Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Freya Gowrley, Lecturer in History of Art and Liberal Arts, University of Bristol

The Netflix documentary Fit for TV: The Reality of the Biggest Loser raises questions around the ethics of one the most popular US reallity TV series of the 2000s. From claims about the cruel treatment of its contestants and its callous endorsement of “fatphobic” narratives, the series sits at odds with feelings around body image and weight in a post body-positivity age.

Recently in the UK reality television shows such as Love Island have been under the spotlight for alleged bullying and misogynistic behaviour. This perhaps shows that a more sustained reckoning is on the horizon for programmes dealing with our bodies, and their long-term effects on the collective psyche.

The idea for The Biggest Loser came to its executive producer David Broome when he spotted a sign posted by an “obese person seeking a trainer” to help them get into shape. The show would eventually see contestants and trainers battling to see who could lose the most body weight through the show’s extreme methods, ultimately winning a prize of US$250,000 (£185,000).

This was a significant amount of money, especially for the time, but the real prize was supposedly the discipline and freedom gained through the process of radical body transformation. As such, the show is rooted in narratives of hard work, determination and ultimately the American dream – you can be anything you want, as long as you work hard enough.

Baiting and exploitation

Despite these seemingly wholesome aims, the documentary points out that the tone of the show was initially unclear. Indeed, its title seems to invite the ridicule of its participants. The first few seasons were presented by a comedian and stacked with challenges seemingly designed to humiliate contestants.

In one episode, the “losers” were asked to build a tower of food with their teeth. In another, they were asked to survive temptation challenges – they could eat as much as they wanted for the chance to see a loved one or go home, but they would still be weighed in at the end of the week.

While these challenges are justified in the documentary by producers as realistic scenarios replicating real-life temptations, commentators such as fat-acceptance activist Aubrey Gordon noted that these tests were based around the presumption that “fat people cannot be trusted around food”. Revelling in the spectacle of failure, such challenges encouraged moralising judgments.

In the temptation challenges, the visual pleasure of excess was clear. Key to such challenges was transforming weight loss into drama – a spectacle people would watch.

Extravagant display was necessary as the show revolved around the potentially slow process of losing weight. Indeed, while diet has been shown to be key for those hoping to reduce their body mass, a programme of extreme exercise was devised. Contestants, often on as little as 800 calories per day, were shown sweating, vomiting and collapsing, cameras shaking to convey the heft of their bodies.

As the seasons progressed, the weight of participants starting The Biggest Loser “journey” went up and, arguably, their ability to work out safely went down, much to the dismay of the show’s medical adviser, Dr Robert Huizenga.

On both the original show and the documentary, Huizenga is presented constantly at odds with trainers Bob Harper and Jillian Michaels, whose methods he challenged. In his obvious concern for the contestants, he became a voice of reason in a show that seemed focused on the entertainment value of those taking part.

The magic of TV transformation

The 2000s ushered in a new era of exposure – an abundant culture of images and television shows celebrating the glamorous lives of celebrities. But this was not limited to the the rich and the famous.

Shows like Pop Idol plucked everyday Joes from obscurity and placed them in the spotlight. These shows glamourised the self-help mentality of the American dream. Hard work, self-control and more than a dash of “natural” talent and beauty were all one needed to be propelled into relative superstardom.

Like rough stones turned into shiny gems, members of the public became top models, popstars and even Dallas Cowgirls as if at the click of a finger. This was a process of transformation, often centred on the visual. It was only logical that this be extended to the most extreme kind of bodily transformation that could be recorded. The message in all of these shows was clear: with extreme hard work and determination you too could achieve the body, the celebrity, the popularity or whatever you deserved.

The Biggest Loser was far from the only series promoting negative stereotypes around people’s bodies on TV at the time. As the virality of body-shaming clips from shows like America’s Next Top Model and 10 Years Younger shows, this was an all-encompassing entertainment culture that villainised gaining even a few pounds.

Today, weight loss is omnipresent once more thanks to the prominence of drugs like Ozempic. In the last two years, we have gone from a broad culture of bodily acceptance to one that seeks to achieve perfection. Celebrities are thinner and look younger than ever, and the abundance of these transformational narratives on social media suggests that we should all aspire to follow suit.

The changing reception of The Biggest Loser – once a very popular programme – revealed in Netflix’s documentary not only shows how influential the media can be in how we see our own bodies, but also reinforces how fickle bodily trends can be.

We can’t know how long it will be until we are told once more to embrace our curves and wrinkles – but you can be sure that it will be visual media that will drive the change.

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Freya Gowrley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Biggest Loser: how an aggressive entertainment culture normalised body-shaming – https://theconversation.com/the-biggest-loser-how-an-aggressive-entertainment-culture-normalised-body-shaming-265592

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mehebub Sahana, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Geography, University of Manchester

The Ganges, a lifeline for hundreds of millions across South Asia, is drying at a rate scientists say is unprecedented in recorded history. Climate change, shifting monsoons, relentless extraction and damming are pushing the mighty river towards collapse, with consequences for food, water and livelihoods across the region.

For centuries, the Ganges and its tributaries have sustained one of the world’s most densely populated regions. Stretching from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal, the whole river basin supports over 650 million people, a quarter of India’s freshwater, and much of its food and economic value. Yet new research reveals the river’s decline is accelerating beyond anything seen in recorded history.

In recent decades, scientists have documented alarming transformations across many of the world’s big rivers, but the Ganges stands apart for its speed and scale.

In a new study, scientists reconstructed streamflow records going back 1,300 years to show that the basin has faced its worst droughts over the period in just the last few decades. And those droughts are well outside the range of natural climate variability.

Stretches of river that once supported year-round navigation are now impassable in summer. Large boats that once travelled the Ganges from Bengal and Bihar through Varanasi and Allahabad now run aground where water once flowed freely. Canals that used to irrigate fields for weeks longer a generation ago now dry up early. Even some wells that protected families for decades are yielding little more than a trickle.

Global climate models have failed to predict the severity of this drying, pointing to something deeply unsettling: human and environmental pressures are combining in ways we don’t yet understand.

