The Search Party

by Hannah Richell

‘Now you just sound like a slogan on a sexist T-shirt. Telling a girl to “be nice” totally plays into the hands of the patriarchy. You’re telling me to ignore my own feelings to please someone else.

‘It’s not camping. It’s gl-amping,’ Dominic insisted. ‘Changing two letters on a word doesn’t make sleeping outside and peeing in a stinking portaloo any more gl-amorous,’ muttered Scarlet.

I don’t want a quick fix. A band-aid. I don’t want the best, most wholesome moment of my week to be the ten minutes I spend queuing up for organic veggies and artisan coffee at an overpriced farmer’s market. I want the real thing. I want to change things.

‘Those poor kids, saddled with their hippy names… and all that airy-fairy forest school and free-range parenting.

Of course, they all thought they knew what they wanted, but they had to be shown – told even. Men could be so clueless.

It was like when men said they preferred ‘the natural look’ on women. They thought they wanted the natural look, but if you actually gave it to them… the raw, unwaxed, untanned, un-primed woman in her undone state, they’d be off quicker than a toupee in a hurricane.