"I’m all for girlhood, with womanhood being such as it is"

I AM in the Sligo boondocks with my sister, staring at her youngest daughter Lola who’s sitting under the kitchen table eating a pink meringue.

Now don’t get me wrong — I’m all for mothers cutting their little girls’ hair. I mean no three-year-old needs to cultivate the art of feminine grooming, especially when you consider the ghastly lifelong bore of it, never mind the debate over early sexualisation and how this limits girls’ aspirations and achievements.

Of course I’m all for girlhood — why wouldn’t I be, what with womanhood being such as it is. Besides, childhood innocence is a bedrock assumption of contemporary Western thinking; I’d much rather see Lola up a tree than Lola primping in a salon.