The Cows Read online

  Nothing.

  The truth is, a woman without a child is as available and capable as any man. Even more so, possibly, as many of those men will have families to get home to. But childfree women, we are free as birds to crack on with whatever job is in hand. No tie to a home, no pressure to be anywhere else. We could literally take over the world with all the time we have. Which is probably why a lot of men like to put childless women down, call us heartless, selfish, presume we are lesbians. They have to rationalise that there is something wrong with us, because the reality of the threat we pose is possibly a little too terrifying to bear?

  I am not trying to encourage more women to choose childlessness, but I am encouraging those who do to wear that badge with pride. We, the childfree, can bridge the gap between men and women and achieve true equality, because there is nothing that makes us unequal. We can boldly say that men are no better, stronger or more worthy of status, money or power. Women with children are rock stars, women without children are superheroes. Together, we can take over the world.

  ‘I basically just solved feminism,’ Cam says to herself as she reads the blog post back. She’s on a roll, her new accolade is gaining momentum, she’s a hero among her childfree fans.

  But with all her success, there is always someone trying to kill the fun.

  An email pops up from Samantha Byron, Head of Advertising at L’Oréal, Camilla’s main sponsor. Cam dreads Samantha’s messages; they’re always urging her to be boring, or safe, or write something she doesn’t want to write. Samantha has no imagination and she’s really tedious. But even though Cam has final say on all content and creative output of HowItIs.com, as L’Oréal is her main sponsor, she has to at least pretend to take their notes on board.

  Samantha took over from Susan Jeffries around six months ago and it’s been a challenge ever since. Susan was cool, mid-thirties, she had a kid when she was in her twenties, didn’t want more. She was single, feisty, untraditional and really funny. She took such pride in L’Oréal sponsoring Cam’s website, but quit when she got a job in the New York office, and Camilla was gutted. They used to go for wild boozy lunches and all Susan’s notes ever said were, ‘More of you, more of you … whatever you are today.’ It was unusual for Cam to feel so at ease with someone, especially someone who was essentially her boss, but she liked Susan. They were friends. She misses that relationship.

  Samantha, on the other hand, is a dull, play-it-safe jobsworth mum who probably only had sex three times in her life to make her three babies. She has no sense of humour, she hates other women, and she can’t even bear to call herself a feminist because she thinks feminism is ‘scary’. The working relationship is stiff, and happens predominantly on email. She also always says ‘we’ when she means ‘I’ and ends all of her sentences with question marks.

  Dear Camilla

  We’ve all seen and enjoyed your writing this week, and of course the piece in The Times is wonderful exposure for the site? We do feel it necessary to mention though, that we are concerned about alienating the many women who are not onside with your new accolade?

  As a working mother of three I’m not sure I would want to check in with a website that promotes a lifestyle I can’t myself participate in? Does that make sense? It might be an idea to keep www.HowItIs.com balanced to appeal to a broad spectrum of women as it always has. And we think you are at your best when you keep things light and fun, nothing too heavy or political. We women have enough to worry about, don’t you think?

  I’m sure you understand?

  Thanks,

  Samantha.

  ‘Oh blah blah blah,’ says Camilla out loud, to no one. This is going to be massive for the site, that piece in The Times was a game changer, and it wasn’t the only one. Grazia Daily, the Independent, Emerald Street and Glamour have all done stories about Camilla, leading with the line ‘The Face of Childless Women’. It’s going to be huge, and just the USP she needed to keep her ahead of the game. Competition mounts daily; if she doesn’t reinvent herself she’ll be knocked off her pedestal by some millennial who writes about Tinder and partying on Molly. Cam could be the voice of a growing demographic, but stroppy old Samantha would rather she wrote about fluff? It’s so frustrating. But she has to keep her advertisers happy, and annoyingly, maybe Samantha is right, while she becomes a hero to some, she might lose the attention of others. She needs to write something that keeps the mums on board. Maybe even something that gets her own mother on board. Anything is worth a try.

  Cam writes.

