You can stick your pink cupcakes, your 20% discount and your beggy 'speak at my event for free, for 'The Greater Good'' invites this IWD.

You can stick your pink cupcakes, your '20% off for International Women's Day' discounts and your 'please speak at this event at my profit-making company for free for the greater good.'

What I would truly love for International Women's Day is:

• Real action - the receipts of what you're doing to support women in the workplace for the other 364 days of the year
• Women to stop coming after other women, and wake up to how this she-said-that, shes-a-b*tch-this is instigated by profit-making patriarchy.

International Women's Day has now been commercialised to the point it may as well have its own 'holidays are coming' Coca Cola advert.

What prompted me to articulate the rage, sadness and 'am I going mad?' that has been swirling around in my mind to the point where it feels like my head might explode, is the 'ping' of an email from a flower company, offering me a 'limited-time discount' for International Women's Day.

This particular company is owned by men, with net assets estimated at over ￡46 million.

As Sue Fisher points out, "think this day is run by the UN, a global women’s rights organisation, or activists fighting for real change? Think again. Google "International Women’s Day", and you will land on internationalwomensday website. It looks official. It sounds official. It is not.That site is privately owned by a marketing company that sells corporate sponsorships to businesses looking to align themselves with the movement. Which raises a serious question. When a private company manages the messaging, does it risk becoming more about corporate PR than real change?"

This year, the UN’s official theme is"For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment."

The IWD website’s theme is"AccelerateAction."

I don't know about you, but I've seen dozens of posts in my feed about the latter, as women (myself included) think we are supporting the 'correct' cause, but have been caught in the trap of activism-as-marketing.

And then, to add some sprinkles on top of this pink-but-tastes-like-bullsh*t cupcake, this week has been riddled with examples of women tearing each other down publicly.

I've seen so much sh*t about Meghan Markle (yes of course fair critique is one thing, but listening to the review of an expert TV producer or commentary on whether her show advances or pulls back feminism by thought-leaders in this topic, is different to picking apart the appearance of someone we've never met because we've been told to hate them).

Aside from that, there's been so much in-fighting about who gets to be a woman and who doesn't.

When you are a cis white heteronormative woman who refuses to acknowledge the existence of other women and those who do not identify the way you do...

Can you not see that the patriarchy is playing us?

It's fortunate to be able to take the view that only one type of woman exists (just so happens to be the type you identify as!) and encourage the erasure of other people whose experiences, preferences and ideals do not align with your own.

And also not to question how many of your ideals are actually yours and how many are borne from the conditioning of being in a society where there's one normal.

When I was a newspaper editor, we ran a story about an attack on a trans woman.

Guess who threatened to find my house and kill me? Guess who posted photos of me on the Internet and encouraged attacks? Guess who had to be reported to the police?It wasn't any other type of woman than cis and white.

All because we reported the news.

Since starting my business:

??Guess who pretended to want to be a client, and proceeded to steal my content to the point where people thought her stuff was me?

?? Guess who messaged women commenting on my posts saying 'I'm an award-winning stylist you should work with me instead of her'

?? Guess who wrote a nasty, put-your-internalised-misogyny-on-show post about me using the trope of 'buying handbags' (I've never spoken about my handbags, in fact if you're read anything I say on handbags you'll know I examine them from the standpoint of being a tool of the patriarchy, to get us loaded with sh*t we don't really need to carry around) because she didn't like that I talked openly about my sales

?? Guess who I've had to call out for 'she seems so up herself' snipes in conversations about women we've never met?

?? Guess who incited a pile-on of someone who disagreed with their opinion, using their faux tears to shift their products?

Yes one of these examples could be classed as extremism, and the others as internalised misogyny.

But it all sits on a sliding scale.

Chesler (2001) argues that "to understand how internalised misogyny functions, it is important to admit that women are not less sexist than men and to not idealize them, but rather accept them as human beings who "are capable of both compassion and cruelty, cooperation and competition, selfishness and altruism."

But I can not help my frustration when I see on Linkedin how an accomplished woman speaks on her lived experience a thousand times over, and other women either withdraw support, judge or refuse to give their support because 'I don't want to like her post in case she gets more than me' (as if there's a finite amount of money and success available to us as a collective).

And then a man siphons what she said, contorts it into his own post under the name of 'allyship' without crediting her... and women go: "omg, you're such a hero, thank you sooooo much for sharing this!"

He's getting paid handsomely to speak at companies and on stages about women's experiences, meanwhile women are being asked to speak for free in the run up to International Women's Day because of this idea that we should be 'giving back for the greater good.'

