A handsome beginning
It’s 10
o’clock on a Wednesday in another inner city café. I’m waiting for a bespoke
coffee and an avocado smash, after an early appointment. To my left is a person
tapping on a laptop. Ahead is a chatty couple eating brekky burgers and beyond,
on a larger table, are two colleagues and letting off steam about some work
encounter and receiving longed-for sympathy. The coffee machine roars and gurgles,
grounds are sharply tapped out, and fridges open and close. The furniture is
upcycled 1950s, and the mod teacups and saucers are perfectly mismatched.
Smooth, beatsy music glides above the street art on the walls. We are at ground
zero; this is the murmur and rhythm of life in Brunswick.
This place has is a bit different though. For one thing, there are no beards. That’s because the couple, the tapper, the workers and the person waiting for a takeaway, are all women. The barista, waitstaff and kitchenhands: women. The staff are a wide variety of faces and bodies and shades and figures of speech. I look up and around at the décor - on the front wall is a photo gallery. Here’s Gertrude Stein and Faith Bandler, Germaine Greer and Beyoncé. The difficult, the charismatic, [not strong enough]. Women who found their voices. Beside me is a mural by Mimby Jones Robinson, an Australian street artist, of a woman wearing Kahlo-like flowers and tribal patterned clothing. The face, that could belong anywhere in the world, stares powerfully ahead. I order a soy cappuccino.
Handsome Her came under low-level fire when it opened in July 2017. The expressly feminist café opened with a pledge to charge an 18% surcharge for men, representing the lifetime gender pay gap, which would be donated to Elizabeth Morgan House, an Aboriginal women’s shelter. The policy found Handsome Her making it to the national papers and commercial TV news. The usual criticisms were levelled: tweeters were outraged, the nicer ones explaining that the reverse would be unacceptable and the less nice not warranting repeat. It needs to be justified, that is true. The café has explained that the policy is not strictly applied – it’s voluntary and only on weekends – but the tone was set.
Now that things have settled down, it seems to have the usual traffic of any Sydney Road café – 8 o’clock takeaways, 10 o’clock sit-down coffees, and a comfortable number of weekend brunchers. Here and there a man wanders in, sometimes comfortably, sometimes wearing a layer of discomfort. Today there is a man with his toddler son. His behaviour is hard to read – he is built like a footy player and walks like he would be naturally dominant in any space, but here he is talking a bit loudly, and smiling at people slightly awkwardly. Part of me thinks, “why are you here?”, but a kinder part of me thinks “He’s trying”. I want to turn and speak to him, to help him feel more welcome, but it occurs to me that this is one space where there is no expectation that I do that. It is a brand new feeling, and I try to feel the strength of it so it will stay with me. He is, on some level, a little unwelcome. That’s ok, I think. It’s just showing you the water that we all swim in.
On one wall is rails of mugs on shelves. There are no paper cups - if you want a take away, you take a mug and you’re asked to return it another day. It’s no big deal, there are always more mugs - HH put out a call when it was opening, and – no surprises – found that locals happily combed through cupboards and donated hundreds of unwanted mugs. There are no paper napkins either, instead meals are served with clean facewashers that are washed after every use. Handsome Her is also a vegan cafe, which turns out to be a treat. The chef, like so many vegan cooks, is determined to show that vegan food can be delicious.
I recently heard Celeste Liddle observe that discrimination comes from every angle when it comes – that sexual oppression naturally goes hand in hand with racial discrimination, environmental degradation and animal cruelty, because it’s all the same rabbit hole of entitlement by exclusion. Handsome Her sees the phenomenon, and flips it. The ethos here is that all those who are vulnerable are entitled to feel safe.
I’m sitting here after my weekly therapy appointment. Every Wednesday I duck in with red eyes and a smile. I grew up with no language for the politics that ran in faultlines across our household, other than my harried mother keeping us quiet, telling us Dad was tired, or stressed, or unwell, or anything other than out of control. As we grew older, she had fewer excuses to rely on, but still there were no words to talk about Dad’s rages. Men held up the community. My father was a scout leader, a sports instructor, and worked long hours in the family law firm. The principal of my all-girl school was a man. Gender and power crossed my family in an open wound that had no meaning, and so, as children do, we assumed the rage was of our making.
The café manager recognises me and waves. She’s about ten years younger than me, and has the smile of a person who lives what she believes. She comes up and asks me what I want. I explain I have recently injured my back and she goes away and brings me a turmeric and ginger tea and something fermented on activated charcoal bread. She explains how all of them are good for inflammation and healing and recommends a Naturopath. I smile and want to give her a hug, and when she’s gone I pull out the Nurofen.
Last year I came here during the “me too” week on social media. A suggestion that women write the simple words “me too” (or #metoo) on their social media feed if they have ever received unwanted sexual attention, harassment or assault, went viral. It had many reactions, but mine was pretty simple. “Hasn’t everyone?”, I thought.
