Julie Burchill
7 February 2004
The Times, Weekend Review

A KING-MAKER, A BALL-BREAKER, A RISK-TAKER WITH NOT A MAN TO MATCH HER
Of all the crimes committed against the English language by "rap" (the "c", regrettably, is the only thing about it which is silent), perhaps the worst is the way that any old "ho" can now be called a "bitch" -or rather, "bee-yatch". Until rap, to be a bitch you had to be more than a woman, though not necessarily three times a lady; it meant you were bold, bolshy and the very best sort of "respectable" -that is, worthy of respect because of your sheer molten badness.

But now it just means you hang around slack-jawed men in short promotional music films, wearing next to nothing, simpering and getting excited about a sip of boring old Cristal.

In the blue corner, feminism too has devalued this once worthy word by "reclaiming" it. (Always a mistake, I find; does anybody really want to be called a queer, a Paki or a slag? Where insults are concerned, I always believe "finders keepers" to be the best rule.) In her book The Bitch Rules, Elizabeth Wurtzel lays out some basic guidelines including "have pets", "have a job, have your own money, support yourself" and "When all else fails, talk to God". Now these things may well go a long way to making you a decent person; they will almost certainly make you happier than if you did the opposite. But they're about as bitchy as knitting baby bootees.

Since the power-dressing Eighties were shown the door -more in sorrow than in anger -by the caring, sharing Nineties, the bitch proper has been persona non grata in polite circles, and thought to be something of a period piece, like the broad, the doxy and the dame. There are a good number of classic lit-bitches, special honours going to Brenda Last of A Handful of Dust -relieved that John her son rather than John her lover has died -and Galsworthy's Irene Heron Forsyte who, when discovered in flagrante with her naive bezzie's fiance by said naive bezzie, to the shocked reaction, "But I thought you were my friend!" comes back with the impressively chilly line: "A woman of the world doesn't have friends - she has lovers, and acquaintances." Wish I'd thought of that; still, my passionate vow to friends -No Loyalty Expected Or Given! -is pretty damn good.

Some people think that you can find the best bitches in the golden age of Hollywood, in the films of Joan Crawford and the books of James M. Cain. But Mildred Pierce did it all -ah! -for her daughter, while Phyllis of Double Indemnity and Cora of The Postman Always Rings Twice weren't really bitches at all -not dry and wry enough -but vamps. Vamps, unlike bitches, haven't travelled well; all that heavy-lidded languor and those heaving bosoms look silly and camp now, role models fit only for female impersonators.

These days in Hollywood, where any woman with an IQ over 50, a dress size over 8 or a birthday over 35 is good only for the scrapheap, bitches are extremely thin on the ground; the word is merely used to describe a spoilt high-school princess who won't swallow. No, the best bet for a bitch-fest has for long been TV; to be specific, soaps, from de luxe to down-home.

Tellingly, though Joan Collins starred in a film actually called The Bitch, no one but your most shameless kitsch-hound (moi) would recognise her character's name - Fontaine Khaled -whereas Alexis Carrington Colby will live for as long as there are blue cocktails to be quaffed. With pleasing egalitarianism, a bitch may as easily be called Ange as Alexis, and some of the very best of breed have marked their spot on the drabber side of Soap Street; Stef and Nicola of Emmerdale, EastEnders' Cindy and Janine -the last of whom, along with the incomparable Tracey Barlow of Coronation Street, made one rather think that we were actually living through The Golden Age of the Bitch right here, right now.

Until recently ...

Tracey and Janine, since Kate Ford and Charlie Brooks took over the previously thankless tasks of playing them, were always quite mesmerising -Mata Haris brought up on MTV and bootstrap feminism. Fair play be damned; both these girls were painfully aware that the decks had been stacked against them since birth - not just girls, but working-class girls -and saw no reason whatsoever why they should abide by Marquess of Queensberry rules. All this type has going for them is their looks; Shelley Winters once wrote that "a pretty face is a passport", but actually it's rather more of a visa -it runs out. And by the time it does, you'd better have accumulated some stocks and shares to take the place of that T&A.

Tracey and Janine, bless 'em, were well aware of this, and their sheer shamelessness and gumption made one want to stand up and cheer whenever they pulled off yet another spiteful scam.

Of course, it was too good to last; now both Weatherfield and Walford ring with the self-loathing sobs of these two soft-centred sweeties, who turned out - surprise! -to be vulnerable. I hate that word -and when it's used of a woman, it invariably seeks to castrate with caring, a variation on killing with kindness.

All that time, apparently, Tracey and Janine were lying, cheating and stealing not because it felt good or because it got them stuff (ie, for sensible, logical reasons) but because they felt unloved (ie, for a totally mad, illogical reason - if you're not loved and want to be, just be nice to people). What's a decent bitch to do, with these small-screen sisters revealed as nothing more than wusses in wolves' clothing? Easy. She dusts down her Footballers' Wives boxed set (episodes 1 to 8) and reflects smugly that they'll never turn Tanya! As created by Maureen Chadwick and Ann McManus (how strange these honest names look in the poncey mileu of television writing) and played by the astonishing Zoe Lucker (a perfect bitch name in itself; "Lucky Life") Tanya Turner was always the black heart of Footballers' Wives, and she survives into the next bout after decent, clingy Donna, lovely, fragile Chardonnay and her own ludicrous husband have long limped off the pitch. Fresh totty will be wheeled on, younger and prettier and itching to dethrone our Alpha Girl heroine, but Tanya will remain invincible; a king maker, a ball-breaker, a risk-taker, with not a man to match her. And, one prays, never ever revealed as "vulnerable". How strange -and what a judgment on "quality" TV drama -that one can find only in something as supposedly camp and unrealistic as Footballers' Wives such a unique portrait of a woman who is in NO WAY vulnerable, damaged, neurotic, needy or looking for love in all the wrong places, as with every allegedly "strong" TV heroine, from Cathy Come Home to Jane Tennison.

Whatever problems Tanya has, she copes with; gin and tonic, grin and bear it! The therapy and victim culture has somehow gone right over her immaculately groomed head; she is the sort of woman -all stiff upper lip, steely nerve and backbone - who embodied so much that was traditionally great about our island race. But without the Blitz to brave or frontiers to hold, unable and/or unwilling to buy into the culture of vulnerability, such tough-minded women often choose occupations which, on the surface, seem trivial and meretricious -be it poison-pen journalism (me), glamour model (Jordan) or footballer's wife. For in an age where everyone wants to look deep, seeking to appear shallow is a kind of modesty, a kind of kindness.

"See my complexity! Feel my pain! Now respect me!" demand the monstrous, jostling legions of the Deep. "Who, me? -not a care in the world," sneers the Bitch. "But watch your back, or I'll have you." One's "nice"; the other isn't. But I know who I'd prefer on my team, in my bed or on my TV screen any day.



julie.burchill@thetimes.co.uk