by Julia Baird
In the noughties, things were changing for men. One notable example was the week-long debate in the national media about Mark Latham’s ‘manboobs’, snapped when he was playing a game of cricket in a t-shirt. The Daily Telegraph also ran a page two story about Latham’s hair being unkempt, accusing him of having too frequent bad-hair days: ‘Other politicians have battled an image issue and the Opposition leader’s thatch appears to be his bugbear. His staff freely admit he sometimes sports a “rooster” — the technical term for that annoying clump of hair that springs up on the back of the head.’ A Sydney hairdresser advised him to use ‘some serious product’ to keep it down. Latham’s adviser told the journalist he did not believe it was a serious issue in an election year, but the reporter retorted: ‘Prime Minister John Howard’s eyebrows made headlines when they became unruly. One colleague remarked at one stage the PM appeared to have two koalas asleep on his forehead.’64 And here I must confess — mea culpa — that I once wrote a story about David Kemp, then minister for education, shaving off the facial hair which had earned him the moniker ‘weird beard’.65 I cringe!
Often it is fellow politicians, not journalists, who are the worst culprits. An unnamed Victorian Liberal backbencher caused some excitement when he was widely quoted saying the then deputy opposition leader Louise Asher had not performed well but was ‘the one with good legs who wears short skirts’.66 Victorian National Party MP Ron Best won a political Ernie in 2001 for saying to Minister Monica Gould that her ‘breasts were so small that her front was indistinguishable from her back’. Erstwhile NSW opposition leader Kerry Chikarovski was accused of having hormones to make her voice deeper, and of wearing long skirts to hide her legs. Still, when Labor MP Peter Black shouted across the chamber at her in 2000, telling her she should ‘get a facelift’, he was chastised by both journalists and colleagues. The Sunday Telegraph ran a story, headed ‘Giving this MP a taste of his own medicine’, where a plastic surgeon claimed that with $20,000 of plastic surgery, he could make Black look 20 years younger.
Many of the first young female MPs to come into parliament cleverly capitalised on all kinds of media attention. But while some women have been ogled and petted by journalists, others have been ignored, or lampooned for not being thin or pretty enough. It all adds up to a scrutiny that can make it very uncomfortable for women in the public eye. And, as Natasha Stott Despoja was to discover, it can make their position far less secure.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Natasha Stott Despoja: the ‘impossible princess’
The chief glory of a woman is not to be talked of, said Pericles, himself a much-talked-of man.
— Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own
I have to be pretty if I am going to get over and I have to get over if I am going to f . . . the system up. And I’m gonna f . . . it up.
— Courtney Love, quoted by Natasha Stott Despoja in ‘Stott in the name of Love’, Sydney Morning Herald, 22 January 1999
The first time I saw Natasha Stott Despoja was at the ARIA Awards in the year 2000, when she was photographed with a fake tattoo and accused of posing as a pseudo celebrity. I was with a star-struck journalist friend who could not keep his eyes off her, and claimed she was the most desirable woman in the country. The second was in the wee hours of Mardi Gras 2002, upstairs in the VIP room, where board members, party organisers and their friends unwind with cold beer or cups of tea and watch the crowds grind and soar on the dance floor in the Royal Hall of Industries below. I was standing in the bathroom, squashed between a couple of enormous drag queens and a purple-clad photographer. Stott Despoja emerged from a cubicle, pale and tiny, and stood in front of the mirror, adjusting her hair. She was immaculate, untouched by the sweat and steam of the dance floor. A drag queen, towering over her in painful-looking heels, cooed, and tried to crush her to her heavily padded chest: ‘Oh, Natasha!’ Stott Despoja smiled, then washed her hands. Looking apologetic, the photographer leaned forward and asked if she could take a shot. The drag queen beamed and looked hopefully at Stott Despoja, who politely shook her head and walked out.
