Caroline Lucas, Diane Abbott, Rachel Reeves, Yvette Cooper and many other left female politicians dress professionally and appropriately.
A MP votes on decisions that may cost lives or severely impact livelihoods. It’s not just a corporate job. It’s running a country. It’s statesmanship. She is not going to approve a marketing budget or a new inkjet supplier, it’s one very serious notch above.
Would you like for her to attend your wedding in a dirty tracksuit or to show up to your parents funeral dressed in sequinned pink, or to vote for or against war looking as if she spent serious time picking an outfit?
Some events, some circumstances require a bit of gravitas. HoC is one of these.
And why is so crucial that women need to dress to express their sense of style at work? You’re not there to seduce or to be yourself, you’re there to get the job done.
Even if they don’t dress for the male gaze anymore, they still dress for the gaze somehow, they still show the world that they place an inordinate amount of attention and value on their looks, like the patriarchy wants them to.
If you can’t be in the world without being dressed one way or the other, may it be like a TA on a sugar high and a Popsy addiction, or like one of Trump’s dolls in bodycon dresses, high heels, and Botox, or if you need a face full of makeup before you go out, you re not the free agent, feminist spirit you think you are.
I suppose you’re all young, brought up on social media, the dictatorship of appearance, told to bring your best self to work, made to center everything around yourself and your feelings (peddled to you as agency and autonomy), and a total ignorance of civic duty.