Legs-it: what should women leaders wear?
Legs-it was the clever caption on The Daily Mail front page photo of Theresa May and Nicola Sturgeon showing a lot of leg last week. An article that prompted a great deal of coverage. As was widely noted at the time, the picture and cheeky headline received a great deal more attention than the substance of these powerful women’s frosty meeting or the issues surrounding it.
Legs-it prompted a storm of Twitter protest
Legs-it PR lessons
There are a couple of PR lessons that jumped out at me from the legs-it furore.
- As ever, what you wear and how you look should be controlled to ensure it is not a distraction. No dangly earrings, no flamboyant jewelry, no crazy shoes and men should avoid hilarious ties or bright socks.
- Serious women might consider avoiding knee length skirts if they are going to be filmed or photographed sitting down. Men should avoid short socks that will show too much hairy leg between sock and trouser when sitting down.
- If you are the PR man or woman – think about controlling the shot. What is in front, what is behind and what is the angle of the cameras.
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Sorry, but I think your takeaways only serve to endorse the sexism of the Daily Mail. I agree that it is important to be well presented and look professional at work, but women shouldn’t have to cover their legs or dull themselves down to prevent sexist men from taking them less seriously because of their gender. Society should simply reject and oppose sexist articles and put it down to extremely poor journalism.
Hi Victoria
I understand the argument and agree it is if not poor then certainly frivolous and sensational journalism. However, our blog is written for PR people and those likely to appear in the media. If I was trying to get a message across, or trying to ensure my spokesperson doesn’t get undesirable publicity, I would seek to control or eliminate, all things that might be a distraction. Journalists often behave in a way that the business or political community wishes they wouldn’t. Mostly, we chose not to try and directly control journalists (because that sets up the predictable clamour about a ‘free’ press) but try instead to control the other side of the equation. However, there may be times when the outcome is not mission critical in which case we could take the view that we should do our bit to inch society towards a more equal society.
Hi there
Interesting take on sadly sexist journalism but your thought on the camera angle isn’t right. Look at the eye-lines, May’s in particular. She’s looking at the camera and it’s about eye level, so the camera(man) will have the camera at about waist height. Even if they took the shot from above, the legs would still dominate the frame. I’m sorry to say it but Merkel gets it right.