Dear Andy, please tackle the epidemic of misogyny directed at your wife?

Sometimes I open the Daily Mail app. I know. It’s a guilty pleasure, like daytime telly or looking up people you used to admire on twitter and seeing how bonkers they’ve gone.

And there’s a particular kind of story they run, and it goes something like this:

Such-and-such (insert celebrity name) wears GRAVITY DEFYING outfit to the Top Choice Awards!

So-and-so (name) puts on leggy display in AGELESS hot pants!

Fling-flong (name) works up a sweat as she curls those FABULOUS arms!

Whats-her-face (name) shows off stunning figure AGE 54 in hot beach PDA with new lover ten years her junior!

You get the idea (and yes I am available for a sub editor role for the right salary)

The funny thing about all of these stories is that, on paper, they sound very pro-woman. But often, they are doing something quite different. They are actually inviting criticism and hatred.

What they typically do is write the ‘full of praise’ headline and then put an image to accompany the article in which you can quite clearly see from the photo that the woman doesn’t look taut, ageless, fabulous or stunning at all.

Quite the opposite.

She looks saggy, old, knackered or wobbly.

It’s a clever tactic. Almost like an advanced form of sarcasm. “Wow, doesn’t she look LOVELY!” “Well, er, no, not really.” “Oh, you don’t think? That’s rather unkind of you to be so critical, wouldn’t you say?” A form of DARVO in which the newspaper gets to raise its hands and admit no guilt whatsoever for the toxic misogyny that then ensues in the comments section.

This week, I saw a classic of the genre.

And on the website thumbnail, they showed this accompanying image.

In fact, in the piece itself, they showed THREE similar shots of Mel C’s back, as you can see here.

And then, much to the Mail’s amazement, I’m sure, the readers took the bait.

Here’s just a few of the 2.6k comments. It won’t surprise you to know that they are all on a similar theme.

So, can we just blame the Daily Mail and its readers for all of this?

No.

Because less than 24 hours later it was another woman’s turn to be ripped apart, this time Marie-France van Heel, Cambridge graduate, mum of three, oh, and married to the new PM. As soon as I saw her walking into Downing Street looking ‘real’, as in, looking like a 56 year old woman who had had three children and a preventative double mastectomy, I knew exactly what would happen, and it did.

This time, it wasn’t just the Daily Mail comments section that pulled apart her look, it was everywhere.

On twitter, this post from Liz Kershaw got nearly 6k likes.

And oh look, it’s self-styled feminist Jean Hatchet (yes, she of the FiLiA dancefloor brawl).

And then there were the tweets like this that, intentionally or not, mirrored the Daily Mail’s ‘just sayin’ approach and led to more toxic takes on her look. “Oh we were just praising her! Why the pile on!”

And of course the comments came…

I could spend the rest of this beautiful July afternoon trawling the cesspit of social media for comment after comment and still not have space for them all…but…you get the idea.

My latest book asks why so many women hate themselves when they look in the mirror.

It asks why we find aging so hard and pour millions into creams, treatments and surgeries.

It asks why even younger women are now spending thousands on skincare and cosmetic procedures.

And this - this attitude to women that is everywhere - this is why.

Because, although the reality of this problem is constantly denied, it is an epidemic.

Social media has allowed people to comment anonymously and say things that they would perhaps not have the guts to say in real life.

But the attitudes are there. These people are real. They live next door, they are your friends and relatives, you pass them in the street. Maybe you are even married to them. And they think these thoughts. They have this view of women - that our bodies are disgusting and something to denigrate. That it’s ok to pull a woman apart, even on her wedding day or the day she walks into Downing Street, and judge her like a piece of meat rather than a living breathing person who has done ground-breaking things with her life.

I don’t think this just impacts us in terms of how we feel about our bodies, although that would be bad enough.

I think this deep misogyny is at the heart of violence against women.

Because if you truly feel it’s acceptable to dehumanise women by reducing them to sets of body parts you can pour scorn on, then you’re contributing to a wider cultural acceptance of misogyny of which violence is the ultimate manifestation.

It’s telling that ‘she looks like his mum’ was one of the most common insults used. How deep the agism and sexism runs in the idea that women who look older or show signs of maternity are the most repulsive, and the most ripe for mockery and derision. In reality, the pair are the exact same age - but find me a critique of Andy’s ‘dad bod’ and I’ll buy you a frock from VB herself.

Andy Burnham positions himself as a change-maker who isn’t afraid to tackle the biggest problems society faces. Let’s hope when he sees the comments about his wife he’ll realise just how deep the problem of misogyny runs, and finally address it. Because right now we live in a world where even the headline, ‘She looks incredible’, is an invitation to attack women and all they stand for.

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