Could a woman who looks as scruffy and shambolic as Boris ever become PM ?

[longwayoff]

Bother, no vote available on this. Ah well. This is about appearances only. Not intellect, education or ability. I say never, impossible. All women judged on appearance first, ability second.

Not a chance in hell.

Nope.

What Boris looks like is the least of our worries.

Did Theresa get voted in because she was stunningly beautiful then? Or Maggie?
If they did it would seem a little unfair they get voted in due to looks but the man can't rely on that.

Nope.

Angela Merkel is hardly a fashionista and she has done OK....

Sturgeon wasn’t styled initially but she had to cave into getting styled, which I think is a shame.

Yanbu.

Christ can you imagine the tabloids! If Boris looks scruffy it's part of his persona, if a women did it she'd be "disheveled", "unkempt" and "bleary eyed" 🙄

Teresa May got in and she looks seriously unwell most of the time.

And her fashion sense was horrendous.

I don't think Boris looks that bad in comparisson. At least he can stand up straight and doesn't look like he might keel over at any point.

No way. Can you imagine the hounding any woman who looked even vaguely as scruffy and disheveled as Johnson would be subjected to. The Daily Mail sidebar of shame would be 90% made up her face, hair, body shape, clothes, shoes and accessories fails. Meghan and the Kardashians would be demoted to the bottom of the list while hell was unleashed on any contender for No.10 that in any way was seen as falling short of acceptable .

Sturgeon wasn’t styled initially

Not sure that's true really, she always looked dapper in a nice suit in the early 2000s she's changed as she entered the public eye more but I think that's just natural.

TM may not be stylish but I don’t think she ever actually looked scruffy.

Nope!
It’s not about looks either. He looks scruffy in appearance.

It's not about being beautiful but as though you've had a wash.

Boris, in my opinion, is one of those people who just looks untidy, whatever he is wearing. He looks like an unmade bed. I think his hair would still look a mess if he had a buzz cut.

I dread to think what his ‘casual’ is like.

At least he can stand up straight and doesn't look like he might keel over at any point.

lowering the bar for PM that bit further..

Tbf I think if it was a woman, the Daily Mail might self combust over having to choose between the scruffy appearance and the fact she'd moved her boyfriend into number 10 while still married.Perhaps they could alternate daily.

Unlikely.
FWIW Merkel always looks groomed and professional. Johnson looks likes he's been dragged through a hedge backwards after a night on the piss.

We will have achieved equality when the answer is "yes". Sadly we seem to be moving in the opposite direction....more and more ridiculous grooming demands are being placed on women, eating up their time and holding them back.

Remember the horror at Jeremy Corbyn’s appearance?

You would never see any of those women in power with dishevelled hair or their buttons wrongly fastened (might be exagerating) or dressed completely ridiculously - you might not like their taste in clothes but they do tend to look respectable.

I did read about Angela Merkel that she made a point about wearing almost identical outfits (same style jacket and trousers - just different colours) as she didn't want to be judged on how she looked but on what she said and what she stood for.

Definitely not.

Women are only allowed in if they look like a stern headmistress.

No, female political heads of state tend to stick to "safe" tailored suits/ dress/ jacket combo, as close to their male counterparts as possible.

Doesn't TM have type 1 diabetes? Regardless of her politics and outcomes, it was a mentally and physically demanding 3 years which would take its toll on anyone, let alone someone with a chronic health condition needing constant monitoring.

It amuses me how young John Major looks now compared to his look in the 1990s, and how much Tony Blair aged post-Iraq although it's easy to forget it's 22 years since he was elected in.

Back to the OP, high profile female politicians tend to closely follow masculine templates (although TM has more flair than Merkel). Doesn't Merkel basically have one style of suit in all colours so that the focus is not on her clothing (unlike the attention on TM's leopard print kitten heels).

More variety of feminine styling or indeed, unstyling of prominent female politicians would be a positive sign of equality and that a woman can be taken seriously for her politics alone (although that doesn't fully explain how we came to have BJ as PM )

Crikey, I'd forgotten the, er, girlfriend. Even more impossible then.

It's not just the scruffy appearance. It's the whole bumbling, shambolic, flying by the seat of his pants under-preparedness that is his political 'style'. But he's a posh public school boy, so he can throw out a few Latin phrases whilst looking bamboozled and scratching his head, and it fits a certain trope. A woman, a non-white man, a non-public school boy would never in a million years get away with it. But it's Boris, so it's ok.