Jack Monroe #37 Don't f*** with cats.

[Dustye]

That was me! Fingers crossed it works as well for you!

In gender-bending child stories: I pretended to be a boy (called Jack. I KNOW!) from the age of about 8-10 whenever I met any new children in parks and such like. I was very successful at passing and no one ever bothered me about it.

My daughter has short hair (very chic pixie cut/side fringe of her choice, though a bit mullet like now with lockdown), and she gets regular comments about how she doesn't have 'normal' hair and that she looks like a boy from other people at school. She is not at all male-presenting, there's a lot of black and grey but it's all very female clothing, and she is very 'feminine' looking in a waifish way. Yet because of the hair, she's considered massively non-conforming. I find it bizarre, like we have gone backwards.

I was a teen in the heady days of indie/grunge and I imagine it was a challenge to tell the boys and girls apart in a group of baggy jean, lumberjack shirt, vest top and army boot wearing, long haired crowd.

Thanks @Flumps

That was me! Fingers crossed it works as well for you!

In gender-bending child stories: I pretended to be a boy (called Jack. I KNOW!) from the age of about 8-10 whenever I met any new children in parks and such like. I was very successful at passing and no one ever bothered me about it.

My daughter has short hair (very chic pixie cut/side fringe of her choice, though a bit mullet like now with lockdown), and she gets regular comments about how she doesn't have 'normal' hair and that she looks like a boy from other people at school. She is not at all male-presenting, there's a lot of black and grey but it's all very female clothing, and she is very 'feminine' looking in a waifish way. Yet because of the hair, she's considered massively non-conforming. I find it bizarre, like we have gone backwards.

I was a teen in the heady days of indie/grunge and I imagine it was a challenge to tell the boys and girls apart in a group of baggy jean, lumberjack shirt, vest top and army boot wearing, long haired crowd.

Thanks @Flumps! Your daughter's hair sounds really cool, I rocked a pixie cut as a young teen after getting sick of being bullied for my frizz and hacked away at it with the kitchen scissors. My mum made me clean up all the hair I'd thrown down the sink in panic, quite rightly

 

[Breakdance Badass]

The SODs thread is dying a slow, limping death. I think any of us left contributing there are waiting for FODot (I include myself in this waiting room).

I’m checking in now and again, but it’s really painful. Wish she would make a come back, mind you not sure I’ve got time!!

 

[emm]

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Why does she constantly mention the pandemic in this way, does she think it’s escaped someone’s attention?! Ffs

 

[Eurgh]

She could go and eat banana ketchup in the Balmoral again....

 

[Harrybosch]

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duck off.

 

[Nottonightbabe]

The O2 one was the one... I’d love to smell that now. There’s a scent that crops up (I don’t know if it’s a shampoo, deodorant, shower gel) that instantly reminds me of a German Exchange trip when I was 14. Probably smells like Impulse!

I loved O2

 

[emm]

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Ooh. Also. How can she go on hols with a dependent little kitten?

I notice the kitten wasn’t even mentioned when she spoke of responsibilities, 100% she will end up giving it away

 

[Eurgh]

Genuine question, what is she actually DOING? Those £15 school meals never materialised, she’s not done any YouTube videos, her son appears to be at his dad’s. Letdown Larder has been forgotten.....She’s probably elevating black voices behind the scenes. That’s it!

 

[AmTellinYa]

Further to last night's mobfest View attachment 169956

Yep thats the first thought I had when I saw the half naked, granny grunge undie wearing Jack flung "seductively" across her (one of four VERY EXPENSIVE) sideboards.. . Oh how noble she is helping all the thousands of us low income households whilst so clearly crippled with anxiety.

 

[blurstoftimes]

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So she hasn't PEELED off her BODY ARMOUR yet then i see

 

[Breakdance Badass]

Just been nosing at the comments. It’s about time they fucked off tbh. They are so irrelevant now, who cares about their privilege anymore, all they ever did was moan about it. Do you think there will be a come back?

@Saint_clemmie i think they will at some point, I don’t think they can help themselves! Did you see Cash Carraway has a play coming out about Clemmie and allegedly has “all the receipts”!

 

[GrunkaLunka]

@Cat_scratches sending you love and hugs This is a lovely canal of trolls full of genuine kindness

I'm sorry, its such a lovely message but... canal All aboard the gondola of trolls.

 

[blurstoftimes]

Genuine question, what is she actually DOING? Those £15 school meals never materialised, she’s not done any YouTube videos, her son appears to be at his dad’s. Letdown Larder has been forgotten.....She’s probably elevating black voices behind the scenes. That’s it!

Secretly consulting the government on matters of all things poverty related, making really unbearably bad videos for resilience training, choosing the sexiest ensemble to pose on sideboards for very important secret projects - the list just goes on!

