Media Tarts

by Julia Baird

  In the early 1990s three events changed the way the press viewed Machin: she got married, had a baby, and became a minister. After the birth of her son, James, in 1992, the references to her hair and sexuality died down almost completely.39 When in 1993 she was touted as most likely to replace the vacancy in cabinet left by Wal Murray’s resignation, she was dubbed ‘young mum Wendy Machin’.40 She was praised for having ‘handled the demands of motherhood and an increasingly onerous career’.41 But the continual questioning about how she coped, she said, implied ‘every time something happened I was going to retire’.

  In 1993, Machin was appointed minister for consumer affairs: the first female member of the National Party to be a minister in New South Wales. As a minister who was also a mother, there was another distinct change in the way she was portrayed, and the reporting of her views on policy issues such as credit laws, toy safety, junk mail, warranties, door-to-door selling, and HomeFund.42 The profiles shifted from glamour to her ability to juggle babies with politics, as she, of course, was quickly made a spokeswoman for working mothers. She was quoted refuting a study’s findings that daycare is harmful to children, and defending Labor MP Gabrielle Harrison when criticised for not staying home with her son.43 She formed part of a ‘nappy power’ push for childcare facilities in Parliament House and portrayed as heralding a new era in NSW politics.44

  The problem was, as Wiese found, the attributes that helped to create a profile would resurface in times of strife. A ‘party girl’ tag was also used by members of Machin’s party to undermine her and, she believes, affected her political advancement. She claims the added exposure led some of her colleagues to think she was a ‘flibbertigibbet’ or media junkie who chased publicity. Some still say, off the record, that they consider her to be a lightweight. She now thinks this may explain why she was so rarely asked to chair committees.

  However, Machin used her profile to her advantage and insisted women could control stories by the way they looked, and ‘“manipulate” the media by superficial things such as appearance’:

  I occasionally would wear something outrageous just for the hell of it, or I would do something just for fun, and from time to time I used it. And it would be dishonest of me or any woman to say that they weren’t conscious of the benefits of exposure. But women politicians are able still to exploit the difference because we are still a little unusual so from time to time you can get an issue up perhaps by dint of the fact that you are a woman . . . The exposure could be a benefit. The problem is, it is hard to control.45

  And there, as the cliché goes, lies the rub.

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  In 1984, the NSW minister for natural resources, Janice Crosio, was splashed on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald in her swimming costume, sweeping her hair off her face, her breasts spilling out, knee-deep in the Bondi surf. It was a spectacularly revealing photograph, for a politician. Crosio, who was facing allegations that Bondi Beach was polluted by sewage, decided to go for a swim to prove that the water was safe. She alerted journalists, drove to the beach with her press secretary, and stripped down to her swimming costume. ‘With a look of steel and a determined stride,’ the Daily Telegraph wrote, Crosio, surrounded by press photographers and news cameras, ‘marched defiantly to the water’s edge and dived in’.46

  Crosio was horrified by what she saw the next day. The photo selected by the Sydney Morning Herald for its front page emphasised her deep cleavage, and almost made her look as though she were posing for the cameras, with one arm sweeping her hair off her face, her other hand on her knee. The photographer, Rick Stevens, said he filed several photographs that day, most of them more flattering than the one selected. The Daily Telegraph pictured her reclining in the shallows, leaning back as her legs pointed upward, with the heading ‘She’s up to her neck in it’. The Sun printed shots of her backside and breasts with the headline: ‘Surfer Jan cops a towelling’. The Mirror sniggered, ‘She’s thrown her weight behind arguments that our beaches are clean and the water crystal clear.’47

  Crosio now blames her decision to enter the water on a female reporter who egged her on to prove the water was safe, but the media reports implied that she had invited journalists for that specific purpose. Stevens said she had prepared for the shot by coming to the beach in a swimming costume and robe, and repeated the stunt for the Daily Telegraph, who arrived late.

