Nadia hits back at rich-lister’s ‘ugly’ language
NEWLY announced MasterChef NZ judge Nadia Lim has hit back at being branded ‘‘a little bit of Eurasian fluff’’ by one of the country’s wealthiest men.
The world of business is undergoing some pretty tough soul-searching of late as it faces up to gender pay inequality and a spotlight on how many women sit on boards, so it’s maybe not a great look to have a row about chauvinism played out in public.
But the outrageous comment by the DGL Group founder and chief executive Simon Henry sums up what’s so wrong about some of the most powerful leaders in New Zealand.
The comment came in an interview with Henry (who, the National Business Review reveals in the same article, is worth a cool $700 million) about how he’d been such a phenomenal success as CEO of the warehousing and distribution company. He took the opportunity to take a big swing at My Food Bag, the cook-it-yourself food delivery company founded in part by celebrity chef Lim and husband Carlos Bagrie, and which listed on the stock market last year shortly before DGL.
‘‘I can tell you, and you can quote me, when you’ve got Nadia Lim, when you’ve got a little bit of Eurasian fluff in the middle of your prospectus with a blouse unbuttoned showing some cleavage, and that’s what it takes to sell your scrip, then you know you’re in trouble,’’ Henry told NBR’s Hamish McNicol.
‘‘Go back to that prospectus and find that photo. You know you’re in trouble. I mean, you know, when you got a TV celebrity showing off her sensuality to hock script, then you know you’re in trouble.
The uglier the board, the more successful the share.’’
To its credit, NBR asked Lim what she thought about the ’’Eurasian fluff’’ comment.
‘‘...your email did make me think that you should do an NBR article on the ‘Top five most chauvinistic people in NZ business’. That article would go great guns! And you’ve already interviewed one! :)’’
By Friday, Prime Minister Jacinda
Ardern had also branded the comments ‘‘insulting to all women’’, and TVNZ’s
Hilary Barry had started a typically amusing #flufffriday to highlight the ‘‘outrageous racism, and . . . misogyny’’.
Quite aside from the fact that Henry has
since sent an apology to his staff admitting ‘‘the language I used to describe her is unacceptable’’, it is incredible in this day and age that we have an influential richlister willing to go proudly on the record using such abhorrent language.
It’s possibly even worse that he can also so flagrantly tie looks or appearances with being successful.