At last! Theresa gives a speech – and noone talks about her shoes
Confused Rory has an Archers moment ...
TELL you what I liked most about Theresa May’s speech to the Police Federation last week. It wasn’t how the Home Secretary stood up to the silent sneers of the force, and subjected them to a withering lecture about corruption and cover-ups – it was how afterwards, nobody commented on her shoes.
In fact, it was a rare instance of a woman in the public eye, with a role to play, being judged exclusively on how well or badly she had carried out her job and nothing else.
And for this I say, well done, Mrs May. You pulled it off. You did us proud.
For, apart from you on this notable occasion, we were reminded last week at every turn how hard it is for a woman to reach the top of her profession and not invite ball-by-ball commentary on her weight, looks, age, clothes, even her sexual desirability.
In an abject interview with the Radio Times last week, John Inverdale – who’s just lost his gig as the BBC’s Radio 5 Live Wimbledon presenter to Clare Balding – blamed his comments in the wake of Marion Bartoli’s Wimbledon win last year on… an attack of hay fever.
Inverdale had mused aloud whether the player’s father had ever said to her: ‘Listen, you’re never going to be a looker. You’re never going to be somebody like Sharapova…’ not forgetting to mention Sharapova’s endless golden legs.
Mmm. Moving on, Jeremy Paxman interviewed Silvio Berlusconi on Newsnight, and he point-blank asked the embalmed Italian politician whether he’d ever described Angela Merkel as an ‘un****able lard arse,’ an offensive question, to both the German Chancellor and the former Italian premier, that the BBC used to trail the programme all day.
AND then the week ended with the fat lady singing at Glyndebourne, or so you would believe if you only read the reviews of the house’s production of Der Rosenkavalier. high-toned claque of opera critics dismissed the performance of a gifted, garlanded Irish mezzo-soprano playing Octavian with a succession of put-downs based entirely on her looks.
Rupert Christiansen, in The Telegraph, said Tara Erraught was ‘dumpy’, and her costume made her look like a cross between ‘Heidi and Just William’; Rupert Morrison in The Times said her ‘Octavian is unbelievable, unsightly and unappealing both as boy and girl’, and the FT called her a ‘chubby bundle of puppy fat’. POOR Caroline Wozniacki, who is in pieces after her golfer fiance Rory McIlroy called it all off after the wedding invitations were already in the post. It all calls to mind the recent Archers plotline, where Tom actually jilted poor Kirsty at the altar. Part of me thinks that it’s terribly caddish behaviour – but another part of me thinks that it was brave of Rory (and Tom), and better in the long run, to be true to their hearts. What made all this worse, in my view, was that some of the critics only reviewed Miss Erraught’s appearance (and for the record she is, as her father proudly says, both ‘beautiful’ and ‘a young woman of substance’) and not her performance.
So, apart from the Home Secretary’s address to the Police Fed, all last week was distinguished – for want of a better word – by white, middle-aged men, often no oil paintings themselves, critiquing highprofile women of all ages purely in terms of appearance and never in terms of ability.
IKNOW that there was a picture of Jeremy Clarkson, 54, with a pot belly on a beach in Barbados, too, and there have been jibes about Michael ‘Moob-lé’, but it’s not the same for blokes. They’re allowed to be fat, hairy, grizzled and old and – most of the time – no comment.
For women, the wearying message is, whether you make it to Glyndebourne in a lead role, to the Chancellery of Germany, to the Centre Court at Wimbledon, you will still be judged on your looks.
And unless you are thin, and pretty, and young, or Theresa May, you will be judged wanting – and above all you will be fat-shamed.
So we’ve come a long way, baby, haven’t we?
Only in the wrong direction.
I BUMPED into CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in our tennis club at 8am on Thursday. ‘Why are you here so early?’ I asked. ‘Because I thought I’d have to queue to vote,’ she said. ‘So I gave it an extra half hour.’
My mind boggled at the idea of a surging swarm of suited bankers, media moguls and hedgies stampeding to exercise their democratic right at St John’s Church, Lansdowne Cres, W11 (our polling station), and my amazement must have shown on my face. ‘Don’t forget, I’m used to elections in places like Iraq and Pakistan!’ she explained.
ELLE MACPHERSON has divulged her beauty secrets yet again, and they are: DON’T drink, smoke, do drugs, eat meat or drink coffee after lunch. DO sports, meditation and visualisation (nor me), and drink five pints of water daily. By coincidence, The Body gave this exclusive at the launch of her new Super Elixir (£96), a supplement she developed with a nutritionist because her body was ‘too acidic’. It contains 45 everyday ingredients such as alkalising super greens, Chinese herbs and maitake mushroom. I wish I’d known sooner that looking fabulous at 50 was so quick, cheap and easy!
MADE in Chelsea’s Jamie Laing talked loudly on his mobile on the 3.05pm from Leeds to London despite being in the quiet carriage and was cautioned by police for ‘unacceptable behaviour’. Can’t say I’m surprised. He is as addicted to his smartphone as I am to mine, and also thinks that rules don’t apply to him. I know this because when I did a telly thing for Sport Relief with the McVitie’s heir, we signed contracts agreeing to hand in all our devices as well as our wallets, so that we could live on the breadline with poor families for real and walk in their shoes incommunicado as well as skint.
Shortly before handover I found him poking a paperclip at something, trying to load his SIM into a secret spare. I think he smuggled in two contraband devices in the end.