‘Optics”, like its close brethren “toxic” and “woke”, belongs to a dismal suite of words that contribute to the modern idiom of mob outrage on social media. These words are detached from their original environment and made to perform the task of harnessing indignation. Thus, if an action isn’t illegal or even unethical but seems questionable nonetheless, its “optics” are deemed to be bad.
Eva Bolander, the lord provost of Glasgow, now finds herself in the crosshairs of these aggressive optics. Last week, it was revealed that she had run up a bill of £8,000 spread over a period of more than two years on a number of items of clothing and personal grooming including dresses, lipstick, shoes and underwear. This has elicited a vindictive and tawdry response designed to cause maximum humiliation with a careful measure of titillation because, well… she’s a woman and a woman’s choice of foundation garments is so much more tantalising than men’s and thus worthy of exposure.
Bolander is a new Glaswegian, who visited from her native Stockholm 25 years ago and never returned. She became enchanted with the city, raised a family and involved herself in local politics and public service in appreciation of the warmth and affection shown to her.
“People Make Glasgow” is the city’s marketing slogan and some people, it seems, like to make Glasgow hostile. The lynch mob that targeted her used deeply offensive and sexist insults, comparing her to Imelda Marcos who, with her husband, Ferdinand, presided over a brutal, corrupt and oppressive dictatorship in the Philippines.
Every detail of Bolander’s purchases was listed, right down to her hairdressing, nail treatments and cosmetics. The office of lord provost also carries the duties of the Queen’s lord lieutenant in Glasgow and as such she must embark on hundreds of appointments a year, often requiring three changes of clothes in a day. The office carries a small annual personal allowance of £5,000 in recognition of her role in welcoming visitors to Glasgow and being its public face to the world. Her spending was thus legal and appropriate in respect of the role we expect her to perform on our behalf. Yet, by also being a woman who in her bearing and appearance likes to convey a hint of elan, she was trussed up and fed to the hyenas.
Glasgow likes to proclaim its virtues loudly and to dress sharply. Perhaps acknowledging the poverty and deprivation that cloak many of its outlying neighbourhoods, it feels compelled to look good as a means of projecting confidence. It is a diva city that likes to convey the impression that it lives on the edge and like there is no tomorrow. Many of us who were born here and live here are shameless divas, too, in our conduct and retail choices.
Much of this masks deep insecurity and a need to please. It’s who we are, though, and how we choose to roll. Bolander’s spending choices from her civic allowance are entirely in keeping with the spirit of this city and she should feel no shame about them.
They also pale when compared with the egregious extravagance of several of her predecessors in this role. This includes one panjandrum who took his spouse on an eye-watering assortment of global peregrinations on the public purse. Another travelled first class on so many flights that she could have qualified for membership of the Prince Andrew lounge. Bolander was compared unfavourably with her predecessor, Sadie Docherty, who purportedly elected not to dip into her civic allowance. Docherty could certainly afford not to avail herself of the city’s largesse. In 2012, her husband, Willie, a former senior executive in Glasgow city council’s arm’s-length body City Building, secured a substantial payoff and was immediately re-employed in an equally rewarding post by a firm part-owned by neighbouring North Lanarkshire council.
Let’s speak plainly here. At the heart of this story is old-fashioned sexism of the nastiest sort. Women are judged on their appearance much more than men. Here, newspapers continue to mock women in public life if they are pictured wearing the same frock twice, appear to have gained weight or exhibit any signs of physical wear and tear.
And spare me the fake concern for the feelings of people in disadvantaged communities. The people who belong to these communities appreciate it when public figures look as if they’ve made an effort when they visit a church hall or preside at the launch of a community project. At these occasions, male politicians can get away with wearing the same suit as last week – after all, these come in only three colours: shiny black, sleet grey or egg-speckled blue. Women are never afforded such latitude in their personal grooming.
Predictably, Tory politicians also rushed to join the frenzy over the lord provost’s retail choices. Laughably, some of them were touring council estates last week lamenting a bin crisis brought on by their party’s one-sided austerity campaign against these neighbourhoods, resulting in cuts to public services.
The value of having a confident and smart European citizen as your city’s main representative as it seeks to promote itself as an outward-facing international metropolis in the post-Brexit era simply cannot be calculated. Perhaps they’d prefer her to turn up looking like a bag of washing, the favoured style of the prime minister of the UK. At £4,000 a year, the bill for looking and feeling good for Glasgow is a modest one.
• Kevin McKenna is an Observer columnist
