The 82-year-old gentleman leaned over the table and declared: ‘If I was 40 years younger I’d be asking you on a date… you’re an attractive woman, if you don’t mind me saying.’
Though this was a professional lunch and we had met only once before, as a married mother of four in her mid-40s, I did not mind him saying this at all.
I will take any compliments that come my way at this point, whether that is a ‘nice outfit!’, a wolf whistle from a short-sighted builder or a dentist telling me my molars are still in good shape. A compliment is a lovely thing – a free and easy way of boosting someone’s self-esteem. Mark Twain once noted he could ‘live on a good compliment for two weeks’.
Alas, though, the art of complimenting – specifically male to female – has become a minefield, as discovered by golf legend Gary Player last week. The 90-year-old was about to be interviewed by Sky Sports presenter Anna Jackson when he looked towards the camera crew and said: ‘No wonder you’re smiling, working with this good-looking chick…’
While Jackson herself seemed unfazed – pivoting with a brief, ‘Well, Mr Player, what an introduction that is’ – some viewers were left frothing with fury.
‘Old creep!’ raged one. ‘Made my skin crawl,’ tutted another. ‘The worrying thing,’ came a whimper on social media, ‘is many people will think that type of behaviour is absolutely fine.’ Damn the patriarchy for emboldening this nonagenarian to use the rampantly sexist and demeaning term ‘chick’!
News outlets reported on Player’s ‘gaffe’ as though calling a woman good-looking slings him in the same bracket as uber-perv Harvey Weinstein.
But what, exactly, made this ‘creepy’? Is it that Player was talking to the unseen camera crew, thus belittling the journalist? Is it the power dynamic – he a famous golfer, she a less well-known young woman?
Or is it that some people are simply desperate to find offence in normal, jokey interactions?
It is moments like these which make me feel like the modern world is a strange and alien land: a land in which we have taken leave of our senses and lost sight of the simple pleasure of banter, compliments and mildest-of-the-mild flirtation.
The MeToo movement which exploded in 2017 did a lot of good. It meant horrors like Weinstein were banged up for a long time. It allowed women who had endured genuine sex abuse and harassment to have their voices heard.
But it also had a chilling effect on more normal interactions, casting compliments as creepy come-ons and banter as the thin end of the harassment wedge.
When the MeToo spotlight swung around to Westminster, and tales abounded of predatory politicians, I was approached to write about my own ‘MeToo’ horror stories. Having worked in politics for ten years – five in the Houses of Parliament, five in 10 Downing Street – surely I must have some dirt? An MP placing his hand on my knee? A cabinet minister making me shudder? I scratched my head. Nope.
That’s not to say I didn’t get remarks on my appearance from some of the Tories I worked with over the years. George Osborne once complimented me on a new hairdo (which was actually a hairpiece). David Cameron said I was a doppelganger for Kylie Minogue’s drummer (who I assumed was female). Boris Johnson observed that I had eyes like ‘bisected Maltesers’ (which I think was a compliment).
Coming from people I liked, I took all this as amusing and non-threatening chatter. But how might a female aide react today? Tears and tribunals? Best stick to talking about the weather, chaps.
One slightly iffy exchange came when I was writing speeches in No 10. As I departed a meeting with a couple of colleagues, a member of the House of Lords in his 60s asked me: ‘How do such great speeches come out of such a small body?’
Far from being outraged, my workmates and I fell into the corridor to explode with laughter. It was a cringeworthy thing to say but I think the old cove was aiming at a genuine compliment.
Calling such awkward flattery ‘harassment’ is like calling someone brushing past you ‘assault’. It is not only absurd, it belittles the real thing. I’m not saying women should sit back and take it while male bosses make explicit comments about their bodies.
But the pendulum has swung so far the other way that we are killing the simple pleasures of flattery and workplace banter stone dead. All this has made many men terrified of joking with a woman, lest they unintentionally cross the line from cheeky to creepy and face global censure for it, a la Gary Player.
Some MeToo zealots might ask: who cares if a few old ‘dinosaurs’ are forced to filter themselves, if it makes women feel more comfortable?
But frankly, when conversation between the sexes has to be sanitised to the point of dullness, when we lose some of the joking and banter that lightens everyday life, it’s all of us who lose out.
