“It wasn’t quite stilettos dawn,” read the story’s tease line.
But given that the story had nothing to do with shoes, online commentators cried foul that the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper was — again — using sexism to sell papers.
“Never mind Brexit, who won Legs-it!” shouted the headline on the British tabloid’s print edition on Tuesday, alongside a photo of the female leaders of the UK and Scotland.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon had posed for the photo after a meeting to discuss Britain’s impending exit from the European Union and Scotland’s desire for its own referendum.
The Daily Mail has not yet responded to a CNN request for comment.
Twitter animus
Politicians immediately slammed the headline’s sexist tone.
“It’s 2017. Two women’s decisions will determine if United Kingdom continues to exist,” Opposition MP Yvette Cooper tweeted. “And front page news is their lower limbs. Obviously.”
Her Labour colleague Harriet Harman called it “moronic.”
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn also took a dim view of the editorial choice, saying that the paper’s sexism “must be consigned to history.”
Journalists also criticized the tone-deaf headline.
“This is how the Mail talks about the UK Prime Minister and the Scottish First Minister in 2017,” said one, Olivia Solon, a tech reporter for the Guardian newspaper.
The left-leaning publication’s former editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, highlighted the ridiculousness of judging leaders on their physical attributes by tweeting “Nice pins” above a famous picture of wartime leaders Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin at the Yalta conference in 1945.
Other social media users were more acerbic. “Hello, Daily Mail? 1972 called. They want their casually sexist & demeaning front page headline back,” said one Twitter user.
Another drew comparisons between the tabloid media’s approach to women and last year’s presidential campaign, in which Hillary Clinton struggled against sexist tropes in her failed White House bid.
“Ignoring an actual story in an attempt to demean & humiliate successful women..dated, unimaginative & so, so boring,” tweeted a user identified as Chloe Wood.
It was noted in media reports that the paper’s Scottish edition will use a different headline: “Oh so frosty! Secrets of Nicola and PM’s talk-in.”
Brexit meeting
May and Sturgeon were meeting ahead of the UK government’s plans to trigger Article 50 on Wednesday, the formal announcement of a separation from the EU.
Sturgeon, Scotland’s leader, has complained that plans to activate the clause have gone ahead without consultation with the Scottish Parliament, or the other constituent governments of the UK.
Lawmakers in the capital Edinburgh are set to vote Tuesday on proposals for a new Scottish referendum. Sturgeon has made plain her view that Britain is heading for a “bad deal” on Brexit. In the June vote, 62% of Scots voted against leaving the EU.
The Daily Mail strongly supported Brexit in the run-up to last June’s referendum, when the majority of the British public voted to leave the EU.
Politically incorrect
The British tabloid press has a long history of regressive editorial practices.
Perhaps the most obvious example is the Sun’s Page 3 — a daily feature of topless models launched 1970 by media mogul Rupert Murdoch. It was dropped in 2015.
The Daily Mail is one of the UK’s most commercially successful tabloids, and its website — churning out upwards of 1,600 stories a day — is the most-read online newspaper in the world.
A prominent feature of its hugely successful Mail Online portal is what is colloquially known as the “sidebar of shame,” — a lascivious rundown of short pieces, heavily illustrated with photographs. It usually features celebrity news, focusing on women and their bodies through stories about diets and bikini choices.
