Are you (or someone you know) a victim of Fourth Prettiest Girl In The Playground syndrome?

This is a paid for post BUT the main chunk of it - the opinion bit - is free to read and sits on top of the paywall YOU’RE WELCOME

I have a theory about the poor response to Marie-France van Heel, wife of Andy Burnham, ref her arrival at Downing Street, which, mainly came from women, and was not terribly nice about her choice of dress, body, or general appearance.

First of all, of course, it’s nothing to do with her specifically - everything to do with women in general. I believe it’s a thing which happens every time a brand-new woman is suddenly, dramatically introduced to proceedings, one of whom we haven’t previously been aware.

When they just kinda land on us, almost as if from outer space.

Same as it is, when a new one suddenly turns up at the school gates in the midst of a term, or, starts working on reception at the exact point we thought we’d finally got our head round all the women in the company, or, becomes a regular in Pilates and has the good lycra and also seems to be semi pro at the practise and keeps taking our mat space, even though, technically, no one has mat spaces.

It’s as if we all go “F**KING GREAT! Just what we need. ANOTHER F**KING WOMAN! As if we haven’t got enough on our plates already, trying to feel ok about all the ones we already knew about.”

This, then, is what I think of as But I’m The Fourth Prettiest Girl In The Playground! syndrome. Sudden consciousness to Another F**king Woman necessitates a shake up in the existing Greater Hierarchy Or Women; you know - the one which obviously doesn’t really exist anywhere but in the darkest, least admirable, least feminist reaches of our collective imaginations, but which is, all the same, unfortunately, undeniably, definitely THERE.

Another F**king Woman can be terribly confronting, can’t she? Can send us all into frantic paroxysms of questioning our own really-very-shakeable sense of status – AKA our prettiness in the playground rating – because: has she, by dint of just, you know, arriving, displaced us? Has she knocked us down to Fifth Prettiest?

Is she better than us? Cleverer, more charismatic, hotter, funnier? Richer, better dressed, younger, or (arguably worse) older, but looks younger? Do men fancy her more than they fancy us? Is her house nicer? The whole system is f**ked in the time it takes her to walk up Downing Street for the first time in her new capacity as wife to the PM, so NOW WHAT?

Oh: I know, now what! We go straight into attack mode, of course! Attempt to dismantle the threat she poses our deepest sense of ourselves! And we do that by identifying and then trumpeting what we believe to be her physical flaws.

OMG she’s so X or Y! She really fancies herself even though she definitely shouldn’t! What’s she wearing? Why does she laugh like that? A bit of Botox wouldn’t go amiss, luv! OMG have you SEEN how much work she’s had done?

Et cetera.

We do this, even though Fourth Prettiest Girl In The Playground Syndrome isn’t even really about looks. Or: it isn’t only about looks. It’s about power and status. It’s just that, were women are concerned, looks is shorthand for all that.

We’ll rattle on like this for a bit, until we get used to her being around, until we realise she probably isn’t about to steal our husband, boyfriend, wife or whatever, until we realise, maybe she IS better at pilates than us, or, has a nicer house, or, now occupies the coveted position of Fourth Prettiest In The Playground, thus knocking us down to the ignominy of Fifth, but, it’s actually sort of OK. It doesn’t mean anything seismic. The hierarchy settles…

Until Another F**king Women shows up.

I know it well, because it kind of happened to me, when I first got a bit of writer profile, aged about 30. My byline pic started appearing pretty regularly in The Observer, and I could pretty much feel it – almost hear it, certainly read it, in the comments, and on the blogs – all those women readers, going: “F**k’s sake! Another f**king woman!”. And oh! How they focussed on what I looked like (*the failings of it) while ignoring the words I wrote. I called it: “Being seen, but not read.” And it always perplexed me because I thought I was so much better at writing, than I was, being looked at. That was the point of me, right? Professionally at least? The writing?

Apparently not.

It subsided over time, because , I think, there was kind of a general resigning to the idea I really wasn’t going to stop and go away (this being the only way I knew, know, have EVER known, to make money) plus, I didn’t steal any of the readers husbands or wives off them, so FINE.

Nonetheless, it was quite the shock.

Which it shouldn’t have been, because, while I’d LOVE to tell you, I’ve only ever been on the righteous receiving end of Fourth Prettiest Girl syndrome – so nice to be the poor, sad, brave victim, not the evil perp – of course, that wouldn’t be true. I’ve felt it! When some new writer chick suddenly gets the full force of the spotlight, the burgeoning profile (which always seems like it’s out of nowhere, and thus somehow, unfair; yet of course, it never is. It’s only ever foreshadowed by a lot of graft). When some staggeringly lovely new ingenue stumbles into the foreground, all eyes and legs and borrowed couture. When it turns out the new PM’s wife is platinum blonde (but like: breezily, carelessly so? See how she scrapes it back into a ponytail?) with a fondness for red lips and big hoops and a Victoria Beckham dress some people didn’t get, but only because they’re not as Fashion as she is (and deep down, they know that, know she wins out there).

It’s like a great disturbance in the force. As if millions of voices suddenly cried out: BUT I’M THE FOURTH PRETTIEST GIRL IN THE PLAYGROUND!

ME!

NOT HER!

Yeah.

We probs need to get a lid on that, eh?

Now. Fancy a little light shopping to cheer you up?

I had not heard of this brand,

After the pay wall, an insanely good pair of trousers, a perfect necklace, the trainers you will either obsess over or totally hate, a serum without which, I can no longer live (on discount) and the first great jacket of the new season.