‘We’re women, not ladies,’ the Women’s Libber, still in campaigning mode after 40 years, reminded us sharply.
‘We’re women, not ladies,’ the Women’s Libber, still in campaigning mode after 40 years, reminded us sharply. She was for the first time in the same room as Peter Jolley, who had helped to organise the notorious 1970 Miss World contest. He, too, does not seem to have changed much in the intervening decades. ‘So much work went into it, my dear,’ he insisted, riling his fellow conversationalists, perhaps deliberately.
Twenty-five billion viewers switched on to watch the event at the Royal Albert Hall as 58 ‘girls’ from around the world were set up like prize specimens and assessed for beauty, personality and demeanour. On this occasion, though, another group of ‘girls’ had decided they’d had enough of women being exploited for commercial gain and smuggled into the hall in their ‘handbags’ an armoury of smoke bombs, rotten tomatoes and ‘limp lettuce’ to disrupt the competition and expose its iniquities.
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