Rainbow High

I spent a delightful Friday evening last weekend watching Evita instead of going out. It was definitely a good call.

Asides from Antonio Banderas, I also fell in love with THE COSTUMES. drool. They were just amazing, each and every single one of them. I feel the following snippet from the movie accurately shows off why I was in wonderment.

...................joy! pure joy!

Eva Peron's story has been forever immortalised in the musical Evita which should make her happy as she is quoted as having said, "My biggest fear in life is to be forgotten". Given that she was wearing outfits such as that shown below, there was very little chance of her being forgotten.

Watching the movie got me thinking about how female heads of state dress versus first ladies married to male leaders.

Leaders:

Julia

Helen.

Angela.

Now for the wives:

Carla

Michelle.

Bronagh

I tried to be not too biased in my choice of leaders vs. first ladies but I kind of failed. There weren't that many female leaders to chose from and I did chose quite stylish wives (I threw Bronagh in there for NZ balance).

Now, as a young woman who is yet to even attempt at fulfilling her career potential, I am very interested in the way that powerful women dress and I see myself as well dressed but also very career able. After looking at the women shown above here are the general trends that can be observed, displayed excellently in a screenshot from excel:

I know that female politicians are not there to look pretty. And it did piss my feminist self off when  Silvio Berlusconi referred to Angela Merkel as an "unfuckable lard-arse". I'm not here to discuss today the merits of women as leaders but I am interested in why female leaders tend to be terribly dressed. 

Time: Time is probably an important factor as they have world-saving things to do and entire economies resting on their shoulders so doing their hair probably isn't at the top of their priorities. But MEN do it, Barack Obama, arguably the world's most powerful man, never has a hair out of place. His outfits always are infallible, he probably has a stylist so why don't his female counterparts? Someone to pick all their outfits, lay them out, they just have to put them on in the morning?!

Respect: Recently there was a woman who was apparently fired for being "too sexy". According to bank employee, Debrahlee Lorenzana, she was told "not (to) wear pencil skirts, turtlenecks, (...and) business suits that were fitted. Basically they said it drew too much attention"

Now, this incident does trigger a few thoughts. If a women is good looking does she command less respect? Does it make other people awkward to deal with a woman in a professional capacity if she is also somewhat of a babe or are they just threatened? To become a female politician you have to be hard-nosed and driven, competing in a male-dominated world. You must be seen as an equal, if not superior, to your colleagues. Vanity is seen as a weakness and in a world in which one must appear strong, it is ill-advised to appear so.

Personality: A large factor that cannot be ignored is the personality type of women that go into politics. Lets face it, they are nerdy. And in general, nerds aren't known for caring too much about what they wear. It's a very simplistic attitude to the matter but I do feel that it holds some credibility. 

LET'S MAKE A GRAPH TO SUMMARISE:

 I feel I have waffled on far too much and strayed quite substantially from my original point about first ladies. To gain forgiveness for this error, here is a picture of Antonio Banderas:

Brooding mmmmmmm.....