ADDRESSING EVERYDAY SEXISM
IN THE week that Donald Trump was cleared of any wrongdoing following his impeachment hearings, it is ironic that a dress should be making the headlines here in the UK.
The last time I can recall such an item creating this level of fuss, Bill Clinton was being impeached and the dress belonged to Monica Lewinsky. The less said about that the better.
Anyway, in case you have been under a rock all week, or I don’t know, paying attention to actual serious news like coronavirus, the Australian bushfires (they are still burning by the way, only the world has largely stopped paying attention), or terrorists being given early release, MP Tracy Brabin made a speech in the commons this week wearing an off-theshoulder black frock. No biggie, right? Unfortunately, as she leaned forward to read her notes, the dress became more off-the-shoulder than the 58-year-old probably anticipated.
Don’t panic, we didn’t see anything we shouldn’t. Just a little skin. Possibly more skin than some of the uptight public schoolboys on the benches opposite are used to, but I digress.
However it was all too much for some people.
Within hours Tracy, who you might recognise from her Corrie stint in the Nineties, but who has been the member for Batley and Spen since 2016, was subjected to unspeakable abuse on social media, leading her to clap back on Twitter that she was not ‘A slag, Hungover, A tart, About to breastfeed, A slapper, Drunk’ and something else which I found so offensive I won’t even repeat it here.
Defending herself in TV and radio interviews afterwards, the shadow culture secretary, who had been to a music event earlier in the day and was not expecting to make an address at the dispatch box, called the abuse out as ‘everyday sexism’.
She added that people need to “listen to what we say not what we wear”.
For the record, the reason Tracy was at the despatch box was to raise a point of order over journalists being asked to leave a Downing Street press briefing on Brexit talks earlier this week
I think we can all agree that is worth listening to.
Full disclosure, I was not the biggest fan of the dress and, I was a little surprised to see someone wearing the £35 Asos design in the Commons.
However, there is no excuse for the vitriol and pure misogyny levelled against Tracy by, in the politician’s own words “keyboard warriors sat in their mum’s back bedroom eating Pot Noodles and having a pop at people they don’t know anything about”, purely because she chose to wear something they didn’t think she should.
To borrow a phrase, I disapprove of what Tracy wore but I will defend to the death her right to wear it.
Sidebar, while usually attributed to Voltaire, that quote (which is meant to be a defence of free speech rather than free fashion choices) was actually written by a woman named Evelyn Beatrice Hall in a book she penned about the famous French thinker.
See, Tracy’s right, people really do need to pay more attention to what women say.