sometimes I feel like societal collapse.

we live in a society.

Today I cycled to the library in a miniskirt. It’s not a noteworthy thing for me to do; in fact, I probably wear more clothes than most of the people I see on my commute in the balmy final days of summer. It is not remarkable to see a lady’s nipple through the thin fabric of her top, nor would I bat an eyelid to see fathers doing childcare, people expressing queerness of any sort, or public protest against our government – except, of course, that it makes me grateful to live in a metropolitan, global city where I rub shoulders with people of all demographics. It does, though, live in the back of my mind that I am what old Victorian men feared when they preached against such things as female emancipation through allowing our free movement on those newfangled bicycles.

When the Victorians lobbied against women’s education, liberation, and freedom of transportation, they were talking about me. First we cycled in our bloomers; gradually, though, the standards have slid, and we have gentlemen who dress like labourers and labourers with access to gentlemen’s spaces, and indecorous women in jobs and who drink or smoke freely, and we read explicit novels with no educational purpose, and I am free to ride astride with my bare legs on show up to my thighs. An educated woman, perhaps, ought to know better, but then perhaps I ought not be educated at all?

Would I change what I am, simply because some people, crumbled to dust, would object? These people, though, are not all in the long past: there are developed and globally significant nations that even nowadays would hate some aspect of myself, my friends, and the life we choose to live. In addition to being social degeneracy to a Victorian man I am what Anita Bryant hated, and there are people in my own country assembling en masse to object to the values I hold dear. How could that not make a person second guess themselves? The fundamental principles I hold the dearest – choosing not to think people are backwards or ignorant or lesser simply because they live a different way to me – are both what is objected to here and also what compels me to try my damnedest to see their point. So, would I change myself, or is what I believe in something to stand steadfast behind? Are my visible thighs emblematic of the problem?

The life we have open to us is both better and worse than that which was given to our forebears. Education has made us sick, in one sense: we can see the rot of unfairness, sense that the succours given to us are a distraction from some unattainable greater answer. But succour we have: I can go home tonight and I have disposable income, leisure time, enough education to pursue… whatever. I have the power to decide what’s important to me, and could dress like a duchess in designer or have eight healthy children or eat nothing but macarons and if that’s what I chose, I could. I think my mother might be the first generation in my family to taste a macaron and not have to sew her own clothes, and that’s good. The obscene business practices which make food and clothes as cheap as they are and medicine as expensive as it can be are terrible, but the solution is not to remove the good things; it is to change the systems which provide excess and profit.

Educated, working women and people of colour especially have priorities our ancestors did not: my PhD is not conditioning me to choose a childfree life, is it simply that access to education comes with the ability to choose such a mode of existence. My control over my finances allowed me to be a lot more choosy who I ended up with, and I am so much the happier to find myself a husband who does not have to care for me financially, who can cook and clean and sew, who loves me. Reproductive rights and the liberation of LGBTQ+ people, the rights of women and people of colour to earn an equal wage, my right to freedom of expression – to wear clothes that say something about myself, but not have that be the only route I have into public and private discourse – they are something worth standing by. They are not making society sick. I would not choose to live without these freedoms, and I would not deny these freedoms to others.

Whilst these fearmongers may have been right about where the freedoms led, they were – to my mind – wrong to associate freedom with negativity. As a society we have chosen to not let it matter if I see bare legs on the streets of London. A bare leg, devoid of context, says nothing about its beholder.

To get this article, and others, as physical media, subscribe now.

On This Topic:

• The UN Declaration of Human Rights is a moderate, common-sense document. In 1948, written in the mess of a post-war society, it was 29 simple articles no sane person would argue against; in 2025, with many fearing we are on the brink of war, they are surprisingly contentious.
• Please share your ‘I’m surprised this is a hot take’ moments from this year in the comments. I am constantly surprised by what’s considered a hot take.
• The miniskirt in question: a relatively modest Hobbs number

To-Do:

• Put barcodes on jigsaws, buy project boxes.
• Listen to The Favors album.
• Clean work pens.

Today’s Culture:

• I make better playlists than most people, and I don’t want to say I only listen to my playlists… but I can certainly tell when somebody else wants Spotify Radio on at work.
• Buying stickers off Etsy and Redbubble. The Redbubble ones are more expensive but I do love being able to show off my own interests rather than assumed ones.
• Staying late after work, apparently: I haven’t left before 6 this week.