I love you. Just sayin’.

You can no more “win” in politics than you can win an earthquake.

But try right liberalism instead. We have nothing against attractive women in positions of power, nor unattractive ones! And we try our best not to talk over anyone, regardless of their gender or youth.

Very good piece.

Thanks! *doffs cap*

Women are judged on their looks.

Men are judged on their bank balances.

By some of the people, some of the time.

Blah.

It says more about the person judging and their personal values.

Get over it already. That you can’t and had to bring it up here says it matters to you. inverted snob.

This is the kind of situation where my default assumption – “Oh yes, but nothing this strange old man is saying can possibly apply to me” is very helpful. If all women adopted it, no woman would need defending by other women and we’d be well on our way. Don’t wallow in being judged – refuse to be. Or, in the words of Sir Pterry, don’t get angry, get even.

Well, personally I couldn’t give a monkey’s what Stella Creasy looks like – for me it’s the policies that count every time (and looking at her blog, I’d be most unlikely to be voting for her had I been living in E17).

That’s a lovely title Laurie was it consciously echoing the Merchant of Venice ? To continue the conceit

The politics of beauty are constrained
It droppeth like the acid rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath: it is twice cursed;
It curseth she that gives and him that takes: ‘

You look quite pretty in your picture , I `m sure you will be able to accessorise a set of state dungarees to devastating effect.( Might want to sort that nose out though)

It could be opera mini messing me around (or a class A geek jape) but I don’t think you are linking to the right picture there.

Laurie,

I don’t think I quite caught that comment, was trying hard to bloody remember who she was! I did get the feeling there was a subtext I wasn’t quite seeing at work (hence my continued looking away distracted).

Oh yeah the link in your piece links to a picture of the Lost game (well it does for me)…

That aside, very nice to meet you [properly] finally. Oh and I’d argue I was the least famous person there!

To a certain extent, beauty is a symbol of good health and status (perhaps more so amongst men than women?), both of which are correlated with wealth and privilege. Would it be acceptable to regard people who possess these symbols in a slightly more negative light than others, in order to correct for their privilege?

I’m not sure. On the one hand, fairness may demand it. But on the other hand, when we’re electing representatives to work on our behalf, we want the best people we can get. Having an MP with good genes and good health is probably more useful than having an MP without one or either of those things, as they’re more likely to be able to win support for local causes through the media, or charm/impress those with the power to aid local concerns. On that basis, it’s flat-out wrong to see someone as being ‘too glamorous’ to be an MP, as that very fact might make them more effective at the job.

Hmm. I’m having trouble remembering whether I’m playing devil’s advocate or not now

Laurie, you’ve got your own back – I left the Labour Party in 1990 FFS, that’s nearly 20 years ago!

For the record, what I remember saying was simply “she’s a bit glam isn’t she” – it’s interesting that Laurie heard rather more.

What I think is that looks are an asset in politics as in any other walk of life, yet it’s also a commonplace that beautiful women find their beauty a mixed blessing.

The voters of Walthamstow have had a top-notch MP in Neil Gerrard these past 20 years, and deserve one just as good.

As to “talking to the other men in the group” I was actually responding to what Sunny was saying. It was an aside so I didn’t “proceed to change the subject” and I made it as a shorthand allusion to the fact that Ms Creasy’s progressive credentials are yet unproven.

Sexist? That depends how sensitive you are, I suppose. (And for the record the other woman in the group had just flown in from New York and knew nothing about British politics – I assumed she was there to listen and learn.)

Rob – that argument is a little too complex to be worth taking seriously, I think. But if you want to continue in the same vein, you could argue that it’s better to elect a white man because they will face less barriers and obstacles in toadying up to people in power or arrogantly demanding priority and privilege for their obsessions.

Great article.
But this raises a puzzle.
There’s evidence that good-looking people do well in the labour market generally:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Hamermesh/Beautystuff.html
And there’s even evidence that they do better in exams:
http://ideas.repec.org/p/ver/wpaper/18.html
Which raises the question. What is it about politics that places a penalty upon good looks, when these – on average, generally speaking, ceteris paribus – earn a premium in other walks of life?
Or is it just that you got unlucky, and the wrinkly Labour man is atypical of attitudes to looks in politics?

