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Pregnant women can behave so oddly, it is not surprising the BBC won’t take a gamble on her, says Jemima Lewis
“I am not ill,” says Denise Van Outen. “I am just having a baby.” Certainly, the 35-year-old presenter didn’t look the least bit peaky when she wafted down the catwalk at a charity fashion show in London last week, her six-month-swollen belly swathed in a Grecian-style gown.
Van Outen always turns out nicely, but this time she had a point to make: the day before, she had angrily accused the BBC of dropping her from a judging panel because she was pregnant. Despite having appeared as a judge on two of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s previous BBC talent shows, she will not be helping him choose a Dorothy for the new stage production of The Wizard of Oz. “I feel disappointed and let down,” she says. “Being pregnant is not an issue for me. I feel fit and healthy.”
The BBC insists that her impending motherhood had nothing to do with the decision. It points out that none of the previous judges – including the gay entertainer John Barrowman, who seems in no imminent danger of reproducing – will be on the new panel. Had the BBC been in less gallant mood, it might also have argued that Van Outen, former Big Breakfast weathergirl and 1999 Rear of the Year, is rather less qualified to judge a singing competition than her replacement, Charlotte Church (2003 Rear of the Year).
But even if her pregnancy had been a factor in the producers’ thinking, who could blame them? Filming starts next month, just as Van Outen goes into the gruelling last trimester, and will end in May, perilously close to her due date. What if she went into labour early, or developed last-minute complications, or just became really, really tired and bad-tempered? She is not on a staff contract with the corporation; it has no legal, or even moral, obligation to rehire her.
Yet somehow, none of this can be spoken aloud – as if not hiring a pregnant woman were equivalent to racism or sexism. Like Ali G’s white gangster wannabe silencing his enemies with the threat that they might be seen as bigoted (“Is it because I is black?”), self-righteous mothers-to-be can now use their fecundity as a weapon with which to belabour any reluctant employer.
Maternity leave is one thing – a wonderful thing, in my view, since I will soon be taking it. It is a rare example of capitalism having been tamed for the wider benefit of society. The burden to businesses of subsidising staff members while they are off producing the next generation is so great that it might be seen as one of the most remarkable philanthropic movements of the past century, if only it had not been forced on them by the law. But hiring a woman when she is already toting a cannonball around her waist – that is more charitable behaviour than anyone has the right to expect… Continue reading
