Journalist Polly Vernon is the author of the book Hot Feminist. And as you are about to find out in this extract, she doesn’t really care if you don’t approve of her.

A barista apologised to me for using the word ‘chick’.

‘It’s a contextual thing!’ he said, hastily, frothing my milk.

‘Huh?’ I said, for I had been too busy surreptitiously eying up the lay of his abs beneath his T-shirt to focus on his chat. He is young and shaggy-hairedly cute, and he wants to be a video director one day, unless that’s the other one? It might be the other one. This one might be the poet. Well. He is definitely one of my top ten baristas, a mental chart I carry around and reconfigure regularly in my head, which rates all my favourite coffee boys in accordance with their physical charm, their chat, and their ability to make my Flat White just perfectly, bonus points if I don’t even have to remind them what my order is.

Polly Vernon, author of ‘Hot Feminist’. Image: @pollyvernon

I am a terminal letch. I consider fancying people to be a feminist act.

‘She calls herself “chick” – but I think with irony – so I was thinking of that when I said it, but then actually, as a feminist, I do really hate the word myself, so . . .’

‘Do you?’ I said. ‘I couldn’t give a monkeys. Call me chick any time.’ Then I took my coffee from his hand, winked at him and playfully smacked his arse.

No. I didn’t, really. In my head, I did. But I did tell him ‘chick’ doesn’t bother me. Because it doesn’t. As a feminist, I reserve the right to not be offended by the word ‘chick’. Or by almost everything, mainly because being offended requires vast quantities of energy, and I have little left over, what with all the lusting after baristas I do.

Here’s some other things which don’t offend me, not one jot. Being called ‘love’ by some bloke, or ‘darling’, or ‘lady’, or ‘girl’. (Although I do think that last one is pushing it on a trade description level, increasingly.) I don’t love being called ‘madam’, but that’s a question of vanity muddled up with an instinctive repulsion at the unique combination of snottiness and toadying the word suggests; it’s got nowt to do with gender politics.

I don’t like being referred to as ‘a female’ admittedly, don’t entirely enjoy being reduced to my biological function. But I’m fine with ‘babe’. ‘OK, but say a male boss calls you “babe”,’ says Original E. ‘Surely that’s not OK? Surely that suggests an inappropriate level of intimacy, or a tendency to patronise, or at the very least that he doesn’t take you entirely seriously?’ ‘I don’t have any male bosses,’ I say, which is true. I’ve tried them in the past; they didn’t suit me, I got shot. All my bosses are women.

E sighs, because I’m ‘so literal’. ‘What if you did have a male boss, and he called you “babe”?’ she goes on. ‘It’d very much depend on my relationship with him, his intentions, the subtext of the situation, whether or not he was gay, whether or not I liked him and felt that he liked me. I’ve been called “babe” with affection, even respect. And I’ve been spoken to, by men, in ways which would technically tick every box on the ‘respectful engagement with a woman’ checklist, but which dripped with quiet contemptor basic dislike.’

‘Yeah. Well. I still think “babe” is dicey, as a rule,’ says E. ‘Oh, you and your rules, E!’ I say. Other things which don’t offend me: I don’t mind being wolf-whistled, if I consider the wolf whistle to have been delivered with profound reverence, that the whistler whistles in the vein of one dreaming of something he’ll never have. I don’t much like it when they (1) direct the kind of noises at you they might also make trying to attract the attention of a recalcitrant cat (I am not a cat), and I did mind it that time one of them pulled up alongside me at some traffic lights, looked over, and said, quite as if he were asking the time: ‘Excuse me. I was wondering. Do you take it up the arse?’

(1. You know them. The Men.)

I got offended the time I thought the cute guy and I were eyeing each other up in a mutual flurry of casual midday fancying, only then he accused me of looking at him ‘funny’ because he was black; at which point I stuttered: ‘I’m not racist! I’m lecherous!’ Which didn’t help. But if they’re pausing briefly to express some form of admiration with whole words/a whistle: honestly? It doesn’t appal me.

I do not get remotely offended if a man holds a door open for me, or offers me his seat on public transport. Does any woman, ever, actually mind that? Soft sexism, (2) I believe it’s been re-branded, because it’s imbued with the suggestion that women are meek, weak and weary creatures, who can neither open their own doors, nor stand up for half an hour while their tube rockets round the underground system like a demented mole.

Me? I’ve always viewed that sort of offer as the acknowledgment that I am either too obviously hung-over to remain upright, what with the remnants of last night’s dry white having saturated my inner ear and screwed up my capacity to balance; or too obviously over-burdened to have a hope in hell of opening my own doors. My capacity to collect baggage –canvas tote bags, Sainsbury’s carriers; laptops, tablets,iPhones and Kindles I somehow failed to put away properly when the opportunity presented itself; paperback books (even though I’ve got the Kindle); six packs of Coke Zero; and a spare pair of shoes in their very own drawstring pouch – is stunning. It’s nothing to do with my being a woman, everything to do with me being over ambitious and, also, freelance: when you’re not tied to an office, you have to carry all office requirements around with you, like an urban Nomad.

(2 I think they’ve missed a trick there, I’d have gone with Sexism Lite. Snappier, more European.)

As a consequence, I have oddly strong fingers, and a semi-permanent need of someone else to open doors for me. But no, I’ve never met any woman who does mind the door-opening seat-offering routine, although I have met a few men who say they’re far too wary of sparking a feminist meltdown to dare offer any chick (see? I use it myself) such services; reading between the lines, I think what they actually mean is: they can’t be bothered and they love having that seat too much to give it away. I do not get offended by the widespread practice of photoshopping commercial and editorial images of beautiful women; in which the already-minimal flaws on the faces and bodies of models hired to prance and pose and show off clothes or handbags or just themselves, on the covers of magazines, are digitally eradicated.