Yes Laurie it is possible. It is not easy, and it takes patience and humour.
The telegenic looks of women like Stella Creasy can be used to her advantage. If elected, she will get more air time, more pictures etc. to start with. How she uses it is up to her. It will be how she deals with and discusses policy that will ultimately count. How she deals with Jurassic members who are rude will depend on her skills too.

Rachida Dati was reported to have lost her post due to her difficult manner with some of the judiciary. I don’t know whether this is true or not but the press certainly embraced her to start with in a way that they didn’t embrace Carla Bruni or Michele Obama (admittedly both partners and not ministers) but how they handled the visibility and scrutiny determined how they were treated.

How Dati dealt with her high visibility is partly to blame for Dati’s fall from grace and popularity ratings. She was doing photo covers when there were problems to be dealt with her office. The criticisms about her wardrobe related to its cost. The substance of these criticisms are the same as those levelled at men (ie the Lehman banker golfing when the bank was burning) and other women (Sarah Palin) when they don’t have a grasp of the issues they are employed to handle.

Oh Mike, maybe you don’t sound sexist but you do sound a bit inconsiderate. Imagine if you were engaged in a serious discussion about the cabinet and a woman piped up with “that David Miiband, he’s a bit sexy” to a table dominated by women and they all understood and ploughed on with the chat. Wouldn’t make you feel at all out of place, would it? And if that happened all the time and you hoped for a future in politics but were aware that the appearance of male politicians was alluded to whenever the subject came up and you were the only British man at the table? That’s why this is a feminist issue- because women are a minority in politics and men need to consider that and apologise when they make another woman feel that.

Nina, I don’t think that’s a true parallel – the dynamic in the situation you hypothesize would be totally different.

I’m still left wondering if Laurie would have felt differently if I’d been more or less her own age…

“if you were engaged in a serious discussion about the cabinet and a woman piped up with “that David Miiband, he’s a bit sexy””

Ew!

But I agree with MK, the dynamic would not have been the same at all. A truer parallel for a middle-aged man might perhaps be *gathers all powers of empathy* a bunch of very successful young women talking about how some middle-aged man is a past-it failure. Even so, I don’t think its being young women would make it any worse than its being young men.

imagine someone saying of David Lammy, who is both black and well-dressed, ‘yes, but he’s a bit too bling to take seriously, isn’t he?’

If he wore half a ton of gold jewelry, I’m sure that’s exactly what people would be saying.

The truth is, everyone is judged by what the look like and what they wear (and other factors, like how much money they’ve got, or what accent they speak). This is true for politicians and non-politicians, for men and for women.

@13 Mike: What I think is that looks are an asset in politics as in any other walk of life, yet it’s also a commonplace that beautiful women find their beauty a mixed blessing.

My understanding is that studies have found that good-looking people tend to be more successful.

I think it’s only right to respond to Mike first!

I remember that you left the Labour party a while ago, but I wanted to make the point without necessarily embarrassing or even identifying you, hence leaving it vague.

I’m not sure the point you’re making about age at all – I’m not even sure if you’d have thought to say such a thing if you were also 22.

(A whole other post for a whole other time, I think, is that smoker solidarity counts at least as much as age does, for me and a lot of people – I certainly wasn’t feeling hostile to you because you’re older than I am).

Yes, looks will always be a part of politics, for everyone, not just women. But the Labour Party has played host to some terrifically ugly cabinet members in the past, and nobody’s dress or appearance has been more commented on than Jacqui Smith’s and Caroline Flint’s. For all politicians, looks matter – but for female politicians, they are still *supremely* important. Female politicans are judged first on whether they succeed or fail as beauties in a man’s world – if they fail, like Mo Mowlam, they are objects of ridicule; if they succeed, they can be dismissed by the old boys’ gang. That’s the distinction, the unfairness I’m getting at here.

smoker solidarity

LOL!

“What do want?? CANCER! When do we want it? NOW!”

