Christine Keeler's eyelashes

I’ve been watching the BBC’s Sunday night drama, “The Trial of Christine Keeler”. As the story unfolded, I was gripped. I was born in 1966, only three years after the Profumo Affair, but Christine had been on the periphery for me for years. What did I know about her? She was young, incredibly beautiful, usually described as a call girl or a model and seemingly irresistible to powerful men. It turns out I knew next to nothing.

Perhaps because the screenwriter was a woman (Amanda Coe), we saw the story of an abused, malnourished child growing into adulthood in a world where power was firmly in the hands of men, mostly rich, privileged ones. This is a narrative only too familiar in our supposedly enlightened times. Me Too, Time’s Up, Don’t Look Away – the list goes on.

There’s a very short scene in one episode where Christine finds herself in prison. Standing in front of a female prison officer, she gasps in shock and pain as the woman leans forward and rips off her false eyelashes. It’s a tragic foreshadowing of the many humiliations yet to come. Earlier in the series, another set of false eyelashes goes missing, this time in the marital bed of John Profumo. It’s sort of OK, because she finds them, but it really isn’t because nowhere is safe. Just because Mrs Profumo is away, just because she’s young and pretty, just because she’s mixing in exalted company doesn’t mean she isn’t going to take a long, slow, agonising fall, well-documented by the intrusive lenses of Fleet Street.

I put on “Life on Mars” again recently and that’s a hard watch. For someone like me, born in the Sixties into a world of routine sexism, homophobia and racism, the scene where Liz the WPC walks into the smoky room filled with leering male police officers felt like a slap in the face. That’s what it was like. If you were a girl, you were fair game. I’m lucky. I’ve never been raped or sexually abused, but I’ve been groped on the Tube more times than I can count. Smutty jokes, innuendo and the underlying knowledge that no-one would listen if you told were absorbed by girls of my generation, almost without question.

Abi Morgan’s legal drama, “The Split” is back. I loved the first series and I couldn’t wait to watch the first episode on Tuesday evening. One of the many things I like about it is that the main characters are all women and they don’t play out that old crowd-pleasing trope, the Two-Dimensional Female Character. We see them at work and at home, doing their best to balance home responsibilities and a career. Infidelity, bereavement, divorce, disappointment, the glass ceiling – it’s all there, but our female protagonists get up in the morning, apply their work face and put in a full day.

There was one scene in Episode One which for me evoked those feelings of the girl born in the Sixties. Three of the four women, mother and two daughters, are now working together at a law firm. The third daughter comes into the office to share exciting news. We see them laughing loudly, throwing their heads back and broadcasting their joy. However, we’re shown this happy scene through the lens of the male gaze. Zander, the Senior Partner is standing in his office. “This place is going to pot,” he mutters, taking off his glasses and staring angrily at the laughing women.

Immediately, I felt that old shock of fear. The men aren’t happy! What’s going to happen? Abi Morgan is far too good a writer for this to be a coincidence. Dismissed by several papers (none of which I have any truck with) as “soapy”, “The Split” holds a mirror up to our society and sadly, part of that reflection has to include the past.

From Christine and her false eyelashes, WPC Liz and her struggles every day through routine sexism to the Defoe women and their complex lives, none of it’s easy. Thank God that my daughter will never have to plough her way through this toxic brew in the same way that my generation did.

Every generation has a new issue with which to contend. Global warming, cyber-bullying and single-use plastic pollution weren’t things we Sixties kids had to deal with. I hope and pray that the girls of my daughter’s generation won’t ever feel that shock of fear and apprehension that I’ve felt three times this week.

As someone said back then, what’s so funny about peace, love and understanding? Search me.