There aren’t many world leaders one
could bear to look at without a shirt and I suppose the Canadian prime
minister, Justin Trudeau, is near the top of the list. Pictures of a young Trudeau,
leaning against a window sill with curly hair and dark glasses, are claimed to
have “broken the internet”, which is what we say now when a lot of people all
look at the same thing.
Trudeau looks a bit like Jim Morrison,
whom older readers will remember as the tragically good-looking lead singer of
the Doors. Despite sharing a first name and initials with another singer,
Justin Timberlake, Trudeau has sensibly avoided the competitive world of
showbiz and opted for the safer milieu of politics. It is part of his job to
meet other world leaders, most of them men, and even with his shirt on he outshines
just about every bloke he shares a stage with.
Trudeau prompts these swooning
reactions because he’s operating in a limited field. I’ve never liked the line
that politics is showbiz for ugly people, but beauty (especially male beauty)
isn’t the first thing most of us look for in a potential leader. That doesn’t
mean male politicians aren’t sometimes preposterously vain, a proposition
demonstrated every single time I look at Donald Trump’s hair, but
they aren’t used to being judged on their appearance in the way women are.
When Theresa May launched her bid to lead the
Conservative party and then became prime minister last
summer, she gave the impression that she’d planned every public appearance down
to the last detail. She’s been around long enough to know that it’s childishly
easy to distract supposedly serious political commentators with a pair of faux
leopard-skin shoes. Read the full story here
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