Royals’ kilty secret
Clint Eastwood.twood. Someone please tell him the Dirty Harry cameras stopped rolling in the 70s. Turns out he’s as unreconstructed in real-life as toughguy cop Harry Callahan. I know he’s 86 now but that’s no excuse for defending Trump’s racist rhetoric and slagging off today’s generation. He boasted: “When I grew up, those things weren’t called racist.” Clint grew up during segregation. Nothing racist there, then. Great at acting, terrible at thinking. How very dare anyone call Isabel Spearman a mere “stylist”. She may have advised Samantha Cameron on her pretty dresses but she should be more correctly identified as a “special advisor”, say former Downing Street aides, and as such is very much entitled to an OBE. She organised SamCam’s entire diary, apparently, endlessly juggling gym sessions, shopping and lunch dates forr a paltry £60,000 a year. Phew. Pass thee smelling salts. Or the sick bucket. Another week, another sozzled yob causes chaos on a holiday flight. This time, a plane from Edinburgh to Madeira had to make an emergency landing to have the fool removed. We’re all nervous enough about terror attacks without some drunk causing panic. How many more episodes do we have to endure before boozing is banned on planes the way smoking was. Who wouldn’t sacrifice a mid-air drink for a safe and peaceful trip?p? AnyA time one of the senior royals set foot in their Highland estates, they feel compelled to dress like Harry Lauder. Och aye, Scotch plebs…they’re one of us, you know. We can tell by their natty kilts. Now we learn that even their cringey attempt to ingratiate themselves reeks of elitism. New public papers reveal commoners were banned from Tested my bird phobia d Drummon at Blair Failed. Used Safari Park. a old son as my 10-year- bird of during the seen human shield you Well, have in prey display. Toddler close up? a sea eagle chortled at my terror r pushchai munching a brazenly while the bird if taunting Wotsits as not me). That (the eagle, SAS boy’s a future hero. wearing the official Royal Family tartan 80 years ago and the ban is still in place.
Now I’m not suggesting anyone with a modicum of style would wish to copy the Balmoral tartan overload favoured by the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall.
But we wouldn’t even be allowed to, not without special permission from Buck House. Thank goodness they look so daft. If we couldn’t laugh, wwe’d cry.
The boy’s version read “Mummy’s Little Hero” and the girl’s “Daddy’s Little Princess”.
Should have wondered at the time why little girls can’t be heroes too, instead of princesses, but I bought them because they were cute and not because I meant to peddle gender stereotypes.
In my own defence, it can be very hard to stay on top of the sexism agenda when you’re shopping for children’s wear and focused on price, size and getting the hell out of the shop before your own kids destroy the place. Good job the babies couldn’t read at the time, eh?
Jump forward a few years and Gap have found themselves at the centre of a social media stramash over a new range of clothing for kids. The boy’s version declares him “the little scholar” while the girl’s “the social butterfly”.
A cheeky- faced little lad stands proudly displaying an Albert Einstein T-shirt while his female counterpart is wearing kitten ears and is declared the “talk of the playground”. The playground? Wow. That far-and-wide?
Casual sexism in casual clothes. Annoying? Yeah. Worse than that, we probably don’t even notice until some more right- on types call it out. Worth burning our daughters’ Frozen merchandise over? Probably not.
Really doubtful that the cutesie pink T-shirt they wear as a pre-schooler is going to condemn any young girl to a future of flashing their boobs in the Big Brother house or hanging around in nightclubs waiting to be noticed by a footballer. Or even, perish the thought, trying to blag themselves Prince Harry.
My son got an ironing board and iron for his third Christmas (well, he’d asked Santa) and as yet he’s showing no signs of leaning towards a career in domesticity.
How girls grow up comes down to what we teach them and show them, not what we dress them in. They’ll outgrow the slogans just as they outgrow the clothes.
We’re now in a world where there’s a female First Minister, Prime Minister and German Chancellor, a woman in charge of the IMF and (fingers- and- toes-crossed) another waiting to be named the next President of the United States.
Actually, it’s becoming a bit concerning that boys are woefully short of men to look up to so, if they have to hark back to a genius of the early 20th century, let them do it. The poor lads have people like Trump trashing their gender confidence – they could do with a break.
But before you hand over any cash, might be an idea to point out that Einstein’s brilliance was pre-dated by the woman whose face now adorns the RBS £10 note, 19th century Scottish scientist Mary Somerville, and that her work likely influenced his.
It’s not her fault that her stuffy portraits wouldn’t look quite so quirky on T-shirts as the goofy mad-professor photo.
In any case, the clever creatives who masterminded the new Gap campaign managed to send out advertising that carried a glaring spelling error. They mis-spelled Einstein. How embarrassingly dopey. Probably a man.
All this in the week that a 10-year-old girl won Child Genius by answering questions such as how to spell the word “thelytokous” ( producing only female offspring) and “polydactylous” (having extra digits). And, yes, I did have to look them up.
Don’t sweat the small stuff too much, not when the big stuff’s so big, not when women still earn around 80p for every £1 made by men, while the glass ceiling is still very much intact for most and while the inf luential boss at one of the country’s biggest ad agencies can claim grown women la ck “vertical ambition”. As Einstein might have said, it’s all relative.