by Julia Baird
By the mid-1970s, sexism in political reporting had become a fashionable story — usually written by female journalists. In 1982, Queensland journalist Sally Loane wrote an article about Sullivan and the ‘peeping Tom’ press. The article began: ‘Like some beastly King Kong pawing over the blonde Fay Wray, the Queensland press has for years held Senator Kathy Martin in its hairy palm.’ Sullivan told Loane the print media were far worse than the electronic, and singled out the Queensland press as particularly chauvinistic. When she crossed the floor and resigned from her position as deputy whip because she opposed Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s simultaneous election referendum proposals, the headline in the Courier-Mail screamed, ‘Canberra’s Blonde Bombshell’: ‘The blue-eyed blonde from Brisbane, one of the standard-bearers of new-look Liberal politics, has become a bombshell.’13 The article clearly trivialised a serious — and damaging — political move. Over a decade later, Sullivan attributed the years she spent on the back benches to her decision to cross the floor. It led to a ‘very cold’ relationship with Fraser, which affected nine years of her political career, she said, and made her ‘a lot of enemies’.14
Sullivan believes the greatest problem of her 25-year political career was not being trivialised but receiving coverage only for her views on women.15 The bulk of newspaper articles about her centred on her looks and the discrimination she experienced.
Barbara Wiese: the ‘page three girl’
South Australian Labor politician Barbara Wiese was considered a conventionally beautiful woman. This fact made her a constant presence in the major South Australian newspapers, the Advertiser and the News, in the 1980s. Few articles about her were printed without a photograph or reference to her looks. She was 30 years old when she was elected to the state parliament in 1979, having worked as a short-hand secretary and stenographer, and risen rapidly in the ranks of the ALP executive. The small cluster of male journalists who covered politics in Adelaide sat up. In 1980, when this ‘very female feminist’ was elected the first woman president of the South Australian Labor Party, the News declared it ‘the day the ALP went chic’. Tony Baker, who took a particular shine to Wiese, self-consciously gushed that he did not object to her views about women: ‘In the case of Barbara Wiese feminism comes in a very fetching package. That observation may be sexist but it is irresistible and apposite because Miss Wiese is as attractive as she is intelligent — and she is highly intelligent.’16 However, he attributed her success to luck and accident, and alleged her appointment was tokenistic. She was qualified, he wrote, but basically she was ‘the right woman in the right place at the right time. Being a good looker in a still male-dominated party also does no harm at all.’17
It was difficult to be taken seriously by members of the press who were dumbfounded by the combination of brains and femininity. Wiese told me Baker ‘seemed to be surprised that a person could be attractive and intelligent as well if they were a woman, so for that reason he seemed to find me even more attractive.’ Male journalists were baffled by her objections, she said, because they saw a focus on her looks as a drawcard: ‘Why should I whinge about such a thing when one of the reasons they wanted to come and talk to me was that they found me attractive and interesting?’ The Wiese profiles quickly became formulaic: her beauty was both a drawcard and a liability, she was single, and she was beautiful. She was repeatedly asked to explain her achievement, and told journalists she worked hard and had no distractions like a family.18
Wiese’s profile grew substantially when, aged 35, she became the first female Labor minister in a South Australian cabinet. The Advertiser published a feature which began with a reference to her appearance, and expressed surprise that she stayed calm and performed well at her first press conference: ‘Barbara Wiese is every inch a politician, albeit an unusually decorative one. She veils her excitement at being South Australia’s first woman Labor minister with decorous calm. She sits at press conference, hands in lap, head held high, fielding questions as if she were born to do so.’19 Gosh! A 35-year-old woman able to answer questions.