  Camilla Stacey – www.HowItIs.com – Mothers and Non-Mothers, Let’s Quit with the ‘Them and Us’

  Can we get one thing straight? Yes, I am a woman who does not have or want children, but that doesn’t mean I hate mums or motherhood. There is a lot of vitriol online at the moment, and it’s aimed at mums who dare to post happy family pictures and pictures of their kids on Facebook. This has never bothered me; I’ve always thought it’s quite a nice thing. But I’ve seen people complain about it, saying it’s an unfair representation of what parenting is really like. Making other mums feel guilty for struggling, or non-mothers irrelevant for not being able to conceive, or contributing to society’s notion that women are in competition with each other. Really, is that what you actually think?

  If you do, I think you’re the one with the problem, not the happy mums posting pictures of their cute kids.

  Everyone knows parenthood isn’t really represented by the photos people put on social media. Mums aren’t going to post pictures of the moment a midwife scooped their poo out of the birthing pool with a colander, are they? Or write a status update about healing vaginal stitches, or having to perform a manual evacuation (Google it) on a constipated one-year-old. Why would they tell us about how their anus practically turned inside out during birth, and how ever since their poo just falls out, unannounced? Or how they can’t walk up, or down, a hill without wetting themselves, or that their varicose veins ache in hot weather? They are hardly going to bleat on about the sleepless nights, the fact that they are never able to pee without an audience, or that their child still wears nappies at the age of seven.

  Who wants to read about that on Facebook? We all know motherhood isn’t glamorous, so let’s allow people to celebrate the joy online, and deal with the copious amounts of shit behind closed doors. As a non-mother, I feel the least I can do is click ‘like’ on a happy family photo.

  But some people are so riled by happy photos and I find that really odd. I even saw one woman on Twitter say that the women who had time to post pictures of their kids on Facebook were ‘jobless idiots’. That’s right. An actual woman, a journalist in fact (shocker), wrote that about other women who take twenty seconds to post perfect pictures online. Yes, many mothers are jobless and yes, they may have made that decision themselves. As much as I can’t personally relate to that, or imagine it for myself, I am not behind feminism turning against mothers. How terrifying and ugly is that? I have three older sisters who have multiple children, I see their blood, sweat and tears as they do their best by these little people who demand everything, need everything, scream at everything. Anyone who calls a mother a ‘jobless idiot’ is a heartless cunt. End of conversation.

  My mother was a housewife. I don’t think she’s pathetic, I actually think she’s amazing. She raised four kids on a caretaker’s wage and it was impossible at times, but the pictures on the mantelpiece in her house don’t represent that, they represent the happy moments. No one needs to know that hours after the picture of us all frolicking by a pond in the summer of 1983, my older sister disappeared into the pond and had to be dragged out and resuscitated by my father. We all thought she was dead, and my mother’s guilt for allowing it to happen still haunts her today. Of course she survived, although we all think she is a little slow (sorry, sis), but that was the reality of having four kids. There were terrible times where my mother and father lost control of us. The picture is on the mantelpiece because it reminds my mum how lucky sh
e is that my sister didn’t die that day, it’s actually quite sombre, despite how blissfully happy we all look. If there was Facebook back then, that would have been the picture she posted — not the one that my other sister took of the moment my half-dead sister vomited up a load of green algae.

  Mostly, it’s hurt women, who want kids but can’t have them, who get upset about mothers’ photos. I guess I kind of understand this, it must be like rubbing salt in a wound, but what is the answer? Do we ban the joy of motherhood from the Internet so as not to hurt anyone? And then what? Do we just ban joy? Will people who are dying of cancer say that images of people in good health are offensive? Will they become angry and abusive to people who are not dying? No, we can’t get to that.

  I’m sorry for all the people who want kids and for whatever reason can’t have them. That must be agony and I do understand why you get sad. But you can’t blame the women who do. It’s not fair. They are, after all, simply continuing on with the human race.

  Many women don’t choose childlessness, and it’s for them that I want to be a beacon of positivity on the matter. For them there will be grief, of course, such sadness for the thing they always wanted that they might not ever have. But I want those people to know that if they don’t have kids, their lives don’t have to be empty. There are a million ways to be happy, so don’t give mothers a hard time for spreading joy. Just find a way to be as happy yourself.