Everywhere she went, the photogenic Stott Despoja was a target. At 26, she was the youngest woman to be elected to the federal parliament, and she capitalised on this fact in order to be able to air her views about young people and their alienation from politics. When she was elected leader of the Democrats, there was a palpable excitement among many women, particularly those disaffected with mainstream politics and the suited men who controlled it. Friends from a range of parties said they would consider voting for or even joining the Democrats once she was leader, and there was much interest in the fact that a woman of her age was wielding serious political power. Many journalists were unrelenting fans who praised her with fawning prose; likened her to the vulnerable, blonde Princess Diana; and wrote flatteringly about her physical appearance. They defended her from attacks, and gave her ample space to air her views on a range of subjects, including the opinion pages.
The fact that many in the media liked her was, predictably, used as evidence that she was shallow. When I worked in the federal press gallery I was struck by the cynicism of the reporters towards Stott Despoja’s appearances in forums which had endeared her to my peers — she outwitted blokes on the ABC TV show ‘Good News Week’, made politics accessible and somehow possible when talking on Triple J, and showed herself to be human. But according to a growing sentiment in the gallery, she had a high profile and, ergo, was vain. She was a show pony, a celebrity, a ballot box Barbie, a woman who was young, good-looking and therefore insubstantial. Sure, many of them argued over time, she looks good in a frock, but what about policy? The ‘more sizzle than sausage’ cliché was repeated to a mind-numbing extent. She was forced on countless occasions to defend herself from the charge, and stubbornly refused to change her strategy of appearing in as many different forums — and in many different guises — as she could, including Cosmopolitan, Cleo, Rolling Stone and Juice.
Reading through the reports again while working on this book, I felt frustrated with the press, who did not recognise how complicit they were in this. Given the prevalence of these charges, why not sit her down and grill her about a raft of policies, instead of just speculating about her intellectual depth? It was odd. Why not count the number of times she had spoken, and what she had fought for? Only a sprinkling of senior journalists took this approach.
Stott Despoja, introduced as a ‘part-time politician and full-time enchantress’ on ‘Good News Week’, and voted the 70th sexiest woman in the world by men’s magazine FHM in 1998, was the ultimate ‘media tart’ journalists eagerly pursued then mocked. She once wrote that women should ‘manipulate the media’ in order to get their voices heard. The problem was, the press who adored and replicated her image eventually despised her for allowing them to do so.
Since it was the media who first touted and endorsed Stott Despoja as leader, then dismissed her as naive and lightweight, the key question is this: was her media strategy wrong? Should she have pruned back the personality cult in order to impress the heavyweights of the gallery? Or was she just battling a series of dodgy assumptions about young women? Was there, as a good Democrat might ask, a middle way, between media darling and media tart?
*
Stott Despoja’s name was synonymous with Doc Marten shoes from the moment she walked into the Senate. They became the defining symbol of her youth. Sensible, chunky, and solid, Docs were popular among middle-class youth of university campuses, and feminists who refused to wear high heels. They became a cliché in her press coverage, starting from the day of her swearing-in ceremony in 1995, when she decided to wear a pair of Doc Martens — they were comfortable, practical and emblematic of a younger generation — and the press hungrily lapped it up, with headlines like: ‘These boots will walk right into the Senate’; ‘Senator goes in — boots and all’.1 In a piece she wrote the next day for the Canberra Times, Stott Despoja referred to her shoes several times. ‘My decision to wear D
oc Martens into the chamber was a sign of the times — and a need for sensible shoes and, in some respects, it is the dress code of a generation.’2
The Doc Martens references lived on for years — to complain about it revived it. But Stott Despoja continued to refer to them in interviews and speeches. Her frustrations with the ‘Doc Martens’ image were reported throughout her bid to be leader of the party five years later.3 She was forced to defend herself from the charge that she was a ‘Doc-wearing pretender’ in at least two newspapers. When she wore heels, instead of Docs, this was reported on.
