POSH WOMEN, fat women, skinny women, older women. Oh, boy. They pretty much all got it between the eyeballs. Maybe it's like a watched pot. The airwaves simmer and, when you turn your back, they boil over with stories of how women should shape up. But, even if they do, there'll be another reason to sock it to them.
The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show(Today FM, weekdays) was coming from New York earlier this week. It was supporting fundraisers for Special Olympics Ireland who were running the NYC Half Marathon. It didn't feel like they were actually there. Were they in an attic in Marconi House? Or on the moon, perhaps? It was an antidote to the worthy Morning Ireland, but also surreal. Has much changed since Radio Nova? There was chatter about Bono and Madonna, and B-listers. "What a picture of Madonna in the New York Post,"Ian said. "She really is starting to look her age." That was the first snap of the week's 168-hour girdle.
Madonna, one of the world's pushiest, most successful, toned, ageless women, was pictured on TMZ.com, tabloids and other online gossip e-zines. She either looked gaunt from all the working out or the wind changed and the odd expression on her face stayed the same. Or maybe she had something done.
Either way, women are waiting for her to droop and sag. As are men. She is the Fifty Foot Woman, trudging through Manhattan trampling everything in her wake. She's been at it since the early 1980s. Has she not fallen and impaled herself on the Chrysler Building yet? One bad photograph won't do it.
Also on Tuesday, Gift Grub did a sketch from Ballybrit, with a fake "Colm Murray" announcing, "Welcome to Ballybrit, the annual orgy of equine competitive endeavour . . ." Newly posh Lisa Murphy was the target. She is now stepping out with Gerald Kean. Is she a femme fatale or the girl next door? Can't she be both? Her appearance and accent in the audience of The Late Late Show may have spawned this alter-ego. "Gerald, I love the outfit, what have you come as?" says "Gráinne Seoige". The fake Gerald replies, "I've come as Emperor Nero. It's wonderful and my toga is very comfortable as a rule. Feck the begrudgers!" "Lisa, what a beautiful day!" Gráinne says. "Fawbilous," Lisa replies. "Who have you come as?" Grainne asks. "I am the slove who feeds Nero his gropes," Lisa says. So what if her jewels are as fake (or real) as her accent? Impersonators are not mean-spirited, not when they are hopelessly devoted to perfecting your voice.
Wednesday's Life With Orla Barry(Newstalk 106-108, weekdays) covered the story of a Jersey nightclub which banned large women, with staff telling them, "You're too fat" and "Go home, love, lose some weight".
I assume it was a short-sighted publicity stunt: it was picked up by the London Timesand the Daily Mirror. Martin Sayers, manager of the Havana nightclub in St Helier, told the press he was trying to "protect" his business, which implies the nightclub is run for men who want their women a size zero. He later apologised and effectively crawled under a Jersey rock before lifting the ban after customers threatened a boycott.
Dave texted, "Who wants lazy overeaters in a nightclub?" Orla said, "A little bit fattist, are you Dave?" Misogynist, surely. Anthony texted, "He probably wanted to turn the club into a classy place with models sipping champagne, not slobs drinking pints of bitter." Orla said that large women sip champagne too.
She should have asked them to send in their pictures. My guess is Dave and Anthony won't be gracing any chocolate boxes any time soon. I'd like Orla on a TV chat show, giving Dave and Anthony what they deserve.
Later, on Moncrieff (Newstalk 106-108, weekdays), Sean Moncrieff took the body image theme to men. Finally! And interviewed . . . a woman. Jenny Langley, author of Boys Get Anorexia Too, is the mother of a boy who had anorexia, which started with excessive training, which made him lose a quarter of his body weight.But they could have interviewed a male. If they wanted an author, male and anorexia sufferer, Gary A Grahl, author of Skinny Boy: A Young Man's Battleand Triumph Over Anorexia, would have been a good start.
But there is one feisty woman who is an Amazonian warrior on the political landsape. Age and political setbacks will not wither her or blunt the sharpness of her tongue. And we wouldn't have it any other way. Mary O'Rourke is one of the few Fianna Fáil politicians to say there should be no second Lisbon Referendum.
She told Mary Wilson on Wednesday's Drivetime(Radio One, weekdays), "I think it's intellectually lazy for mandarins - I hate the word but there's no other word to describe high-level civil servants - to say let's just go again." She said of Nicolas Sarkozy's visit: "He's gone home scratching his, well, pulling at his hair . . ." The woman who said the Teflon tyrant Robert Mugabe should be shot and gave us that image of herself in the bath, listening to the radio, often leaves her more toothless male colleagues with a spritz of perfume in their eye. Mary should go to Jersey and sort that creep of a nightclub manager out.
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qfottrell@irish-times.ie