Have you noticed that whenever The Australian wants to publish another piece of vicious, moronic, sexist crapola about Julia Gillard, they nearly always get a woman to write it? Kate Legge on earlobes, Glenda Korporaal on handbags, Planet Janet on pretty much anything you care to name, and now yesterday we have this pile of really stinking ordure by another such female OO journalist [sic] with Form in this respect, namely former adviser to Peter Costello and John Howard (about what, one wonders. Women's affairs? Nah) Niki Savva.
Greg Jericho at Grog's Gamut reckons that of all such poisonous tripe published by the OO thus far in a naked attempt to sway the stupid, this Savva piece takes the biscuit. Which is saying a lot.
Why do they do it? I think it's because they're so ignorant of feminism that when someone says 'Oi, this is vicious, moronic, sexist crapola,' they can reply 'No it isn't, because it was written by a woman.' And I really do think that they really do think that that constitutes some sort of answer.
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14 comments:
"Have you noticed that whenever The Australian wants to publish another piece of vicious, moronic, sexist crapola about Julia Gillard, they nearly always get a woman to write it?"
I've also noticed that when things go pear shaped in the corporate world, it is often a woman who is sent out to face the music and explain the bum notes.
Another fairly transparent ploy.
Ah, yes, Lord Sedgwick may be referring to the 'glass cliff' phenomenon, where women are more likely to occupy positions with a higher risk of failure.
I too, noticed the gendered authoring of the Oz articles.
Kate Legge writes about earlobes.
Glenda Korporaal writes about handbags.
Peter Brent writes about gravitas.
And Niki Savva writes about stylists.
Spot the odd one out.
I assume that 'Gravitas' is a designer label - one Julia would be well advised to embrace, apparently.
Fat hate, woman hate, Savva's got it all. Why can't Liberal supporters understand that they lost the election?
Liberal supporters never understand that they lost the election. Born to rule, etc.
Liberal supporters never understand that they lost the election. Born to rule, etc.
Therein lies a bit of an irony. (Can one qualify irony?) Supporters are often more zealous/blinkered than the actual participants.
(Of course uber participant, Tony Abbott's performance tends to undermine my generosity.)
Dare I say that "Why We Still Need Feminism, Part #1,908" should be rebadged (rebadgered?) "Why We Still Need Feminism, Part #1,984" or "The Australian - Fahrenheit 451."
(One can only hope.)
And how funny was that, having mentioned 'badger' - the word verification came up as 'sette'.
(Google IS Big Brother!)
What amuses me is that people like Nikki Savva (and Julie Bishop with her smirks during question time) set such store in their own omnipetence as if the public at large are waiting with bated breath to see what they say or how they react. Who gives a stuff what Nikki Savva thinks or writes really. It doesn't make it true. She is just another bitchy liberal seeking to appear more important than she is. She needs to get a life.
"(and Julie Bishop with her smirks during question time)"
... and her smirking "You'll never see me in this outfit and bling more than once."
The Marie Antoinette of the Coalition.
Bring on Rosespierre.
There’s a problem here. I don't read Nikki Savas and one could be stereotypically snarky about what she might wear, but I do have concerns how my PM dresses.
I had concerns how Howard dressed and even, forgive me, PJKs obsession with Zegna OTR, when he should have been promoting Australian bespoke. Value added to out wool here at home. And he would have looked better.
JWH stared off looking like a suburban accountant whose wife bough his clothes at Roger David sales with a two pants special with each suit. Spare me.
Half way through someone pulled him aside and sorted him out. He started to get bespoke from Cutler in Sydney from what I understand and he looked so much better for it. And so did Australia.
PMs are public property and they should dress to represent their country.
Julia is no different. Its not about being female - its because she’s PM.
I think her hairdo is mostly ok. About half of her outfits look ok from the chest up - normal TV shot. But she does wear some awful fitting tops and bad bad bad pastel colours.
In long shots she doesn't seem to have tailor made clothes to suit her shape.
She wears heels that are far far too high and should get a better height of heel. I worry she'll fall arse over tit one day on camera.