Hmmm…

@21 Laurie: nobody’s dress or appearance has been more commented on than Jacqui Smith’s

Really? I don’t recall reading anything about her clothes or looks, although I’ve read a fair bit about her policies. But maybe that’s because I don’t care what she looks like so I’d filter out any such information, so to test that hypothesis I’ve downloaded the top 10 Google links on her name and skimmed through the pages, and not found any discussion of her dress or appearance their either.

Laurie, I was even more of a pain in the *ss when I was 22!

I think Laurie’s post does capture something important here. The instinctive gender politics of my generation – i’ll be 35 this year – are I think different to those 10 years older. Those currently in their early 20s might shift this further again. These have been progressive shifts, though one can not necessarily be complacent.

This reflects that we remain in a moment of transition, when it comes to gender and power in politics. Gender is still more determining than it ought to be. A fundamental reason is that we remain a long way from it being unremarkable for women to hold an equal share of power as men, and that places various burdens

It seems to me that the progression has been something like this .. this is a very rough top-of-the-head schema, and there might be much wrong with it

1. The very small minority presence of women in politics post-female suffrage tended to see a pigeon-holding into ‘women’s roles’ (like education) or primarily focusing on gender equality issues: the only way to break this was a ‘women in a man’s world strategy’, of which Thatcher was the exemplar, but perhaps others like Barbara Castle fit this to some extent, in which women had to show they could (more than) compete on traditional male definitions of power and politics.

2. Early 90s to around now. The generation of Patricia Hewitt, Harriet Harman, etc are a break with this. They emerge from the civic pressure group campaigning culture of post-68/70s. And by the time they are entering formal party politics in the 80s (and this is a very one-sided, Labour development), the party is seeking to modernise and break the Labourist image of the cloth cap and the trade union.

These may have been important and useful shifts for the Labour Party to make under Kinnock, Smith (and then New Labour in a different way). I think it is progress. But there is obviously still a heavily gendered definition of the ‘positive’ contribution being made. They are valued as women, bringing something different: softer, female values: a more discursive, listening, participatory politics, as well as a different media image. This may (or may not) have been an inevitable part of a politics of transition, at a time when women remained very much a minority at the top table, though with a growing presence. (It is worth noting that this ‘feminisation’ of Labourist politics makes a positive difference on the agenda of politics: there are issues like democracy, environment, skills, early years which are part of this). But it seems to me a partial breakthrough.

(It is clear too that they faced – and face – a lot of much more unreconstructed sexism whenever they – eg Harman – seek to pursue anything with even mild feminist content).

3. The question for the generation of emerging politicians is how to break down further those categorisations. I think that the instinctive gender politics of the (males of this) generation are more egalitarian – that was certainly my sense at university, but perhaps it does not carry over to the workplace as strongly – but that remains to be tested.

It does – I think – become fundamentally more likely if we get close to 50-50 chances of men and women becoming MPs, being in the Cabinet, etc, at which point the ‘burden of representation’ for women changes. But there is a danger that we are now becoming too complacent about that. (We have made much faster progress on equal chances for non-white candidates than for women, despite many people thinking the opposite is true). In this sense, I think there probably remains rather more value in a relatively traditional feminist politics, whereas I have become rather more sceptical about the diminishing returns around an identitiy politics of race.

Laurie

My instinctive reaction to this piece was to urge you to “grow a pair” but I realise that might be problematic.

Having read the vapid prose of Ms Creasy’s anodine contribution to Labourlist, I would suggest it is fortunate she looks good otherwise she might not have much of a political future.

Also, @9, 10: this was my attempt to make anyone who thought an actual picture of Stella was massively relevant after a description lose the game. Because I am secretly a massive geek. I apologise.

Mike: hah! We’d probably have got on…

Heh abstract. Made me want to download the game demo…heh.

Evening all,

Has it occurred to anybody that one of the reasons that Stella strikes Labour as such as good choice is precisely because of her looks – that the blokes who pull the strings in that charming party (the same charmers, no less, who thought so much of women as recently as the end of last year that they fell over themselves to avoid getting abortion rights to women in Northern Ireland)?

I can just see the current party incarnations of Derek Draper sitting round at this or that selection committee saying ‘phwooar, we’ll have her. She’ll pull (voters). She can be our version of that blonde Justine thingee the Tories have got.’

Etc.

