Forget your skinny female catwalk models and film stars, according to the Equalities Minister Lynn Featherstone the flame haired voluptuous size 14 star of ‘Mad Men’, Christina Hendricks, is the one to emulate.
The minister has called Hendricks, who plays the sexy siren Joan Harris in the series, an “absolutely fabulous” physical role model for girls. Something echoed by Esquire magazine’s female readers who voted the Mad Men actress the ‘sexiest woman alive” in May.
Lynn Featherstone (who has been voted the most fanciable MP herself) is a campaigner against the “overexposure” of ultra thin models and the use of airbrushing techniques that then portray “totally unachievable body stereotypes”.
“Christina Hendricks is absolutely fabulous. We need more of these role models. There is such a sensation when there is a curvy role model. It shouldn’t be so unusual.” said the minister.
Hendricks herself seems to have attributed this to her Mad Men character’s confidence and feistiness. “They like to see a woman standing up for herself, especially in this atmosphere in 1962. Joan’s sassy. She snaps back. Men love her because she’s in touch with her sexuality and femininity. The men in the office can play with her a little bit. They can tease her, and she’s not going to be in the bathroom crying later”. She also gives old fashioned advice to men out to woo a woman to “stand up, open a door, offer a jacket ….. it makes us feel important”. That’ll have the feminists turning purple.
The Equalities Minister also points out that the advertising industry is potentially breaking its own code by retouching pictures because inaccurate, misleading and distorted information then gets published. “Magazines regularly mislead their readers by publishing distorted images that have been secretly airbrushed and altered” she said.
