“Are We Just Jealous?” Victoria Moss Unpacks the Sexist, Ageist Commentary Around Marie-France van Heel’s Victoria Beckham Dress

As Victoria Starmer left Downing Street, stage left, on Monday morning, you couldn’t help but see the smile on her face as one of relief. Ever since her husband assumed the role of Prime Minister, every outfit she’s put on has been reported on and even highlighted as part of a pay-for access scandal (Labour donor Lord Ali had as it turned out, paid for her Me + Em haul). Walking into that viper’s nest, where you will be painstakingly scrutinised in the hope of finding fault, is an unenviable prospect, no matter how prestigious your new address might be. Mrs Starmer left Downing Street wearing Karen Millen, chastened perhaps by two years of headlines.

And so it was when Marie-France Van Heel stepped out of the car at Buckingham Palace that you felt an inevitable intake of breath, a new woman in a new dress, fresh meat for the rubber-necks to pick apart.

For what it’s worth, my first thought was “move over Pippa Middleton, her bum looks amazing in that.” Then I noted the tell-tale cut of a Victoria Beckham dress, the gently-ruched-style with loose sleeves that she’s made a lucrative signature piece. A demure length, a flattering neckline in a pretty summer-y colour. A proper British designer—smart!—but, oh god, they’re going to go after her for the price of it (£850).

Van Heel was of course instantly pilloried, with comments over the fit of her dress which curved over her small tummy. Her body being of more interest than the fact that this new high-profile representative of our country is a Cambridge-educated marketing director, who sits on the boards of charities, mother of three, who some 16 years ago, as a carrier of the BRCA1 gene, underwent a double mastectomy in order to lessen her chances of developing the breast cancer which killed her sister at 39. A woman who, through her own hard work, can clearly afford to buy her own clothes, from wherever she wants—shouldn’t we champion her agency and success? Are we just jealous? Must we be so predictably reductive?

But, given the lifestyle-section reaction to her husband’s appointment, there was little more to expect. Endless click-bait has been churned out debating the ‘health’ ramifications of the “Burnham belly”, spinning off into fitness and diet tips for how to get rid of your dad-fat. I know we want equality, but extending body-shaming to men feels somewhat to miss the point.

We live in a hyper-visual age, inundated with excessive amounts of imagery of which the demand for perfection is so high that we are happy to be seduced by AI influencers, selling us their ‘wellness’ tips and tricks. The fleshy reality of human bodies is hidden from us in the age of social media, perhaps that makes us more accusatory when confronted with the figure of a 56-year-old woman, who is not asking us to get ready with her, or showing us a skincare routine, but simply accompanying her husband on the biggest day of his career.

It’s all very well to scream ‘patriarchy!’ when women are compounded by the rigid beauty standards we cannot expel ourselves from, but in reality it is often other women appraising and admonishing each other when it comes to fashion.

As much as we might say we dress for each other, rather than men, we also hack into each other when we feel someone has transgressed the red lines of how we insist women should appear in public. Small, obviously. If your body has shape that should be smoothed down and covered appropriately. No visible belly-shape, please! No breasts outlined in a bra! Hair must be perfect, makeup there, but not too there. We complain about being forced to live in this aesthetic straitjacket of expectation, but sometimes it is there of our own volition.

If we want impressive, inspiring women to take up space in the public eye, we seriously need to rethink how we treat them once they are there. Are we all but one awkwardly angled photograph away from being viral hate-bait? We admonish celebrities for being too thin or too fat to the point that the slither of space we allow bodies to exist in is forever shifting. An impossible space to fit. No one can win this game, and aren’t we all just exhausted by playing it?

We might cry to be seen as we are, irrespective of our bodies, but we still fail to give ourselves or each other that same grace. If we want to be taken seriously as people who do things other than get dressed, we might just need to back track on the back chat.