Wimping out of TV trials is not a flattering look, Nicky
THE Conservative MP Nicky Morgan spoke last week of the relief at no longer being a Minister: she gets far less online abuse. Fair enough, I suppose. Some people just aren’t cut out for frontline politics and (never mind about making people’s lives better) at least the comments on Instagram about your new hobby knitting field mice will be kinder.
But she added something even stranger: she also gets far less abuse since avoiding setting foot in… Nottingham.
Gosh, I wonder why? Was she unable to buy paracetamol in Boots when the pharmacist was at lunch? Did a conker fall on her head from all those trees? Does she believe Robin Hood to be the world’s first terrorist?
No. She just hates what that city’s small, regional TV station, with its Neanderthal-like cameramen and malicious lighting technicians, does to her face. ‘It is deeply unflattering in how you look, and actually that’s why I now don’t go and do TV from regional offices because – particularly at Nottingham – they get you to perch on a little chair, bright lights, really unflattering and then I get just a whole load of social abuse afterwards about how ugly I am.’
I’m puzzled by her outburst. She’s 45, so surely should have got over the fact that she will never be mistaken for Keira Knightley. She is a feminist, not a contestant on Love Island, so her prime objective on these broadcasts is to display the size of her brain, not the blush of her beauty.
I am all for women – and men – at least looking as though they exercise for a bit in the morning before they exercise power. Didn’t the way Obama rocked a slim black suit inspire confidence? And even Margaret Thatcher was concerned about her appearance. Aboard that Challenger 1 tank, she insisted on a headscarf to protect her hair, and on a flight she wore her headset upside down so as not to disrupt that hairdo.
BUT the difference is that her particular brand of vanity was about being in control, not looking dewy. She didn’t care too much about her face, and was so busy that make-up was allowed to wear off.
These days, when everything is so polished and stage-managed, the ether abrim with perfect, pouting bimbos posting selfies, I tend to yearn for the next Ann Widdecombe, waiting in the bingo wings.
A female politician who is too pert, such as the aptly named Priti Patel, puts voters’ backs up. At least the bags for life beneath the eyes of Theresa May mean she’s losing sleep over everything.
And even if you are like Nicky Morgan, and can’t stand the TV sniping, then do what I do whenever I’ve appeared on Good Morning Britain or Celebrity Big Brother (sans make-up and in a bathing suit, I hasten to add!) – avoid wading in the Twitter cesspool afterwards. Don’t bleat. Even if you did have to watch your appearance on Look North through your fingers with your lenses out, just swallow your pride and get on with your job.
In the grand scheme of national crises, who cares that the camera adds 10lb (I love Chandler’s line in Friends to Monica about her wideness of girth in her prom video: ‘So how many cameras are actually on you?’).
Yes, we want women being listened to rather than leered at, but flouncing out of BBC North East because you look a bit pasty ain’t the way to advance the cause.
We can’t shout ‘Me Too!’ and ‘My left side really is my best one!’ in the same breath.