The big fat problem with saying Leigh Sales looks great on TV. (Even though she totally does.)

When Leigh Sales beamed onto television sets across the nation last Saturday night, she nailed election coverage that would turn many of us to water.

The skill it takes to negotiate a revolving panel over seven hours cannot be overstated. She expertly anchored a live election night of many moving parts; seats decided by a margin thinner than a Cruskit; Antony Green’s massive ballot brain spitting out algorithms; analysis for days.

And yet we can’t help ourselves.

It was a fact mentioned furtively in the offices on Monday. Leigh looked radiant. Chloe Shorten was a bombshell in red. Penny Wong should wear more eye-makeup, because it looked amazing.

And here’s the dilemma: Are we all bad feminists when we point out how good these women look?

I know the refrain: ‘No. Feminism is about choice. We choose what to wear, how to present ourselves to the world. We can take compliments and dish them out because part of being a woman is feeling good and celebrating beauty.’

I feel like I've heard that before. Like when Kim Kardashian posts a nude selfie and labels it empowering. Or when Fergie puts out a video clip of gyrating mothers in bikinis under the guise of Women We'd Like To Follow.

C’mon people. In a world where so much is about beauty and looks, on a night where it is all about the brains and the politics and the strategy, why can’t the value be on the job they’re doing?

I raised it on the Mamamia Out Loud podcast this week, and the response was, well, kinda disheartening.

It’s unrealistic, Mia Freedman tells me.  Television is a visual medium. Something she found out early, when she would perform blistering cultural analysis on panels and people would tell her afterwards, "I loved your necklace."

She now knows the trick:

You can’t change the world overnight, Kate De Brito tells me. Besides, humans are visual creatures. We spend all our lives gravitating towards beautiful things: Beautiful food and beautiful landscapes, so why should beautiful humans be any different? Why can't we appreciate when someone is visually attractive?

Still, I’m not the only one wrestling with it. Mia ran into Sarah Ferguson, the Gold Walkley-award winning journalist well-known for her withering interviews with power-brokers.

She had interviewed the leaders of both parties recently, and Mia leaned in, and asked her quietly;

“Can I just say, you looked gorgeous? Is it OK to say that, or is it objectifying?”

"Please," she said. "My night's been made!" was the response.

I'm guilty of doing it all the time. Heck, I loved Jesinta Campbell's Logie's dress, I devour fashion pages of mags, I covet Mia Freedman's lipstick and I watch (mostly in horror) The Real Housewives. I appreciate you, Leigh, FIRST for your brain and THEN for your white jacket and good hair colour. (Agh, I squirm even writing that bit).

I'm a contradiction, because it's hard, isn't it. SO hard.  Saying out loud that Leigh Sales/Penny Wong/ Hillary Clinton/ Sam Armytage/ women in general look gorgeous on TV seems fun, innocent even, but it's  loaded. And little by little, it just continues to perpetuate that a woman's value is placed squarely on how she looks.

So, we asked Leigh. What does she think? Does she feel objectified? And she responded in the most Leigh way possible:

"I don't think it's in any way anti-feminist to compliment a woman on her looks,  especially when it's in the context of also noting her professional skill, achievements or character." she said.

Ok. Glad we sorted that one out.

Anyway, that's just what I've been thinking this week.

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