Alexandra Shulman’s Notebook
Power and glamour do mix – just ask Phoebe
PHOEBE Waller-Bridge can do no wrong. The actor/ writer’s second series of her TV show Fleabag has launched triumphantly and there are many of us counting down the minutes to the return of her funny and twisted psychodrama Killing Eve.
In a year she’s grown from being one of those names-to-know-if-youare-in-the-know to a regular mainstream fixture.
And there’s a lesson here that is as unfair as it’s true: fame and fortune favours the attractive. While 33-year-old Waller-Bridge is sublimely talented, she also rocks a plunging bra-less jumpsuit with the best of them.
Tall and athletic with a flawless complexion, cut-class vowels and a 1920s bob, she’s a woke Joan Hunter-Dunn who can slip into a backless evening gown for an awards ceremony while simultaneously being lauded as a spear-carrier for the female condition.
It’s that very combination that is her power. Having seen her host the Evening Standard Drama Awards, I can vouch for the fact that her winning looks (more delicate in real life than on screen) and willingness to change into multiple designer outfits through the evening gave her licence to deliver volleys of lethally targeted insults – and have her targets applaud in rapt admiration.
I doubt that a less attractive woman spraying the middle-aged men in the audience with condemnatory (yet wickedly funny) vitriol would get the same reaction.
On the other side of the pond, a politician called Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is by far the most highprofile of the 2019 female intake to the US Congress. At 29, AOC (yes, she’s already famous enough to be known by her initials) is the youngest woman ever to take a seat in that house. Of course she’s whipsmart but she’s also a photogenic Latina beauty rarely without her trademark vermilion lipstick. She’s winning attention for talking about her hard-Left agenda – a top-end 70 per cent tax rate and abolition of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement – as well as for being prepared to reveal her double-cleansing Korean skincare routine. The views of the 41 other new female Congress appointees are scarcely getting a look-in.
It’s deeply unfashionable to point out that looks matter – in fact it’s unfashionable even to mention them. But ignoring reality doesn’t help move things on.
For years it has been thought that you couldn’t do a serious job if you enjoyed your fashion and make- up, and a desire to show that you could do both was one of my missions at Vogue.
How encouraging it is to see that powerful women are showing that they can get stuff done and indulge in a glamorous appearance, rather than feel they have to play it down in order to be listened to.
Don’t let knife terror destroy kids’ freedom
INCREASED independence is one of the joys of growing up; travelling to and from school alone, leaving a party in your own time rather than facing the mortification of being collected by a parent, the fun in just hanging around out there with a group of friends, with no particular place to go.
As parents there comes a point when it’s essential to allow our children to learn how to deal with life outside their protected family bubble. They need to be encouraged to explore, to experience of the joy of the world and not to view strangers as potential threats and the streets as minefields.
But it’s also hard. We lie awake waiting for the sound of the key in the door and the clump of trainers walking past our bedroom. We equip them with mobiles to keep in touch; we teach them – we hope – how to be street-savvy and aware. For the parents of recently murdered Jodie Chesney, and Yousef Makki, this was not enough to keep them safe.
There have been 285 fatal stabbings in the past year, which is clearly 285 too many, but the spread of fear is another malign consequence of all this horror – debilitating, pervasive, and very hard to eliminate once it takes hold. Fear is a tough enemy. It invades our psyche and defies rational thinking so that it becomes controlling and limiting. Fear of fear becomes terrifying in itself.
Tomorrow is not soon enough for drastic measures against t he knife- crime epidemic. Bring it on, whatever it takes – stop and search, metal-detecting arches and, of course, a greater police presence. I can’t remember when I last saw a policeman in our neck of the woods and we have simultaneously a police station next door (which no longer operates a counter to log crimes) and drug deals on the street corner. But as parents we also have to play a part in combatting this ghastly violence by refusing to allow fear to take grip and erode our children’s, or indeed our own, confidence to roam free.
Men deserve MeToo moments as well
I THINK I’m allowed to say what follows because: a) I have never depended on a penny of a man’s money; b) I have employed and I hope supported many women in their working lives; c) I have worked all my adult life; and d) because I feel that asking a female if they are a feminist is one of those ‘Duh?’ questions. But in the aftermath of International Women’s Day, I’d be interested to see the same amount of attention paid to International Men’s Day, which I have only just realised actually exists (November 19 this year, since you ask).
The current climate of Me Time, Me Too positioning encourages women to air their considerable and often valid grievances at length. But men shouldn’t automatically be shot down for saying whatever they like about their own roles – that’s if they can ever get a hearing.
What does billionaire Kylie do for an encore?
AT 21, Kylie Jenner has become the youngest self-made billionaire in the world through her line of cosmetics, Kylie Cosmetics. What on earth is she going to do with the rest of her life (when she’s not busy spending it)?
My travel essential: a massive medical kit
WE ARE about to go on holiday and I bought a new suitcase online. When it arrived, I was horrified by how large it seemed – surely it wasn’t quite that gargantuan in the picture? But as I survey all the clothes, books, cosmetics and cameras waiting to be stuffed in, suddenly it doesn’t look big enough. Part of the kit is a vast number of medicinal aids without which I don’t feel safe travelling outside London, let alone abroad. My partner David says it’s ludicrous. ‘They have chemists in Egypt, you know.’ But to parrot Ronald Reagan, talking about how hard work never killed anyone, I figure why take the chance?