Their misbehaviour was dull, usually revolting; that of the ladette is the stuff of voyeurism and male fantasy.Yet, because the people behind these programmes are not pornographers but ambitious young men and women of the media, the exploitation is given a cunning, modern gloss.Actresses who advance their careers by undressing for male magazines are no longer perceived as witless bimbos demeaning themselves for the male gaze,but as free spirits making their way in the world ina witty, hedonistic, self-parodic manner.Similarly, a TV show such as Ally McBeal – in which the central character is a simpering air-head prepared to pout and wiggle for men to get her way, even in court (she’s an attorney, for heaven’s sake) – gets away with it by playing the irony game. Somehow, if the presentation is knowing and slick enough, the insult to women can be ignored.Just as, in the late Sixties, the mood of political liberation was exploited by men to get vulnerable younger women into bed, so today’s media portrait of young women, either as quickie-crazed bunk-up-merchants or giggling bimbos, is every bit as insidious and harmful as any stereotypes of the past.It makes good marketing sense, of course. To the poor saps who spend their days thinking up new ways to sell deodorants, or to the lazy creators of fly-on-the-wall documentaries, it offers an opportunity to provide the illusion of cutting-edge contemporaneity while cashing in on traditional forms of fantasy and voyeurism.Yet it is now so accepted and widespread, that an unpleasant form of brainwashing could be taking place. Be a ladette, enjoy that quickie, wiggle and pout at work, teenage girls are being told – it is all right to play up to men, so long as it is for you, not for them.It all seems rather sad, the way feminism’s hard-won victories have been hijacked by the marketing culture.

Somehow, all the talk of freedom and choice sounds more and more like a new version of the old, old story.terblacker aol
More from Terence Blacker. The Leeds International Piano Competition cranks up again, drawing the young hopefuls of the piano world to Yorkshire. A hundred-plus virtuosi will go through their paces, and, after the televised final, one winner will emerge, clutching a cheque for £12,000 and a trophy, and, with the help of tremendous media coverage, will find him or herself catapulted into the first rank of concert pianists At least, that’s what we’re told. The Leeds International Piano Competition cranks up again, drawing the young hopefuls of the piano world to Yorkshire. A hundred-plus virtuosi will go through their paces, and, after the televised final, one winner will emerge, clutching a cheque for £12,000 and a trophy, and, with the help of tremendous media coverage, will find him or herself catapulted into the first rank of concert pianists. At least, that’s what we’re told.
It’s been going on now for nearly 40 years.

It was set up by the redoubtable Fanny Waterman and Lady Harewood and has escalated steadily ever since. It’s one of the most important piano competitions in the world and is taken very seriously, it seems, by pianists and pundits alike.God knows why. Frankly, it is a competition with the track record of a three-legged mule. From the first competition, in 1963, which was won by Michael Roll – who happened to be a pupil of Fanny Waterman herself – it has steadily picked pianists who have failed to make much of a mark on the outside world.