Pretty as a picture?

Michelle Obama and Samantha Cameron.

During the 1950s and 1960s, staged photo opportunities were everywhere. But in the last ten years or so, they seem to have come back to our newspapers and television screens. During the Obamas’ recent trip to England, we saw the President and Prime Minister playing table tennis for no reason whatsoever, flipping burgers at a military barbecue, and, of course, that much-analysed shot of the First Lady and Samantha Cameron delicately perched on the kitchen sofa at Number 10.

Naturally, people want to see their leaders as ‘real people’ as well as performing their political duties - it’s all part of the current trend for reaching out to a public that often feel far removed from political processes. For the families of servicemen who routinely risk their lives fighting wars far away in the Middle East, seeing the Prime Minister rolling up his sleeves and humbly preparing hot dogs may have said something important about a wish to connect on a personal level with the men and women that usually appear as numbers on paper in cabinet meetings. As much as these may be staged events – and we’re all pretty sure that they are – they occasionally do achieve their object in giving the public a chance to identify with powerful, prominent personalities.

Call me po-faced, but the snap of Samantha Cameron and Michelle Obama sitting like two “Stepford wives” in a kitchen struck a rather jarring note for me. I can accept the intention behind the image – these are two women whose husbands have a necessary political relationship, and here we can see them socialising normally the way anybody else would. The thing is, I can’t believe that that is how they socialise.

The prim and proper lady on the right is Mrs. Cameron, until quite recently Creative Director of Smythson, a brand with a turnover of £20 million per year, which she is credited with having turned around from being a fusty stationer to a modern, fashionable brand. Michelle Obama, sitting next to her, legs demurely pressed together in the well-appointed kitchen, is an eminently successful lawyer and public servant; an assistant to the Mayor of Chicago, Dean of Student Services at Chicago University, and an executive on the board of Chicago Hospitals who, until her husband’s election, earned roughly double his salary. Considering this, I struggle not to be mean-spirited about this snap that seems to paint them as two air-headed women discussing cupcakes while their husbands head political negotiations. Michelle Obama spends much of her time attempting to inspire ambitious young women that they can achieve just as much as men, that the sky is the limit, and she does all this as an admired and well-liked public figure. In light of this, why reduce her to the level of a mere political appendage? Samantha Cameron does not occupy a political position of such consequence as the First Lady of the United States, but is a well-regarded businesswoman who, by all accounts, has different but commensurate abilities to her high-flying husband.

There is a section of media that aims to portray the wives of politicians as old-fashioned stereotypes that cook, clean, gossip and support their husbands. Hillary Clinton caused a furore in 1992 when she reacted to a reporter’s questions about her ability to be a wife and mother while having a political career. She told the journalist: “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfil my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.” Needless to say, there was uproar that the wife of a presidential candidate was seen by some to be behaving condescendingly to stay-at-home moms. I don’t believe that she was: what Clinton meant was that as a successful woman in her own right she felt she should not have to apologise for that success. Reporters should not demand that she wring her hands, shake her head and admit that her line of work made her a bad mother. She did not feel herself to be one, and was naturally defensive at such an implication, as any good mother would be.

The problem with this photograph is that it exemplifies this bid to show the true character behind the political facade. While for the Prime Ministers and Presidents, that’s all about laughing and joking, playing games and flipping burgers… for the women, the story is rather different. Some parts of the media believe that for women, the truth we want to see is ladies sitting together in kitchens and nattering. A photograph such as this only serves to diminish their achievements while pushing an unhelpful stereotype. A picture may speak a thousand words.

This picture generates a deafening silence with regard to the intelligence, ambition, success and inspiring qualities of these two women.

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