 

[emm]

Genuine question, what is she actually DOING? Those £15 school meals never materialised, she’s not done any YouTube videos, her son appears to be at his dad’s. Letdown Larder has been forgotten.....She’s probably elevating black voices behind the scenes. That’s it!

I always imagine if she was an employee in a catch up meeting with boss explaining what she had achieved that week, wtf would she say (other than complain about her health issues and lack of childcare, and of course the pandemic ) other than those 6 Hellman’s episodes and not sending books she has done nothing

 

[Nottonightbabe]

Finally got around to changing my avatar! Giving serious consideration to changing my name to Nottonightpet

 

[Alansbigplate]

This is from a Washington Post interview Jack gave a year or so ago. Here are some highlights:


Five years ago, she was broke and desperate, relying on food banks. “Because I went through a particularly harrowing period of poverty is the reason I’m here talking with you today,” Monroe says. “I look at it like a necessary horror.”

“I am the food stylist!” she says. “I’m also . . . ” She starts counting on her fingers. “I’m an author, writer, food blogger, photographer, sales manager, diarist, accountant, media manager, political commentator, TV presenter, radio show personality, activist . . .”

Her assistant Catherine shouts from the dining room. “And publicist!” “Right,” Monroe says. “I’m publicist, patron of nine charities, creative director, food consultant, recipe developer — and mum.”

She applied for a hundred jobs: apprentice car mechanic, traffic warden, forklift operator, fast-food server. No dice, for 18 months.

“I was a young mother with a dependent.” She went into debt. “I went from nice flat and fire service job to cold and hungry with a child.

I lived rough for two years, with six months relying on the food bank.”

“I’ve had people pull me back from the railroad track,” she says. “I’ve had people hold my hand and give me a cuppa — and a biscuit.”

The thing that annoys me, if true, which I read on money saving expert was that she voluntarily left that job at the fire service because she ‘didn’t have a child to see him 16 hours a week’. Neither did I but I have to work full time as a single parent with no family around to keep a (rented) roof over our heads.

 

[bananasplit88]

Where are all these stans when her live shows are on?

 

[AmTellinYa]

Do you remember the Impulse body sprays??

I was BUSY(!!) drenching myself in White Musk and Fuzzy Peach from the Body Shop every Saturday on my trip into town with my besties. And buying anything Revlon because I thought using it would make me magically turn into Cindy Crawford.

 

[TheDragonWithAFlagon]

This. I'm very interested in the spread of people who use Tattle, you can tell from grammar, syntax, humour etc as well as message content that there's such a huge range of class, age, education and taste here. I think it's really fascinating how many people on the Jack thread a) have direct experience of the claims she makes and b) are very evidently either highly educated, very successful in their careers or just bleeping smart as hell. It's probably the highest concentration of critical thinkers I've come across in a non-academic setting. And man, does she HATE us for it.

It's a very [sticks tin hat on] middle class, hard-done by, poor little rich girl thing.

And she reminds me of the children of quite a few professional foster parents who felt they were hard done by because they had to share their parents/home/toys with other children who had desperate need, even though a lot of the extra nice lifestyle was available as a direct result of the Fostering Allowances. I'm sure some of them were sick of getting attached to kids only to have them disappear, to have ones where severe problems had been brushed under the carpet by SS only for them to come out in the home environment or for genuine needs of their own to be dismissed as they had 'everything' and 'nothing to complain about' but out of all the kids I knew, only one was chilled out and happy.

As a kid with duck all and abuse to deal with and then a tit early adulthood, I lean more to the 'I'm not a pov, I deserve better than this' mentality going on here. Because the raging suggests that she had no idea that this could happen to her and it was brutal and traumatising. Well yeah, no tit. But it's no different to how it's always been since politicians went back to the Victorian Poor Laws mentality - of poverty being a moral failing rather than tit Happens and you try to help people where you can because you're not an hole.

****************


I had to write a foreword to a school production of Oliver Twist once. I managed to get parallels drawn between the historical and sociological context of the book and the contemporaneous Tory rhetoric past the Head, the Deputy Heads, the Governors and the pompous little twit who was the local MP at the time. All in the guise of 'setting the scene' for the show. The only person who noticed was the Drama teacher, who came from a similar background to me. Of course, the entire premise of Oliver Twist is that the kid deserved better than he had, so that's problematic in itself even without the anti-Semitism, the need for all women who had unmarried sex to die and that the other children without similar lineage to never get out of their lane, but Dickens wouldn't have been able to get a non-MC kid's story past the audience. I was still pleased with myself, especially when I saw parents smirking when they read the foreword from my spot in the band. It's amazing what you can do with nicely written, carefully formatted words.

 

[Silver Linings]

She’s always so bloody rude!

Spoiler: Screenshot of kitten vid - Jack’s twitter