When I asked her if she regretted the Doc Martens image, she responded:
I’m proud of a symbolism that says I represent my generation and heaven help the woman with a punk hairdo when she gets in . . . It makes conformity very appealing, it really does . . . I walked into an environment where there were not a lot of women and there was no one my age or younger — did I really want to emphasise that difference any more? I didn’t need to, I didn’t want to, but inevitably that was part of the role of me working with the media and part of the media’s excitement or role to play as well because that sold stories and that got my party publicity. Pretty simple exchange.
Along with the Docs, the other symbols of Stott Despoja’s youth were her predilection for Diet Coke and chocolate, along with her use of the phrase ‘cool bananas’. She admitted she had smoked marijuana, watched the cult American soap ‘Melrose Place’, and went to clubs and raves. As Democrats spokeswoman for youth affairs, she put out press releases headed ‘Gen X has Senator on Side’. She was the champion of ‘Gen HECS’ in the university debate. She was not the only person under 30 to have been elected to parliament (Paul Keating, Gary Punch, and Christopher Pyne were all elected at 25, and Bill O’Chee at 24), but her gender, position, and approach cemented her status as The Voice of Youth.
In part, Stott Despoja’s ‘cool’ image was a poor reflection on the conservative and stifling atmosphere of federal parliament, and the fact that there were few other young people there. To an outside observer, she appeared to be an earnest, serious young woman committed to accessing power for herself and her party. It amazed me when I heard people call her a bimbo — as though a woman who spent her precious university years at Democrats meetings, lobbying, electioneering, and politicking could really be classified as someone with a head full of bubbles. Many young people spend their 20s clubbing, travelling, making mistakes and having tragic relationships. Yet because the neatly dressed, and apparently well-behaved, Stott Despoja wore a backpack and Doc Martens, and listened to bands like Powderfinger, she was constantly described as ‘hip’, ‘groovy’, ‘chic’ and ‘cutting edge’. For those not sedated by the valium of federal politics, ‘Australia’s coolest MP’ was not radical but fairly normal. This was in fact her appeal. Buckets of young women drank Diet Coke; lecture halls and rave parties were studded with Doc Martens; and millions listened to Triple J. The fact that she spoke politics so forcefully and effectively at the same time is what made her so popular.
In the mid-1990s, the young, photogenic senator had a protracted honeymoon with the press. Many journalists were lyrical about her attributes. They were sympathetic to her claims that she was patronised because of her youth. She was frequently profiled. A close examination of her clippings files reveals Stott Despoja was active across a range of her portfolios in the 1990s, particularly tertiary education.4
Stott Despoja’s success was such that when her party leader Cheryl Kernot defected to the Labor Party in October 1997 she was immediately touted as a potential leader. She declared the party should be bold, and asked reporters ‘whether the media or the public is bold enough to back a woman under 30 in a leadership [position] in Australian parties. I’m not so sure they would.’ A Taverner poll found she was the most popular candidate. She later said she thought the media was pushing her to run: ‘I would have to say that 98 per cent of the publications were saying either “You have no choice” or “Whether she likes it or not, this is her responsibility” . . . It was almost this anointment by the media.’5
After much agonising, she decided not to stand, and was elected deputy leader. She told Virginia Trioli that she was conscious of the fact that her high profile was important to the Democrats, and that she was in the best position to promote her party. She wondered out loud: ‘Where am I best spent? Unlimited travel running around the country, campaigning for everybody, doing high-profile media stuff, or is it controlling a parliamentary team and being responsible for mammoth legislation, some of which I don’t have a handle on?’6
From this point on, the possibility of leadership for the bright young spark who pounded the popularity polls like an Easter Show strongman preoccupied many journalists. And she continued her policy work.7
*
Allegations that Stott Despoja was light on policy and heavy on publicity emerged less than a year after she entered parliament. The genesis of this criticism came earlier. Her opponents frequently told journalists that she was preselected after an ABC-TV report showed her being ‘photographed like a Vogue model’. By late 1997, journalists were writing that she was ‘wearied and worried by constant accusations of being a media manipulator, a headline hound’. She became preoccupied with her image. Virginia Trioli wrote that her ‘cognisance of the media, its influence and its appetite is complete’.8
The accusations grew louder the following year, when she appeared in a slinky Armani dress in Cleo, as ‘dewily doe-eyed as any starlet’. It was a glamorous but not overtly sexual shot, as she reclined with her hair waved and face made up. She later defended her decision: ‘Many women voters want alternatives to boring old men in government. The National Party boys call me the Cleo Senator, they go — how embarrassing! — but why shouldn’t we do this? These men are stunned when you tell them the magazine circulations.’9 She repeatedly insisted she did not drop IQ points when she put on a dress, and that: ‘You can be a politician and look however you want.’ She added that she had refused to wear fake breasts with the dress as requested.