I’m with Laurie in that I don’t think Stella’s looks should count or be commented on – especially because she is an intellectual and a feminist, and even old whores like me like to fantasise about living in a place where those things count more – and if I’d been present at the abovementioned event, I would have hauled Mikey boy off to the latrines for a good old-fashioned head-flushing.

I’m just very, very cynical about the realities of Labour’s views on women. The number of female politicians there is a travesty (isn’t it true that Tories are doing better – Sunder can wallop me one on that if I’m wrong) and the ones they are recruiting look like they’ve been made by that live-doll guy. Which isn’t their fault – good luck to them if they’ve got it. I just don’t see them recruiting plain ones.

Etc.

Think I’m going off piste here. Probably the menopause.

Good looks have been the bane of my existance. It’s hard being taken seriously as an anarchist when you have the athletic physique and finely chiseled features of a Starship Troopers recruitment poster.

Oh, definitely – me too, Shatterface. Even though I’m am ageing faster than a piano falls out of a window, and possibly changing genders in the process, I struggle to keep the admirers in an orderly queue. It’s total chaos.

“I struggle to keep the admirers in an orderly queue. It’s total chaos.”

I feel very similar. I can’t even walk outside my own front door without film producers crowding round, imploring me to star in their latest epic…

It’s a remake of something called “The Elephant Man”. Has anyone heard of it?

Kate

At the last election, 98 Labour women, 17 Tories, 10 LibDems were elected. So the House of Commons is 20% women – but that is 27.5% of Labour MPs, 8.5% of Tories, 16% of LibDems. This graph of the history of women MPs does clearly show that Labour has been the only party to begin to take women’s representation seriously to date.
http://www.ukpolitical.info/FemaleMPs.htm

So I can’t see it makes any sense to say the Tories are doing better, though it is good that they have now begun to take this seriously in the last 3 years. (The tory 2001 intake of 38 MPs was made up of 37 white men and 1 woman). It is still the case that the factor which will most affect how many women there are in Parliament will be how well Labour does (though the effect of Labour doing badly on cutting the number of women MPs will be less dramatic than it would have been in the last 3 elections).

But I don’t want to make an excessively partisan point. all of the parties need to be pushed to do considerably better. Had Labour not made a significant advance in 1997, it is difficult to see that the other parties would have made efforts to catch up. But I think the 1997 intake has led people to be too complacent about the progress being made on gender. It is much slower in terms of fair chances and outcomes than progress on ethnicity (except in the LibDems) but most people think the opposite is true (partly because labour has used all women shortlists, but not all black shortlists, so that is the issue people think has been sorted out).
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/women-lose-out-in-race-to-be-an-mp-994918.html

In the current selections (this is based on all selections up to the start of November, but the % won’t alter dramatically: I will do an updated analysis later on).
* All parties are now overall selecting women at similar rates when selecting new candidates (ie, excluding the current MPs, so Labour will have a much higher proportion and most MPs in the next Parliament, even if eg there was a Tory landslide. But the rate is only around a quarter for each party in selecting new candidates. (Up to 1/11 last year, it was Labour 24.9%, Tory 26.6%, LibDem 25.8%). This, I think reflects strong institutional biases against women in the way candidates are selected. In my view (because of the emerging contrast with BME candidates doing better) this probably is about the financial and time costs of seeking selections – the latter particularly affecting those with caring responsibilities – more than it is about stereotypes of the male middle-class MP (as was possibly the case pre-97).

* In seats which their parties hold where a new candidate is being selected (ie, their best chances of electing an MP), the rate is higher. This reflects, among other things, efforts to try to increase the number of women selected in different ways in each of the parties, which are focused towards the top of the winnable seats lists for obvious reasons.
- The LibDems had selected new candidates in 9 LibDem held seats, and have selected 5 women (55%), which is a major advance (though, of course, a small sample). The LibDems do worst on BME selections, but are improving most quickly on gender.
- The Tories were at 13 out of 32 (40.6%)
- Labour had selected 26 candidates for Labour held seats, 10 women (38.5%). But what worries me is that 9 of these were all women shortlists, and so only 1 woman was selected in the first 17 open selections in Labour held seats. (This excludes eg Bethnal Green, which Labour will win but which is not ‘Labour held’ and where a woman was selected in an open contest).

