2012 is supposed to be the year that we all come to terms with feminism: with the fact that we still need it and that it's nothing for either men or women to be scared of.
So how did we kick things off? With a naked lady, of course. Actor Lara Pulver was the subject of numerous complaints after she appeared naked and carefully draped before the watershed as Irene Adler in the New Year's Day episode of BBC drama series Sherlock. Since the brouhaha over her bralessness, she said this week in an interview that she felt the stunt was "empowering".
Call me old-fashioned, but it strikes me that any instance of a woman using her body to get what she wants - whether fictionally or not - is proof enough that we still need feminism. Sherlock, after all, doesn't need to get his kit off to make us take him seriously. He just does that infuriating thing where he works out what colour pants you're wearing from the way you rest your chin on your hand.
Women have laboured too long under the illusion that being overtly sexual, not to mention angry about sex, is a form of empowerment. Being naked in front of an adversary isn't empowering; having sex with someone you despise doesn't give you the upper hand. And who propagates this myth? Male writers. From Steven Moffat's Irene Adler to Martin Amis's Nicola Six, retrograde, two-dimensional women who play their sexuality for power end up losing out.
Don't worry, though, there are plenty of other "strong women" proposed as role models for us this year. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo features Stieg Larsson's tough-as-old-Doc Martens private investigator Lisbeth Salander, hailed as a woman who fights back, who doesn't take any nonsense and who gets what she wants. But Salander is, in fact, a deeply troubled victim of violent rape, whose monomania for finding and punishing men who kill women verges on a revenge malady as heartily theatrical as any such Jacobean obsession. This is not a role model, so much as a cartoon character - and one who needs some counselling at that.
