A beautiful dead woman

I don’t often throw things at the radio when BBC journo Nick Robinson is on – but missiles were launched this morning (including a complaint via email) when he described a dead female refugee as ‘beautiful’.

What??

Here’s what he said on the BBC’s flagship news programme:

“The photograph of a beautiful young woman stares out of many of today’s front pages …”

He was referring to Maryam Nuri Mohamed Amin who tragically drowned while trying to cross the Channel from France to Britain.

Here are my perennial comments and questions:

• Is her worth as a human being somehow bound up with her ‘beauty’?
• Was her death somehow more tragic because she was deemed ‘beautiful’?
• Would a dead male refugee ever be described as ‘beautiful’ (or ‘handsome’, even)?

Even when we’re dead, we women can’t escape being judged first and foremost by our appearance.

I keep waiting for this lazy, sexist, unthinking use of language to be consigned to the dustbin. Unfortunately, it’s retrieved again and again for recycling.

Enough already.

Not for recycling