There are times for slamming the table, and I am sure both Beckham and McCartney are prone to outbursts in their businesses when tough decisions need making. But I don’t interpret McCartney’s words as several steps backwards for women, as some feminists have. In correctly diagnosing that only women are allowed to be “fragile” (and indeed that such fragility can have “a strength to it”), she is simply showing a bit of leg and teasing us with how things really are.