Picture of asp snake

Why does it take a python slithering round a woman's body to raise a discussion on empowerment for the modern woman? - Column

It takes some finesse to wring a social statement out of a picture of Anthea Turner, lightly oiled, naked and entwined with a python. Undaunted, the Daily Telegraph had a go. The portrait, it opined, said "much about the nature and demands of modern celebrity". In addition, it noted that the photographer who shot the Tatler magazine cover story had summarised his work as "a salute to an empowered woman".

Back in neolithic times, from Ur to the Indus Valley, reptile-wrapped goddesses symbolised female submission, while the serpent represented male power. Switch to late-20th century iconography and the snake still gets the best lines.

Other "empowered women" have bowed to the "demands of modern celebrity" and, Eve-like, clasped a python to their bosoms for a photocall. Fiona Fullerton, Priscilla Presley and Melinda Messenger have subsequently faded from the public gaze. Monty - Miss Turner's snake and one of a stable of 50 celebrity slitherers - can, conversely, boast a CV crammed with commercials, sitcoms and a crawl-on part in a Bond movie.

The latest Eve is also struggling. Turner's Blue Peter career, built on doing things with yoghurt pots, was always less Eden than Eden Vale until she - then a Lottery presenter - attempted unsuccessfully, to pinch someone else's husband. Her rehabilitation strategy was, in itself, hardly shocking. Helen Mirren (at 50) and Jeanette Winterson also posed naked without provoking much comment. So what is different here?

Only that Turner's depressing calculation - that it is possible to counter misery, loneliness and a flagging career with the flash of a perfect body - appears to be correct. Anthea is "courageous," says the Times, particularly since she is 38: "an age at which even exhibitionists have developed some insecurity about their bottoms".

So there we are. The government reverts to male clubbery, not a single woman holds a top Foreign Office job, beleaguered female executives turn to drink, and it takes Anthea Turner's backside to open a debate on women's empowerment.

Is this a parable' of progress? In a minor way, yes. Shift back a few years to page three of the Daily Mirror, whose lightly clad occupants were beginning to offend the sensibilities of the then editor and, doubtless, the readers. A solution was found. The, pictures would stay, but staff writers would pen literary and erudite captions, drawing freely on, say, Graves or Gide or Golding, but sedulously avoiding all allusion to Gorgeous Gaynor's Gusset. The experiment was not a success. Page three girls were dumped.

A planned replacement, a supplement aimed at men and women, demanded subtler illustration. A television newcomer was chosen to feature in a cover story. Modestly engulfed in yards of tulle, Anthea Turner offered the antithesis of the exploited sex symbol. And now, aeons on, Turner is herself a page three girl. In the Daily Telegraph, moreover.

Though Turner also got a prominent slot in the tabloid papers, the tone of their reporting was less accommodating. Rather, it was almost universally censorious of a stunt deemed passe, unwise or tasteless. The sole exception was the Sun, hardly at liberty to cavil over "sexy Anthea doing the full monty with a python", given the sensibilities of Sexy Shae, still the sitting tenant of its third page.

There is a certain hypocrisy implicit in all this. In avoiding any hint of get-yer-kit-off salaciousness, the Telegraph must identify Turner's metamorphosis as an insight into the beleaguered public figure. (Memo to Harriet Harman: in need of an image rebuild? Simply dial Rent-An-Asp.) Likewise, the tabloids have it in for Anthea because of her husband-nicking credentials.

Even so, there has been a curious switch in reporting related to women. On the day Turner struck her liberated stance, Diane Clark was also freed.

The decision not to jail Clark, a brutalised woman who had stabbed her drunken husband to death, was a landmark judgement denoting a new judicial enlightenment. It made a spread in the Daily Mirror. The Telegraph, by contrast, appeared to find this story bereft of social significance, not to mention snakes. It consigned it to a few paragraphs at the bottom of a page.