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Kate Garraway, a presenter on morning television show Daybreak, last week made headlines by wearing a somewhat revealing dress on the show, which airs in the UK from 6 – 8.30am. Halfway through the show, either Kate or one of Daybreak’s producers must have had second thoughts about the outfit, as she changed into something rather more high-necked for the remainder of the show.
The story, which astonishingly made the press in almost all of the British newspapers, has led to a lot of people here in the UK expressing their thoughts about the way in which female television presenters dress. Liz Jones, writing in the Daily Mail earlier this week, posed the question:
‘Why do women on TV, and particularly those on news programmes, have to dress like barmaids?’
It’s an interesting question to pose. Whilst Daybreak isn’t particularly high-brow or intellectual television (think the Daily Mail in televisual form), it isn’t actually too much of a …
… stretch to think of female presenters of serious journalistic television programmes whose outfits leave little to the imagination. As Jones puts it:
‘[There is] Newsnight colleague Emily Mathis, an Oxbridge graduate who speaks Mandarin, but whose experiments with fashion makes Isabelle Blow seem as conservative as the Queen.’
Whilst I’m all for women wanting to dress just how they want to, I think there’s a question here of whether the public can stomach certain fashion choices from television presenters, and whether there is a need to draw the line somewhere. Whilst experimentation with fashion is fantastic, I think there’s probably a time and a place. Is full-on cleavage or side boob acceptable over breakfast at 7am?
In looking at why this glamourisation of women on television exists, a few instant possibilities spring to mind. First of all – ratings. We can certainly argue that putting an attractive woman in a low-cut top on the TV might make more viewers tune in. But that’s a pretty vapid argument. Another possibility is that men still dominate behind the scenes in news programming (as we’ve discussed before here on ZL) – though things may look more equal on screen, in producing and editing television, men still call the shots.
In writing this piece, I wonder whether Kate Garraway’s outfit last week, and Liz Jones’ opinion in her piece in the Daily Mail really matter. Surely a woman can be a serious news journalist and dress however the hell she wants? Surely you can be a feminist and still dress as provocatively as you like? Well yes, but I think the problem Jones, and the others who slammed Garraway’s outfit last week have, is that there appears to be a trend forming here, and that the way a television presenter dresses sometimes needs to be appropriate to the news she or he is delivering. Jones writes that:
‘For one, I don’t want announcements of more British deaths in Afghanistan made by a woman who looks like a WAG.’
Whilst most of me thinks that the way a female television presenter dresses shouldn’t affect the news she delivers or how she is seen in her profession, I can see how a person affected by serious news could feel upset or offended by such news being delivered by a person dressed in a somewhat inappropriate outift.
As I’ve said before here on ZL, I think it’s important that we teach young women that having big ideas is much, much better than having big tits / eyes / whatever, and I wonder whether the fallout surrounding Garraway’s outfit and the reaction this story has provoked feeds into the idea that just the opposite is happening.
Thoughts?
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This is just another example of women being “marked” by the way we dress. We’re damned if we do, damned if we don’t when it comes to “appropriate” dressing. If you dress down, or cover yourself you’re a prude or unfeminine. If you reveal too much you’re a skank or you’re trying to get ahead by using your body. The proof of this obsession is the fact that we never talk about male journalists’ wardrobes with this much scrutiny. I long for the day when I can wear whatever I feel comfortable in without making a statement. If this is such a great issue, if it’s so distracting – then why don’t news networks have standards for dressing? It’s not the journalists’ fault, do they even pick out their own clothing?
When I clicked to submit this comment I was sent to a spam advertisement on a completely different page. It wasn’t a popup, it was a new URL. The website domain was cpalead… Is this one of your advertisers? If so, you might want to smack them for doing that. And when I try to get out of the page it gives me annoying popups asking if I really want to leave. Also their Web of Trust rating is red, with most people stating that this is a virus. Just want to make sure this is ZL and not my computer that is infected, so if anyone could let me know if this is also happening to them I’d appreciate it. I’m on a Mac using Firefox, so while viruses aren’t impossible they are unlikely.
I was hijacked trying to get into the comments on another article also, glad you said something so I know it’s not my computer.
Thanks for letting me know, Shannon … I’m going to check into this to find out what the problem is and what it means, because I don’t think that’s supposed to be happening either.
It happened to me as well.
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I would actually disagree somewhat about the male-female dress problem in news anchors, because most male news anchors have a fairly standard wardrobe and it’s pretty conservative and professional. I don’t watch the news very often, though, so maybe I’m missing out on something. However, I would consider the shirt in the picture highly inappropriate for a news anchor; I want the news, not a sizable helping of your boobs. Most female anchors I’ve seen dress with a similar modesty to their male counterparts; this usually involves fairly simple, yet modern and professional clothing. So I’m not sure what channel the barmaids are on, but I haven’t seen them.
All this fuss over nothing? Not quite. Imagine what would happen if a man turned up on TV wearing casual clothes to read the news. Would it be any different to the reaction seen over Kate Gallaway’s dress sense?
This kind of touches on something I have noticed on tv, espescially news programs. Dudes pretty much have one look, shirt and a jacket. It is rare that one will go outside the lines and wear a sweater or just a shirt. Women on the other hand have a never ending parade of outfits. The average woman has like 10X the number of outfits as an average man.
I blame Eve,she ate the apple. Really,it’s true,I read it in the Bible!