I’ll admit it. I’ve always felt slightly uncomfortable around Carol Vorderman. Not the actual person of the former Countdown co-host, but the very idea of her. Which, at the moment, thanks to what seems a decade’s worth of saturation photoshoots, paparazzi snaps and red carpet spectaculars, appears to be that of a woman who was once brainy but now, well, has a body. This stereotype reached its mind-melding apogee last week when it was revealed, by Vorderman herself on social media, that she was suffering from friction burns after falling off a treadmill while (and here’s the punchline, lads) running naked!
To which the only appropriate reaction must surely be: “Phwooar! Ye sexy ride! Get them off ye! Er, hang on, they’re already off ye, but, ye know, phwooar! Woman! Body! Naked! We love all that!”
Normally I am loath to express an opinion on female sexuality. This is because I am of the opposite gender and am living in a culture that is increasingly proscriptive about the conversations it allows on that subject. Which means you can say anything you like, as long as it’s “she’s a woman of power, and she’s in charge of her sexuality”, which, clearly, works for Kim Kardashian, and loads of other role models.
In this case, however, I’ll make an exception by posing the question: is it not inherently depressing, whether you’re a feminist, post-feminist, or unreconstructed Fifties housewife, to watch someone who was once applauded for being a Cambridge-educated maths whizz slowly evolve into a pre-eminent celebrity figure who’s mostly celebrated for wearing “curve-enhancing” outfits and for twice winning the “Rear of the Year” award?
I know there’s a greater meta-argument about what kind of society prizes a***-shots over intellectual prowess in women, and I shudder to think that my daughter is growing up in the grip of these forces. Yet when I see those endless so-called va-va-voom pictures of Vorderman that seem to circulate on a weekly, if not, daily basis (“The curves!” they scream. “Look at the curves!”), I can’t shake the feeling that, like Kim Kardashian and Pippa Middleton, Vorderman is complicit in her own objectification. Which, as a woman of power who is in charge of her own sexuality, is obviously a good thing.
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It’s not an ageing issue either, not some weird condemnation of a 54-year-old who refuses to “act her age”. The celebrasphere is littered with older women (the Mirrens, the Ramplings, the Denches) who have nailed the art of va-va-voom while also retaining a deeply felt sense of creative credibility.
While we’re at it, sorry but who runs on a treadmill naked? In fact, who does anything naked other than showering, sleeping and sex? Imagine if Brad Pitt had tweeted: “Oh man, just been working out naked in the gym. The usual. My body’s looking great, though. Especially my privates.”
There’d be an outcry. He’d be accused of sleaziness, or some unspecified cyber-crime relating to conceptual overexposure. But Vorderman obviously knows her market, her brand and her audience. She tweets it. We read it. And we respond: “Carol Vorderman? Phwooar!” The public gets what the public wants.
Driving us mad — with lust
Speaking of hot babes and gearsticks . . . most men, according to the Institute of Advanced Motorists, are idiots. Or, if not quite idiots, they certainly have poor taste in women. For, thanks to a recent study by the institute into driving habits and attractiveness, we know that 84 per cent of women are unequivocally turned off by men who exhibit so-called “boy racer” traits behind the wheel (illegal overtaking, aggressive driving, needless revving etc).
Men, on the other hand? Not so smart. A sizeable 52 per cent of men said they found poor driving in women to be a turn-on. Because, when you think about it, there’s nothing in the world sexier than standing by the kerbside while your blind date pulls up and instantly mangles the parking. “Oooh, she can’t even parallel park!” you think. “I bet she’s dynamite in the sack!”
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Jamie’s junk TV
I don’t know why, but I can’t get too excited about Jamie Oliver’s recent so-called “attack” on ITV for showing junk food ads during the commercial breaks of popular Saturday standards such as The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent.
Oliver, apparently, was sitting down with his family to watch an episode of Britain’s Got Talent when he was unceremoniously assaulted by commercials for not one, not two, but “three major junk food retailers”. Oliver, presumably, fell to the floor, writhed in agony, and could only be resuscitated by the freshly squeezed juice of an organic mango and a light dusting of quinoa.
Me, on the other hand, I’m trying not to be a small-screen snob, but I find myself shrugging and sighing: “Junk food for junk TV? Kind of makes sense.”