Predictably, the question of tokenism emerged instantly. Many female politicians appointed to ministry positions in the 1980s faced criticisms that they were only showpieces, particularly if their elevation came when their parties were publicly acknowledging the need for more women in parliament. If they were ever under intense pressure, made mistakes, or became embroiled in a controversy, allegations that they lacked the necessary skill, grit or competence quickly surfaced. Wiese’s appearance was again described as an impediment, and a distraction from being taken seriously. She told reporters:
I found when I first joined the party it took quite a long time for me to make people realise I was a serious person who had something to say and wasn’t just a pretty face. But in many ways it’s probably also helped me. People are attracted to people they find attractive and in that sense it has probably provided entrees I might not otherwise have had. But having reached that point I really find sometimes it’s more difficult to get to the next step — which is to be taken seriously and to have people listen to you — because they are distracted by the first part.20
These comments could easily have applied to journalists as well as politicians, as the tenor of the ‘beautiful Barbara’ articles remained the same. Comparisons were drawn between her appearance: ‘attractive, an elegant dresser, and softly spoken in manner’, and her competence, as though the two were naturally at odds.
Wiese was conscious early in her political career that photographers were often seeking sexualised shots of her. She told me that when she became junior vice president of Australian Young Labor, ‘the photographer was particularly keen for me to turn side-on so that he would be able to get a good silhouette of my bust.’ She refused. On a trip to Hawaii, a photographer asked her to pose in a bikini by the pool. She refused. She says photographers ‘would want me to recline somewhere or just pose in a position that I didn’t think was fitting or becoming for a politician. I wasn’t a model or a movie star, I was a politician.’ The requests continued when she was a minister, and her profile grew. When minister for tourism, she often appeared on page three. She was photographed bearing a spade and wearing a helmet, drinking a beer at the close of the Adelaide Grand Prix, riding a camel, inspecting a new wing of the Mortlock Library, with hat and torch in a copper mine, in an earth-moving machine at a marina, patting a wombat, feeding a wallaby, and throwing a pamphlet in a bin. Her many appearances prompted cynics to call her a ‘Barbie doll’ and ‘page three girl’.
It was Wiese’s female political opponent, Jennifer Cashmore, the opposition’s spokesperson on women, who first publicly aired the ‘page three girl’ tag after a large photo of Wiese with a python curled around her body appeared on page three of the News with the headline ‘Oh, Minister — you’re a charmer’.21 Politicians and journalists alike sprang to Wiese’s defence when Cashmore said she needed to be more than ‘a page three girl, charming snakes and spinning dice’ while her department was in ‘critical condition’. Premier John Bannon, asked if he would be moving Wiese from the ministry, replied, ‘Why should I when someone is performing so well? The sour grapes attitude of Ms Cashmore is just extraordinary.’22
After Cashmore’s attack, Wiese released a seven-page defence to the media. Cashmore was slammed by commentators. Wiese said, ‘They just absolutely went for the jugular . . . The other side of the coin was that she was a pinched old woman who was being nasty and was suffering from sour grapes because there was this younger, more attractive woman who was having a go. I think it was a double-edged media response which was just as horrible.’
Although many of Wiese’s colleagues and talkback hosts had defended her, in an often chivalrous fashion, the debate revived suggestions that Wiese was in cabinet only for cosmetic reasons. Articles suddenly began to appear posing the question: ‘Is Barbara Wiese’s rising star waning?’, accompanied by photographs of Wiese as she opened Port Lincoln Marina, released a dove and inspec
ted a mine. The Advertiser alleged Cashmore’s comments had ‘struck a raw nerve’, and that the opposition had targeted Wiese as a ‘weak link’ in the Bannon cabinet. Critics condemned her parliamentary performance, a perceived aloof bearing at social events, reliance on political advisers, lack of sensitivity to issues, lack of knowledge of local government, and a ‘tentative’ media performance. The Advertiser quoted detractors who said Bannon had appointed her as a ‘PR asset’ in the 1985 election, and that the ‘Barbie doll’ tag had been earned because of the ‘number of occasions she gets attention from press photographers and TV cameramen’. ‘It might be sexist to say it,’ wrote Kym Tilbrook, ‘but photos of Ms Wiese add a certain charm to newspaper columns and television news items. And Ms Wiese is politically wise enough to know that to be photographed holding snakes or climbing down mines will not do her any real harm.’
