After her triumphant address to The Beard Society, Professor Mary Beard squeezed in an interview with Varsity on modern feminism, TV and sexism within the University of Cambridge.

Jilly Luke: Would you stand by your statement that “modern orthodox feminism is cant” and how would you say your “maverick views” differ?

Mary Beard: I think that there is a degree of political correctness which occludes our seeing our own very different and problematic engagements with feminism. If any woman says to me “I’m not a  feminist” I want, metaphorically, to shoot her, but I think that the danger of those kind of labels is they can be oversimplifying. There are some simple things, but there has to be a complexity and it’s cant to imply that there isn’t. So I think it’s a campaign against simplicity.

JL: Speaking of simplicity, do you think there is a danger with populist feminisms such as those espoused by Caitlin Moran, that they might dumb down theory?

MB: I think there are different types of feminism which have different jobs to do. There is a “come on, pin in your bum wake-up” sort of feminism which I think we really need. But I think we have to think through what this means in a more complicated way. That’s our job, and that’s not saying that Caitlin Moran- She’s fucking good!- But our job is to say it’s more complicated than that. If we’re not saying that, we’re not doing the job.

JL: You’ve had a TV programme, Meet the Romans, do you think the way women dress and present themselves on television affects how seriously their views are taken? Should it?

MB: I think it’s an issue and I think it’s a gender issue. If you’re David Starkey you can look like the back end of a bus. We (Beard, the BBC and the production company) had an agreement. I said, I am me and if you want me telling people your audience what I’m interested in and why I think it’s important I can do that and I think I can do it bloody well but I’m not going to do it by pretending to be someone I’m not.

JL: How can we encourage women and teenage girls to want to be more than just beautiful? How can we encourage them to want to be clever and funny?

MB: I just think you do it by interesting them. If you talk to kids about stuff and you say this is a Roman willy and it’s really little, and you’re talking true, they like that. I think there a hell of a lot of kids that like the idea that I’m not Barbie. It’s maybe a flash in the pan and all the rest but you can interest people and make them think that you have something to say to them that ultimately may make them think, and probably does in some cases, that there’s more to life than being a size nought. You’re not looking at me to go “oh look, that’s great totty on the screen”, you’re watching to hear what I’ve got to say. The BBC has been very good. Janice Hadlow on BBC2 has been really good, she’s a middle-aged woman, she’s got lots of middle aged women to present factual programmes and it’s tough. You have to have skin of bloody iron.

JL: Earlier in the term Lucy-Anne Holmes, the founder of the “No More Page 3” campaign, addressed The Cambridge Union Society and said “The Sun has fostered a ‘look at the tits on that’ culture". Do you agree? Has that spread to academia?

MB:  If you were to ask me “would I rather The Sun didn’t have a page 3?”, of course I would. How do we get rid of it? I think by just saying “isn’t it silly?”. Can’t we just ridicule it? I think when women can use ridicule to get their own way then we will have won. We don’t need to say this is so OUTRAGEOUS, just that it’s silly. I think the academy is very complicated. Almost everybody I’ve met has their heart in the right place. The problem is that having your heart in the right place isn’t quite enough and that’s quite hard to say to your colleagues. It’s quite hard to say it’s no good just wanting more women, what are you going to do about it? I don’t know about all women shortlists, it’s one thing for a parliamentary seat because there’s lots of those but the one job in Latin literature that’s going to come up in Cambridge, I’m not sure I can do that.

JL: You’ve said that when you came up that you felt Cambridge was very sexist in its views. Do you think that’s still a feature of life here?

MB: On the one hand, compared with 35 years ago, it’s another world. I would like to give the university a huge pat on the back because it’s transformed itself, it’s a different place. If you can move an institution on from 12% women to 50% women in less than 40 years, that’s amazing. We’ve done bloody well and to say that we need to do better isn’t a criticism; it’s in part a compliment.  It’s a lot better than parliament. I feel privileged to have been here. It’s been great. It’s not been easy, but it’s been great.