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With only 23 women TDs Ireland equals Djibouti in East Africa

Michael Smith It is tuesday lunchtime in Liffey Valley and I am meeting Claire Tully, Ireland’s only Page 3 model.   She enters the “Arc” bar – tiny – and apologises for not wearing make-up.  I am not sure if people recognise her: the transients of shoppingland keep their thoughts to themselves, though I detect occasional celebrity half-murmurings.  We make our way to an upstairs table.  She orders a hot lemon. Originally from Hartstown near Blanchardstown, everything was fine for the young Claire until her family moved to Lucan when she was ten.   In Lucan she was “bullied because I have a relatively strong Dublin accent”; because she was quite quiet and very good at school; and because of a maternal régime that ignominiously forbade such teenage norms as the wearing of high heels: her mother always had a thing about wearing proper shoes. She was taunted so much at school and in her area, including amazingly by adults, that she couldn’t walk through her estate.   This throws me: she thinks she was an outsider. She doesn’t really get on with Mammy.  She was always Daddy’s girl.   Her mother was non-confrontational – little help to Claire – and perhaps as a reaction she’s not like that, she’s outspoken.  Her parents split when she was twelve and she didn’t really speak to her father for five years, despite the fact he was and is “solid as a rock”. She learnt that it’s important for parents not to say anything against the other if a relationship breaks up.  She’s sick of people who have split up, talking about  themselves.   She feels that, “you had children and they should be your life”, though she’s not a goo-gaaing maternal person. During our interview she mostly focuses on her own experience to which she typically diverts any general or political questions.  When pushed, she is articulate and she is not deliberately avoiding questions.  Still, she does avoid them. She regrets the “because I’m worth it” mentality and thinks there’s been too much emphasis on materialism.  She’s always given time to the homeless.  Her mother wanted material things from her father, who owned Tullys’ tiles on Dublin’s Smithfield.  He in turn advised Claire against over-estimating the importance of money, but she nevertheless feels you need it to go places – nothing remarkable there.  When I suggest that  the media portray her as materialistic, (isn’t that the whole point of her?) she’s slightly taken aback and she wants to know specifics.   Eventually she laughs easily…  it must be the car comment.  She’s been reported on several occasions saying if a man is  a sponger or doesn’t have a car at thirty she wouldn’t want to have a relationship with him. And now there she is across from me regurgitating what she said on a horrible TV show I saw recently (while a female psychologist shook her head, appalled), with the same pursed face. The source of her preference is that, because of her own family background, she envisions herself  eventually at home with her kids provided for by a man (not let down by a bike-riding sponger).  I’m warming to Claire Tully who’s genuinely bright and sharp but I can’t help thinking this might mean she has regressive personal views on the roles of women and men.   Why am I here? Oh yes! Claire Tully is most famous for her Janus-like coupling of Page 3, with a perfect score of 600 points in her Leaving Cert, a first-class honours degree in Science from Trinity College and an offer to pursue a doctorate in Immunology on HIV in Oxford.  When she didn’t get the funding for Oxford she was short on cash and had nowhere to live in Dublin.  The Sun newspaper liked what it had seen of her in FHM lads’ magazine.  She had appeared there after finding their top 100 honeys unimpressive; and her boyfriend, who was reading it, suggested she go for it.  And so she finished up on Page 3. In politics, she likes to take the side of the little person and doesn’t like to see rich people getting away with things.  She is against private education and not unhappy to be described as “socialist”.   She’s disillusioned with the “corruption of society by money”.   What she’s learned from knowing people like footballers – ordinary middle-class people like her – and things she’s been told, would shock you.    I ask  her if she lives her life to reflect this.  She says that she’s frugal (“I drive a 00 Yaris with a dint”) and that there’s a difference between appearance and reality.   “It’s difficult to know – if people see the real you – if that will sell”.  What could she mean? Earlier she has noted that she was not popular in Trinity and can be difficult, though, somewhat improbably, she puts a lot of it down to bad luck. Does she think it’s a man’s world?  She can see both sides.  There’s only one immunologist in Trinity.  But she can see employers would be nervous about women in their thirties who might get pregnant.   “There are obvious differences between men and women.  Men can do more physical jobs.   It’s not fair”.  But she’s “not a feminist”.  I go on and on that maybe she could or should be, but she’s not biting.  She admits she can be quite old-fashioned and notes that women are designed to be nurturers.  Feminism has a connotation of being anti-man, she feels.  Feminists “wouldn’t agree with the Page 3 job but they’re not seeing – and sometimes this comes down to esteem issues – since men look at other women and that drives women insane.  They don’t realise that the men aren’t saying they’d rather be with the girl”.   She doesn’t think glamour modeling is objectification of women for male gratification.   She is confident there is no link between Page 3 and women being consigned to nurturing, or anything in particular else.  I can see that some of these male-centred and homebirdish views would