  Have a great weekend,

  Cam x

  Stella

  ‘Morning!’ says Jessica, all spritely and annoying. I’m on the bus on the way to work, it’s full but I got a seat. I’m a bit wet because it’s raining outside, and there is a very large woman sitting next to me rubbing her big wet raincoat against my jeans. Answering Jessica’s call gives me an excuse to squash up against the window, to create more space for her enormous arse.

  ‘Hey,’ I say back, quietly.

  ‘You OK, babe?’

  ‘Yeah, sorry. Just on the bus.’ I feel a little conspicuous as people look at me, so put on some sunglasses to hide my swollen eyes. I couldn’t stop the tears coming this weekend, I just cried and cried and cried.

  ‘Oh God, I couldn’t be on a bus right now, my morning sickness is so bad. It’s horrible, Stella. When you get pregnant you won’t believe it, it’s like constant food poisoning and I’m sooooo tired, I could fall asleep standing up, like a cow.’ She laughs at herself, and I hear Mike laugh in the background. ‘Anyway, I’m just calling because I have a favour to ask.’

  ‘Oh, what is it?’ I ask, feeling a little boost at the idea of someone needing me for something.

  ‘I have to go to John Lewis to get all our baby stuff, a cot, onesies, bottles; oh God, the list is endless. I don’t want to go at the weekend because it will be hell in there, but Mike has to work during the week, so I was wondering if you’d come with me, can do any day soon? You said you were quiet at work. We could go for cake after?’

  ‘Oh,’ I say unenthusiastically, imagining myself having a full-scale emotional breakdown in the baby section of John Lewis, but also knowing I should get out of my own head, and do something that doesn’t involve sobbing alone. So I say yes, and tell her to let me know when.

  ‘OK, amazing, thank you! I’ll text. Love you, bye,’ she says, sounding delighted.

  ‘OK, bye,’ I say in a fake happy voice. I try to say ‘love you’ back, but it just feels weird.

  The bus comes to a stop, and a load of people get off, including the fat woman next to me. I feel my own bum spread across the seat as I now have full use of it. A woman with a pram gets on, parks it just in front of me and sits down. She’s skinny and looks tired. Her baby is screaming.

  ‘She’s been like this all day,’ she says to me, looking despondent. I nod and smile then turn to look out the window. She reaches into her bag and pulls out a rice cake. ‘There,’ she says, sternly, giving it to the little girl who shuts up immediately like she’s just been drugged, looking at the rice cake after every bite as if baffled by its diminishing size.

  ‘You got any?’ she asks me.

  ‘Any what?’ I say back, thinking how rude it is to ask me for food.

  ‘Any kids?’

  Oh.

  I look out the window for a moment, remembering how Alice and I used to discuss city living, and how you have small interactions with hundreds of people a week, none of whom you’ll ever see again. Whether on public transport, in a lift, waiting in a queue or walking down the street. Strangers’ lives connect for brief encounters that may or may not affect your day. We used to joke about making up characters for ourselves, being someone different for everyone that we met. How fun that would be; that no one would ever know the truth of who we really were. In a big city, you can be anyone you want to be.

  So I turn to the lady, and I look her in the eye, and I say, ‘Yes, I have two. A one-year-old and a five-year-old. Is it just the one for you then?’

  ‘Wow, yes, just the one. You started young. So you know all about this shit then. This brat just lay in the middle of the road in a solid plank, screaming like she’d just been run over and refusing to get up because I tried to put a shoe back on her. A shoe. You’d have thought I was trying to pull her foot off.’

  ‘Oh dear, poor you,’ I say, as if I fully understand. I imagine myself grappling with a screaming child. Maybe mine won’t do that. She’s probably not strict enough or something, the kid knows it can get what it wants. I’ll be firm but fair, it can’t be that hard to reason with them.

  ‘Oh yes, been there,’ I say, smiling. ‘My eldest didn’t wear shoes until he was three, he just refused. Little sod.’

  She seems comforted by what I say. I feel a little disappointed in myself for bitching about one of my imaginary babies. ‘But he’s excellent at maths,’ I add, feeling better about it.