Water has been diverted into irrigation canals, groundwater has been pumped for agriculture, and industries have proliferated along the river’s banks. More than a thousand dams and barrages have radically altered the river itself. And as the world warms, the monsoon which feeds the Ganges has grown increasingly erratic. The result is a river system increasingly unable to replenish itself.

Melting glaciers, vanishing rivers

At the river’s source high in the Himalayas, the Gangotri glacier has retreated nearly a kilometer in just two decades. The pattern is repeating across the world’s largest mountain range, as rising temperatures are melting glaciers faster than ever.

Initially, this brings sudden floods from glacial lakes. In the long-run, it means far less water flowing downstream during the dry season.

These glaciers are often termed the “water towers of Asia”. But as those towers shrink, the summer flow of water in the Ganges and its tributaries is dwindling too.

Humans are making things worse

The reckless extraction of groundwater is aggravating the situation. The Ganges-Brahmaputra basin is one of the most rapidly depleting aquifers in the world, with water levels falling by 15–20 millimeters each year. Much of this groundwater is already contaminated with arsenic and fluoride, threatening both human health and agriculture.

The role of human engineering cannot be ignored either. Projects like the Farakka Barrage in India have reduced dry-season flows into Bangladesh, making the land saltier and threatening the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest. Decisions to prioritise short-term economic gains have undermined the river’s ecological health.

Across northern Bangladesh and West Bengal, smaller rivers are already drying up in the summer, leaving communities without water for crops or livestock. The disappearance of these smaller tributaries is a harbinger of what may happen on a larger scale if the Ganges itself continues its downward spiral. If nothing changes, experts warn that millions of people across the basin could face severe food shortages within the next few decades.

Saving the Ganges

The need for urgent, coordinated action cannot be overstated. Piecemeal solutions will not be enough. It’s time for a comprehensive rethinking of how the river is managed.

That will mean reducing unsustainable extraction of groundwater so supplies can recharge. It will mean environmental flow requirements to keep enough water in the river for people and ecosystems. And it will require improved climate models that integrate human pressures (irrigation and damming, for example) with monsoon variability to guide water policy.

Transboundary cooperation is also a must. India, Bangladesh and Nepal must do better at sharing data, managing dams, and planning for climate change. International funding and political agreements must treat rivers like the Ganges as global priorities. Above all, governance must be inclusive, so local voices shape river restoration efforts alongside scientists and policymakers.

The Ganges is more than a river. It is a lifeline, a sacred symbol, and a cornerstone of South Asian civilisation. But it is drying faster than ever before, and the consequences of inaction are unthinkable. The time for warnings has passed. We must act now to ensure the Ganges continues to flow – not just for us, but for generations to come.

Mehebub Sahana receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship. He is affiliated with The University of Manchester, UK.

– ref. The Ganges River is drying faster than ever – here’s what it means for the region and the world – https://theconversation.com/the-ganges-river-is-drying-faster-than-ever-heres-what-it-means-for-the-region-and-the-world-265891

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Curran, Research Fellow: Peacekeeping and Peacebuilding, Coventry University

The assembled United Nations dignitaries gave Donald Trump 13 seconds of applause as he approached the podium for his address to the 80th anniversary general debate on September 23. They clapped for 20 seconds when he finished speaking.

In between, having been asked to confine his remarks to 15 minutes (like all other speakers), the US president gave the room a lengthy address that lasted 57 minutes. It veered from the many shortcomings of the previous US administrations, to why UN migration policies were ruining the world, to the climate change “con job”, to a warning to the assembled leaders that “your countries are going to hell”.

At points in between, Trump congratulated himself, for turning the US into the “hottest country anywhere in the world”, for repelling a “colossal invasion” of migrants at America’s southern border and for ending seven wars – for which he repeated his line that he should have been given the Nobel peace prize.

He also savaged the UN, which he said “did not even try to help in any” of the conflicts. “The UN is such tremendous potential. I’ve always said it. It has such tremendous, tremendous potential, but it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential. For the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly worded letter and then never follow that letter up.” He added: “Empty words don’t solve war.”

Questioning whether the UN could play a productive role, Trump offered “the hand of American leadership and friendship to any nation in this assembly that is willing to join us in forging a safer, more prosperous world”. In other words, UN-led multilateralism is out, to be replaced, perhaps, by a series of bilateral relationships dominated by the US.

Eight decades after its founding in the wake of the second world war, it is not a good time for the UN. It is currently mired in a budget crisis: US$2.4 billion (£1.77 billion) in unpaid dues from member states against an overall budget of US$3.5 billion for 2025. Of this, the US owes the most, about US$1.5 billion.

The Trump administration is applying a much-reduced budget that includes zero funding for UN peacekeeping operations. This decision has been made despite the fact that the US has an obligation to pay at least one-quarter of the UN’s peacekeeping costs. It has also paused most other funding to the body.

Trump’s speech did not shy away from other issues of critical importance. He highlighted the need to “stop the war” in Gaza and negotiate peace. He also chastised Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. But his views on these conflicts were largely aimed at individual states as opposed to the UN – and multilateralism – in general.

When it came to Gaza, he was critical of the states that “unilaterally” recognised Palestinian statehood. Talking about Ukraine, Trump criticised European states for not cutting off purchases of Russian energy and energy products. The UN, and its efforts in addressing these catastrophic situations, was not mentioned.

Migration and climate

But Trump was most savage when it came to migration. He opened his section on migration by stating that “your countries are being ruined”, stating: “The United Nations is funding an assault on western countries and their borders.” Claiming that the UN provides cash assistance towards migrants journeying to the US, Trump then stated: “The UN is supposed to stop invasions, not create them.”

The rest of his discussion on migration was aimed at Europe. Within that he offered unsubstantiated claims about London – with whose mayor, Sadiq Khan, he has a longstanding disagreement: “Now they want to go to sharia law” he said.

