Why Katie Price is a Feminist

I always get a lot of stick when I say this, but I really like Katie Price. Maybe it is because in spite of all her gold unitard wearing shenanigans, her story resonates with me a whole fricking lot. Here is a single mum, raising the disabled child of a deadbeat dad (shame on you Dwight Yorke for not taking care of your seed) and she is also the main breadwinner of a broken family. Her husband left her when she was adamant that she did not wish to end the marriage. Did she feel sorry for herself ? No, she spent a few weeks getting drunk in Marbella and then she emerged, feisty, fighting and back in form with a new boyfriend at her side. She was not born the most stunning woman in the world, nor the most intelligent, nor the sexiest or the most privileged, yet she has managed to be completely self made and to have created a market out of herself spawning homeware, clothing, No 1 Albums, bestselling books and reality TV shows. I think Katie Price is a feminist icon because if she can do it, the rest of us have no excuse.


The feminist movement in the early 1990’s were defined by a number of key issues: women’s suffrage, gender neutrality, equal work for equal pay, free choice of women to their reproductive rights but increasingly, women are disappointed with the fruits of the spoils. Men routinely deny that there is a glass ceiling, but the miniscule numbers of senior employees in corporate UK betray the lie. We have been told to work hard and assiduously and we will have the dream husband, the dream family and the dream house in the country, only to find that we are still left with the lion’s share of the housework and childcare whilst that man that we love so much chases DDs and salivates over Botox enhanced, silicon filled blondes. We were taught to be independent, to value the fact that we could purchase our own homes, our own cars and pay our own bills: no one told us that this was a stupid strategy. As Lil Kim says in the Moulin Rouge- why spend mine when I could spend yours? Meanwhile the girls at school who happily used their best assets and gave it up to the right bankers, lawyers, and IT personnel are enjoying the very same spoils, except for free and without the hassle of bank accounts, investments, mortgages and the like.

Katie Price has turned this form of delusional thankless feminism on its head. She has is a cacophony of contradictions. She has had an abortion, had three children and is undergoing fertility treatment to have another. They will probably have three different fathers, turning the idea of the nuclear birth family upside down and on its head. She has, to some extent, reinvented herself from the rubber clad, Lolita inspired pin-up of a Page Three Girl into a viable business enterprise, merchandising herself and her children. Nothing is sancrosanct, nothing is secret. Katie Price has cleverly made herself the brand and is marketing it (even unapologetically whoring it) with passion and enthusiasm. She is strikingly honest about her capabilities, surprisingly optimistic despite all the negative press, and has a dogged determinism and sense of not caring about the opposition that we only latterly see in men. She exploits the lad’s mags with knowing prowess- a pout here, a wink there, a bat of the eyelid. She can become the sex kitten at the drop of her knickers but can also be versatile enough to sell children’s equestrian gear in pretty pink. Isn’t this even better than Germaine Greer? A woman exercising her choice in all aspects of her life, refusing to be defined by the views of others and eking out a name and a place for herself? Katie Price has worked quite hard for her cars, her house, her horseboxes and her life but crucially, has done so doing it on her own terms, at her own pace and with her own vision. There are partners who are earning millions in brown suits at multinational law firms who cannot say the same.

Some may say that her overt sexualisation is actually demeaning traditional concepts of feminism and by continuing to pose for men’s magazines and on the covers of Nuts and Zoo, she reinforces stereotypes of women as objects. I beg to differ. Katie Price has taken her sexuality by the vagina and has released herself from the claws of society’s expectations of what is a “good woman”. She is the head of her household and plays a dominant role in her relationships. And there’s the rub- Katie Price probably best epitomises the central thesis of Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. By her failure to fit squarely into the traditional, suburban, nuclear family which is both repressive and devitalising, she has become a metaphor for our times where women resist being separated from their sexuality. Katie Price more than owns her libido and her desire; she cognitively associates herself with it, and manipulates it for her own benefit. Isn’t this the antithesis of the female eunuch?

Not everyone is born to be a suffragette. Not every individual will fight for parliamentary freedoms or be the first to go to University or to enter into the professions. And we don’t all want to be pink pony toting women in a sea of hair extensions, hobbling with six inch heels to a celebrity event. But if a woman chooses this, and makes a commercial enterprise out of it, I am surprised that this is considered counter-feminism and counter the movements that preached that we were all needed to reclaim ownership of our choices.