Laura Craik on Pippa Middleton's honeymoon jog

Laura Craik on men’s fashion fails, honeymoon no-nos and female modesty
Laura Craik8 June 2017

I type this with tanned hands, for I have been on holiday. Twice. Just in case you missed it on Instagram. No, really, have a look. The pics are as dreary and irritating to all except my immediate family as everyone else’s holiday pics. They’re also as painstakingly curated. Although it wasn’t just the mosquito bites and family arguments that were edited out. It was the menswear.

Every time I tried to snap a pretty view, a man would stroll into the frame, in shorts festooned with lobsters. It started at the airport — a twenty-something bloke in a floral dress and pink, fluffy slippers — and got worse from there. Slipperboy was clearly on a stag do: what was everyone else’s excuse? Blindness? Sunstroke? Boris Johnson as a sartorial role model? I’m not even talking about the usual ‘oh God, men’s sandals — aren’t they awful? Put your hobbit feet away before I barf’ schtick. Plenty of women (okay, me) have hairy toes, and often forget to shave them. Besides, if women will insist on wearing ‘cold shoulder’ tops, they’re hardly in a position to slag off mandals. Holiday dressing is rarely anyone’s finest hour.

That said, if you cast your eyes over a group of women on holiday, you will at least glean some sense of what year we’re in. With men, it’s often hard to tell the decade. Woman’s holiday look = pool slides (ideally with a wedge, for extra leg length) + jaunty beach bag + white broderie anglais to show off the tan. Man’s holiday look = sandals with Velcro fastenings + pink shorts + polo shirt with a large number on the back, presumably to convey some sort of rugby prowess. It’s the same look — possibly the same garments — they’ve been wearing since circa 1996. They need to google these guys (above right) to stop them blighting the horizon with their strange, off-duty estate agent ways.

Jog on, Pippa

Aahh, honeymoons. The beaches. The cocktails.

The staying in bed until noon. The… jogging? Isn’t that the thing you do before the wedding, then never do again until your firstborn is six months old? Now that Pippa Middleton has aced it as a bride, you would hope she’d cut herself some slack. But no: she and her new beau have been spotted jogging around Sydney. But beneath her beatific smile, the questions are forming in her mind: ‘Why can’t we just have a lunchtime beer like normal people?’ That’s the problem with marrying a self-made billionaire: relaxation doesn’t come easy. Faced with shagging, sunbathing or climbing a 134-metre bridge (as Pippa and James Matthews did earlier in their Sydney trip), they’ll choose the bridge. Still, you know what they say: the couple that jogs together, stays together.*

Bride Pippa Middleton and groom James Matthews arrive for wedding

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*They don’t. I have never heard anyone say this, ever. Nonetheless, I hope that it’s true.

Tell it like it is

‘People were fine with me as an actress, but with Goop it was like, “stay in your lane”,’ said Gwyneth Paltrow in a recent interview. ‘Women in general get a lot of pushback, especially if you’re successful and attractive… I’m not saying I’m attractive. I mean when you’re considered attractive.’ Like, WTF? Seriously? The pictures with this interview are ravishing. She manages to pull off a triangle bikini. In mustard. Her hair sets new standards for Ultimate Summer Blonde. Yet here’s a beautiful woman forced into tedious self-effacement mode for fear of… what? Being accused of having too high an opinion of herself? Say you’re attractive, Gwyneth. Own it. If someone as hot as you can’t say it, it puts the rest of womankind in a very strange position.