His language here will (rightly) cause considerable concern for many. It may reflect his belief in the role of sovereign borders, particularly in the US. But the attachment – in particular with regards to European states – of the idea of sovereignty to a way of life that is somehow endangered by migration is one which could embolden anti-migrant sentiment on a global level.

Trump’s views on climate change will also grab headlines. Interestingly though, given his other criticisms of the UN, while he called climate science and the idea of man-made global warming “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world”, his scorn wasn’t particularly aimed at the UN.

Granted, the UN has been in the driving seat for many of the steps taken in attempting to tackle the climate crisis – so by implication, the UN was in the US president’s sights. But he instead he took the opportunity to direct his slurs towards China which – he said – builds wind turbines “and they send them all over the world but they barely use them”.

So what can be taken from this? It may not have been a worst-case scenario for those who support international cooperation. He didn’t explicitly pull the US out of any other UN programmes.

But there’s very little to take reassurance from a multilateral perspective when viewing Trump’s 57 minutes at the lectern. In his view, the UN is not up to speed with attempts to build peace, it doesn’t function properly, it’s secondary to bilateral efforts, and – when it comes to the US – it has supported an “invasion” by migrants.

And, reading between the lines, Trump’s perspectives on sovereignty, climate change and migration may embolden other political leaders who want to push similar agendas. It has the danger of going beyond rhetoric.

The US president’s disdain for multilateralism and the UN system may mean other members reprioritise their budgets, cutting funding still further. This would further fracture a UN system which is already seriously under pressure.

David Curran received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and Irish Research Council in 2022/23 to hold a series of workshops to better understand UN policies towards the Protection of Civilians

– ref. ‘Your countries are going to hell’: Trump’s UN speech explained by an expert – https://theconversation.com/your-countries-are-going-to-hell-trumps-un-speech-explained-by-an-expert-265944

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Olivia Carpenter, Lecturer in Literature, University of York

Jane Austen penned the last sentences of her unfinished manuscript for the novel we know as Sanditon in March 1817 before she died that July. Like me, many Austen fans often stumble upon this work after they have read all six of her completed novels.

At this point, readers of Austen feel like they know her and have sought out Sanditon because they want more of what they loved in her other works. However, they are often surprised by what they find.

In the final months of her life, Austen had moved away from writing about the English country house. The titular Sanditon is instead a seaside health resort, and the novel follows characters who spend a season there trying to get healthy or wealthy.

Austen’s most striking departure from the rest of her work, however, is in her inclusion of the character of Miss Lambe – a young heiress staying at the resort who is of African descent. Sanditon is the only Austen novel to contain an explicitly Black character.

Sanditon’s narrator explains that Miss Lambe is a mixed-race Black heiress of just 17 years old. Austen calls her a “chilly and tender” girl who attracts attention because she requires luxuries such as “a maid of her own”, and “the best room in the lodgings”.

Far from being disadvantaged because of race, Miss Lambe has more privileges than many of her white peers, and they react with interest and envy. The resort’s scheming foundress, Lady Denham, even fantasises about making an advantageous match for her nephew with the girl.

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This article is part of a series commemorating the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth. Despite having published only six books, she is one of the best-known authors in history. These articles explore the legacy and life of this incredible writer.

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Miss Lambe’s presence in Austen’s novel presents a stark challenge to any assumptions that Austen never wrote about people of colour. Many still assume that authors in Austen’s time simply weren’t writing about Black characters.

However, Miss Lambe is not the only character of this background to appear in books of the period. I am currently finishing up a book on the subject of Black representation in British marriage plots. I research Black characters who are heiresses, escapees, keepers of dark secrets, and participants in all manner of surprise twists and turns.

For example, in the anonymously authored 1808 novel The Woman of Colour, trouble ensues when a young Black woman, Olivia Fairfield, travels to England from Jamaica in order to marry according to her father’s wishes.

There have also been several rich and wonderful research projects demonstrating the enormous variety of Black British history in Jane Austen’s England. The writer and academic Gretchen Gerzina’s book Black England, for example, brings to life a vision of this world that included Black community, activism and intellectualism.

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Read more:
Austen and Turner: A Country House Encounter captures the spirit of two great geniuses, born 250 years ago

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The Mapping Black London project, a stunningly detailed digital resource from Northeastern University, London, provides interactive maps demonstrating evidence of Black life in the city through the records of everyday people. We can see the proof of Black Britons being baptised, getting married, or being buried in London during Austen’s lifetime.

We can also turn to Black writers from the period who tell us their story directly, such as Olaudah Equiano, Ottobah Cugoano, and Mary Prince. Black British writers like these commented directly on their experience of finding ways to survive the violence of transatlantic chattel slavery.

In contrast to these writers’ real experiences, however, Miss Lambe’s in Austen’s literary take on Regency England is markedly different. As an heiress, she has a lot more in common with real historical figures who were the children of white British enslavers and Afro-Caribbean women.

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Read more:
Jane Austen: why are adaptations of Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey so rare?

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The scholar of early American and Atlantic history, Daniel Livesay, has written extensively on these figures in his book Children of Uncertain Fortune, detailing the lives of the privileged few who were acknowledged by white fathers, and were either born free or granted their freedom. Such children were often educated on both sides of the Atlantic and might apply for special legal status, giving them similar rights to those of white British subjects.

Austen hints at this background for Miss Lambe in discussions of her wealth. Like the children Livesay discusses, Miss Lambe has left the West Indies and is now growing up in England. She is in the care of Mrs Griffiths, an older lady who treats her as “beyond comparison the most important and precious” client. This is because Miss Lambe “paid in proportion to her fortune”.

A wealthy family member would have needed to set up this arrangement with Mrs Griffiths. The family member also would have helped Miss Lambe gain the special legal status necessary for a Black person to inherit a fortune under colonial law.

While we can celebrate Austen’s inclusion of a Black character, we know that representation alone is not empowerment. As Kerry Sinanan, an academic in pre-1800 literature and culture, has insisted, we need to be careful about an uncritical celebration of Austen’s “radical politics”.