I think I’m supposed to be offended. A lot of people say they are horrifically affronted by photoshopping. Losing sleep and waging cold, cultural wars against it. There’s a feeling that Photoshop is destroying women’s self-confidence, landscaping our world with images of physical perfection we can’t hope to live up to, not least because not even the women in the pictures look like that, not in real life.

The phenomenally influential blog Jezebel.com describe itself as offering ‘Celebrity, sex, fashion for women. Without airbrushing’, ‘airbrushing’ being a charmingly retro word for the practice of Photoshop, although knowing the speed at which technology moves, ‘Photoshop’ will be a charmingly retro word for Photoshop, by the time this gets printed. One of Jezebel’s many schticks is to identify incidences of Photoshop in advertisements or on the printed pages of magazines which it considers especially dangerous, or remiss, or deceptive. Jezebel is in the habit of posting Before and After Photoshop images, pinpointing the varied ways in which the pics have been tinkered with; because Jezebel does not approve of Photoshop! Nor do some politicians.

Hot Feminist. Image: @pollyvernon

Periodically, I hear rumours that someone or other’s thinking seriously about anti-Photoshop legislation. The Liberal Democrats are all over it, junior Minister for Women and Equalities Jo Swinson has very much made it her Thing; in the US, an organisation called Off Our Chests launched a movement called The the Self Self-Esteem Act, which campaigns for clarification on Photoshopped images, for stickers alerting all those who encounter Photoshopped images to the fact that they’ve been Photoshopped. But I don’t care about Photoshop! Not a bit! If anything, I’m offended by the idea that I’d be offended by Photoshop.

First, because I know it happens, what with me not being completely bloody stupid. Anyone who ever whacked a filter on their own Instagram shot knows digital trickery happens, knows that the truth behind every photo is a lot less pretty than it first seems. Anyone who ever went to see a Spielberg film knows that! Second, because I already know models and film stars are better looking than me! Like: loads! Younger and firmer and fresher and thinner,  with vast eyes and rosebud lips and silken, silken hair!

Even without Photoshop, they’d be a lot better looking than me. Being better looking than me is their job! And I don’t mind! My self-esteem is not impacted one way or the other by a passing glimpse of Gisele Bundchen’s honeyed thighs, or Cara Delevingne’s immaculate cheekbones, or Miranda Kerr’s spectacularly perky bottom! Not a jot! And yes, I understand that the concern is for eyes and minds younger than mine; but let’s give teenage girls an option on not feeling like victims, eh? Let’s suppose some of them – maybe even lots of them – aren’t destroyed by those images, aren’t deflated or diminished. Let’s certainly accept they know more than we ever will about the digital altering of media, because that’s what happens when you and Facebook were born at roughly the same time.

I am not offended by the amount of women who aren’t on TV panel shows, because I can’t stand TV panel shows (too dull! Have you seen them? I mean – really! How could I be offended by my gender not being integrated into a format which is outdated and ruefully lacking in imagination? I am grateful, if anything); nor am I offended by crowd shots of sporting events which focus on the hot girlfriends of competing athletes. Or by, I dunno, the semiotics of twerking. Or Game of Thrones, HBO’s blockbuster TV adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s novels about a fantasy power struggle in a fantasy land which is not unlike medieval England in a lot of respects, give or take the zombies. Obsessed, yes! Totally, utterly, joyfully obsessed! But not offended.

‘What about all the gratuitous nudity, what about the sky-high tit count?’ asked my friend Ross (a boy feminist), anxiously. ‘I know! It’s excellent, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘And also: the wolves!’ I didn’t get offended that time Cosmopolitan magazine ran a series of sex tips for lesbians, and I didn’t get offended when the Daily Mail featured commentary on the clothing choices of some newly appointed female Tory MPs. ‘But when a newspaper does something like that, it reinforces the idea that women’s first purpose will only ever be decorative,’ rages E, who is losing patience with me fast; but then, she often does. ‘Only if you think a woman can’t simultaneously be well-dressed and potentially really good at her job,’ I say. ‘Only if you assume she’s peaked at coordinating her skirt and her tights. I don’t. I’d go as far as to say it suggests a level of base competence which hints at a wider-reaching potential for competence, one which could well include running the country, not least because they 

presumably knew the paps would be there that day, and correctly anticipated that.’

‘But no one ever talks about what the male politicians 

are wearing,’ she countered. 

‘No, and they bloody should! It’s a disgrace. I don’t think female politicians should care less about their physical appearance, I think the male ones should care more. Much, much more! Dudes! People can see you!’ (The whole episode reminded me of the time I took a woman lawyer friend shopping in advance of her making a high-profile court appearance, one she knew would result in her being photographed on her way into the courtrooms. In a move that was definitively Hot Feminist in nature, she told me that she’d taken the time to badly advise a clueless and arrogant male colleague on what he should be wearing to undertake the equivalent walk into court, thus ensuring that he looked awful in all resulting newspaper coverage.‘It’s not my fault he didn’t realise the suit I told him he should totally buy and wear was a fucking revolting colour,’ she said.)

I don’t rage against the continued existence of the Sun’s Page Three. I mean, I’m surprised anyone wants to look at those daily updated, full-page shots of a 23-year-old’s boobs, what with the internet flushing free, moving porn direct to everyone’s smart phone. Page Three seems archaic and a bit infantile, and if I were the Sun I’d ditch it from a journalistic perspective, rather than a feminist one. It’s been done and overdone, and bums a