They say behind every successful man is a woman. Yesterday showed that behind every successful woman is a 'skirt'- a colloquial or derrogatory short-hand for woman. Not enough of a skirt, apparently.
27 April at a Security Council meeting that addressed the escalating situation in Syria, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, was upstaged as she spoke, by one of her assistants sitting to her rear and unaware of the fuss her high-riding skirt was already causing.
The woman, spied mid-way (or further up) through her embarassing faux-pas, sitting in a most unlady-like fashion, hardly fit for a living room let alone the dour halls of diplomacy at the UN, was unable to rescue herself from the public fall-out following a video clip exposing the whole affair - and her uppermost thighs- to an Aljazeera English audience. Though she was continuously fidgeting and wrestling with her skirt as she tried to pull it down, to no avail, she still got caught in a compromising situation more befitting to Britney Spears- herself snapped on camera in the notorious 'no-knickers' moment leaving a car.
The Al-Jazeera clip reveals a lady that had no clue of the rucus she was kicking up, though she was being inundated with messages about the scene she was creating.
Women aids to politicians have been called skirts before: "Blood thirsty skirts!" screamed a headline in response to the story on female advisders advocating for war on Libya recently- 'Obama's Women Advisers Pushed War Against Libya'- as published by The Nation. But Susan Rice yesterday pushed this to the limits, not least her assistant's skirt that rode up her thigh to the upper extemeties within the upright settings of a UN assembly. A meeting addressing the use of artillery fire against unarmed civilians in Syria.
By Dina Dabbous
