ALEXANDRA SHULMAN'S NOTEBOOK: The trouble with giving young girls identity labels

The other day I watched a small girl chatting gaily to a woman I took to be her grandmother. As she bounced along the street, she sang 'What I tell them first is that I'm binary, what I tell them first is I'm binary' as if she were chanting a nursery rhyme.She was clearly pleased with herself, although I'm pretty sure she meant non-binary and didn't really have any idea what she was talking about. Binary has become a word merrily flung around in the school playground.In our world of identity politics it's the children who bear the brunt of the need for labels. No longer can they just be who they are without wondering if they fit into some category or other.Of course, the desire to be part of a tribe has always been part of childhood and teenage years and subcultures like the Teddy Boys, Mods and skinheads have not just been about style. Membership made you part of a community, for better or worse.Yet I find the idea that a small girl seeks comfort and excitement in a gender label troubling.Recently, I spent a few days with a girl who has been diagnosed with ADHD.She was highly intelligent, but like many teenagers she felt beset by myriad problems and she is relying on medication to solve them.It's quite possible this will deal with some of her issues, but the more I hear about ADHD the more I question how helpful it is to designate oneself a sufferer. A young girl and her grandmother (file image). In our world of identity politics it's the children who bear the brunt of the need for labels. No longer can they just be who they are without wondering if they fit into some category or other, writes Alexandra Shulman At the moment she bundles everything under this umbrella, but I would wager that quite a few of her worries come from being at an age when her body is changing. The question of who we are is, of course, the forever question - one we deal with all our lives. But I am not sure the increasing desire to label us is really much help, particularly when very young.My scales don't have the measure of meMy poor personal trainer has his work cut out for him. About once a month I step on the scales in the gym which are meant to measure BMI, body fat composition, water content and so on. Despite our travails, they show zero change.I look crestfallen and cross and he tells me that it doesn't matter. These instruments are not always accurate. So why do we bother using them, I ask, especially since - although my weight hasn't changed - I am sure I have lost fat? We both shake our heads and go off to the leg press where we discuss chicken and rice recipes.Why are Christmas ads such humbug?What to say about the ghastly Christmas ads our major stores have lavished fortunes on?John Lewis offers the depressing tale of granny Dame Kristin Scott Thomas, a woman whose grandchildren have no manners and symbolise everything that's wrong about festive consumerism.The soundtrack is the Rolling Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want. That was one of three songs we chose to play at our recent wedding and will now be forever tarnished. Joe Wilkinson and Keira Knightley in Waitrose's Christmas advert James Norton and Lucy Punch do their best for M&S, but Norton in particular looks embarrassed by his performance as a beardless Santa. And maybe it's just me but does any man - even Norton - look good in a cream turtle neck?Then there's Keira Knightley - my new love object as the assassin in Black Doves - who struggles to make any sense of a Waitrose script which seems to say that beef Wellington is the way to a woman's heart. But, just as I despaired, salvation arrived in the shape of Tesco's offering, with Anna Maxwell Martin rescued from a foodless Christmas by Roisin Conaty's delivery driver - heartwarming and funny and with a genuinely festive spiritWhere there's a Wills, there's a dream editorHanding over a magazine to a guest editor is always tricky. The hope is that a famous name will boost sales and Country Life, given over last week to the Prince of Wales, has certainly been rewarded with massive ad sales.The risk is that the guest editor will want to feature all kinds of pet projects and issues which the usual reader doesn't much care about. They frequently want to promote their friends or their own work. It can turn into an ego trip and skilful diplomacy is required.Country Life seems to have avoided these pitfalls and the subjects Prince William has included are very much standard fare for its readers - reminiscences of the Highgrove gardens, an interview between his wife, the Princess of Wales, and the brilliant nature writer Robert Macfarlane, a photographic portfolio of rural heroes and a recipe for his favourite chocolate biscuit cake.Fortunately he has left the property pages - everyone's favourite element - in place, so we can gorge on houses like the stonking hilltop mansion in Oxshott, Surrey, with garaging for up to 20 cars, on the market for a cool £10,950,000.Dig your own furrow in gardens - and lifeFilm and television director Paul Weiland, the man behind a long-running series of commercials for Walkers crisps, has recently published A Garden Love Story, a book about his restoration of 60 acres of historic gardens and parkland at Belcombe Court in Wiltshire.Gardening has helped him through some of the most difficult moments in his life, including retiring from his career.Weiland acknowledges that when new to gardening he had advice and help, but essentially always did what he wanted. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.His mentor, the hugely successful film director Alan Parker, inspired him by saying 'You need to trust in your own vision and go with it, right or wrong. After all, you don't see many statues commemorating committees.'Absolutely right.