Labour have just announced a number of further all women shortlist selections, which will alter this proportion. But being probably neck-and-neck with the Tories on these new selections does show that Labour is relying too heavily on the AWS mechanism, and that this has diminishing returns. (There are some complex reasons for that – it is rational for the many of the best women candidates to target the AWS seats). It certainly reflects a taking the eye off the ball on cultural change.

There is a dilemma here: AWS did deliver the breakthrough, and women did terribly in the 2001 intake in all parties (when it was not used by any party). So I would not want to see Labour be complacent about its current lead on women in parliament at all, but the other parties need to work harder.

‘Think I’m going off piste here. Probably the menopause.’

ILU.

29 – “The number of female politicians there [in Labour] is a travesty (isn’t it true that Tories are doing better – Sunder can wallop me one on that if I’m wrong)”

Numbers might be slightly out, but as a guide there are 69 female Tory PPCs and 13 female Tory MPs.(so 82 female candidates at next election plus any yet to be selected)

There are 97 female Labour MPs and 59 female Labour PPCs (so 156 female candidates at the next election plus any yet to be selected).

Proportion of women standing in seats which Labour might win is higher than the above would indicate (unwinnable seats for Labour seem to have nearly all got male PPCs). Dunno about the Tories – the way the polls are at the moment there are very few seats for them which are totally unwinnable.

Stella will be an excellent Labour MP after the next election.

My predication, in 15-20 years time the Labour Party will have a majority female Cabinet and a female leader.

In addition to what donpaskini said, I don’t think the numbers game helps, as it certainly doesn’t with race either. Labour will still embrace feminists (even if the media jeers at them) but the Tories won’t. Their poster woman is Nadine Dorries. They are the ones obsessed with giving married couples a tax break and not really giving a shit about single mothers.

There was a good article in the current Fabian Review that I’ve asked Sunder if we can publish here, titled: Labour – bad for women but good for feminism’ (or something like that) which I thought was spot on.

Morning all,

Thanks for the numbers, fellas – I knew you’d put me right!

Don – let’s put a tenner on that prediction now.

Sunny – love ya dearly man, but how on EARTH can you claim that Labour embraces feminism… unless you do indeed mean that Labour is bad for women but good for feminism… although how anyone can say that a party with Labour’s record on abortion rights and its recent middle of the road decisions on prostitution embraces feminism, God only knows…

… but definitely, the Fabian article would be good to have here. It would be good to thrash this one out in more detail. My own view is that a party’s commitment to feminism stands – or otherwise – on its commitment to free, legal abortion. Others may have different views, so it would be good to have a discussion about feminism and politics in that way. Cheers, Kate.

[29]

if I’d been present at the abovementioned event, I would have hauled Mikey boy off to the latrines for a good old-fashioned head-flushing.

Promises, promises…

Kate @ 29 wrote:

I’m with Laurie in that I don’t think Stella’s looks should count or be commented on

Ah, but they will count whether you like it or not. There are all kinds of advantages to physical attractiveness that will continue to apply to her and not to others who lack the same attributes. It’s a classic unearned privilege. Why shouldn’t it be talked about?

In a perfect world, I totally agree – there would be no such privileges and therefore no need to talk about them. But if we can use terms like “hideously white” to talk down people benefitting from being white, can we not use terms like “too glamorous” from people who benefit from physical attractiveness?

Usual disclaimers apply: this isn’t necessarily my opinion, just trying to work out a consistent rule… etc.

Sadly, Rob, you are right and I happily I take your disclaimers. We won’t be shoving yr head down the latrine.

I know I fantasise when I imagine a world where looks don’t count., and the older I get, the more I fantasise about it. Wouldn’t say it shouldn’t be talked about, either – there are days when I talk about nothing else. This is turning out to be one of them.

I’ve just done all this reading about the various heydays of feminism when looks didn’t matter so much and bras where burned and legs went unshaven, and the darker bikini lines went down past the knees…

…but I’ll stop there. Poor old Mike will explode if he reads more of that….

[41] Ah yes, when I was young…