As the “me toos” rolled down my feed, some women started disclosing difficult stories, and I started to mentally catalogue my own - the pizza lord who grabbed my ponytail and whispered the things he wanted to do to me, as I watched his wife feeding a baby a few tables away; a long-time friend who, after I refused his advances, excluded and humiliated me; my year 12 boyfriend who told his year level the details of our consenting sexual activities; a random, savage grope on the stairs of a nightclub. The list goes on. I can still feel them all, under my skin. And I realised, as memories kept bobbing to the surface over the next few days, that I had normalised this experience so much that I could barely imagine a world without repeated instances of sexual intimidation by men, be they friends, colleagues or strangers. No, not all men, not by a long way. But enough of them. And every time it happened, it was a reminder that, to many of those around me, my safety in my own body mattered less than the desire held by many men to touch it.
My attention soon turned to the obvious question: how is it that I so easily I absorbed this into my life? And it occurred to me that because all my friends and sisters had experienced this, it was simply the water in which we swim. It was the dirty lecturer we laughed about over a bottle of wine. It was the teacher who massaged our shoulders. It was the partner who touched the law clerk’s bottom at the Christmas party and then offered a job. It was the anger wrestled again and again into pity and derision, because otherwise it would consume us.
A few weeks ago, I fell sideways on the tram as it lurched to a halt. A man I didn’t know took the opportunity to encircle my waist and grin instead of steady me by the shoulder. I did not shout, I did not glare, I did not speak. I vaguely smiled and simply moved away. It was night time. I was reminded, again, that I was unsafe.
The next morning I returned to Handsome Her. It’s a good place to leap out of the water. It is a tiny world of safety that I want for my daughters, in few metres of shopfront. The hum of sexual dominance does not exist here. It’s akin to putting on noise-cancelling headphones for the first time.
*****
The door opens and a mother walks in with a toddler dangling from her arms. She sits down with the two women talking shop and gives her a quick breastfeed. The waitstaff and dishies walk in the front door and are greeted by name, welcome as guests when they arrive and clock on.
One day I take my two daughters here. We stand in front of the gallery. I ask them which faces they know (Malala, Beyonce), and I name the ones I know (fewer than I would like). We eat vegan scrambled eggs and drink Bonsoy hot chocolates and my teenager asks me to explain the gender pay gap. We talk about their dad, and how he worked part-time to care for them, and how feminism gave them the gift of two loving, flawed, fully involved parents. And we talk about why women need spaces like this, to rest.
Today, as I had over my card to the sounds of Sharon Jones, the café manager asks how I am today. I look at her and say “I’m just glad you’re here.” And she nodded, this bright, grounded young woman, because she understood.
This place has is a bit different though. For one thing, there are no beards. That’s because the couple, the tapper, the workers and the person waiting for a takeaway, are all women. The barista, waitstaff and kitchenhands: women. The staff are a wide variety of faces and bodies and shades and figures of speech. I look up and around at the décor - on the front wall is a photo gallery. Here’s Gertrude Stein and Faith Bandler, Germaine Greer and Beyoncé. The difficult, the charismatic, [not strong enough]. Women who found their voices. Beside me is a mural by Mimby Jones Robinson, an Australian street artist, of a woman wearing Kahlo-like flowers and tribal patterned clothing. The face, that could belong anywhere in the world, stares powerfully ahead. I order a soy cappuccino.
Handsome Her came under low-level fire when it opened in July 2017. The expressly feminist café opened with a pledge to charge an 18% surcharge for men, representing the lifetime gender pay gap, which would be donated to Elizabeth Morgan House, an Aboriginal women’s shelter. The policy found Handsome Her making it to the national papers and commercial TV news. The usual criticisms were levelled: tweeters were outraged, the nicer ones explaining that the reverse would be unacceptable and the less nice not warranting repeat. It needs to be justified, that is true. The café has explained that the policy is not strictly applied – it’s voluntary and only on weekends – but the tone was set.
Now that things have settled down, it seems to have the usual traffic of any Sydney Road café – 8 o’clock takeaways, 10 o’clock sit-down coffees, and a comfortable number of weekend brunchers. Here and there a man wanders in, sometimes comfortably, sometimes wearing a layer of discomfort. Today there is a man with his toddler son. His behaviour is hard to read – he is built like a footy player and walks like he would be naturally dominant in any space, but here he is talking a bit loudly, and smiling at people slightly awkwardly. Part of me thinks, “why are you here?”, but a kinder part of me thinks “He’s trying”. I want to turn and speak to him, to help him feel more welcome, but it occurs to me that this is one space where there is no expectation that I do that. It is a brand new feeling, and I try to feel the strength of it so it will stay with me. He is, on some level, a little unwelcome. That’s ok, I think. It’s just showing you the water that we all swim in.