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Read more:
Jane Austen at 250: Why we shouldn’t exaggerate her radicalism

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When we think of Black life in Austen’s world we need to think both about the Black wealth and privilege Austen chooses to represent in Miss Lambe as well as the enslavement Austen never addresses. If we long for Austen to be a champion of all women, including Black women, we may be sorely disappointed by Austen’s ten brief sentences mentioning her sole Black character.

Nevertheless, Miss Lambe remains an important reminder as we celebrate Austen’s enduring legacy 250 years on: Black British life and experience have always been part of British literature and history. Remembering this character in Austen’s writing can only help to add urgency to the ongoing re-evaluation of how we teach, learn and understand that literature and history.

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This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

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Looking for something good? Cut through the noise with a carefully curated selection of the latest releases, live events and exhibitions, straight to your inbox every fortnight, on Fridays. Sign up here.

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Olivia Carpenter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Jane Austen’s real and literary worlds weren’t exclusively white – just read her last book, Sanditon – https://theconversation.com/jane-austens-real-and-literary-worlds-werent-exclusively-white-just-read-her-last-book-sanditon-264813

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Bob Walley, Researcher in Climate Change Engagement and Communication, University of Lancashire

“Get a job!” shouted yet another driver going past me in the sweeping rain outside Preston New Road fracking site, on another bitingly cold winters day. Recipients of these outbursts were mostly retirees like the Nanas of Lancashire (a group of women from the northern shire of England who had become prominent anti-fracking activists).

My mum often joined me and other protesters to oppose the exploratory drilling that throughout 2018 and 2019 caused earthquakes. Local people were worried about the damage this could do to their homes, the water they rely on and the area’s nature and wildlife.

When it got too cold and I could see mum was starting to get the shivers, we would go back to my family home for a nice cup of tea, leaving the die hards to keep guard 24/7, continuing the fight until we could rejoin them next time.

“It’ll never make any difference,” Dad would comment as we put the kettle on. As a reader of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring – the 1962 book which exposed the destruction of wildlife through the widespread use of pesticides – and a school teacher all his life, he knew all too well the threats of the climate and ecological emergency. Especially once I joined the environmental protest movement.

But activism was not for him. “What was the point?” he’d wonder.

I can see why many people might feel like that. Especially when the decision by Lancashire County Council to reject fracking at Preston New Road was overruled by the Conservative government of the time, and the magnitude of permitted earthquakes was raised.

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Read more:
Fracking causes earthquakes by design: can regulation keep up?

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Frontline activism is certainly not for everyone. Especially when some journalists and politicians would have people believe these “eco-zealots” are the “enemies of society”, due to the disruption that can be caused by increasingly desperate and urgent protests and actions.

Stereotypes remain strong in public opinion and news sources often get basic climate change facts wrong. A quick google image search for “environmental activists” shows people with banners blocking roads, shouting into megaphones and looking angry. Perhaps even throwing soup at a painting or gluing themselves to the front of an office building if you scroll down a bit.

The radical flank frontline

More radical groups know that more disruptive actions lead to greater likelihood of coverage. This can lead to a “radical flank effect”, referring to the comparative outcome that occurs when more radical factions of a social movement like climate activism operate in the same arena as more moderate or less confrontational sections of that movement. The radical flank creates space behind it for others to move into and opportunities for social change can appear.

A vital role it would seem. But this doesn’t tell the whole story of what an activist is.

In a recent research study, I interviewed activists across a range of different ages, circumstances and ideological positions, from Just Stop Oil and Greenpeace to local wildlife trusts and community garden projects. All share concern for the future of life on this planet, trying to do what they can, where they can, to help shape a society we all deserve to live in.

Many express frustration and anger, alongside recognition, that the status quo and current economics are given more importance in political discourse and action than the large‐scale changes required to live sustainably within the natural world. One middle-aged woman who volunteers at the local climate hub (a public space for people involved in climate action) expressed “very little faith in governments. Just massive disappointment.”

The recent changes to protest laws which further vilify environmental activists and mean harsher sentences for attending zoom calls or holding a placard are seen as terrifyingly authoritarian. Yet a young employee of the group Surfers Against Sewage noted they are effective in that they “turn away the people who were kind of on the fence a little bit about it. But … it will also inspire others who are just like, dead against the injustice of it.”

My team’s research indicates a sense of despair due to this political inaction and pushback against those who speak out. Some on the radical flanks are seen by more conservative activists as too radical, and some on the flanks see those more conservative as too “soft” to generate the required changes.

Yet there is recognition of the vital roles everyone can play. A long-term Extinction Rebellion activist who now resides in Calderdale in West Yorkshire, recognised there needed to be “people fighting in different ways on so many different fronts, and I think there’s strength in supporting each other, if we can”.

Fracking was stopped in Lancashire. It was stopped by the Nanas, my mum and the many others on the radical flank frontline. But also by all of those working behind the scenes who put in time to lobby or protest in their own way. It was all these pieces of the puzzle working together that led to victory in Lancashire.

Our research shows you don’t have to be waving a placard shouting into a megaphone, although there is an important place for that too. Crucially, there are many roles for us all and ways we can work towards that future we all deserve to live in.

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Get a weekly roundup in your inbox instead. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed so far.

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Bob Walley receives funding from various internal research institutes and external funding bodies for the research and community projects he coordinates. He is affiliated with the University of Exeter, the University of Lancashire and Envirolution Network.

– ref. Why you don’t have to block roads or glue yourself to buildings to be a climate activist – https://theconversation.com/why-you-dont-have-to-block-roads-or-glue-yourself-to-buildings-to-be-a-climate-activist-260714

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Serena Dyer, Associate Professor, Fashion History, De Montfort University

Marie Antoinette (1755 to 1793) is a cultural icon of monumental proportions. She was the last queen of France before the brutal and bloody French Revolution, and her life was ended by the revolutionaries’ guillotine blade.

Her legacy courses through the visual language of music videos, fashion catwalks and drag shows. Even the shapes and styles behind the current corset trend, popularised by the show Bridgerton, owe more to the era of the French queen than to the Netflix regency romp.