There was a growing insistence by journalists in the late 1980s and 1990s that women — especially those considered good copy — played a role in shaping their coverage, and benefited from the exposure. The question of whether she was ‘more than a pretty face’, it seems, was never satisfactorily resolved.
In retrospect, Wiese said she felt ‘schizophrenic’ about the media during her career because the gushing descriptions embarrassed her. She believes the focus on her looks damaged her relationships with female colleagues. She claims the press only ever conducted ‘soft’ interviews which probed how and why a woman could enter a male environment, and she found it hard to have people listen to her views on policy. Because of this, the tourism portfolio was considered appropriate for her, she believes, because ‘it was always light-hearted; it was froth and bubble in terms of the media focus, and so because I was being viewed that way I could get that part of the message across.’ The difficult part was getting across news about policy decisions.23 She was asked questions about how she managed to be both attractive and intelligent throughout her career: ‘You might expect it when you first burst on the scene and that that might be the focus initially — “she’s good-looking and gee she’s got a brain as well” — but you don’t expect to be still reading that article in that vein ten years later.’24
Wendy Machin: the ‘spunkette’ MP from Gloucester
After ‘young spunkette MP’ Wendy Machin walked into the NSW parliament in the mid-1980s, her physical appearance was frequently described in print. In 1985 Machin, a 27-year-old public relations consultant, was the first woman preselected by the National Party for a winnable NSW seat. Although she differed from older National Party colleagues because she was in favour of a republic, supported the decriminalisation of homosexuality, and was prochoice, this was not discussed in the many ‘first woman’ stories published when she was elected. ‘She wears homemade clothes,’ cooed the Daily Mirror, ‘but manages to look as if she has stepped from the pages of Vogue.’ Journalists hinted at a wild side of the woman who ‘showed a penchant for leather clothes and outdoor rock concerts during her time on the [North Sydney] council’.25
A large part of Machin’s appeal was assumed to be cosmetic. Reference to her looks and youth were closely followed by expressions of surprise that she was also intelligent. The Daily Telegraph defended her from charges of tokenism, raising them and dismissing them in the one breath.26 When she was later appointed deputy speaker, a profile in the Daily Telegraph said she exuded ‘cool confidence’ about the formidable task ahead, and, although it was not clear why she would have been expected to, Machin was showing ‘no signs of apprehension or self-doubt’: ‘And with her easy demeanour, neatly bobbed platinum blonde hair and short black skirt revealing aerobically exercised legs, Wendy is no pushover.’27
Dorian Wild, a gossip columnist with the Daily Telegraph, constantly described Machin in sexual, lascivious terms. He instantly dubbed her ‘the spunkette MP for Gloucester’ who, just ten days after entering parliament, had ‘started setting various hearts a-flutter’. Marking her as both sexually desirable and available, he wrote that the ‘unwed mother of none’ had been wearing some daring dresses: ‘On Tuesday it was a tan number with a faint leopard spot . . . yesterday it was a white cotton skirt, slit nicely to the knee, and set off by a pair of sporty red and white shoes.’ The next day, he wrote the ‘unattached’ Machin had dressed down for work after the publication of his article on how ‘she had been knocking people out with her stunning frocks and whatever’. ‘She might be the prettiest thing in the NSW Parliament,’ he wrote, ‘but . . . [Machin] sure knows how to disappoint a chap . . . Instead of the white skirt, slit to the knee, that set political pulses racing on Wednesday, she wore a dreary white blouse, stripy blue and grey jacket and a fawn skirt that could have done with an iron.’
