The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
This is wearing thin now
Well, here we are again. In this day and age of #MeToo, Time’s Up and (to quote the Howard Beale TV presenter character from Network): “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any more!”, we’re back to the same old, same old. Commenting about how women look and what women wear.
It’s still an obsession. Of course, the current move towards solidarity in the acting and related professions has made an issue out of female stars wearing black to such highly public events as this week’s Bafta awards ceremony so one should, perhaps, not be that surprised that there is an almost unbalanced interest in how women choose to array themselves. Partly, I imagine, because they are still automatically buying into the notion, hard to shake off at any level of life, that the most important thing about women is what they look like. But if that is indeed still how things are seen in society at large, of course, women’s clothing can, does and perhaps should be used to make major statements.
It takes someone of the integrity and grit – and perhaps, age and experience – of the redoubtable and hugely successful Frances McDormand not to go along with the crowd in an obvious way but instead to back a movement with her words and actions.
It does make life rather more difficult for someone like the Duchess of Cambridge, who is going to be damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. But for the most part, in spite of changing royal roles (and even the Queen turning up at her first-ever fashion show this week), her look is still what matters most about her. Perhaps what she wears on an occasion such as this, when public points are being made, is not so much her own statement but a blank canvas on to which others can project. And, like the emperor’s new clothes, see what they want to see. In its own way, it’s a rather clever way out of an equation she could never really solve to everyone’s satisfaction.
Then again, since the woman can do no wrong for me since she played press secretary CJ in The West Wing, Baftawinning actress Allison Janney probably got it right when she said that the duchess “can wear whatever she likes”. Jennifer Lawrence, last seen choosing to freeze her delicate little bits off in what my father used to refer to as a gownless evening strap, while the men around her couldn’t be seen for tweed and upturned collars, would certainly concur. If a picture paints a thousand words, a dress can either have you in stitches or show you coming apart at the seams.
Which leads me neatly to the on-ice wardrobe malfunction that befell French figure skater Gabriella Papadakis who still managed to finish in silver-medal position in spite of her costume making an unscheduled bid for freedom. It reminds me of Cole Porter’s sublime Swell Party song where Bing Crosby asks Frank Sinatra if he’s heard: “…about dear Blanche? Got run down by an avalanche”. Then proceeds to inform him: “She’s a game girl, you know – got up and finished fourth.”
At least, according to what I saw, anyway (and I figure my eyesight even at my age is a helluva lot better than the man who disallowed the Wales try against England in the Six Nations or the curling judge who reckoned Eve Muirhead hadn’t let go of the deciding stone of the final end soon enough), nothing much met the eye. Although given the fuss about it, you would have thought that the poor girl had shown more than her skating form. And if she had? Embarrassing and distracting for her, of course, although she did manage to pull herself, if not her apparel, together.
But as for the watching world? Shock, horror, probe. If we’re not careful, people might realise that women have breasts. That would be better, however, than the brou-ha-ha caused by a woman who was once Prime Minister of Canada for about five minutes and who has since obviously not found enough to do with her time. She it was who found it necessary to castigate female newsreaders for wearing sleeveless tops because the resulting inflammatory sight is likely to “undermine credibility and gravitas”. Completely unaware of the irony of a situation where she has managed to do that to herself without wobbling a bingo wing but merely by opening her mouth and inserting her (presumably stoutly shod) foot in it.
Woman has breasts. Alert the media. Woman has arms? Don’t let her anywhere near the media because no one will listen to a word she says. And surprise, surprise. Comments on Jon Snow or Peter Sissons’ ties aside, no one has, as yet (and quite rightly, too), made any disparaging reference to the waggling turkey necks or drooping eye baggery of our more mature male TV presenters.
Perhaps because, in the great scheme of things and given the generally awful and deeply serious news of the moment, they actually don’t matter a damn.