“Did you just look at me?” says Queen Anne to the footman and, as he shakes his head staring into oblivion clearly hoping this was not happening, she shouts “Look at me”. He reluctantly turns his head, looking at her in obvious discomfort when she screams “how dare you; close your eyes?”  A short vignette from the television commercial advertising the award-winning film ‘The Favourite’ and very much a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t for the poor hapless footman.

A few weeks ago, I accompanied my wife to a bear fair in London; she makes vintage bears as a hobby and occasionally takes to setting up a stall at some fair to sell them.  As I sat behind the stall navel gazing and wandering what the football scores were, when I was going to get something to eat and when would be an appropriate time to go for a wander without giving off the vibe that enthusiasm was now waning, my wife said, ‘did you see that’?  ‘What’ I asked peering over a number of furry Ursidae heads (I’m told they don’t bite)? ‘That woman in the orange top’ exclaimed my wife. Scouring the room for a woman that had been Tango’d, I listened to her explaining that a 30ish year old woman had just come out of the toilets wearing a bright orange top and emblazoned across her generous chest were the words ‘eye contact’.  ‘I suppose it’s a good message’ said my wife as I settled back down to my navel gazing.

I thought about the incident, if you can call it that, on the way home and that was when the film trailer came to mind as a rather good analogy.  I get the message, but it seems a rather odd way to go about conveying it.  From a distance we are drawn to looking but then castigated for doing so.  A case of look at me, why are you looking at me?  And so, it seems to me that the idea behind the message is somehow diluted and even trivialised.  The top is no more than a fashion item in the sense of it being a top but also in a sense of the message.  The message is commercialised; I wonder whether the top was purchased because of the seriousness of the message it conveyed or because it would look good and attract attention?

I discussed this with a colleague and she brought another dimension to the discussion.  Simply this, where was the top made?  Quite possibly, even likely, in a sweat shop in Asia by impoverished female workers.  And so, a seemingly innocent garment symbolises all the wrong things; entrapment, commercialism and inequality.  I can’t help thinking on this International Women’s Day that it’s a funny old world that we live in.