Sunday Times Style Magazine 29 March 2015
GOOD TIMES
The 1970s is back – but what is it about that decade that makes us giddy with
nostalgia?
Fay Weldon looks back on a decade of civil strife, sex wars and sheep-rearing. Are
we in for a 1970s rerun, she asks
Fay Weldon at home in the 1970s
When I encountered my first feminist, she was wearing khaki dungarees, Dr Martens
bovver boots, no bra, no wedding ring and no make-up, and she refused to smile at
men. It was a New Year’s Eve party in Primrose Hill in 1970. In spite of her efforts,
she was still the prettiest girl in the room. That was my introduction to the 1970s. And
what a tumultuous decade it turned out to be. Not unlike the one we’re in, I suspect,
45 years later.
At the time, I had a halo of backcombed hair and was wearing a gold-embroidered
kaftan from Liberty in some heavy furnishing fabric that covered all bodily
imperfections. I was married to an artist husband, had three children, the youngest a
year old. I had an au pair to help out, a full-time job in advertising, wrote TV plays in
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my spare time and had published a couple of novels. I also found time to bolster the
perfect housewife myth and give elaborate Elizabeth David dinner parties, murderous
cream, brandy and all. I was exhausted. Something had to give.
I had just been asked onto The David Frost Show to join in the condemnation of the
women who had let off smoke bombs at the Miss World competition, the nation’s
favourite spectacle – they were being dismissed and jeered at as sex-starved
troublemakers, ugly women who were jealous of their pretty sisters. What gave was
me. I stood up and said no, they were early martyrs in a cause nothing was going to
stop. I was right.
Then the dungareed one took me to a consciousness-raising group and that was that –
I was a feminist (though I never managed to admire my private parts with a mirror,
which was all the rage: it seemed indelicate). “Gender relations”, as we learnt to call
them, were at an all-time low. Most of us were on the pill, rejoicing that sex and
procreation were no longer necessarily linked, we made ourselves more easily
available and stopped demanding marriage as the price for sex. Men understandably
took advantage of this new order, though they despised us for it: slags and bitches,
they called those of us who refused to iron their shirts. I wrote on, recording the times,
describing men as they presented themselves to me in that horrible era. My publisher
decided to sell me as a feminist writer and was surprised at how sales rose. Men
would walk out of rooms when I walked into them.
The early 1970s was an era full of strife and change; decimal currency, strikes,
Edward Heath’s introduction of the three-day week, the threat of food rationing, a
sudden rise in oil prices (nearly 50p a gallon! Our hearts stopped). I went to Harrods
for tights, and there was only one shade in stock – a pinky beige. That really shook
me: clearly the end of civilisation was nigh.
But the world didn’t end. Fashions echoed the tumult of the decade. Styles changed
rapidly and radically with the mood of the times. Dungarees and bovver boots gave
way to anything Third World, peasant blouses and frilly collars; unisex; topless; halter
and granny dresses; skirts up and down like yo-yos; ghastly flares – till it all collapsed
at the end of the decade with the commoditised nihilism of punk. High fashion, at a
loss for some kind of discernible developing direction, followed where street fashion
led. I took to Jean Muir: good-quality silk, nothing fancy and safe, ladylike seams. I
still have some of her clothes from back then. Only yesterday, I wore one top to work,
machine washed a thousand times and still going strong – well, strong-ish.
By the mid 1970s (25% inflation, a top tax rate of 98%), those who could had fled to
the countryside to avoid the threatened nuclear winter, in search of “self-sufficiency”
(nettle soup and hedgerow harvest), and I was one of them. In 1976, we were living
on a smallholding with 12 rare-breed Soay sheep, 20 ex-battery hens, two pigs, four
geese, three dogs and two cats. We grew vegetables in the shadow of Glastonbury
Tor. I used my Fifth Avenue fur coat to keep warm on a cold winter evening when I
went out to shut the hens away from the fox, and I forgot about fashion. I went to a
London party wearing that same gold-embroidered kaftan at the end of the decade,
and everyone looked at me as if I was mad. I probably was.
I wrote on. One book a year, sometimes more, TV and stage plays, films, everything.
My then-husband became an even fiercer enthusiast for the feminist cause than was I.
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He was so convinced of my hypocrisy that I found myself, for the sake of domestic
peace, signing a piece of paper for him admitting: “I am not feminist and never will
be.” (This was from a man who, in the 1960s, had not “allowed” me to have a
washing machine because the noise of domestic machinery might disturb his
creativity. We were divorced in 1994. I probably wore Escada. Good, clean, businesslike lines, with a little bling added.)
Do I still see myself as a feminist? Decidedly yes. By the end of the 1970s, men were
often stricter feminists than women: male journalists would give me a far harder time
than their female counterparts when it came to blaming me for some inadequacy in
my feminism. But maybe they just hoped pretending to be a feminist made them more
attractive to the new breed of women. How can one tell?
The first five years of this current decade look to me rather like a speeded up rerun of
the 1970s. Today’s fashions dart from one thing to another, as they did 40 years ago.
On the catwalk now, the naked midriff turns from horizontal to vertical, nobody
smiles, unisex is back, and “ethnic” is everywhere. Legs are long, long, long;
cleavages, if a girl can raise one, on display. Males, more beautiful than females, flash
their genitals. They are the new sex objects, lusted after by women. Men may be
getting quite angry about this new gender reversal that once so pleased us. Violence
against women increases. One can only hope this decade doesn’t end in a new
regression, in which women adopt a babydoll helplessness, kohl their eyes, go all
Laura Ashley and demand to go back into the home.
Mischief by Fay Weldon (Head of Zeus £16.99), an anthology of her short stories with
a new sci-fi novella The Ted Dreams, is out now. To buy it for £14.99 (inc p&p),
visitthesundaytimes.co.uk/bookshop or call 0845 2712135
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