Scotland’s leader is not amused by ‘Legs-it.’
Speaking at the eighth annual Women in the World Summit in New York City, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon addressed the controversial cover of the right-leaning British tabloid The Daily Mail. The headline of the story—published the day after U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon met to discuss a second Scottish independence referendum—reads: “Never mind Brexit, who won Legs-it!”
“I tried not to overreact,” Sturgeon told Summit organizer Tina Brown about the story, which goes into minute detail about each woman’s limbs (The Scottish leader’s legs were described as “undeniably more shapely” and “more flirty, tantalizingly crossed.”)
While The Daily Mail said the article was meant to be taken lightly, Sturgeon called it “a vivid illustration…of how much more [women] still have to achieve.”
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The first minister then went on to talk about the media’s repeated focus on her and the British Prime Minister’s body parts. In particular, she spoke about one photograph from the two leaders’ first meeting, in which the focus was on their shoes.
“I love shoes, but this tendency to reduce women to body parts, to what we wear, to what our hair looks like is nothing we can just laugh off,” she said.
