Last Friday’s headlines were enough to make anyone who has ever thought that the press has it in for women, shiver. ‘Fatal distraction’ rang The Independent. Tabloids echoed the outraged cry...

Last week I started trapeze classes, about which I am very excited; I am salivating slightly at the prospect of my future self – tight abs, impressive biceps, hands like a lizard. I’m driven by the desire to impress. Tuck, pike, heave. Go girl.

What have my trapeze classes got to do with Friday’s headlines? Well, most of the dancers attending my class are not (as I am) out to impress, they are out to get work. Aerial skills, I am told, come as a requirement for those wanting to apply for work on cruise ships.

Cruise ships... Ah yes! Headlines!

The trauma of the stricken Costa Concordia off the coast of Italy is ongoing. Bodies are still to be found and divers are working hard to find them before the massive, part-submerged cruise ship sinks completely. Rescue efforts aside, many UK newspapers on Friday began to speculate on the possibility that the ship’s captain’s reckless, and possibly criminal, actions were due to the fact that he was accompanied by a ‘pretty young woman’ (thank you Michael Day of The Independent for describing her for us so nicely).

Ah yes, that makes sense. A woman on the ship’s bridge with the captain? What a terrible thought. Men get all silly around women, don’t they? Men crash ships when women are near them. Men forget their responsible selves when they are with women. Women should really know better than to keep men company, especially on ships. And especially if they’re pretty.

Ok, point made, sarcasm over. Who the hell do The Independent think they are? The headline ‘Fatal distraction’ quite literally implies that the woman, just by being with the captain (which she maybe wasn’t at the time it crashed) was somehow responsible for the deaths of the passengers who drowned as the ship sank. That’s a low blow.

The woman is Domnica Cemortan, a dancer from Moldova working on the ship. I bet her biceps are immense and the back of her knees are weary from rope burn. If she wanted to she could swing from her trapeze any day and thwack these idiot journalists in the jaw. Show ‘em what’s for.