Yet, standing in front of a single, gently worn, and very small shoe at the Victoria and Albert Museum’s latest exhibition, Marie Antoinette Style, the French queen suddenly feels as fragile and little as the brittle silk of her surviving heeled pump.

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Read more:
Bridgerton – how period dramas made audiences hate the corset

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It is the tender fragility of the teenage queen that first greets visitors. The 16-year-old Dauphine smiles coyly in an animated version of Joseph-Siffred Duplessis’s 1772 portrait of the future queen. She is strikingly innocent, entirely oblivious to the tumultuous years which would define her legacy. It is a poignant moment for all who are aware of her tragic fate.

Joyful and incandescent youthfulness thrums from the first few spaces of the exhibition. A glittering mirrored hall filled with some of the most spectacular gowns of the period pulses with magical energy as a ball in Versailles’s hall of mirrors. The gowns that the visitor encounters, like the wedding ensemble of fellow European royal bride, Duchess Hedvig Elisabeth Charlotta, are tiny.

This is not, as many visitors may mumble, because everyone in the past was small (they were not), but because this was a court of teenage royals.

The garments chosen are a spectacular array of pastels, representing the diversity and complexity of styles worn at the French court. But these glistening, dazzling garments pale in comparison to the fragments of gowns which possibly once belonged to Marie Antoinette herself. Other than the shoes, a shift (the linen underwear worn closest to the skin) and a smattering of accessories, very few of Marie Antoinette’s own garments survive.

The revolutionaries who oversaw her downfall and execution in 1793 attempted to destroy her vast wardrobe. So fragments like the ivory silk one, encrusted with silver spangles, gems, velvet and metal embroidery are incredibly exciting. The scars of stitching from its former life as a court gown tantalisingly hint at how it might have formed the sweeping front section of a gown’s skirts.

The exhibition confidently places Marie Antoinette not as an exuberant and frivolous monarch, as she is so often seen, but as an intentional, frequently playful, and decidedly modern patron of the arts. Aside from the gowns, there is furniture, porcelain, jewellery, theatre props and some of the most recognisable and iconic portraits of the infamous French queen – many of which have never travelled to the UK before. It is in this section that the fervour of her celebrity becomes apparent.

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Read more:
Marie Antoinette – extravagant French queen has long been a symbol of female excess

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There is a bowl supposedly modelled after Marie Antoinette’s breast, complete with nipple, and which it is said is the origin of the coupe glass. There are also an astonishing amount of diamonds, including a copy of the jewels from the infamous affair of the diamond necklace. This audacious con saw a cardinal and a self proclaimed Comtesse steal a priceless necklace while posing as Marie Antoinette. Despite the Queen’s innocence, her reputation is ruined.

It is here that the darker side of her reign also begins to trickle into the exhibition. Her expenses were nowhere near as detrimental to the French economy as her husband’s warmongering, but Antoinette’s very visible and enviably luxurious life earned her the moniker of Madame Déficit. She became an easy target for an angry and starving population, who began to vilify her, depicting her as a harpy and falsely accusing her of torrid affairs.

This insidious shift is cleverly woven into the exhibition narrative. For instance, there is an opportunity for visitors to smell samples of the scents from the court by sniffing perfumed busts of the Queen’s head. Visitors enjoying the scents are then suddenly assaulted with the stench of her impending prison cell.

Marie Antoinette was not oblivious to the rising revolutionary tide. That innocent girl that we met at the start had grown into a sympathetic queen. She recycled her garments, gifting them to her staff, she adopted and released enslaved children, she gave endlessly to charities and turned down gifts which she felt were too extravagant.

And while her luxury consumption looked extravagant, her patronage was essential to the success of French industry. When she stopped wearing silks and turned her attention to simple cotton gowns, for instance, the silk weavers rioted. She was never going to win.

Despite these warning signs, it is impossible to prepare for the next space. The dominance of pastel pinks and greens is quickly supplanted by a deep, blood red. A blade from a guillotine dominates the space cut a few words of repetition here. But her death is not the end.

The remaining rooms celebrate her enduring appeal across art, culture and fashion. She was a fancy dress costume within decades of her death, and by the 20th century cinematic portrayals like Norma Shearer’s 1938 portrayal of the Queen cemented her pop culture position. But her legacy, fraught with misogynistic myth-making and uncomfortable stereotypes, gets lost in a celebratory atmosphere.

It is undeniable that her cultural significance is massive. But so many of the visual signals designers nod to are just as false as the fake news generated during her fall from grace. For instance, the tall white wigs are a Hollywood invention. Marie Antoinette always wore her own, natural blonde hair pristinely pomaded and powdered.

It is disappointing that, while the myth-making from her lifetime is robustly challenged in the exhibition, the perpetuation of those myths in artistic responses to her legacy were largely overlooked. In this section, the fashion of John Galliano or costumes from the 2006 Sophia Coppola film or Hulu’s The Great, while wonderful to see, lacked the deeper critical engagement of the early sections of the exhibition.

The exhibition is a visual treat, and the opportunity to see rarely displayed objects make it a must see. But the imagined Marie Antoinette we leave at the end of the exhibition is a far cry from the real young woman that smiled shyly as we entered. Marie Antoinette may be immortalised in the cultural imagination, but I am not convinced she would recognise herself.

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Serena Dyer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Marie Antoinette Style at the V&A is a rare opportunity to see what survives of the queen’s closet – https://theconversation.com/marie-antoinette-style-at-the-vanda-is-a-rare-opportunity-to-see-what-survives-of-the-queens-closet-265700

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Joanna Syrda, Assistant Professor in Business Economics, University of Bath

Public transport infrastructure can be deeply political. A new cycle lane appears in a neighbourhood, and suddenly the letters page of the local paper is full. A plan to pedestrianise a city centre street sparks furious debate. A proposal to expand a bus route is hailed as progress by some and criticised as wasteful by others.

The conversations we have around urban planning reflect deeply held values and priorities. They even pit competing visions for society against each other. This was visible in debates over Ulez (ultra-low emission zones) in London, for example. Each of the two sides appealed to a different set of values: critics to individual choice and economic mobility and supporters to collective wellbeing and environmental responsibility.