  What was significant about the front-page photograph of Crosio coming out of the water was the number of times it was used again, in both the Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Morning Herald, to accompany profiles or simply as a ‘head shot’ with a political story. When it was used once with a serious article about the delay in relocating stormwater drains, the photograph was cropped to include her breasts.48 When Crosio leapt to her feet to attack Roger Wotton for calling Wendy Machin ‘not just a pretty face’, Premier Nick Greiner waved the photograph in the air, reminding her of her embarrassment, again pitting women against each other. This was five years after the photograph was first published.49

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  Crosio was not the only one to be featured on the front page in her bathing suit. When Joan Kirner, who later became the first female premier of Victoria in 1992, was appointed deputy premier in 1989, the front page of the Australian displayed an old photograph of her sitting in a spa in a swimming costume. The headline was ‘Kirner shapes up as first woman Deputy Premier’. Joan Kirner, who as premier was nicknamed ‘Miss Piggy’ and ‘Mother Russia’, was frequently criticised about her body shape. But the caricature used in cartoons was not just of a well-proportioned woman but a harassed housewife, drawn with drops of sweat or frustration springing from her brow. The subliminal message, she suggested later, was ‘How could an ordinary housewife cope?’: ‘And I’m sure that’s why they constantly want to photograph you in the kitchen, because they can cope if you maintain your links with being an ordinary housewife. But once you don’t, it’s not you who can’t cope, it’s them.’

  Many Sydneysiders still remember the day Labor minister Janice Crosio stripped down to her bathing suit at a press conference and landed on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald, 21 December 1984. Rick Stevens/Sydney Morning Herald

  Her friend and cabinet colleague, Caroline Hogg, was appalled by the press Kirner received:

  I used to ring her first thing in the morning at 6.30 and say, ‘Listen, there is a bloody awful cartoon in the Sun . . .’ It was very painful for some time. It was very painful for me as her closest friend in the cabinet at the time . . . It was the way she was portrayed physically in cartoons. For middle-aged women that’s hard stuff. I think however much one is in control of all those things to do with appearance, nonetheless, to see oneself day-in, day-out blown up into some terrible overweight bullying polka-dotted figure which couldn’t be further from the truth was just disgusting.50

  Then Kirner confronted the cartoonist Geoff Hook, drew the media’s attention to the phenomenon, and elicited public sympathy in a kind of media masterstroke. At first, she said, she took it personally, which encouraged both Hook and the newspaper. But one day she cornered Hook and asked, ‘Why do you do it? I don’t even own a polka-dot dress, and I’m certainly not harassed all the time.’ He responded, ‘Well, Mrs Kirner, I know how to draw Henry Bolte and I know how to draw Bob Hawke, or John Cain or Paul Keating, but I’ve never had to draw a woman in power before and I don’t know how to draw you.’

  After this conversation, she viewed the cartoons not as a personal but political attack: ‘The editor and his cartoonist were showing their own prejudices — their view of how a housewife could cope — to get at me politically.’ As she told a conference in 1994, ‘I could then ask the questions, “Who is this attack serving?”; “What is the intent behind focusing on my appearance?”; “Who profits if I respond in kind?”; “How can I turn the attacks around?” Having asked and answered those questions, I could then shape my response. And that was to maintain an image, my own, which treated myself and other wo
men with respect and integrity.’51 Kirner fought back, by showing herself in the media in positions of control, visiting factories and making speeches, and displaying a sense of humour with events like the fundraising ‘Spot-on Joan’ concert. While she did eventually agree to change her hairstyle and changed the cut and colour of her clothes, she firmly controlled her image and refused to do anything she was uncomfortable with. She placed the issue of sexism in the media on the public agenda in Melbourne, provoking dozens of articles dissecting gender bias. She won public sympathy for what commentators called a ‘dignified’ way of reacting to sexist comment and criticism, while gaining the respect of many journalists for not ‘forever whingeing about the media’. As John Hurst wrote, ‘She resisted pressure to do anything against her will, however beneficial it might seem in public relations terms.’52 Kirner, as premier, was in a privileged position, with greater access to the media and more power to dictate the political agenda than a backbencher or even a minister, but her story is an important one.

