Magazine

What should women look like?

I tried to watch Trevor McDonald’s Mighty Mississippi last night (no euphemism intended) but it was difficult to focus on the content of the programme because I was distracted by a number of things:

His hair was grey
He was not as thin/tall as I think looks good on a man
His glasses were old fashioned
He had some wrinkles.

It was all so off-putting that I switched over, only to find that my other viewing choices were two hairy bikers baking and Rory McGrath digging up pub car parks.

It’s all very well looking ‘ordinary’ if you are planning to stick to radio but the audacity of these chaps appearing on television without first sorting out their hair, weight and general appearance is quite something.

Mary Beard suffered this ridiculous sort of derision from AA Gill this week following the airing of her first programme, Meet the Romans.

Amongst other things Gill suggested that ‘Mary Beard should be kept away from cameras altogether’. Her programme had nothing to do with her appearance; she was not asking someone to tell her ‘what not to wear’ or ‘how to look good naked’; a critique of her appearance was therefore unnecessary.

At Christmas my 78 year old father bought me a cable-knit, pink, rollneck jumper in a size 16. Both the style and the size were way off. When I delicately enquired about the receipt and explained that it wasn’t really ‘my style’ he said that he thought it was a shame and that I ‘should really wear more colour’. My Father-in-Law only last week suggested that I should wear something from Laura Ashley and grow my hair long. 'What’s wrong with thinking that women should look womanly,' he said.

There is no problem with taking the view that others would look nice a certain way. The problem lies in suggesting that they should. When we suggest how others should behave or appear we are necessarily saying that the choices they have made for themselves are wrong. In doing so we are attacking, not only how they look, but their ability to judge and this is the more damaging aspect of such comments.

Katherine Bennett

Pictured top to bottom: Trevor McDonald, Mary Beard and the Hairy Bikers.