Wild clearly liked portraying himself as a provocateur. Following an exchange with Machin, he wrote that she told him, while ‘marvelling at the ways of modern journalism’, that ‘I haven’t been making any particular effort. They’re dresses I’ve had in the wardrobe for some time.’ Wild soon became the self-appointed monitor of media mentions of Machin, and champion of her sexual attributes. Three years after she was elected, he was still referring to her as a ‘spunkette’, and wrote that her time in parliament had not ‘flattened the womanly shape’ of the ‘political spunkette’. He wrote that as she walked to her seat in parliament wearing a floral frock, ‘Wendy was easily the best thing to look at in Parliament on Wednesday — she strode to her seat flashing an acre of thigh — and a very good thigh indeed’.28
Open, unabashed sexism.
Machin said Wild’s columns made her feel spied on and were ‘just stupid — a bit embarrassing’. She tried to avoid him: ‘I just had to cop it . . . I wasn’t going to sue him or anything like that and that wouldn’t have stopped him anyway. So I think you’ve just got to roll with the punches, take it with good grace, get on with the job and be a bit mature about it, and that in itself eventually sends a message.29 Wild told me Machin was a ‘good sport’ about his columns, because she sensibly ‘knew very well that as soon as you start bleating about what the media does to you, the media will do more of it’.30 Complain, and you will be punished.
Machin’s looks were not just the preoccupation of gossip writers. A curious cross-party debate ensued when a National Party MP, Roger Wotton, told parliament that Machin was ‘not just a pretty face’. Labor frontbencher Janice Crosio accused him of sexism and was ejected from the house for repeated interjections. Crosio said she was insulted by Wotton’s remark that Machin was the only lady in the house.31 The ‘single’ Machin responded she would fight her own battles. The Daily Mirror splashed it on the front page with the headline ‘MP’s Good Looks Spark Row: “I’m not just a pretty face”’. Machin was photographed sitting in a chair, smiling, the lens angled to emphasise the long bare legs crossed in front of her.32 The tabloid newspapers followed the story for several days.33
Since the 1970s, it has been the tabloid newspapers that have championed women MPs considered conventially attractive, caricatured those who have fallen short of the ideal, and given the most prominence to debates about their bodies. This was particularly the case in 1991, after Machin modelled a series of outfits, including gym wear, for her local newspaper, the Port City Pictorial. The photographs were first picked up by the Sydney Morning Herald’s satirical gossip column, Stay in Touch, which printed a selection of photographs from the ‘steamy double-page spread’ of Machin — in sleeveless sundress, leopard skin bike shorts and crop top, and strapless evening gown. She was ridiculed for agreeing to be photographed this way: ‘National Party MP Lady Wendy Machin shows that being the Deputy Speaker and the Chairman of Committees in State Parliament doesn’t stop her burning desire to be a top catwalk siren rivalling even Elle Macpherson.’34
Days later, the Telegraph Mirror splashed the photograph of the leopard print outfit on its front page, with the headline ‘Dressing down for a model MP’. The article concentrated on criticisms from upper house Labor MP Ken Reed, who called the shots ‘irresponsi
ble and demeaning to her position’. Machin said they were ‘lighthearted’, but added, ‘Some people could not handle it. They are too immature and for that reason I wouldn’t do it again.’35 The editorial, headed ‘Machin whoopee’, defended her for bringing humanity to politics and argued Reed’s comments were ‘nasty, politically inspired rubbish’: ‘Ms Machin is an attractive as well as an intelligent woman and she is obviously and quite correctly not prepared to disguise any of these facts. There is nothing wrong with that, as indeed her picture shows. Vive la political difference!’36
Sue Williams, a columnist for the Telegraph Mirror, disagreed. She criticised the ‘prim pin-up’ for failing to recognise the photographs would be controversial, and argued she was letting women down. ‘The day an ambitious, high-profile woman politician tries to win a few more votes by flashing a little flesh and flaunting her fashion sense is a sad one indeed,’ she wrote. ‘Does she want to be admired for the cut of her curves and the flounce of her frills or for her tough-talking, no-nonsense political acumen? Why can’t winsome/lose some Wendy realise the two are mutually exclusive?’37
Were they though? Regardless, on the day of her retirement from politics, Machin said her only regret was posing in the leopard print gym gear.38