Edinburgh 2022: Review: JULIE JAY: OOPS, THIS IS TOXIC, Gilded Balloon

Guest writer: L Gourley

Julie Jay's Oops...This is Toxic - a carefully constructed takedown of nineties/noughties misogyny - was more fun than it was outright funny, but still managed to generate enough laughs to counter the heavy subject matter. From psychiatric wards to the patriarchy, Jay lays bare the misogyny of the past two decades and the impact this had on her self-esteem as a teenager growing up in Ireland.

The themes discussed in Oops...This is Toxic are, at a high level, broadly shared by women across the UK & Ireland. The nights out ruined by men's roaming hands and their entitlement to women's bodies, the laughing it off, and the coded language women use to stop things getting too uncomfortable. Women are by and large fluent in this language; men have never had to learn it. This, and the pressure of growing up to conform to some constantly moving (and ever-unattainable) level of desirability and male-centred "worthiness" is the focus of Jay's hour-long show.

The backdrop to all of this, of course, is popstar Britney Spears' rise to fame and subsequent fall. She is the perfect vehicle to drive the narrative, both as Jay's teenage idol and as the poster child for the type of commodification prevalent in the noughties. A time where female objectification and exploitation was disguised as empowerment, before women's bodies and sexuality truly belonged to themselves. Britney's conservatorship in the latter part of her career served as a warning of the kind of punishment waiting for women in the spotlight who became uncontrollable. A double standard Jay astutely points out has never been applied to the many public spirals and crises of men that Hollywood was built on.

At times, the show feels like a lecture, complete with video presentations to drive home the takeaway message and a literal Dictionary definition of misogyny. This format is apt for Julie Jay given her past as a teacher (did you know she went to Trinity College, by the way?) and it generally works for what the show is trying to do. Jay's critical dissection of 2000s media interlaced with some delightfully out there humour brought back waves of nostalgia, and not always the good kind. The early sexualisation of a young Britney Spears sent ripples of revulsion through the crowd, and that X-

Factor video left an uncomfortable feeling in its wake. How did we ever think that was normal? The grim content is saved from being too dismal by Jay's unique use of props and self-deprecating humour, and it's a testament to Jay's ability to structure and deliver this content in a way that's actually fun.

At the heart of Oops... is resilience and a refusal to play by the old rules set by society for women. It's freeing and uplifting. For women everywhere, there's an anger smouldering, and as Jay says: sometimes the rot is so deep, the only choice is to burn the house down. Catch Jay lighting her own match in a (hopefully flame-resistant) red catsuit in a brutally honest but genuinely humorous look back at how modern misogyny has shaped women's experiences so far.

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