The heels and silhouette she wears with tops seem to make her back look strange and make her bum stick out in an odd way.
A small investment with a good tailor would correct all this.
I can't think of one male politician who dresses acceptably off the top of my head. Joe Hockey looks like he’s wearing tents as shirts, Abbott can look ok by accident as he has the body shape most OTR suits are made for. Most male pollies ties look bloody dreadful like AFL footballer going the Melbourne Cup.
Despite the fact I can't stand her Julie Bishop dresses ok in my view in stuff that suits her, albeit too high heels from what I can see..
Bob Brown looks like he walked into an op shop and said "Find me something too big,shapeless, and nondescript and cheap and I'll wear it on national TV.
Rudd was passable at times, but such an insufferable prissy look (personality leaked through) and combined with bloody RMs with a suit.- what can I say.
Now the Australian way is to say I'll dress how I like, ok then - track suit and t shirt for PM? If not why not dress smartly and as best you can.
ooh what the f is going on - please delete
I was getting error messages
Thanks for this. I've been meaning to blog it but no time. Savva was responsible for the "spaghetti and meatballs hurh hurh hurh" denigration of Labor policy, the "spaghetti and meatballs" being a perfectly ordinary domain diagram or flow chart or similar used constantly by the corporate types for which she shilled at the time.
"Moreover, despite having decried this cycle of negativity, she recounts with pride her role in sinking the Labor Opposition’s Knowledge Nation policy launch by making fun of the accompanying convoluted diagram as spaghetti and meatballs (p. 136–137). Apparatchik Niki thought this was a great victory. It is not clear if sober, retrospective analyst Niki would ponder how easy it is to destroy any chance of intelligent debate."
http://www.australianreview.net/digest/2010/04/tiffen.html
FXH, of course you have a point. God, I myself have seen her dressed in at least one eye-watering shade of goose-turd green and said to myself Why, Julia, why. And as a diehard fan of Dorothy Dunnett I have given quite a lot of thought to the importance of appearances in political life.
But you'll notice that I'm keeping said opinion strictly in the comments, which only hardliners read, and would never make any kind of public attack on her or any other woman in public life for her appearance, with the one exception of stage, screen, catwalk and any other site where one's appearance is the main point of the exercise.
The problem is that this issue cannot be disentangled from the pond-slime aspects of attacks on Gillard, particularly with reference to the OO, where deliberate and sexist slights on her appearance -- and her appearance is perfectly all right, BTW, with the occasional lapse as per above -- are being used to dogwhistle the populace and pander to its own entercnhed sexism in much the same way as similar tactics pander to its entrenched racism. Call out the lowest common denominator and see if we can get it to vote for us, and won't that make us feel good about ourselves?
Your comment is a bit of side issue to the post (not that there's anything wrong with that), which is specifically about the gender aspects, so saying 'But this has nothing to do with gender' when I've just pointed out the ways in which is does is a tad disingenuous.
Besides which, 'This has nothing to do with gender' is a well-known square in Sexist Bullshit Bingo, and the answer is Um, yes it does: when women are attacked for their appearance it's usually on the assumption -- and on the assumption that that assumption is shared with readers -- that women's appearance is the most important thing about them. 'The Governor-General wore a Size 4 heliotrope shantung suit with calf-length pencil skirt and peplum, teamed with champagne satin Christian Louboutin platforms and matching clutch. Oh, by the way, the Government has been dismissed.')
And the sheer unrelentingness of it did not apply to Keating etc, either, just the occasional jab. Besides, Keating was and remains a very elegant man, so the fact that he was occasionally attacked for dressing too well just goes to show that when the media sods are out to get you, you cannot win.
The furore when she appeared in one of the better women's magazines instead of doing something, I've forgotten what it was, shows that Julia can't win this battle. If she doesn't have a stylist she is badly dressed. If she got one then she would be accused of being obsessed with her image instead of concentrating on politics. Whichever way she goes she will be belittled. BTW my Nigel quite likes her hairdos and always notices when Julia's hair changes style. Plus I think her shape is the way she is. It's not badly dressed, it's just Julia.
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