Can we have some normal role models please?
Posted by DavidM in Buying green | 10 October 2006
I don't normally read the Guardian but a couple of weeks ago I picked up my Saturday Times (really only for the Samurai Sodoku - I'm not a fan of media empires large enough to influence voter behaviour) and found the Guardian magazine inside rather than the Times'.
It was a good week for it as the Guardian had two new columnists.
There was Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall who is the Guardian's new food writer. I like Hugh F-W and am annoyed I only got into his TV programs recently. It may have been because when I did once watch it was the episode where he served someone's placenta to her dinner guests. I know it's re-using, but seriously, that's horrible.
Second up was Elspeth Thompson who is 'renovating derelict train carriages into a sustainable home' and telling us all about it on a weekly basis. An undertaking to be applauded and I'm sure there are things I could learn.
However, Elspeth in particular made me think about the role models the average consumer has for going green. It's a nice idea, but I don't know anyone who plans to ditch their Bovis standard build and live in a South-West Trains cast-off.
The excellent 'It's not easy being green' was similar. Great show, fantastic idea. But I have a full time job and and I'm rubbish at DIY so while I can admire them, I can't ship off to the country and if I tried building a waterwheel it would be square.
Why can't we have role models who are normal people leading normal lives? People who are trying to make a significant change to the environmental impact of their lives without reinforcing middle England's stereotype of environmenalists as hippies and drop-outs?
Being environmentally friendly doesn't mean you have to be 'alternative' and to achieve real change we need the mass, the general public, the Sun readers, the office workers, the school mums, everyone, to see that it applies to them.
Come on mainstream media, let's have role models that make us see we can do it too, not these admirable but detached personalities.
Comments
This is something I've also been thinking about recently. It is incredibly annoying to have the media following around rich hippies/downsizers on their so-called new 'green' lifestyle choices.
We need real people making difficult but real choices to better their environment to show others how it can be done.