Many men in the gallery and political parties told me they desired Stott Despoja. Editors were observed blushing in her presence. Websites were devoted to her, and bedecked with glamour shots. A former gallery stalwart told me that after one reporter had a relationship with Stott Despoja, all the other men in the gallery were fascinated, and plied him for details. Another gallery reporter asked me why, if she wanted to avoid scrutiny of her personal life, she dated journalists: ‘How could she keep her private life private if she was having serial affairs with the media? There was no separation; it was a convergence.’ Even in sympathetic articles, she was frequently asked about her boyfriend, and if she planned to get married. Once, Greg Callaghan from the Weekend Australian wrote: ‘I quickly scrub my next question — what kind of men do you fancy? — and leap straight to my Serious Issues list.’10
The interesting thing about Stott Despoja was that although she was aware of the criticisms, she did not moderate her behaviour. Over time, she cut her hair shorter, replaced the Docs with heels, started to wear glasses, and adopted neatly tailored suits, but she continued to appear on a variety of television shows and in women’s magazines. Her rationale was fairly consistent: she was being human, making politics accessible, the public loved her, and the requests continued to flow in — so why change for the dictates of the gallery? She also justified it on a feminist basis, insisting women were multi-dimensional and complex beings.
In a feature-length piece she wrote for the Sydney Morning Herald, Stott Despoja interviewed singer and actor Courtney Love, champion of bad-girl ‘femme-inism’, and paralleled her own experience at the hands of the press with Love’s. It is this article that provides the best insight into Stott Despoja’s thinking.11 ‘Why is it,’ Stott Despoja asks, ‘that the minute you put on a glamorous frock or wear flattering tennis shorts, your IQ is presumed to plummet?’ She quotes Love saying, ‘I have to be pretty if I am going to get over and I have
to get over if I am going to f . . . the system up. And I’m gonna f . . . it up.’ It was, then, a means to an end. Love’s target was music, Stott Despoja’s politics.
But the cumulative effect of Stott Despoja’s appearances in the mainstream media seemed to confirm the suspicions in the press gallery that the ‘new kid on the block’ lacked serious political intent. Querying the length of time Stott Despoja spent in Albania visiting refugee camps while missing a tax debate in the Senate, the chief political reporter of the Daily Telegraph, Malcolm Farr, wrote in 1999:
Senator Stott Despoja will still be in demand as a guaranteed crowd puller for TV shows, quiz nights and speaking engagements requiring celebrity reinforcement. But her commitment and depth as a politician and Democrat deputy leader are being questioned by her peers, of all parties, as never before. The general and strengthening view is that Senator Stott Despoja’s good at being seen and heard but not so good at the hard yakka and teamwork of politics . . .12
Asked what he thought of Stott Despoja in 2003, Farr answered:
I think there are few people more lightweight in this building. She has a view of herself which is compounded by huge self-absorption which she uses to ignore or treat with contempt any criticism. She lives in a fantasy world, in my view . . . There’s a definite view that there’s not much substance there, which is unfortunate because . . . Stott Despoja does get up and join in debates with a certain amount of information and fluency which is not something you can say of a lot of people, the Greens’ leader included. I guess I am being a bit harsh. Because she is an attractive young woman, gnarled and ancient creatures such as myself take that view, but I don’t know, it’s hard to get rid of . . . [Why?] Because she doesn’t have any substance [laughs].