  In the federal sphere, South Australian senator Amanda Vanstone had suffered constant jibes about her weight since being elected in 1985, particularly when she was the high-profile minister for education. She was nicknamed ‘Fatty’ and ‘Roseanne’, told she ‘couldn’t get a job as a road hump’, featured as a gargoyle in the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade, and had plump effigies burnt by angry students.53 The taunts entered cyberspace and, at one point, on an American website called Johnny Howard’s Comedy Store, images of her face were pasted on pornographic photographs of obese women. For a long time she was called ‘The Incredible Bulk’. But the quick-witted Vanstone fought it off — famously telling one of her political opponents: ‘Better big in the backside than bulldust for brains.’

  What kind of impact does this coverage have? Well, firstly, it is a serious disincentive for other women to join politics. Heather Southcott, formerly a Democrat in the South Australian parliament, said the caricatures of her figure led her to abandon any political ambitions. ‘I decided that unless I could lose weight, have a streamlined image, wear smart executive clothes, I would not be any good to the party because I would be a sitting duck for cartoonists.’54 Secondly, it is an added pressure for women already in the public eye. Ros Kelly told columnist Miranda Devine that she had only begun to worry about her weight after she became a politician. ‘After a while in politics,’ she said, ‘I perfectly understand why women get bulimic and get eating disorders.’55 She told another female journalist she never wore pants because she thought her bottom was too big.56

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  Early in 2001, federal sport and tourism minister Jackie Kelly received a letter instructing her to get a makeover. The anonymous complainant wrote: ‘Where do you [and Bronwyn Bishop] buy your clothes — St Vinnies’ op shop? Ever heard of a makeover? You and Bronwyn (lost the plot) Bishop are badly in need of one. Two of the most pathetic frumps in Federal Parliament. You might look all right in McDonald’s Parramatta like that, but not in Parliament in front of cameras, representing the country.’

  The Sunday Telegraph came to her defence, splashing the story indignantly on page three with a headline: ‘Kelly was a victim of sexist hatemail’. The woman often called ‘Trakkie Dakkie Jackie’ told reporter Nathan Vass that women should just be themselves and not worry about ‘the whole image thing’: ‘Women in public life are under enormous pressure to live up to impossible expectations, [like] we should all look like Elle Macpherson. I have news for you — it ain’t going to happen. My advice to women is this: just be true to yourself, don’t try to cater to other people’s image of you and, even under enormous criticism, just stick to it.’ She earned some respect for that approach. When Vass referred to a Melbourne newspaper that had quoted a ‘style guru’, saying Kelly needed to get a haircut and ‘her whole appearance needs work’, Kelly’s response was, ‘I am not paid to be a cover girl. I am paid to achieve things for my community.’57

  She told me the story was a boon for her:

  [It] resonated with my electorate because the women in my electorate said, hey if it’s an occasion, we can get dolled up — what woman doesn’t look gorgeous when you pluck a few eyebrows, shave a few legs, put on a frock, makeup . . . But at the end of the day, we’ve got to get the kids in the car, packed up — you can’t look like that all the time and that’s what’s made me so electable in my electorate; I don’t have that classic Liberal do, that rigid, you always looks the same, twin-set and pearls . . . I think it’s been pretty important for me to bust out of that pigeonhole.

  The fact that the Sunday Telegraph wrote a sympathetic story is an interesting shift. In the 1980s, tabloid papers were fond of asking image consultants to ‘make over’ female MPs, and turn them into what they considered to be sexy, modern women. This often happened when the MPs were under threat, as though it were kindly advice offered from an older sister about how to pick up boys at the local pub. The consultants tended to advise the women either to look more masculine by exuding authority, arrogance and power, or to look more youthful and beautiful: like models, not mothers. In 1984, in an article about the alleged lack of style of Australia’s women politicians, Janine Cohen from the Melbourne Herald quoted a ‘national wardrobe consultant’ who claimed ‘poor image and dress sense hold women politicians back’. Alongside the article ran two photos, comparing the Victorian minister for community services, Pauline Toner, and the wife of the NSW premier, Jill Hickson, a former model. Toner was dressed for work in a jacket, skirt, court shoes and pearls, while a younger, leaner Hickson oozed glamour in a shimmery evening gown, with a cape, and a corsage pinned on her shoulder. The fact that Toner was dressed for work and Hickson for a party went unrecognised.58

