I wish they didn’t look so cheap (and drink like sailors) but I love swagger of the Aintree ladies!
Afew years ago in Liverpool, my husband and I were entering the lift in our hotel when, suddenly, it was invaded by a posse of frightening females.
Despite it being a chilly, grey April morning, their spilling cleavages, dimpled knees and flashing thighs spoke of sex, sun and sleaze.
what appeared to be small bats had settled on their eyelids (only at second glance did I realise they were huge fake eyelashes); sequins and talons glittered and the air was heavy with the famous wAG’s own scent — Coleen X.
My other half didn’t know where to look. Or rather, he did — and that was the trouble. Towering heels hoicked those magnificent melons right next to his nose.
Not being a gal who follows the gee-gees, I was dozy enough to ask: ‘excuse me, is something happening today?’
Being Liverpool women, they were friendly enough not to laugh at the foreign fool, but squealed merrily: ‘It’s Ladies Day, love!’
The lucky guy with them — an Irishman, smart in his suit and tie — looked dazed that people could come to the ‘Pool’ without knowing the Grand National was on.
We’re treated to the pictures each year: hundreds of Aintree ladies doing their best to beat the idea of being a ‘lady’ into the ground. And are they good at it — all year round.
On bitter winter nights, when the wind off the Mersey would make a polar bear cry for a pashmina, the girls queue outside clubs seminaked — buttocks and bosoms (small, medium and very large) defying the elements.
And it’s the same at Aintree, rain or shine. well-meaning folk have tried to suggest a dress code, but they might as well ask the Liver Bird statue to fly.
Nothing will stop the Liverpool lasses flaunting it — and all the more if the snobs down South think they’re a bit... you know... common. Aintree style wasn’t always like that. I look back at vintage photographs of race-goers and wonder where it all went: the elegance, the style, the class.
Then, svelte suits (or costumes, as they were called) topped with fur stoles showed Parisian chic. Silk chiffon fluttered at the ankles of willowy ladies with billowing sleeves and sweet cloche hats.
They could have walked straight from a classy fashion magazine.
Now, gaudy, shiny fabrics strain at flesh — any fight for modesty over before it’s begun.
At Aintree ‘letting it all hang out’ means donning a uniform of diminishing clothes and big... well, big everything else. Ladies Day gets brasher year after year.
So why is this? In my Liverpool fifties childhood, working women like my mother, grandmother and aunties dressed carefully, wanting to look neat but never to draw attention to themselves.
Now Ladies Day epitomises a very different culture: the daughters, mother and grandmothers of today want to look sexy. Hookerchic rules. Tattoos were once the badge of the merchant seamen and dockers who helped make the Port of Liverpool boom. Now the Liver Birds are inked with abandon, and (once again) the bigger the better.
I’ll never understand why everybody — from 48-year-old Jennifer Aniston, pictured this week in a horrible, one-shouldered, leather mini-dress, to the 16-yearold pouting her latest selfie — wants to look like an easy lay. But they do. It’s the consequence of porn culture and it’s everywhere.
There’s another change for women that has taken place, too. when you look at old photos, you notice immediately how bodyshape has altered. women (of all classes) brought up in the pre- and post-war years ate in moderation, because that was the norm.
Now, fast food and fizzy drinks make some of the ladies at Aintree look as if they’ve been on the pies and chips since conception. How the great artists of the renaissance would love their voluptuous glory!
Dolly Parton once quipped: ‘It takes a lot of money to look this cheap.’ And confidence, too.
for me, that sums up Ladies Day. There’s a swagger to this particular style which defies those who think it shows no style at all.
THeSe flamboyant lasses of all ages totter boldly where Guardian females fear to tread — swigging champagne from miniature bottles and proclaiming proudly that they’re ‘All-woman’ as they go. They’re saying they’re as good as anybody — and better than most.
Such sassiness despises middleclass girls who go to the theatre in scruffy jeans, disapprove of makeup and drone on about genderneutral issues. Aintree ladies shriek to the sky their gutsy philosophy; that no matter how bloody tough life gets, you shorten your skirt, slap on the lippy and have a laff. It’s called surviving.
I have nothing but fond memories of the great city’s marvellous, unique character. Though my family left when I was 14, that sharp wind off the Mersey created who I am — and I love it.
My days of revealing a fine cleavage are over, but I’d grab my eye-liner from a fire, because my mum taught me that you should always dress your best and present a cheeky face to the world. what else is there to do?
So though a part of me does wish that hooker-chic didn’t rule — and that perhaps they didn’t drink like sailors — I still love the Aintree ladies.
You can smile patronisingly at their antics and murmur words like ‘vulgar’, ‘tawdry’ and ‘garish’ — but in secret I bet you wish you were brash enough to have that much fun. And one thing I’m sure of — Liverpool women are so fabulous that, if any catastrophe were to hit God’s own country, they would rise high into the air like a flock of muscular, multi-coloured butterflies — ready to terrify the life out of anybody who dared to take ’em on.
Red Rum pays off – Page 29