In the event that newspaper of the year, The Daily Mail should write about two of the nation’s current and most powerful female politicians ahead of Article 50, attention must first be given to their legs. Never mind that Theresa May is The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom or that Nicola Sturgeon is the First Minister of Scotland. Let us first pause. They have their legs ‘out’. Those important body parts both men and women have attached to their bodies, designed for walking and not, of course, for use of objectification in British newspapers.
Never mind that the modern woman has now become a part of the contemporary women’s movement whereby she stands shoulder to shoulder with her male counterparts in all fields of life, politics in particular. Never mind the fact that they are discussing the future of our nation as we trigger Article 50, initiating the two year long ‘divorce’ with the European Union, a significant and historical event in politics. Never mind any of this because politics is a misogynist’s playground.
Here lies another boring and harmful example of patriarchy in full play. Undermining as it does, the capability of a woman based on her physicality and placing it above her professional abilities. Images and headlines like these, not only distort focus on what really matters but also entertains the patriarchs and misogynistic players online. When we think politics, we think men in suits in the House of Parliaments before we think women. An ideology both created and promoted by way of our daily newspapers and television programmes that continue to provide us with a masculinised representation of politics time and time again.
Perhaps the fact that women are horrendously absent from public power has something to do with this. That is not to say that women do not try to succeed in politics, rather the politics of misogyny exceeds them (even if they too are a part of the patriarchal bargain at play). After all, misogyny is the sub-political party that co-exists among all political parties worldwide. Thus, misogyny is usually the silent party in almost every political party in parliament with the most silent votes. This is then mirrored in ‘newspaper of year’. The Daily Mail, apparently. Marvellous.
Furthermore, when women write on matters of feminism, it is often misinterpreted as male bashing or as man-hating. In actual fact, feminism is far from that. Feminism is about equality and freedom. Feminism is politics because it is both political and personal. Feminism is unapologetic. Feminism is man and it is woman because feminism promotes that men are, or at least should be, above patriarchy and strive to be better than our misogynistic belief systems allow us to be.
Perhaps, some of you might possibly be thinking that by drawing attention to the legs of these two female politicians The Daily Mail is taking part in a long tradition of political satire that all mass media partake in. Maybe, but when that attempt at political satire falls short of intelligent critique and falls foul to misogyny through its attention on the female body, that is rooted in misogynistic beliefs. Come on Daily Mail (newspaper of the year), surely you can do better than that?