Tame Grace? Good luck with that. I delight in her brave belligerence

Grace Tame was Australian of the Year in 2021. She received her award for outspoken advocacy on behalf of sexual assault survivors and her successful campaign to eliminate Tasmania’s gag laws which, at the time, prevented sexual assault survivors – like Tame – from identifying themselves publicly. Her case was a catalyst for the “Let Her Speak” campaign.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Jodie Haydon greet Grace Tame at the Australian of the Year Awards morning tea.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Tame has been speaking ever since. She continues to be clear, precise and blunt in her advocacy. Sometimes, she uses words, sometimes, her facial expression, including her famous stony side-eye to Scott Morrison at the 2022 Australian of the Year celebration.

Morrison was a prime minister, it should be remembered, who had claimed to need his wife to explain why he should launch an investigation into workplace culture after a sexual assault allegation in parliament. It was Morrison who had admonished hundreds of thousands of Australian women – who marched for gender equality in 2021 – that they should be grateful that their demonstrations had not been met with bullets.

Then prime minister Scott Morrison and 2021 Australian of the Year Grace Tame during the Australian of the Year awards morning tea at the Lodge.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

For last weekend’s Australian of the Year morning tea at The Lodge, Tame chose to use her clothing to make her point. Specifically, she wore a rather smart white T-shirt with “F--- MURDOCH” emblazoned across her chest.

The usual pearl-clutching has ensued, no doubt as Tame knew it would. As a brilliant and strategic campaigner, Tame understands how much our society loves to police the behaviour of women (hello, March for Justice participants), especially young women. Indeed, the prettier they are, the more we delight in wagging our fingers, pursing our lips and turbocharging our radio mics, if lucky enough to have them.

Certain sections of the community – usually older men with aforementioned mics, conservative politicians and their acolytes, various pulpits and those spouting family values – particularly enjoy policing women’s clothes. There has been a recent minor kerfuffle about the fashion for thong bikinis.

’Twas ever thus. Back in my day, beach inspectors went around with tape measures to check that a girl’s bikini bottom was wide enough. Valuable learning time was once spent measuring the distance a schoolgirl’s tunic was from the floor. Some girls’ private schools had knicker inspections! But the same critics are also down on hijabs and burkhas, even burkinis. Seems women are always wearing either too much or too little.

Many column inches can be filled fulminating about young women’s behaviour, morals, language, ideas and ambitions. Chick-bait masquerading as clickbait. But Tame regularly and gleefully tramples such nonsense. Tame understands, perhaps as the Murdoch empire and its creation Donald J. Trump does, that attention is power.

The difference is that Tame uses attention to expose injustice and inequality, whether for sexual assault survivors, Indigenous Australians, Australians with a disability or merely as the victim, as she has been, of the personal crusades often launched by one of the world’s largest media companies against individuals they happen to disagree with.

And Tame is in good company. Another young renegade has stood up to the behemoth right at the eleventh hour. Prince Harry has been stalwart in his campaign against intrusive activities, such as phone hacking and searching through dustbins, by Murdoch-owned newspapers. He only settled last week, having taken the 93-year-old to the brink of having to face another “humblest day”. Harry is not very popular in the UK, but perhaps his holding Murdoch to account, not just on his own behalf but in memory of his mother, has gained him some respect.

Some of the criticism of Tame is about her pulling focus from this year’s winners. Actually, I think we’ve done that by being so incredibly easy to bait. If we’d all just shrugged, her activism would have failed. Indeed, a word to other winners, maybe take a leaf from Tame’s playbook. If you care about a cause and want to draw attention to it, be prepared to take flak.

That is the lesson courageous young women like Grace Tame continue to teach me. As a lifelong feminist – yes, I was one of those women lucky not to get shot – I delight in witnessing the refusal of younger women to pipe down, behave, and stifle their opinions and their rage. I am inspired by their rejection of shame about their age, their beauty, and their bodies. Flaunt them, cover them up, I don’t care. Women’s bodies belong to them to be used and accessorised as they see fit. My generation, with a few honourable and mouthy (bless them) exceptions, were more easily cowed.

And where did that get us? The good girls who behaved like ladies and put other people’s needs ahead of their own from dawn to dusk, from cradle to grave? A fast track to an old age of poverty and fear, including the very real possibility of living in our cars.

Speak up, girls. Don’t be tame. Be wild.

Jane Caro AM is a Walkley-winning columnist, author, novelist and social commentator.