Friday night should have been entertaining. There were four vivacious women gathered around the kitchen table for an enjoyable powwow. But the entire conversation went like this: “I haven’t been out for two weeks and I’ve given up wheat”; followed by “I haven’t done drugs this month and I’m not interested in chocolate any more”. My own riveting input consisted of: “Well, I’ve given up smoking and drank on only two evenings last week.” There we sat, four one-time bouncy, amusing females reduced to eating vegetarian Bolognese and convincing ourselves that not doing certain things is far more empowering than doing something naughty.
We are in the grip of a new, puritanical age directed at women, inspired by the media and fed by innumerable government surveys and initiatives which convince us that we are all unstable and undeserving in one sense or another. It may be that you’re a smoking mum, that you use bad hygiene methods in the kitchen or that you eat too many biscuits. The information/guilt overload is starting to have an effect.
But, while I may have given up drinking, at least I’m avoiding the tearful rush to the Priory and the traditional heart-rending statement given to the press that appeals for space to “find myself”. Nor will shots of me at celebrity bashes wearing a rictus grin and gripping a glass of milk be appearing this weekend. Why should they? The occasional bad-girl binge doesn’t mean you need thousands of pounds worth of therapy and a telling-off by Tessa Jowell. It just means you need a holiday. Yet such embarrassing acts of contrition are now regular set pieces in the newspapers, particularly when a “ladette” or an “It Girl” is involved.
Camilla Parker Bowles’s niece, Emma, has admitted to having an unspecified “problem” with drugs and alcohol. Whenever these vague admissions surface, I can’t help wondering if the problem isn’t just the lack of a regular supply of the substance in question. Anyway, looking suitably grim and battle-worn, she joins the long line of sexy demi-royals to sniffle: “I have just spent 35 days at the Meadows Clinic in Arizona. It’s all very up- setting.” Last summer, when her cousin Tom was caught doing drugs in public, his attitude to the media attention (and the family ticking-off) was far more mature and easy-going. He never felt the need to call his hobby a “problem” or to seek counselling. And Lord Frederick Windsor did not tearfully beg for a bed at the Priory after he sniffed his way into the tabloids this time last year. Sensibly, both just said that they probably wouldn’t take cocaine in future (at least not in public).
When journalists catch a flighty femme doing drugs in a pub toilet, or falling down drunk on the King’s Road, it’s a different story. The honesty of a “Look, it’s not that often” approach to drugs and booze is not for Emma, oh no. Like many women before, her prospects for work and celebrity status can recover only if she gives numerous humiliating “poor me” interviews. Women who are considered to behave badly must weasel their way back into the nation’s affection by saying over and over again “mea culpa, mea culpa“. If Diana had lived, she would no doubt be selling self-help books by the million today and appearing on Oprah and Ricky Lake, endlessly telling us of “one’s mistakes with men and food”. For the 21st-century single woman, it’s no longer enough to stop doing what’s bad for you (and, frankly, the list is endless); you must renounce all of your former hedonism and eat rocket salad every day, too.
But is there a more sinister social agenda behind Emma’s public apology and her need to boast of therapy and a referral to the Priory as if these were new Versace dresses rather than sad personal weaknesses?
It seems that the Emmas, TPTs and Caroline Ahernes are being made into modern martyrs. They are publicly crucified for the perceived sins of all us party girls. This latest “poor me” phenomenon is nothing more than a traditional backlash against feminine independence. Oh yes, smirk the comment pages in the tabloids, the ladette may have had a brief fling with power and macho posturing, but now it’s time to be girlies again and admit you can’t take the pace. In biblical times, public flogging or stoning paid for such “loose” moral attitudes in women. Now repentant celebs and debs are forced to write endless articles denouncing themselves as alcoholics because they like white wine.
Two years ago, a Sunday tabloid wrongly linked Ms Parker Bowles to Prince William, and even though “sources” denied any friendship between them, her name will have reached royal ears. As Prince William nears his 18th birthday, palace aides are more jumpy than ever about his moral safety. Such is the protective hysteria surrounding the heir that his entourage is being swept clean of any possible links between the Prince and hard- living London gals with their wraps of cocaine. Operation Protect the Prince is well under way, and Tara PT and Emma PB are just double-barrelled casualties in the war to protect the future king’s reputation. If their reputations are soiled in the meantime, then so be it. Wills must not be tempted by these daughters of Eve.
Meanwhile, the rest of us one-time party girls bore ourselves to death boasting about our renewed vigour and the joys of carrot juice compared to a stiff Jack Daniels. Perhaps most pathetically of all, while my fiance enjoys a weekend in Amsterdam before our wedding, I’ll be toasting my new life with a glass of spirolina on a health farm, leaving my party days behind me with a whimper, not a bang.
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