Theresa’s boobs are no laughing matter
Loathe as I am to delve too deep into cleavage-gate, I feel it incumbent upon me to make a definitive statement to the House on Theresa May’s racy, lacy red embonpoint.
There has been much talk among intelligent, liberally minded women (men being unilaterally, unfairly, whatever, you know why, excluded from this particular debate) as to whether the Home Secretary’s daring décolletage was a deliberately deployed distraction or just a woeful wardrobe malfunction.
I’m inclined to go for cock-up rather than conspiracy because well, it wasn’t Ladettes day at Cheltenham now, was it?
Yes, she ought to have been well aware of perfidious camera angles; there’s little point in running a state department if you haven’t got the authority to command a lackey to leap up on a chair and check your political prow. Yet, all things considered, my right honourable opinion is that when May put on her top, smoothed it over the shoulders and hoiked it down at the back, she looked modest as a missionary’s wife.
But once she sat down and slumped a bit with Budget day boredom and shifted a touch with austerity ennui, the neckline shifted and by so doing transformed her outfit into something Susan Sarandon might wear to the Oscars.
Front-bench politics is a nasty, brutish business and Theresa may have a penchant for kitten heels, but that sure as heck doesn’t make her a pussy cat or a foxy lady or some kind of front bench Nell Gwynne. And yet. And yet Twitter, or in this case Titter, the last redoubt of the facile, the frivolous and the fatuous, went, to use that highly infectious social media expression, viral.
There was cringeworthy innuendo tagged #putthemawaytheresa, interwoven with banal discussion as to whether she had recycled the same suit as last year by way of demonstrating her solidarity with austerity and lots of phnarrr phnarrr references to boobs and baps and every other saucy Carry On euphemism going.
On the day when the state of the nation’s finances were revealed and milestone policies unveiled, Britain behaved like a load of spotty sixthformers auditioning for a walk-on part in The Inbetweeners. Maybe all that pent-up sniggering was simply in the air after this week’s photographs of barely dressed race-goers behaving like the plastered chavs on a stag night.
If it wasn’t footballers peeing publicly into pint glasses and then chucking the contents off the balcony, it was young women flashing their nipples because – therein lies the mystery.
If you’re already wearing a thoroughly harloty dress with your breasts hanging out, why would you feel the need? They were drinking, of course. I say of course, while bearing in mind that other nationalities seem, unfathomably, to enjoy sports while sober.
Just as most mature democracies are peopled with citizens who would rather listen to their Chancellor than get weirdly exercised by a serendipitous eyeful of his middle aged cabinet colleague. It wouldn’t happen in France or Germany. In the socially democratic parliaments of Scandinavia it would be unthinkable.
Admittedly Italy, with its bunga bunga legacy, is more accustomed to pouting babes holding important briefs, but elsewhere, every last European leader must be rolling their eyes with exasperation at our childishness and wondering why they are fighting so hard to keep us in their club.
Bearing in mind this was the week when it was revealed that an epidemic of sexting is plaguing our schools, and a World Health Organisation report showed that girls in the UK top the league tables for underage sex and alcohol abuse, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that we are an oversexed, drink-sozzled society unable to escape the shadow of Benny Hill in attitudes to women.
Selfie-expression and the endless cravings of social media usually get the blame for most modern ills, but it’s one thing for trashy wannabes deliberately flashing their assets to gain attention, quite another for an Oxford-educated 59-year-old to be treated like a bit of skirt because she showed an inch more cleavage than she intended.
Or is it? I fear they are just different points on a shameful spectrum. When George Osborne was interviewed on radio by boorish LBC presenter Nick Ferrari, he was asked whether he represented the boom and Theresa May the bust. It’s the sort of pathetic, lazy misogyny masquerading as banter that does women from every walk of life a grave disservice. It’s cheap, it’s nasty, it’s demeaning.
Crass double entendres are a feeble-minded substitute for thought and debate and reasoned argument about the things that we ought to care about, like our daughters’ future.
We quite rightly criticise other cultures for having no respect for women, objectifying them and showing contempt for their status and achievements. Yet on current showing a great number of British people are no better.
Surely, this was not Ladettes day at Cheltenham