The Daily Mail is at it again with one of its favourite subjects: what women look like. You might think that this hateful newspaper, which is designed almost entirely with women in mind, would obsess less on women’s shapes and sizes, but the opposite is the case. A woman’s size matters to the Mail.
Labour leadership candidate Liz Kendall was described by the Mail’s political editor Simon Walters as looking “about the same weight as the Duchess of Cambridge”, but he added, helpfully, “when I ask she slaps me down.” And so she should when the paper’s political editor adds that she is a “power-dressing Blairite”, she has a “lithe figure” and is a “slinky brunette”. I’m afraid the relevance of these comments is lost on me, but it seems like it matters to the Mail. Anyway, what is the political editor doing, writing about fluff like this?
I did not notice the chancellor being described in a similar way when he delivered his budget a few weeks ago. “Georgious George, with his carefully concealed bald patch, cut a sexy figure as he walked to the despatch box, his penis bulging attractively through his trousers” wasn’t a story I noticed, but then he’s a man, just, and the same judgements don’t apply to him.
In order to reinforce my prejudice against the Mail, I have had a cursory look at their website and it’s more of the same. Photographs of a scantily clad Jerry Hall, a side view of Georgia Kousoulou’s breast (no, I have never heard of her, either) and a beach shot of the former boxing promoter Kellie Maloney wearing a monochrome tankini (no, not a clue, either) on a beach in the Algarve. So far as I can tell, all of these photos, and more, were all taken without the prior approval of those who appeared in varying states of undress, taken by a voyeur to entertain men who can’t get a girlfriend, perhaps, or in the case of Kousoulou, to make women feel guilty for not looking like her.
I shouldn’t pick on just the Mail, because other papers are every bit as obsessed with what women look like, but as the Mail is such an odious tabloid, I will just pick on it for now. The Mail’s obsession with image diminishes women. They are portrayed merely as decorative objects, issues of substance being of a secondary nature. Whilst Liz Kendall is not my choice to be the next Labour leader, her appearance is of zero consideration. I will judge her not by the fact she is a woman and still less what she wears. So far as I am concerned, if she had policies that would make this country better, she could wear dungarees and a back to front baseball cap, although probably not at Prime Minister’s Questions.
The Mail website really is the resting place of the Peeping Tom, gazing through the curtains of the next door neighbour’s house, trying to get a glimpse of nudity and getting a big thrill out of it.
No, ladies. The Mail is your enemy, just like its ugly right wing rhetoric is an enemy to ordinary working people in general. The only way to stop it is to not buy it, but if you really feel the need to, then don’t believe a word.
