Make-up? Making it up
Mick Jagger.ger I know he’s a superstar but it’s hard to believe the 74-year-old is the last of the red-hot lovers. Unless “red-hot” means he’s been sitting too close to the electric fire while having a wee snooze. The Rolling Stone stepped out with a 22-year-old film producer in Paris. Girlfriend Melanie Hamrick, 30, was at home in New York. At his age, maybe he just can’t remember where he left his last girlfriend. British summertime is well and truly over. One day after the clocks went back, temperatures tumbled and we slid straight into winter. So it’s even more alarming that there’s been a surge in the number of crisis grants for heating and food. Scottish councils saw an 11 per cent rise last year, with 42,500 applications between April and June, many caused by delays in benefits payments. Cold winterr nights await. The already-struggling mustst not be left to suffer. It still rankles that those cheating bankers who drove us to financial ruin sloped off scot-free with their fat pension packages. So it’s beyond infuriating to hear ex-PM Gordon Brown warn that no lessons have been learned and rogue bankers will inevitably do it again. Tens of millions in Tory Party donations have come from hedge funds and investment bankers and property magnates. The Government refuse to curbb the excesses of their pals. Shameful. She’s 25 with skin like a freshly picked peach and a face that looks like it has never seen a late night.
So can anyone explain why Dior have chosen Cara Delevingne to promote their new antiageing skincare range?
Are they claiming that slathering on creams from their Capture range will magically banish our middle-aged wrinkles and give us 20-something smoothness? Only if they want to provoke a reaction from the Advertising Standards people that’s harsher than an acid peel and more painful than a facelift.
The firm say Capture will “correct all visible signs of ageing to reveal a radiant youthful beauty”.
They are clearly forgetting about another effect of ageing…the ability to recognise a load of old tosh when you hear it.
“Why did these women wait so long to speak out if they were so profoundly affected by their experiences?” That’s what some were saying.
“Why did some accept money to keep their mouth shut and go away?” others sniped.
“And those starlets who went on to enjoy Hollywood fame after their encounters with the slimeball didn’t really have much to complain about, did they?”
They’re back again, the grumblings of snidey scepticism, now that the ripples from the Weinstein scandal have spread out across industries, making everyone think about the behaviour they have witnessed, excused or forgiven in their workplace, reaching the pil lars of British society, right to the very heart of Westminster and Holyrood.
What a pity some of this criticism comes from other women.
It should be poetic justice that Weinstein’s exposure has empowered so many ordinary females in so many walks of life to finally reveal how they’ve been sullied or abused or assaulted by those who wield power over them.
Just as the First Minister instructed last week in an email to senior males in her party, men should be reading what the victims are saying and reflecting on how it might apply to them.
If the fal lout from the Weinstein scandal is as it should be, men will think twice in future and women will no longer feel powerless. In short, things will be better.
So we should be reacting with Prue Leith- style e nt hu s i a sm a s she accidental ly tweeted the GBBO winner’s name 12 hours early. “Bravo Sophie,” she wrote.
“Bravo ladies…” we should be saying, as victim after victim adds their pebble of testimony to an ever-growing mountain of evidence.
So why do some venerable women feel the need to try to knock it down?
Journalist Anne Robinson, 73, claims to despair over the “fragility” of women these days, unable to cope with the “treachery” of the workplace.
We’re not as robust as they were 40 years ago. You know, back in the 70s, when Savile was allowed to do whatever he liked in workplaces like TV studios and hospitals. Yeah, women coped much better then.
Ex-Tory minister Edwina Currie says the Pestminster allegations are based on “flimsy” evidence and that we girlies should learn how to rebuff the would-be suitor “without upsetting people”.
If anyone had pestered her, “he would leave bent double”.
Tough gals shouldn’t be smug gals. So they ran the gauntlet and survived. Do today’s young women have to face the same trials to prove themselves worthy?
Let’s be clear for those, like Edwina, who are struggling to get it. There’s nothing wrong with the perfectly natural romantic liaisons that sometimes occur between two consenting work colleagues. Everyone knows this. But conf lating the off ice romance with genuine sexual harassment trivialises the offence and belittles victims.
So the Tory sex dossier, compiled by party staffers, is far from helpful, listing as it does consensual workplace relationships alongside allegations of groping, harassing teenagers and asking a PA to buy sex toys. There’s a world of difference between silliness and sleaziness.
To any man who would claim not to know where the line is: You’re lying to yourself. And probably guilty of crossing the line. In his private moments, Michael Fallon must have realised this. But none of this is about hating men so I will leave the last word to one. Billy Connolly found time while being knighted at Buck House to comment: “I think things that should have been done years ago are going to be done to protect young men and women. Men will have to get a grip on themselves.”
The Big Yin – a true champion for women. Bravo, Sir Billy.