Radicalism and Tinned Fruit

It was not that it was all that obvious, except from certain angles, but you could easily tell she was one of those women, by the way she moved down the street. Women, in the West, have achieved financial and social independence over the recent century or so. Consequently, certain women do indeed prefer to carry a tin of peach slices with them when they are out and about on an evening.

It was just over a hundred years ago when the Suffragette Henrietta Bullspizzle chained herself to the railings outside 10 Downing Street clutching a tin of peach slices. A few months later, another suffragette Doreen Pendulous smuggled a tin of mandarin segments, concealed in her bodice, into Purple's, a staunch men-only Gentleman's club. Another suffragette flagrantly opened a tin of fruit cocktail during the Grand National with - as we all know – tragically fatal consequences when the authorities later discovered she didn't have an appropriate serving spoon for the occasion.

From these tentative beginnings the suffragettes regarded carrying tinned fruit on or about the person as a political act. They claimed that the male patriarchy had a certain dismissive view of women found possessing various tinned goods when on a night out, especially tinned fruit. Suffragettes claimed men often viewed women holding - say – a tin of pineapple rings in a predatory manner. Especially if that male had in his possession a tin-opener (See, for example, Germoline Goat's: The Female with Fruit Cocktail in Syrup). This they claimed discriminated against the woman – who may have legitimate reasons of her own to want to carry some tinned fruit when going about her business.

However, as time passed and fashions changed it became more and more common for women to go out on the town carrying the aforementioned tinned fruit. This was especially the case for a girls' night out, when each of the women, more as a fashion accessory than as a political statement of feminist solidarity took with them a tin of mandarin segments.

Therefore present-day feminists have called for several Reclamation of the Peach Slices (in Syrup) Nights to take place in town centres throughout the UK. They hope the original spirit of radicalism can be reclaimed from what is now little more than a fashionable way of accessioning for a night on the town.

Others, though, claim that it is too late now and that modern feminists should be looking at other grocery items should they wish to make a political statement of equal importance to that of their forebears.

However, only time will tell who is right, this time.

 

[Books by David Hadley are available here (UK) or here (US)]