home from a comedy gig wanting to dry-clean my brain is rising.

My hackles were finally raised enough to write this article after an especially bad gig I went to recently. A sketch group of white, able-bodied young men performed a series of female grotesques which were so consistently unpleasant that – though cheerily presented – the unmistakable undercurrent to the evening was ‘we really don’t like women much.’ Most sketches involved a member of the group donning a plastic wig to ‘be a girl’ – and every female character was a Lolita, a whore, a woman giving birth or a mother who hated her children. The punchlines ranged from coat hanger abortions to incest to rape to paedophilia. At my table, from about halfway through, we didn’t laugh so much as look to each other for reaction shots and a reality check. Had there not been other people on the bill who I really wanted to see, I would have just walked out.

The problem is more widespread than just one shit comedy troupe. People more eloquent than myself have pointed out this return to the bad old days. It seems like the decades of hard-earned progress, a basic standard of ‘don’t be a shit to the marginalised’, is being discarded because now it’s apparently ironic. Sexism is increasingly tolerated (after all, everything’s sorted and equal now, so just lighten up, bitch) and other kinds of prejudice are also creeping back, too. ‘It’s not racist, it’s just un-PC, and no one likes political correctness. So, while we’re at it, what about those immigrants, homos, and the disabled, aye?’

Increasingly comedians who get pulled up for saying genuinely unpleasant things (I’m looking at you, Frankie Boyle) have taken this to be their selling point and then upped the ante in general douchery. While Jordan, the gossip-magazines’ favourite glamour model, might seem a fair target, when exactly did her disabled son become fair game, too? Let alone in a joke about incest and rape. I’ll repeat that: an incest-rape joke about a disabled eight-year-old child.

While I’m sure there has always been some truly unpleasant comedy around, its apparent mainstream acceptance is a new trend. The Frankie Boyle joke aired on Channel 4. This worries me because our words do carry a power – they reflect how we see the world, but they also set our standards for what is normal, acceptable, okay. The trickle-down effect has real-world consequences. The rise of the rape joke can be a horrific trigger for those who have experienced it. In increments, these themes – packaged as entertainment – normalise these horrors and dismiss their seriousness.

This is not an argument for censorship – I had fervent arguments a few years ago with Daily Fail-reading colleagues about whether Jerry Springer: the Opera should be shown on TV (yes, yes, a thousand times yes!) – but there is a huge middle ground between Mary Whitehouse prudery and comedy which is getting pretty close to hatespeech. Please, guys: self-regulate a little by engaging the brain.

Some would argue that if I don’t like this brand of comedy, I just shouldn’t watch it. To some extent they’re right, and I do try. When I saw a poster in Edinburgh for a standup show called ‘The Lying Bitch and the Wardrobe’ (I see what you did there) I had a pretty strong inkling that this wouldn’t be my kind of thing and I didn’t go. But on a mixed bill (as almost all small live comedy gigs are) there’s rarely any warning what each person will do – so while you might have gone along because you recognise one name that you like, there is no disclosure until you’re hearing it that the third act, Joe Bloggs, will be your prejudiced asshat for the evening, berating you all with a microphone for at least ten minutes.

Oh, and you paid to see this.

I don’t think anything should be off-limits – but some topics are so unpleasant (not to mention increasingly over-mined) that if a comedian wants to tackle them they will need to be so damn funny, so ingenious, original, tactful – that 80% of comedians just shouldn’t bother. Needless to say, the 80% that aren’t up to speed don’t get this, and the 20% that can do it well often have better things to do than prod triggertastic subjects and tired old clichés with a great big stick. They’re off crafting material that makes you belly-laugh (and think) rather than just titter nervously in disbelief.

James Ross - more sensible than he looks

As my friend James Ross, who runs the consistently wonderful Fat Kitten Improv group and the Better Living Through Comedy night put it: “From a purely technical standpoint, shock humour suffers acutely from a law of diminishing returns: the audience build up a resistance to it, and that alone would be good reason to limit its use.”

Fat Kitten Improv - wonderful and non-bigoted

I think the thing which is missing (besides originality) is a measure of basic empathy. In the increasingly desperate search for ‘dark’ and ‘cutting edge’ material, comedians forget that a lot of their lazily-picked targets are people. Real people. People with feelings and also (self-interest alert, guys:) people who go to comedy gigs.

The rising amount of ‘ironic’ misogyny is not creating a particularly friendly environment for a certain 50% of punters. Last year I went to the Comedy Store to see twelve different comedians being filmed for The World Stands Up. I wasn’t entirely sure if the person who’d invited me along had intended the evening as a date or not, so it was potentially awkward already. Then, as the evening unfolded, four out of twelve comedians used ‘bad fellatio’ as the bedrock of their sets. One standup spent his whole set mocking his wife for not pleasuring him correctly. In the narratives that we heard that night, women’s main role was as dispensers of sexual favours – and we couldn’t even do that right. Thanks, guys. I haven’t been back to the Comedy Store since.

For another example, I was once out with a group for a friend’s birthday when a standup did a set about making a mess in the disabled toilet and blaming it on a disabled person. While he wasn’t to know that birthday girl, sat in the front row, had cerebral palsy – why did he think this would be a good topic in the first place? How many times has he encouraged the able-bodied to laugh at this disadvantaged minority’s expense?

Catherine Semark - smart, funny, feminist

One piece of etiquette that people seem to be riding roughshod over is whether you have a ‘claim’ to your material. While there aren’t (and shouldn’t be) any rules about who is allowed to talk about what, whether or not you’re on the receiving end of a prejudice can make a huge difference to whether or not you have the empathy, warmth, and originality to do it well. Richard Pryor, Omid Djalili, Sarah Silverman, or Goodness Gracious Me on race: usually very good. Jim Davidson on race: enough said.

This isn’t an argument for ‘nice’ comedy. Some of my favourite comedians are pretty darn dark and twisted – Bill Hicks, Dylan Moran, and I heartily recommend Loretta Maine and The Beta Males – but the ‘type’ of twisted is crucial. Jokes are about status – people use them every day to agree boundaries of what’s acceptable, and with that comes a certain amount of responsibility. When activist comedians such as Mark Thomas or Kate Smurthwaite use humour to mock people in power for making bad decisions, that’s something very different to a middle class standup laying into ‘chavs’ for talking funny and drinking cheap booze.

Anger and humour are very often interlinked, but where you aim that anger makes all the difference. Aim it ‘up’ at deserving, more powerful targets and it’s subversive, it can hold people to account – satire has a long and proud tradition. Aim that anger ‘down’ at the underdog and it’s tired, old and – frankly – it’s bullying.