How can stripping for men be feminist? AMANDA PLATELL says it’s wrong to encourage women to go into such a tawdry and dangerous industry

 Author Margaret Atwood is hailed around the world as a feminist giant because of her bestselling dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, where women are subjugated and treated as nothing more than vessels for babies in a male-dominated future.

With the publication of its long-awaited sequel this week, fans were in raptures, and Time magazine put her on its cover, describing her as ‘the reluctant prophet’. Reluctant is not the word I would use, however, given her latest outburst.

Bizarrely, she has come to the defence of female strippers, claiming their profession can be ’empowering’ for girls and make them ‘feel in control of a room’ and their lives.

Award winning author Margaret Atwood has stated support for female strippers saying doing so can be ’empowering’ for women

By coincidence, the 79-year-old’s outpourings coincide with the release of Jennifer Lopez’s movie Hustlers, where J-Lo portrays just such an ’empowered’ stripper, who’s taking control of her life by drugging her sleazy male customers, and stealing their bank cards and PIN numbers.

The truth is the sex business is never more than a hair’s breadth away from serious crime. Atwood is legitimising an industry that degrades, abuses and exploits women on an unimaginable scale, treating their flesh as a commodity — as I learned when I investigated suburban pole dancing clubs for this newspaper some years ago.

One dancer I encountered, a single mum, confessed she thought it was the only way to make easy money to support her child — and then broke down in tears saying no decent man would want to marry her now.

Other dancers revealed that, despite the clubs claiming to have a ‘no-touching’ policy, the reality was very different. Some confessed they had customers they slept with for money.

The seediest joints all too often involve the trafficking of terrified girls miles from home, who are forced by criminal pimps to sell their bodies.

Surely it is wrong to encourage girls to go into this tawdry and dangerous industry? I would ask this of Atwood.

Does the ’empowering’ profession of stripping pass The Daughter Test? If her own child, Eleanor, had said: ‘Hey Mum, I’ve decided on a career removing my clothes for lascivious men,’ would she have embraced her choice?

I doubt it.

When a young woman strips for money she is not freeing her soul but slowly destroying it. Far from being emancipating, it is as enslaving as Atwood’s wombs-to-order in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Defending the release of Britain’s most prolific female paedophile after just ten years, the Probation Service says it has banned Vanessa George from three counties where her victims and their families live. What utter madness. Since George has refused to name 30 of the infants she abused, there’s no knowing in which counties they and their loved ones have ended up.

As one of George’s own family said succinctly: ‘It’s probably safer in prison for her.’

 Eyebrows can kill a romance

Channel 4’s First Dates Hotel is a fascinating insight into the modern dating world. Sheffield lawyer Lianne revealed to the deliciously dreadlocked Sia that he’d know if it was love once he saw her ‘naked’ — by which she meant without her painted-on eyebrows.

Not a good sign. Richard Burton said it infuriated him that his twice-wife Elizabeth Taylor took two hours to do her eyebrows just to go to the pub. Look how that ended.

 One of more than 100 illegal migrants who found their way across the Channel this week was a massive, heavily bearded chap who paddled here in a kayak. How long before the authorities give him leave to stay, believing his claims he’s a 15-year-old fleeing persecution?

 You’ve boobed, Katie

Katie Holmes has been spotted in New York wearing a cashmere bra and cardigan by designer brand Khaite

Fresh from her break-up with Jamie Foxx, Katie Holmes hailed a cab in New York wearing a cashmere bra and cardigan by designer brand Khaite. The internet melted, with both items selling out in an hour. Its designer Catherine Holstein thanked Katie, saying she knew that eventually her bras would catch on.

Can there really be that many daft, rich women desperate to pay £420 for a woolly beige bra that looks ridiculous, and certainly wouldn’t win best supporting role at the lingerie Oscars?

So long Fireman Sam, who has been burnt to a cinder after a county fire service dropped him as a mascot for being sexist and deterring women from joining.

The fire chiefs want a 50:50 gender split, while in England only five per cent of firepersons are women. Nothing to do with the fact that most women are also working mums, and don’t want a job where they have to do night and weekend shifts and spend most of their time rescuing cats from trees.

 All you need is love, Jonathan

Jonathan Ross has recently revealed his remorse at the death of his mother and missing a last chance to see her

Jonathan Ross spoke movingly of his remorse at having missed the last chance to see his mum before she died. ‘She had a form of cancer,’ he said, ‘but we were told it was liveable and we assumed she’d be around a lot longer.’

By all accounts, Ross is a devoted family man — an adoring son and loyally married to Jane for more than 30 years, raising three children together. He should sleep easy. As so many of us who didn’t get there for that last moment have learned, it’s the lifetime of love you give that matters most to any mother.

The tale of size-14 Jade Savage, 28, dumped by a man she ‘met’ through Tinder because she was ‘too fat’, is a salutary one for lonely hearts seeking love on a dating app.

A male friend turned up for an eagerly anticipated date expecting the gorgeous, slim woman whose pictures he’d seen on an app. ‘When I saw a sumo wrestler waddling towards me,’ he told me later, ‘I thought: “She’s swallowed my date.” ’

 Megateam Meghan

Sharing details of their forthcoming ten-day visit to Africa on their Instagram account, Megs and Harry revealed they, Archie and their security team will be accompanied by — hold your breath — a private secretary, assistant private secretary, two programme co-ordinators, a PA, a social media manager, three communications secretaries, a logistics bod, a director of royal travel, a nanny and Meghan’s hairdresser.

At least the thrifty couple are paying for the hairdresser themselves.

The Sussexes will be taking a commercial flight. Crikey, they’ll need one. There isn’t a private jet big enough!

Yet launching her Smart Works campaign — which provides vulnerable, unemployed women with the skills and clothes to get back into work — a relaxed Meghan surprised us all by speaking eloquently and amusingly without notes for nearly ten minutes.

She had her audience eating out of her hand, and she endearingly concluded that she had to get back to Archie as it was ‘feed time’.

The welcome revelation proves what a boon she could be to the monarchy — and, if nothing else, she might give some lessons in public speaking and spontaneity to brother-in-law William.

The Westminster Noticeboard

• Glorious to see Scottish National Party leader Nicola Sturgeon coming out to promote Breast Cancer Now dressed in a matching pink cowboy hat, oversized sunglasses and feather boa — channelling the gay icon Elton John.
• The pompous Commons Speaker John Bercow has never concealed his contempt for newspapers who question his ‘impartiality’. So it was a delight to see even the Brexit-hating Guardian call him a ‘narcissist’ and the kind of man ‘who looks in a mirror and falls in love at first sight’.
• So John McDonnell is promising us ordinary workers a four-day working week. Well, I suppose it’s only what MPs gave themselves back in 2003 under Tony Blair, when they voted Parliament would only regularly sit from Monday to Thursday.

Nicola Sturgeon coming out to promote Breast Cancer – channelling the gay icon Elton John.

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