In my recent study, I looked at how people’s world views affected their views on various transport infrastructure proposals. I used British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey data to investigate attitudes towards cycle lanes, increasing spending on public transport spending (potentially at the cost of other services), reserving parking spaces for electric car charging points, building car parks to introduce more park and ride routes, narrowing roads to widen pavements, and closing roads to create pedestrian high streets.

In each case, I found that whether people supported the change depended heavily on their political ideologies. But among these ideologies, the biggest predictor of how people felt about green transport projects overall was their attitude towards welfare spending.

Those who believed in generous, redistributive welfare systems, government support for the unemployed and efforts to reduce inequality also tended to support government investment in public transport.

Around 41% of differences in opinion on the six analysed infrastructure projects taken together were explained by differences in views on welfare. Political party preference comes next, accounting for 26%. Where people place themselves on the left–right political spectrum explained only 13% of differences of opinion.

When looked at separately, support for the welfare state is the strongest predictor of support for increasing public transport spending, widening pavements, and creating pedestrian high streets. Meanwhile, political party preference plays the biggest role in shaping opinions on cycle lanes, electric car charging points, and building new car parks.

When all political dimensions are considered together, two policies stand out as the most politically charged: narrowing roads to widen pavements and building new cycle lanes. These findings suggest that sidewalks and cycle lanes don’t just redistribute road space – they expose ideological space too. They challenge entrenched ideas about who the city is for, how mobility should be organised, and what kind of future we should invest in.

Historically, the bicycle has been associated with counterculture and leftwing politics. From the 1960s onward, it gained symbolic value as an alternative to the car – a challenge to dominant norms of consumption, status and mobility. Cars came to represent freedom, autonomy and success. Bicycles, by contrast, were reframed as environmental, communal, and anti-establishment. This symbolic opposition still resonates today.

People who are less positive about welfare often emphasise individual responsibility, self-reliance, and a belief that public support creates dependency. From this perspective, cars are earned through work, independence, and personal choice. Cycle lanes or pavements are seen as government interference, taking space (and status) away from drivers.

Changing minds

My research also shows that interest in politics moderates these effects. People who are highly interested in politics are much more likely to filter their views on green transport investment through their broader ideological and partisan commitments. In contrast, those with little political interest are less likely to have their opinions on transport shaped by their political ideology.

This matters because it means that the loudest voices in public debates tend to be the most politically entrenched. When political interest strengthens the link between ideology and opinion, it can polarise the discussion – turning questions of road design or bus funding into flashpoints for wider ideological battles. As a result, pragmatic compromise becomes harder, and transport policy can get stuck in symbolic conflict rather than being debated on practical or social terms.

However, if we understand why people oppose green infrastructure projects, we can start to find ways forward. Framing these initiatives purely in terms of collective impacts, such as lowering pollution, rather than private interests may only resonate with people who already support that kind of public investment.

To reach those who are more sceptical of welfare and state intervention, we may need different messaging. Rather than focusing only on social equity or environmental impact, campaigns could highlight individual interests such as how cycle lanes can reduce congestion, cut commuting costs or boost local high streets. These are benefits that don’t necessarily rely on a belief in state intervention to feel relevant or persuasive.

If we want to build broader coalitions of support for green infrastructure, we need to speak to the diverse motivations people have for how they move through their cities.

Joanna Syrda does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The more in favour of welfare you are, the more likely you are to support cycle lanes – https://theconversation.com/the-more-in-favour-of-welfare-you-are-the-more-likely-you-are-to-support-cycle-lanes-264246

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Bo Petersson, Professor of Political Science, Malmö University

The Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, recently drew parallels between his country’s experience from its conflicts with the Soviet Union during the second world war and Ukraine’s current struggle against Russian aggression. The analogy has gained considerable traction.

It was at a meeting with Donald Trump and several European leaders at the White House in August that Stubb invoked Finland’s wars with the Soviet Union – the winter war (1939–40) and the continuation war (1941–44) – as a source of hope for Ukraine. His message was clear: even in the darkest times, peace and independence are possible.

In 1944, Finland entered into an armistice agreement with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union that ended hostilities. But it came at a heavy price. Finland retained its formal independence, but had to make significant territorial concessions, including the loss of Karelia and Petsamo provinces. It also accepted severe restrictions on its sovereignty.

Stubb was seemingly looking to inspire Ukraine by showing that survival and statehood are achievable, even under immense pressure, and that a durable and lasting peace is possible to establish. However, while the sentiment is understandable, the comparison between Finland’s situation in 1944 and Ukraine’s current war with Russia is problematic and possibly misleading.

First of all, to suggest that Ukraine should accept territorial losses as part of a peace deal risks legitimising Russia’s military aggression and undermines the principles of international law and national sovereignty. It would send a dangerous signal that borders can be redrawn by force, which could embolden future aggressors including Russia.

It also needs to be recalled that the geopolitical context was vastly different in 1944. Finland’s wartime co-belligerent status with Nazi Germany during the continuation war wrecks the analogy. Finland joined forces with Germany to reclaim territory lost to the Soviet Union in the winter war and, initially, Finnish troops advanced deep into Soviet territory.

Ukraine’s situation is fundamentally different. Its limited and essentially defensive military incursions into the Russian Kursk region cannot be compared to Finland’s initial and extensive wartime conquests.

Moreover, drawing parallels between Finland’s tacit alliance with Nazi Germany and Ukraine’s current western support only risks feeding Russian propaganda. Moscow has long tried to portray Ukraine’s government as neo-Nazi, supported by like-minded instigators in the west.

This has allowed the Kremlin to depict Russia’s so-called special military operation as a continuation of the second world war. Even an indirect comparison between Finland then and Ukraine now could reinforce these false narratives.

Prosecuting wartime leaders

Under the 1944 armistice agreement, Finland was also required to prosecute its leaders deemed responsible for the war effort against the Soviet Union. The then-Finnish president, Risto Ryti, was sentenced to ten years in prison while several other ministers were imprisoned for shorter periods of time.

