Fashion show picture

So, Gordon Brown is a sex god? Let's hope he takes his elevation in good part. Women, witness Cherie and Hillary, have to endure far worse - fashion style

Glenda Jackson wears eyeliner. Gosh. And lipgloss. This has come as a shock to those who thought her make-up bag contained nothing fancier than a sheet of wet-and-dry sandpaper and a corn plaster.

"What is it with Glenda?" a male Lib Dem colleague demands to know. "Has she got a fella?" Oh, I shouldn't think so. Just a new awareness that, in politics, style is everything.

I hear Ann Widdecombe has taken up waxing, on the grounds that no one wants armpits resembling Denis Healey's eyebrows. (You can do it at home, girls. Just heat up a handful of Milk Tray caramels, apply in an even layer and peel off.)

Only kidding. One week on, I am still slightly unhinged by the fallout from the Cherie and Hillary fashion show. It wasn't so much the strain of comparing the merits of grey Ronit Zilkha (divine) and powder-blue Oscar de la Renta (naff) or absorbing the fact that shiny tights (oh, Hillary) give one's legs the look of a brace of sausages.

It was more the venom directed at two political spouses enduring an inevitably awkward day in the public gaze. Hillary got the brunt of it; in particular from the Daily Mail's Ann Leslie, who - quite without evidence - constructed a picture of someone so soured by resentment that every personal disappointment and perceived failure was distilled into a poisonous envy focused on a younger, prettier and thinner-calved rival.

Somewhere in all this vitriol lay a warped feminist message. If you give up your glittering career, acquire a reputation of being difficult and devious, and (the mortal sin) stick with a husband accused of sexual harassment, then you will pay the price. In forfeiting the respect of all women, you must submit to being derided by more virtuous sisters for your puddingy face and flawed body.

Not only does this paradoxical message contain a sinister warning for Cherie Booth (fail or falter, and you get the treatment, too). It suggests, absurdly, that women are driven by a personalised, claws-out rivalry from which men are deemed blissfully free.

No one would suggest that Tony and Robin and Gordon, much as they may scrutinise one another's aggression levels, oratorical qualities and range of strategic thinking, would presume to note, let alone gossip over, such trivial details as cut of shirt, diameter of thigh or shade of panstick make-up.

That does not indicate lofty indifference. It implies male solipsism. Men may agonise over their own fatness or baldness. They may indulge their vanities and treasure their Follett tips for looking great on Newsnight. But that's private.

Or at least it was until the Guardian, in an heroic attempt to drag men into the game of appearance politics, produced a thesis on how Gordon Brown is really the sex god of Westminster.

You may think that, in the Guardian's words, "neo-classical indigenous [sic] growth theory", chewed fingernails and a fondness for pounding the treadmill fail to constitute a Dionysian cocktail. You would be right. The sum of Brown's political acumen and Hollywood-style charisma adds up to something short of Brad Pitt the Elder.

I hope, however, that he is gracious enough to take in good part the Guardian's effort. Even allowing for an undertow of irony, the description of him ("a Gallagher-jawed enigma . . . the silent, brooding Mr Darcy of new Labour") served as an antidote to the drivel directed at women in such overload as to suggest a burgeoning trend.

That, at any rate, is the view of the Oxford University Women's Labour Club, to whom I spoke this week. They were depressed at - in no particular order - the rise of the Spice Girls, the decline of feminist theory and the news coverage devoted to Hillary's tights, Cherie's satin lapels and, in particular, Blair's Babes.

As they said, here we are with 101 female Labour MPs - supposedly the critical mass - now installed at Westminster. Where, even allowing for Harriet Harman's new task force, is the evidence that women are now accepted as real engineers of change, whose appearance and image are not of the slightest consequence?

Short of mentioning Mo Mowlam removing her wig in a meeting, I was hard put to say.