Unflattering pictures drive Aintree ladies off the rails
The women primed and on parade at Liverpool’s famous race meeting are hitting back at their critics
The arrival of spring brings with it many things to be celebrated: daffodils, the dawn chorus, lighter evenings and glamorous women, dressed to the nines, enjoying the best day out all year. Yet, every April, racegoers at Aintree Ladies Day face one major hurdle: the sneering that has become as much of a national sport as the Grand National itself.
Do a Google image search for “Ladies Day Aintree” and you’ll find thousands of pictures. Some show friends sitting on the ground, giggling over glasses of fizz. Others depict women in pastel dresses taking a tumble. Some might be flashing a bit of flesh. And we at home are supposed to throw our hands up in horror at the fashion and fake tan.
Well, the women of Merseyside have had enough. An open letter, published in the Liverpool Echo this week, called for an end to the negative coverage. Addressing the Daily Mail specifically, it took issue with photographs taken of women “at an unflattering angle in what is clearly nothing more than an attempt to embarrass them”.
It is not unusual to see headlines about racegoers “letting it all hang out”, poking fun at “the late fallers” and referring to women as “fillies”.
The mockery and finger-pointing have spread to social media, where there are hundreds of comments to the effect that Ladies Day is the most inaccurately named event ever. “Most of them look like porn stars,” one charming chap wrote last year.
“I hate the sneering,” says Marianne Jones, editor of The Telegraph’s Stella and a scouser. “Ladies Day just sums up scouse girls. They’re absolute peacocks and love nothing more than to flaunt and celebrate what they’ve got. The racing is by-the-by. It’s a ritual; they will have had two days, maybe a week, off work to prepare – there’s the outfit, the tan, the nails, the hair, the brows. More is more.”
They would, she adds, be incredulous at some of the muted
outfits southern women wear. And at my desk, writing this in head-to-toe black, I can’t help but feel a bit drab. Justine Mills, the founder of Liverpool’s Cricket Fashion boutique, adds: “I do feel like there is a certain amount of snobbery that derives from the north-south divide. “At other events around the country, there are many similarities in the people attending, but they just don’t seem to garner the same negativity.”
Clare Fraser, 23, a student from the Wirral, wore a pink dress and left her coat at home. She says: “It’s definitely snobbery. I would like to see men in the pictures, too.”
Indeed, that snobbery does not tend to extend to male racegoers. Where are the pictures of men with their shirts unbuttoned, sitting on the grass after a few too many, or urinating in close proximity to the parade ring? (It happens). If we are going to talk about behaviour, we need to do so fairly.
According to the Echo’s open letter, the women of Aintree now “walk in fear that they will do something embarrassing”.
Yet, at its heart, Ladies Day is about camaraderie. The social media feeds of the women themselves tell the real story – friends getting dressed together, popping corks; mothers and daughters with their arms around one another. “Ladies Day is about us all being great. We’re all amazing and we are all here for a reason – to celebrate ourselves,” says Laura Barnett, 33, from Lytham.
And there’s the rub: the women of Ladies Day are loving every second. Be honest, which of us wouldn’t have enjoyed a day off work yesterday, drinking champagne? They were having a lot more fun than most of us were.
What’s more, they probably weren’t talking about Brexit.