As I tell my clients - you are already doing enough for free.

Do not allow a profit-making, mostly male-run company to prey on your social conditioning that you must pay a toll for existing as a successful woman.

I hear peers, friends and clients being asked to work for free all the time. I don't hear the same from male peers.

Over 90 per cent of women with children spend at least an hour a day on housework, compared to 30 per cent of men.

Every day, you're likely working overtime, or going way beyond your remit at work.

If you run a business, you are creating content that's useful for people - for free.

I have this newsletter, social media, a podcast, many free resources. My intention is not to brag (and if you assumed I'm bragging, how fitting for an article about women and money and misogyny) - but I get messages almost every day telling me about the impact of those resources.

I also 'give my time' in ways I do not share publicly - charity work, talks and free sessions for those with a genuine need - because I want to actually be active in this space, and not simply use any small thing I've done as a publicity stunt.

Yet last year, a fellow cis white woman I don't know slid into my DMs and demanded I tell her everything I know (knowledge I've acquired through years of learning and big investments) about running a successful styling business.

When I sent her my pricing, she said she wasn't expecting to pay me, how dare I suggest she should, didn't I remember what it was like 'starting out?' and proceeded to threaten to 'expose' me and damage my reputation... because I wouldn't buy into the collective female martyrdom bullsh*t that makes us feel entitled to another woman's expertise.

She clearly has no idea what my reputation is: that I absolutely do not put up with this sh*t.

Explaining to people that you asked me to work for you for nothing and I said no isn't going to 'damage my reputation', it simply affirms my full embodiment in what I say publicly.

Billion-dollar companies owned by men are profiting from this PR stunt we bake the cupcakes for year-in-year-out on March 8, meanwhile we are seeing no real progression.

It's going to take at least 45 years to close the gender pay gap.

Mothers earn 28 per cent less than male colleagues per hour.

There has been a global rollback on women's rights - abortion laws in the USA have been changed, Iraq, Somalia, and Bangladesh have lowered the legal age for marriage, allowing girls under 18 to marry. And the Polish government has targetted women’s rights activists and organisations.

But here we are, fighting amongst each other about the use of pronouns, as if we have the right to define another woman's womanhood because it doesn't sit neatly with our own.

I fail to see this day as anything to celebrate - if you aren't enraged you don't understand what's going on here.

And if you are enraged, you'll be convinced that's because you're an emotional, irrational woman who can't be trusted to believe her own feelings.

Patriarchy is rubbing its sweaty orange hands together with glee.

So we are clear, no WOMAN going about her life , minding her own business, wants to cause you harm.

And the choices about how she lives that life, when they do not impact you financially, cause no detriment to your health, or impact how YOU live YOUR life, are a not threat to you.

In the UK, between March 2020 and March 2022, 96.8 per cent of suspects in female domestic homicides were male.?

A woman who's faced the shame of 'coming out' to her family because she's been presenting as male her whole life but knows she is a woman, and is facing the stigma of being stared at in the street, alienated by friends and shamed at work, who just wants to try on a pretty dress because it's an experience you've taken for granted your entire life and it makes her feel like herself - for the first time in 40, 50 years - is not a f*cking threat to you.

Men who use those women as a distraction whilst they rollback your rights and are known to have actually harmed women (*cough* one sits in the White House *cough* ) are.

This International Women's Day, tell them to shove their cupcakes and demand real action.

Until you do, patriarchy is winning.

This is not a one-day-only experience, either. It seeps into your every day life, your relationship with yourself, and all the sh*t you've been convinced you need that weighs you down and burdens you in a way not required of men.

I grapple with this every day in my work as a personal stylist.

Do I really love dressing up, or have I been conditioned that way? What are my own beliefs on gendered-clothing? Is my work helping to change things, or is that impossible given my choice of profession?

Do me a favour today and open your wardrobe. Open your beauty cabinet. Ask yourself how much of this is your idea, and how much of it was bought because you've been conditioned, lied to or convinced that without it you are somehow less than.

Examine your thoughts about other women. Examine your reaction to this article.

Then google 'the invention of cellulite' and begin to unravel why you feel the way you do and who's benefitting from that.

In case it isn't quite clear enough from this article - I am mad as hell (and will wait for the 'you're emotional are you on your period?' put-downs) that we get one bullsh*t day which has been hijacked by those profiting from this insecurity to sell us more stuff we don't need for problems they need us to believe we have, so that we will not have the space and mental clarity to work together for meaningful change.

The Style Editor

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