  Some women MPs actually agreed to be ‘made over’ due to pressure from their parties as well as journalists. When faced with threats to her leadership, Janet Powell, who had succeeded Janine Haines as leader of the Democrats, agreed to have a makeover filmed by ‘60 Minutes’. Powell, a former teacher, had a strong intellect and debating style, according to colleagues, but a low profile. She had been called matronly, ‘the forgotten woman of politics’, and nicknamed ‘Senator Sensible’. She had performed ‘stolidly in a hard role’, but, just like future leader Meg Lees, she was said to lack the ‘razzamatazz’ necessary for a ‘marketable image and flair’.59

  In August 1991, newspapers revealed the white-haired and bespectacled former Adelaide academic John Coulter, 60, and Senator Paul McLean, who also wore glasses and was aged 54, would be running against Powell in a leadership spill.60 Although neither of her opponents were catwalk models, or appeared to be lusted over by female journalists, the following day Powell agreed she would consult professional image-makers.61 The Herald-Sun contacted a range of experts who said they were ‘itching to go to work’ on Powell, 48. In a telling comment, one image consultant said, ‘She looks like a suburban mum. There’s nothing wrong with suburban mums — I love them dearly — but I don’t want one telling me what to do.’ Another said she should lose weight, since ‘trim and taut people look ready for action’, as well as change her clothes: ‘They say “let’s go shopping”, not “let’s get cracking and get down to business”.’ A third consultant said again that she looked too ‘mumsy’ and should seek out tailored clothing. This wasn’t a criticism, she said, but Senator Powell’s public and peers were looking for a leader, not a mother.’62 It’s a revealing dichotomy. It was decided Powell had failed to project confidence, egotism, power and assurance, and she was advised to dress in navy blue.

  Ros Kelly posed in an evening gown for Woman’s Day on 8 March 1993 after a great deal of persuasion — five years before Cheryl Kernot frocked up for the Australian Women’s Weekly. Woman’s Day

  Despite her efforts, Powell was dumped by her party — for reasons discussed in chapter nine — after little more than a year in the position, and John Coulter was voted in as leader. Powell resigned from the party less than a year later, after 15 years as a member
of the Democrats. She stood as an independent in the next election, but failed to gain a seat.63

  Most of the makeover articles are just silly and trivial. When Carmen Lawrence became premier of Western Australia, a Sunday newspaper asked local fashion consultants to make over her hairstyle, glasses and clothing. Pauline Hanson, who has defied many of the conventions of political behaviour to her advantage, was filmed being ‘made over’ for her senatorial race in March 2001. Yet frequently, if women do not measure up to an ideal of young, slim, stylish femininity, they are advised to lose weight, cut their hair and buy new clothes. If they do measure up, and newspapers feature articles that portray them as attractive or desirable, they were often victim to charges of superficiality and tokenism.

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  The scrutiny of public figures intensified in a culture of celebrity where politicians were encouraged to groom themselves as visual performers, cultivate a profile, and measure the amount, not the substance, of the ensuing publicity as the standard of their success. Many male politicians tinker with their appearance to satisfy the demands of a fickle electorate and image-driven media. Prime Minister John Howard capped his teeth and trimmed his eyebrows, former Labor leader Kim Beazley was on several diets, and John Hewson changed his banker-style shirts. Bob Carr and Peter Cook dumped spectacles for contact lenses, and Bob Collins went on a salad diet. Andrew Peacock was famous for his vanity, his hair (allegedly dyed), perennial tan, and smooth demeanour. While there have been some male politicians who have been the subject of interest or speculation due to their dress — such as South Australian premier Don Dunstan for wearing pink shorts to parliament; federal MP Al Grassby, who was likened to a ‘spiv’ or used car salesman because of his flamboyant fashion sense; former NSW Labor premier Barry Unsworth for his cardigans; and Prime Minister Paul Keating for wearing Italian suits — no male politician’s body has been the subject of the kind of debate Machin or Wiese has experienced. When former prime minister Harold Holt was photographed in his swimsuit in the 1960s, it was the bodies of his daughters-in-law who surrounded him, and not his own, that were most commented on. Labor PM Bob Hawke also appeared occasionally in his Speedos without exciting comment.