To even imply that Ukraine should demote and prosecute its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his government as part of a peace settlement would be morally outrageous and politically disastrous. Such a suggestion would meet hostile Russian demands, undermine Ukraine’s democratic legitimacy and mock its sovereignty.

The issue of reparations highlights the problematic analogy even more. Finland was forced to pay heavy reparations to the Soviet Union as part of the 1944 agreement, equivalent to US$5.3 billion (£3.9 billion) in 2025. These reparations were paid over a period of eight years, mainly in the form of industrial products.

In Ukraine’s case, the roles need to be reversed. Russia should be held accountable for its unprovoked invasion and the death and destruction it has caused. Russian reparations must therefore be part of any future peace agreement, along with justice for war crimes. These include the forced abduction of an estimated 20,000 Ukrainian children who are now held in Russian territory.

Finally, the long-term consequences of Finland’s 1944 agreement included decades of Soviet influence over its domestic and foreign policy. A Soviet control commission operated in the Finnish capital, Helsinki, from 1944 to 1947. This effectively undermined Finnish sovereignty.

The control commission oversaw the prosecution of Finnish wartime leaders and the banning of political parties and organisations deemed undesirable by Moscow. It also essentially took control of Helsinki’s international airport. Ukraine must be spared a similar fate. Any peace deal must ensure Ukraine’s full independence and freedom from future Russian interference.

Historical analogies can be powerful, but they must be used with care. Stubb’s remarks were likely made with the best of intentions. He probably also meant to suggest that Finland has a unique understanding of what it means to fight for independence against its powerful neighbour, whether it be called Russia or the Soviet Union.

However, the use of Finland’s 1944 armistice as a model for Ukraine risks sending a harmful message. Ukraine’s struggle is not just about survival, it is about justice, sovereignty and the rejection of imperial aggression. The country deserves a future free from occupation and coercion, and all western democracies need to support it to attain this.

Bo Petersson receives funding from Malmö University and the Hamrin Foundation.

– ref. Why Ukraine should avoid copying Finland’s 1944 path to peace with Moscow – https://theconversation.com/why-ukraine-should-avoid-copying-finlands-1944-path-to-peace-with-moscow-265631

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Saskia Goeckeritz, Lecturer in Animal and Environmental Sciences, Nottingham Trent University

The stereotypical rugby player is a larger than average male who is strong, stoic and, occasionally, a bit single minded. But an effective team needs much greater diversity in traits and behaviour, not least because so many rugby players are actually women.

It might surprise you to know that the animal kingdom can help illustrate the variety of characteristics needed in rugby. Here are five animal species that would crush it on the pitch.

Rhinoceros

Often, the most exciting moments in rugby are when a player crashes through the defensive line to score a try. Strength and power are vital for this move, so the first animal on our fantasy team is the rhinoceros, collectively known as a crash of rhinos.

Weighing in at around 2,000kg, rhinos are one of the strongest animals, capable of flipping cars with ease. Rhinos are also relatively agile, accelerating to reach speeds over 30mph.

Although male rhinos are bigger and stronger than females, the females are more sociable. Some herds are led by a matriarch who guides the behaviour of the group, just like the pack leader geeing up the forwards before a scrum.

Caracal

An important part of rugby is a lineout, during which lifters and jumpers work together to get possession of the ball. A key skill is leaping up high.

An artist at jumping is the caracal. One of Africa and Asia’s big cats, the caracal has long, powerful legs that make it an efficient hunter.

Caracals have often been observed vaulting over three metres into the air to capture birds in flight – that’s almost twice the height of an average woman. Male caracals are larger and heavier than females but there is no evidence that they can jump any higher.

Peregrine falcon

Being faster than your opposition not only helps you score more tries, it also means that you can cover more ground in defence. The world’s fastest animal, the peregrine falcon can reach speeds over 200mph in downwards flight.

Females are slightly faster than males – not bad considering they can be twice as heavy as the males. Peregrines can also change direction almost effortlessly. This is a great skill when trying to wrong-foot your foes.

Stoat

One of the key tactics in a rugby game is to deceive the opposition into thinking that you are going in the opposite direction. Cunning footwork can make your opponents speed off the wrong way. Dummy runs draw opponents to a decoy team member, freeing-up that all-important space for a team member to run into. This kind of deception is seen in mustelids – carnivorous mammals with long bodies, such as the British stoat.

These cute but clever mammals perform a deception dance of bizarre leaps and twists, mesmerising their prey before they pounce on them. Stoats have been known to work in tandem with their mating partners, with one performing the luring moves while the other moves in to attack the victim.

Orca

There can be no success in rugby without a team working together, both in defence and attack. So, the final animal in our fantasy rugby team is the orca, a voracious predator, famed among researchers for coordinating as a team to hunt food. Similar to an attacking line in rugby, orcas often swim in formations.

Together, they synchronise tail flicks to create powerful waves that break ice sheets apart. This forces prey such as seals off the ice and into the water where they are easier to capture. Next, they blow air from their blowholes into the water to create “walls” of air bubbles to disorientate prey.

This all takes practice, just like working together as a team in rugby takes training. Orca pods are generally run by an experienced female, the matriarch, who teaches her pod how to perform these strategic manoeuvres.

Animals are adapted for their role in their environment, much like players on a rugby team. Rugby has long been seen as a masculine sport, but people’s attitudes are changing and the game is starting to value diversity in skills, styles and personalities. Disregard of female rugby players is being replaced by an appreciation for their endurance and athleticism on the pitch.

In fact, rugby is a sport in which the strength of a team comes from the variety of behaviour and traits in its players. So, next time you watch rugby, have a think about what animals you might put on a team – and remember, everyone has a role to play.

Saskia Goeckeritz works for Nottingham Trent University.

Louise Gentle works for Nottingham Trent University.

