Predictable harrumphing about the Tory MP’s photoshoot with GQ.{C}
I disagree with Louise Mensch on many things: starting with the Tory party being the best and continuing right down to “Count Cosimo Parigi” being an acceptable name for the hero of a novel. But I’m with her on this: female politicians can’t win. They are inevitably judged on their looks: they’re dowdy frumps (or “unfuckable lard-arses”, to quote Silvio Berlusconi’s charming description of Angela Merkel) or kittenish sexpots. They can’t complain about it, either, because then they are whingeing girls who can’t play at the big boys’ table.
This month, Mensch has been interviewed by Matthew D’Ancona for GQ magazine. Inevitably, the subject of her looks came up — triggered in part, I’m sure, by the Guardian Weekend magazine’s decision last year to ask whether she’d had a facelift — and she said that it was sexist to “‘trivialise a woman politician based on her appearance”. She also posed for a photoshoot wearing a knee-length skirt and a crisp white blouse.
Cue sneering.
The Mail went for “Tory MP Louise Mensch has condemned the ‘trivialisation’ of women politicians who are judged on the basis of their appearance. However, the attack will raise eyebrows given that it came in a magazine interview accompanied by high-glamour photographs of the outspoken backbencher and chick-lit novelist.” Just in case you didn’t know what a “high-glamour photograph” was, it provided one – a photograph larger than the accompanying text, in fact. (D’Ancona told the Mail that Mensch was happy to be photographed but refused to wear “‘skimpy outfits”.)
The Telegraph had much the same idea, accompanying a quarter-page photograph of Mensch with an epic 93 words about her views on her promotion prospects.
Immediately, the cry went up: why pose for GQ if you want to be taken seriously? The answer, of course, is that plenty of male politicians have posed for style magazines with little adverse comment. David Cameron was GQ’s cover star in a photoshoot which must have involved industrial-sized tubs of bronzer and possibly a whole new iteration of PhotoShop (look, if you dare, here). George Osborne’s done it. Boris’s done it. Tony Blair did the cover of Men’s Vogue, for crying out loud. Nick Clegg posed for the Mail on Sunday’s Live magazine doing a sexy tie-based reverse striptease. Look at him, the harlot! How does he expect us to listen to his views on the Eurozone when he’s smouldering like that into the camera?
Yes, I’m sympathetic to the idea that Mensch is having her cake and eating it: promoting herself in a men’s magazine while decrying sexism. (And she’s never going to get my vote as a 21st-century feminist icon.) But there’s a lot of other, far more egregious cake dual-wielding going on here.
The first part of it is the media endlessly regurgitating stories about Mensch’s appearance, then asking her about them, then getting upset that she answers.
The second is illustrating those stories with whopping great pictures of an attractive woman, because editors know that sells papers.
Who is really exploiting Louise Mensch’s looks for their own gain here?
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