This week Five Bad Surfers take on male perceptions of women in the media.
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The surf is suddenly huge– six or seven foot from the South East – and too big to help with my fear of anything but the smallest waves (hypnotherapy is booked in for that). So, hating myself and congratulating myself at the same time, I choose to sit it out and meet Andrew and Tom in our normal café if they make it out of the churning foam.
As for the other two regulars, Michael has a mysterious sudden cold and Lauchlan woke up in a bed he doesn’t remember getting into. Like me, they’re going to make it for breakfast but not for the surf. I suspect the truth is the three of us are staying out of the ocean for the same reason and I’m the only one honest enough to name it. Fear. It’s not always easy being a man. But by the time the five of us are ordering our variations of eggs and coffee, I’m busy trying to convince the others it’s far harder being a woman.
When Lauchlan walks in, even smugger than usual, I’m reading the furore about Colleen McCullough’s obituary in The Australian. You may not have heard of McCullough, but you’ve probably heard of her book The Thorn Birds which sold 30 million copies, was translated into twenty languages and spawned one of those huge mini-series in the days when people watched terrestrial TV. She never matched that success again, and highbrow critics were never great fans, but she was an important figure in Australian publishing.
The reason she’s news this week is that she recently died and her obituary in The Australian started out with this: “Colleen McCullough, Australia’s best selling author, was a charmer. Plain of feature, and certainly overweight she was, nevertheless, a woman of wit and warmth.”
“What’s wrong with that?” says Lauchlan sitting down opposite me. “She was fat but nice, so what?”
I ask him if he can imagine the obituary of a male author starting the same way.
The assumption is that any woman in the public-eye has to be physically attractive.
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“The assumption is” I say, tapping my finger on the table, “that any woman in the public-eye has to be physically
attractive, by which I mean physically attractive to men. No matter what her achievements, no matter what incredible things she’s done, none of it counts unless she looks good.”
“People judge famous men the same way” says Lauchie, half-interested as he tries to attract the young waitress’s attention. “Male politicians have to be smart and well-dressed too.”
I ask him when was the last time any of us mentioned the appearance of a male politician? Before he can answer Andrew and Tom arrive. They look exhausted and say the swell wasn’t worth the fight to get out , it was huge but a lumpy mess. Still I’m jealous of them and wonder if I should have forced myself out. Once they too have given up on the waitress and sat down either side of me, I try an experiment.
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First, I ask a question about our current Foreign Minister.
“Andrew” I say. “What do you think of Julie Bishop?”
“Eugh” he pulls a face. “Frightening. That hard jaw and all that concrete hair? Complete battle-axe.”
Lauchlan starts to say something but I hold up a hand to silence him. I want to ask about our ex-Prime Minister.
“Tom, what do you think of Julia Gillard?”
“What do you mean?” asks Tom. “As a woman?”
“Just what do you think of her? What comes to mind?”
‘Ugly? Nose, big arse. Unions?”
“Hilary Clinton?”
“Too old!” says Lauchlan, determined to be part of the conversation.
“Sarah Palin?”
What made Sarah Palin so attractive was that, whatever it was you wanted to do with her, you could tell she’d probably be up for it.
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Hot!!! They all agree to this. What made Sarah Palin so attractive was that, whatever it was you wanted to do with her, you could tell she’d probably be up for it. They’re laughing about this when Michael arrives. He’s the signal the waitress has been waiting for. She knows there are five of us and hates taking our orders unless we’re all there. She saunters over and asks what we want, the guys flirting with her while she pretends not to mind (“Jesus” I once heard her ask a colleague. “Did you see those old men looking at us?”). Then Tom starts taking the piss out of Michael for his ‘cold’, so to change the subject, Mikey asks why we were talking about Sarah Palin.
“Because she’s hot” says Lauchlan.
“My point exactly!” I say. “You were talking about her because she’s hot. Not because of her politics or her meteoric rise to fame or because of anything she’s ever achieved in life. And when I asked about those other women you all talked about their appearance.”
“That’s not fair” says Tom. “That’s the way you asked it.”
Andrew agrees but Lauchie, to his credit, contradicts them. “No he didn’t. Ged asked what you thought of them. It’s just, the first thing you thought of was how they looked.”
“I’m a man” says Andrew. “You ask me about a woman, I’m going to comment on her appearance. Any man would. Not you, Ged, of course. But if I asked you about a male politician….”
He knows the end of that sentence isn’t true. If he asked me about a film star, then yes, I’d probably start talking about how the guy looked. But my opinion on any other man famous for his achievements? I’d only mention his appearance if he was smoking. (Here’s to you Barack!)
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“It’s like the whole Gina Reinhardt thing” says Michael, talking about local mining billionaires. “Everyone says what a shame it is she’s got all that money and she’s so fat. But no-one ever says that about Clive Palmer.”
“Yeah,” says Lauchie, “but you can’t have it both ways. When Julie Gillard first got in, she did a big shoot for Women’s Weekly, a mate of mine worked on it. That was all about looking good and being feminine and the right outfits. They all do it.”
Would you ask a man the same question?
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“Hillary Clinton doesn’t” I say. “Did you see that thing where she got asked by a journalist what designers she
liked? She asked straight back if the journalist would ask a man the same question. And I admire that.”
Everyone around the table nods politely but I can tell they’re not really interested. The mood’s been less lively since the subject moved away from Sarah Palin. I don’t know what the answer is. I want them to see it’s not a level playing-field but I don’t want to be a party-pooper about it. So I turn the subject to the outstanding achievements of our local sportswomen.
‘What about that hurdler, Michelle Jenneke?” I say.
“Oh my God!” Michael and Tom shout each other down to praise her hotness.
“That warm up dance she does” says Andrew. “The way she moves. She’s such a, such a …”
The waitress arrives back with our coffees and Andrews’ too much of a gentleman to finish his sentence in front of her.
“Impressive sportswoman?” I suggest.
And once again, all heads around me are nodding, although much more energetically this time.
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Need more from The 5 Bad Surfers? Here it is!
Photo: AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Sarah Palin is hated in the US because she not only talks the talk but walks the walk and looks good while doing it. If you think men are fixated on women’s looks and objectify them, you need to listen to what women say about other women sometime. That being said, I think Sarah has drive and chutzpah and probably did a great job as mayor and governor, but she lacks the education and background to play at the national level. But that didn’t mean anything to the “Stupid Party.” The GOP heard her siren call and crashed whatever remained… Read more »
It’s not just in America, I think it’s everywhere in the world. And it’s not just in politics. Women are forced to walk a tightrope between looking good but not looking too good. I think most men – if they thought about it – would agree this is wrong. But most of us are never forced to think about it. All we can do is keep pointing it out and not fall into those easy conversations about the colours a politician chooses to wear.
If you are an independent woman like Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama on the left side of the aisle, you are really consider dog meat. for every anti-woman and racist person in America.
The ironic part is that here in the U.S., her detractors try to actually use her ‘Looks’ against her. As in she just some ‘Bimbo’ incapable of an intelligent opinion!
Well, we use her words against her too. And her career.
Since you live in Australia, maybe you’re not privy to the quirks of American Politics. In the U.S., any women politiician who’s not a ‘Progressive Liberal’ is open target for all kinds of abuse with no help from N.O.W. or any other Feminist group. It’s kind of ironic because if you look at her history, she ran for town council against the ‘Chosen’ candidate of her own party. She won and ran for Mayor again as a political ‘outsider’ and won. Finally, she became Governer of Alaska the same way. You would think an independent women, raising a family with… Read more »
Very true.
THe problem is the ideology is more important than pretty much anything else.