Double Take:In the first of a weekly column, memories of being a 20th-century lovely girl are sparked by the row over politicians using 'glamour models' to hawk their policies.
You have to hand it to Green Party councillor Bronwen Maher, and you don't have to be wearing a tight T-shirt made of sustainable cotton at the time. Maher, a member of Dublin City Council, has had enough of pretty young models being employed by our public representatives to promote wholesome urban initiatives. Rather touchingly, these young women were referred to as "glamour models" in the Irish Times report of the matter this week. Most people know that glamour models are girls who pose topless for the tabloids. But to the Green Party, and perhaps to The Irish Times, all models are glamour models. This is sweet, but inaccurate.
Girls employed to turn up at public events and wear the T-shirt - or the mini-skirt or the bikini - are engaged in what is known within the modelling industry as promotional work. For example, the young models who were used last weekend to pose in the new Ecocab, along with Lord Mayor of Dublin Vincent Jackson. For example, the two young models who posed with the Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, wearing mini-skirts (the Minister wore trousers), in an effort to publicise the revolutionary idea of repairing the leaking water pipes in our capital.
In the last century, promotional gigs like this used to start with a phone call from the estimable Nan Morgan, who would phone from her model agency and tell you to "put on a nice shirt". That's how bad the economy was back then. You had to apply more make-up than you would have thought one face could hold and get the bus into town to freeze your lip gloss off in St Stephen's Green whilst photographers old enough to be your grandfather took you firmly by the arm and placed you in front of the tulips/the bandstand/a large advertising hoarding which kept falling over in the wind.
It was your job to smoke about 15 cigarettes and try to keep your hair steady. Then, about 45 minutes after the designated time, and without the aid of mobile phones, the political or commercial bigwig would arrive, nice and warm in his jacket, and stand between yourself and another mortified young woman.
For this, you would be paid a portion of half of the normal day rate, and the money would not arrive for at least three months. For some of us, such experiences constituted the fast track to feminism and a lifetime problem with tobacco.
Does Dublin City Council really want to see that havoc wreaked on another generation? It is difficult to believe that the British secretary of state for the environment, David Miliband, would encourage people to reduce their carbon footprint by standing between two 19-year-olds with ecological slogans emblazoned on their chests, and possibly a history of dating members of the national rugby team - but then perhaps I missed it.
It is a sign of the delicate tact inherent in Irish culture that, in other countries, these young models are hired to provide what are known, at best, as "crumpet shots" . In Ireland, they are seen as "lovely girls", beloved of photographers and newspapers everywhere. As one male journalist helpfully pointed out in the outcry that followed councillor Maher's remarks, lovely girls are much better looking than female politicians.
Lovely girls these days are not the natural beauties immortalised in Father Ted. Now they are buffed, manicured and bleached within an inch of their young lives. They are the wallpaper of the public relations industry in Ireland, but they are amazons at heart. On Wednesday, they fought their corner on RTÉ Radio 1's Liveline. They also have a devoted following. The Irish website, Blogorrah, a sort of online cathedral to the lovely girl, is devastated by Maher's motion banning them from municipal and national photo opportunities. Maher has called the practice "cliched and old-fashioned". One Blogorrah fan has complained that she has placed "Blogorrah's Very Existence Under Threat".
It does seem a tiny bit strange that while it has become less acceptable to drape young women over car bonnets in order to boost the motor trade - advertisements for cars have become so sophisticated that they are almost hallucinatory - the lovely girls are still desperately needed to promote clean air initiatives and a bit of recycling.
Still, Dublin City Council and various ministers show a commendable loyalty to the concept of the lovely girl. It says much about the age and the gender of the decision-makers in the Irish public relations industry that the most interesting thing they can think of is a heavily made-up young woman in a T-shirt. They should get out a little more - or stay in and surf the web a little.
Either way, they should do those things in their own time. Maher is right to maintain that public money should not be spent on hiring lovely girls, no matter how much a campaign or even a minister needs them.
We will never lose the lovely girl altogether - and would not care to. She may be a bit shaky on her heels, but her smile is solid as a rock. Besides, Dick Roche needs all the help he can get at the moment.