On one wall is rails of mugs on shelves. There are no paper cups - if you want a take away, you take a mug and you’re asked to return it another day. It’s no big deal, there are always more mugs - HH put out a call when it was opening, and – no surprises – found that locals happily combed through cupboards and donated hundreds of unwanted mugs. There are no paper napkins either, instead meals are served with clean facewashers that are washed after every use. Handsome Her is also a vegan cafe, which turns out to be a treat. The chef, like so many vegan cooks, is determined to show that vegan food can be delicious.
I recently heard Celeste Liddle observe that discrimination comes from every angle when it comes – that sexual oppression naturally goes hand in hand with racial discrimination, environmental degradation and animal cruelty, because it’s all the same rabbit hole of entitlement by exclusion. Handsome Her sees the phenomenon, and flips it. The ethos here is that all those who are vulnerable are entitled to feel safe.
I’m sitting here after my weekly therapy appointment. Every Wednesday I duck in with red eyes and a smile. I grew up with no language for the politics that ran in faultlines across our household, other than my harried mother keeping us quiet, telling us Dad was tired, or stressed, or unwell, or anything other than out of control. As we grew older, she had fewer excuses to rely on, but still there were no words to talk about Dad’s rages. Men held up the community. My father was a scout leader, a sports instructor, and worked long hours in the family law firm. The principal of my all-girl school was a man. Gender and power crossed my family in an open wound that had no meaning, and so, as children do, we assumed the rage was of our making.
The café manager recognises me and waves. She’s about ten years younger than me, and has the smile of a person who lives what she believes. She comes up and asks me what I want. I explain I have recently injured my back and she goes away and brings me a turmeric and ginger tea and something fermented on activated charcoal bread. She explains how all of them are good for inflammation and healing and recommends a Naturopath. I smile and want to give her a hug, and when she’s gone I pull out the Nurofen.
Last year I came here during the “me too” week on social media. A suggestion that women write the simple words “me too” (or #metoo) on their social media feed if they have ever received unwanted sexual attention, harassment or assault, went viral. It had many reactions, but mine was pretty simple. “Hasn’t everyone?”, I thought.
As the “me toos” rolled down my feed, some women started disclosing difficult stories, and I started to mentally catalogue my own - the pizza lord who grabbed my ponytail and whispered the things he wanted to do to me, as I watched his wife feeding a baby a few tables away; a long-time friend who, after I refused his advances, excluded and humiliated me; my year 12 boyfriend who told his year level the details of our consenting sexual activities; a random, savage grope on the stairs of a nightclub. The list goes on. I can still feel them all, under my skin. And I realised, as memories kept bobbing to the surface over the next few days, that I had normalised this experience so much that I could barely imagine a world without repeated instances of sexual intimidation by men, be they friends, colleagues or strangers. No, not all men, not by a long way. But enough of them. And every time it happened, it was a reminder that, to many of those around me, my safety in my own body mattered less than the desire held by many men to touch it.
My attention soon turned to the obvious question: how is it that I so easily I absorbed this into my life? And it occurred to me that because all my friends and sisters had experienced this, it was simply the water in which we swim. It was the dirty lecturer we laughed about over a bottle of wine. It was the teacher who massaged our shoulders. It was the partner who touched the law clerk’s bottom at the Christmas party and then offered a job. It was the anger wrestled again and again into pity and derision, because otherwise it would consume us.
A few weeks ago, I fell sideways on the tram as it lurched to a halt. A man I didn’t know took the opportunity to encircle my waist and grin instead of steady me by the shoulder. I did not shout, I did not glare, I did not speak. I vaguely smiled and simply moved away. It was night time. I was reminded, again, that I was unsafe.
The next morning I returned to Handsome Her. It’s a good place to leap out of the water. It is a tiny world of safety that I want for my daughters, in few metres of shopfront. The hum of sexual dominance does not exist here. It’s akin to putting on noise-cancelling headphones for the first time.
*****
The door opens and a mother walks in with a toddler dangling from her arms. She sits down with the two women talking shop and gives her a quick breastfeed. The waitstaff and dishies walk in the front door and are greeted by name, welcome as guests when they arrive and clock on.
One day I take my two daughters here. We stand in front of the gallery. I ask them which faces they know (Malala, Beyonce), and I name the ones I know (fewer than I would like). We eat vegan scrambled eggs and drink Bonsoy hot chocolates and my teenager asks me to explain the gender pay gap. We talk about their dad, and how he worked part-time to care for them, and how feminism gave them the gift of two loving, flawed, fully involved parents. And we talk about why women need spaces like this, to rest.
Today, as I had over my card to the sounds of Sharon Jones, the café manager asks how I am today. I look at her and say “I’m just glad you’re here.” And she nodded, this bright, grounded young woman, because she understood.
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