Big-boob prejudice: does it exist?

Before she arrived like a gust of modern cliches at the Brownlow Medal dinner – tall, tanned, young, buxom, platinum blonde, wearing a crystal spangled gown split to the waist and on the arm of her elderly fiance – Brynne Gordon was nobody in particular. She had a certain exotic cachet in some circles, mostly in Sydney and Los Angeles, and had been variously described as a ”socialite” or ”personal trainer”, but that was it.By Tuesday morning, however, Brynne Gordon and her frock, and particularly her large semi-exposed breasts, were everywhere: in the papers, on TV and radio, being discussed on blogs and webzines. Suddenly, she was water-cooler topic du jour as the buzz around her ”fashion faux pas”, her ”train wreck” of a dress, her ”disgusting outfit” got louder and more vicious with every talkback and weblog minute.

This was a runaway media phenomenon with full public participation and nobody – not even this reporter, who was loath to exploit either Gordon’s vulnerability if she was unaware of the effect her dress would have, or her cunning if she was – had a choice but to play along.

We played into the hands of a society that, in many ways, has become as bitchy and judgmental as a teenage girl, especially about women. Gordon simply delivered herself, stripped (half-literally) and stamped like fodder for the mill. ”I think I looked beautiful,” she told reporters on Tuesday, then on Wednesday, then again on Thursday, as her crystal-encrusted breasts loomed larger and larger in the media: ”I think I looked fantastic.”

But this is irrelevant. The question is how did we think she looked? The majority response was that she was ostentatious, over-exposed, tacky. Not like us. Thank God we were perfect, otherwise how could we justify our collective gall and criticism?

Amid the Brownlow’s arrival traffic of footballers’ wives and girlfriends in glamorous goddess gowns and demure prom-style frocks, Gordon was an eye-popping one-off and we in the media jostled and shouted and queued for her attention a little more loudly, a little more desperately, than for any other woman’s. We knew, the instant Gordon arrived, there was more mileage in a bad frock than a good one. And how right we were.

Like most of the footballers and male guests accompanying their wives and girlfriends on Monday night, Geoffrey Edelsten, a smooth-faced, diminutive 66-year-old with home-dyed brown hair, stepped out of Gordon’s limelight the instant the first camera lens pointed towards her. On the sidelines he proudly confided details (later found to be skewed) about his fiance’s gown; for example, that it was ”originally made for supermodel Heidi Klum”. Gordon, with her youth, ample sexual assets and ”supermodel” frock, was also an effective marketing campaign for Edelsten’s virility and international connections. Whether the couple anticipated some of the media and public’s cruder responses to their appearance, we’re unlikely to ever know.

Along the Brownlow blue carpet, other women were also performing well as their partners’ trophy WAGs. However, only those WAGS with comparatively small breasts usually risk the same level of flesh exposure as Gordon did, and, therein lies the point.

In 2004, when Rebecca Twigley (how could any story about Australian red carpets proceed without mention of her?) appeared in a gown more revealing than Gordon’s by at least 10 centimetres of ribcage and belly, what public shock/horror there was was dunked in a sea of approval. Like many WAGS who instinctively or proactively play to media expectations, Twigley was ”forgiven” for that unusual level of exposure, due to the media and the public’s approval of her slim, small-breasted figure, her pretty face, wide smile and resulting lack of overt sensuality.

It’s a double-D cup standard that Susie Elelman, WIN television presenter and regular butt of public criticism for her own ”fashion faux pas” knows only too well.

”If [Brynne Gordon] were one of those teensy weensy young women in barely a bit of cloth, they’d say, ‘Doesn’t she look elegant, doesn’t she look knockout?’ ” Elelman complains. ”I thought she looked elegant; she didn’t show anything that was inappropriate. She looked beautiful. But, I suppose people would expect me to say that.”

Elelman’s own couturier, the late Christopher Essex, designed some provocative Logies gowns for her over the years, including one featuring a see-through top with lace ”foliage” barely covering her nipples.

It’s obvious, after 20 minutes on the phone with Elelman, that she was never the hapless victim of a voyeuristic media and a bitchy public. Despite being regularly derided for her red carpet choices, she rarely strayed from her overtly sexual style.

“OH, YES, I’ve been named a ‘serial offender’ and I cry myself to sleep every night over that!” she says, hooting with laughter. ”The thing is, we’re not 17, 18 or 21 any more. We’re not like these young girls who’d look good in a gunny sack.”

The ”glamour” of flesh exposure has been judged and redefined so often by public debate in recent years that when a woman such as Brynne Gordon challenges the ratio of flesh and frock, she is instantly deemed to be stupid, or a media strategist. But the balance is trickier to master than it looks. A certain level of sensuality is expected, particularly from young female celebrities with box office credibility and, in the case of events such as the Brownlow, from wives and girlfriends aiming, consciously or not, to reflect their partner’s status and sexuality.

But how much is too much or too little?

On the recent timeline since the explosive media popularity of red carpets, from the Brownlow to the Oscars, there are thousands of images of women negotiating – cleverly or naively – the tangle of psycho-social issues linked to their choice of frock. More often the issues are concerned with their worth as sexual beings. (Little wonder the parallel explosion in numbers of professional stylists.)

Most memorable of those who learnt early how to manipulate the media with their body and frocks, however, is surely British model and actress Liz Hurley. Her appearance at the 1994 premiere of Four Weddings and a Funeral in a black Versace gown, plunged to her waist at the front, with wide side splits secured with gold safety pins, was potentially as shocking as Gordon’s appearance on Monday night.

But, Hurley’s breasts were a sensual ”man’s handful” B-cup, her couturier Gianni Versace, her boyfriend the classy Brit heartthrob Hugh Grant, and her city was London, city of sophisticated risk takers. Her gown on its own might have conveyed a similar, desperate message to Gordon’s, had it not been tempered by its context.

Indeed, Brynne Gordon had more front than Myer, but Liz Hurley had more front that Harrods.