  ‘At five? Wow, maybe he’s a genius or something. So what are their names?’ she asks me, causing me to cough in an attempt to buy me some time.

  ‘Oh, um, Jason and Alice.’

  ‘Ahh, lovely names,’ she says, and I realise I should ask her the same.

  ‘Yours?’

  ‘Oh, Shania. As in Twain. I’m a massive fan.’

  Shania? Christ, no matter this kid is so pissed off.

  ‘So is your fella any good? Mine’s bloody useless,’ she says, reaching forward and handing Shania back the rice cake that she just dropped on the floor of the bus.

  ‘Oh, he’s not been involved for a while. We actually broke up when Jason was around one. We got back together for a bit when he was three but it wasn’t going to work, he doesn’t want to be a dad. I got pregnant with Alice that time but he never even knew about her, still doesn’t. I prefer it that way.’

  ‘Wow,’ she says, looking impressed. ‘Good for you. The hardest thing about my life is my husband. Having the kid is tough and everything but him, wow, he’s another level. I envy you doing it alone; I sometimes think it would be easier.’ She smiles at Shania, who is getting to the end of her rice cake. ‘Truth is, she could scream the fucking house down and I’d still love her. Know what I mean?’

  I nod, and she gets up. ‘OK, this is our stop. Say bye to the nice lady, Shania.’

  Shania waves at me as she is told. I wave back.

  ‘You’re a strong woman,’ says my new friend who I’ll never see again. ‘I admire you, I really do.’

  I sit there on the bus, watching her lower the wheels of the pram onto the pavement, and I think about what she said. I envy you doing it alone; I sometimes think it would be easier.

  That was just what I needed to hear.

  Tara

  I feel like I’m fifteen years old again. I’m sat in my old bedroom at my mum and dad’s house, hiding under my duvet, waiting for a boy to call. Only back then there were no stupid mobile phones, so none of this would have happened. I’d never have sent Jason a slutty text, I’d have given him my number and he’d have phoned me the next day. I’d never have been filmed wanking, I
’d never have been haunted by a speech bubble or sent rape threats on Twitter. But mobile phones have made life disgusting.

  I keep looking at my Twitter page. This time last week I had seventy-nine follows, now I have 614,000. All of those people just waiting for me to say something, probably hoping I’ve drunk myself into a crazy stupor and that I’ll give them more material to laugh at me about. The most annoying thing is that my last tweet before I knew any of this was going to happen was …

  Spent my day with a pervert and it was magic #moresoon #tease #sogoodatmyjob

  Of all the things to say before getting filmed masturbating on a train. All of my followers were just mates from school or people I’ve worked with, so I didn’t think twice about it. I only really used Twitter to keep up with the news and stalk contributors; now I am the news.

  The tweets have been horrendous. It’s pretty intense when you’re lying on your bed reading your daughter a story and @BigGunnerz ‘Bitchez like you are gagging for it luv. I’d rape you double sides on that train but you’d still want more’ flashes up on your home screen. Annie started reading it out loud before I realised what she was saying. I grabbed the phone out of her hand. But just as she was going to sleep she asked, ‘What’s a rape double?’ It made me shudder with fear. Some guy has taken such a huge amount of notice of me that he is willing to write, publicly on Twitter, that he wants to rape me in both of my holes? At least, I presume that’s what it means. How angry is this guy? Angry enough to come and wait outside my house? I told her it was a type of ice cream, put her to bed, and logged in to my settings to turn notifications OFF.

  I can’t bring myself to shut down my account though. I feel I need to know what people are saying about me. I know I could cut out a lot of this pain by not looking online, but how realistic is that? Tragically, I think it’s best that I am aware. And that means reading violently aggressive comments about how I look – ‘frumpy’ ‘pale’ ‘sick in the head’ – how I have behaved – ‘Slutty’ ‘Mentally ill’ ‘Pervert’ – and how I chose to have my daughter – ‘Slutty’ ‘Criminal’ ‘EVIL’. But the worst are the ones from other women, the passive aggressive vitriol that they try to disguise as sisterly; those are the ones that cut the deepest.