Tom Glenn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Fantasy rugby: how the animal kingdom could help you form a winning team – https://theconversation.com/fantasy-rugby-how-the-animal-kingdom-could-help-you-form-a-winning-team-265021

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Simon Thorne, Senior Lecturer in Computing and ​Information Systems, Cardiff Metropolitan University

The UK government hailed the recent US state visit as a landmark for the economy. A record £150 billion of inward investment was announced, including £31 billion targeted at artificial intelligence (AI) development.

That encompasses work on large language models (LLMs), the technology behind AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and other generative AI models. It will also cover the supercomputing infrastructure needed to deliver innovations.

Microsoft alone pledged US$30 billion (about £22 billion) over four years, half on capital expenditure such as new data centres, the rest on operations, research and sales. Tech company Nvidia has also promised £11 billion, with plans to deploy 120,000 of its Blackwell graphics processing units (to speed up computer graphics, for example in games, and process digital images) in UK projects. The US AI cloud computing company CoreWeave is building a £1.5 billion AI data centre in Scotland.

The political narrative is that the UK is becoming a global hub for AI. Yet behind the rhetoric lies a harder question: what kind of AI future do we want? Is it one where prosperity is broadly shared among the public, or one where private firms and foreign interests hold the levers of power, while the technology itself stagnates and spreads misinformation?

LLMs the technology powering generative AI models such as ChatGPT or Gemini, appear to be reaching their technical limits. The underlying hardware that LLMs are built on are called “transformer architectures”, they excel at producing fluent text but have persistent problems with reasoning and fact. Since ChatGPT3.5 arrived in 2022, AI developers have scaled up models with more data and computing power, but gains have slowed and costs have soared.

This progress has also failed to solve their key problem, persistent “hallucinations” that are a significant barrier to leveraging LLMs for organisations and individuals. OpenAI admits that hallucinations – confident but false outputs from AI systems – are a product of how these systems predict words.

Filtering out hallucinations by forcing models to admit uncertainty in their output could cut hallucinations, but reduces usable outputs by around 30%.

Hallucinations may be seen as a necessary downside by OpenAI and other providers, but research also highlights their structural weaknesses. LLMs are not socialised beings but statistical engines, incapable of distinguishing fact from fabrication.

My own work has shown that users place misplaced trust in LLMs, assuming human-like reasoning where none exists. Simple logic tests expose weaknesses and the pattern is consistent: AI often underdelivers and requires human oversight to verify outputs.

This year, the Grok chatbot, developed by Elon Musk’s company xAI, made antisemitic remarks and praised Adolf Hitler in responses on X. The company behind Grok, xAI, apologised and removed the posts, attributing some of the behaviour to an “unauthorised code path” or system update that made the model overly responsive to extremist-tainted user inputs.

In its apology published on X, xAI said: “Our intent for Grok is to provide helpful and truthful responses to users. After careful investigation, we discovered the root cause was an update to a code path upstream of the Grok bot.

The company said the update made Grok “susceptible to existing X user posts; including when such posts contained extremist views”.

They added: “We thank all of the X users who provided feedback to identify the abuse of grok functionality, helping us advance our mission of developing helpful and truth-seeking artificial intelligence.”

Retrospective alignment

All LLMs require retrospective alignment, a process of adjusting their outputs after training, to ensure their responses do not drift into harmful, biased, or destabilising territory. This can mean filtering hate speech, blocking misinformation about vaccines, preventing the promotion of self harm, or constraining political partisanship.

But unlike humans, whose ethical boundaries emerge through lived interaction and socialisation, AI models cannot self regulate. Their alignment is imposed after the fact by those that control them.

This process is not guaranteed to be neutral and we can never be sure who is actually calling the shots. Corporations, governments and powerful individuals may be in there acting as surrogate parents, embedding their own values and interests into the system’s ethical boundaries. The danger here is that instead of aligning the LLM to broadly acceptable norms, it could potentially be aligned to promote undesirable extremist points of view.

In fact, malicious coherence, where AI systems are tuned to confidently repeat political narratives, may turn out to be a bigger risk than hallucinations. On X, Grok is already invoked as an arbiter of truth. It’s very common to see: “Hey @Grok, is this true?” in the comments under posts. This ritual hands authority to a machine owned by one man.

The UK–US trade deal also gestures towards a broader range of machine intelligence applications, from autonomous vehicles and delivery drones to healthcare systems.
Self-driving technology has been imminent for more than a decade, but it remains locked in extended pilot phases with Tesla, Waymo and Cruise all facing setbacks and safety controversies.

Delivery drones remain constrained by regulation, safety and logistical barriers.

There are impressive AI breakthroughs in healthcare, such as protein structure prediction and AI-assisted diagnostic imaging. But deployment in the NHS is fraught with concerns over trust, data governance and accountability.

The lesson is the same as with LLMs, progress is real but uneven, hype outpaces evidence, and without transparent oversight these systems risk being aligned more with corporate profit than with public benefit.

Whose future?

The UK–US trade deal illustrates both the promise and peril of today’s AI moment. Technically, AI systems are stagnating: hallucinations persist, reasoning remains weak, and scaling them up further offers diminishing returns. Politically, the risk is sharper: models could be aligned to private or partisan interests, amplifying disinformation in an already fractured information ecosystem.

The opportunity to change the truth in real time through alignment fits less with Silicon Valley’s promises of innovation than with Orwell’s Ministry of Truth.

Whether in LLMs that confidently fabricate or in driverless cars that make unfortunate manoeuvres, the pattern repeats: systems promoted as transformative struggle with basic reliability, while control over their direction rests with a handful of powerful firms.

So whose AI future do we want? A future of public benefit, built on transparency, oversight, and verifiable outcomes? Or one where private corporations define what counts as truth?

The fanfare of investment cannot answer this. Only governance, accountability, and sovereignty can. Without them, the AI future being built in the UK may not belong to its citizens at all, but to the corporations and governments who claim to speak on their behalf.

Simon Thorne does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The US-UK tech prosperity deal carries promise but also peril for the general public – https://theconversation.com/the-us-uk-tech-prosperity-deal-carries-promise-but-also-peril-for-the-general-public-265728