We've come a long way baby

I have my suspicions. A few weeks ago somebody left me a message on the voice mail in work, wondering if I would like to submit myself to the joys of a makeover. The before and after evidence of this makeover would grace the pages of Himself magazine. No giveaway mention was made of liposuction, but I have fallen for these wheezes before.

Having produced a little book a few years ago, I actually got into a lather of sweat when the sports editor put a friend up to ringing me, purporting to be the editor of Woman's Weekly. She asked if it would be alright to come out and take photos of myself, my family and our lovely home. It seemed a little over the top for the author of a quickie biography of Jack Charlton, but slaving as I do under the weight of an unfeasibly large ego I took the bait in one gulp and told them, panicking, that I would get back with a suitable date. Then I headed straight for the wallpaper shop.

So when somebody purporting to be from Himself magazine proposed a makeover I kept mum, waiting for the fey inquiry from a colleague which might give the game away. Himself has been an object of some mirth in here since it first appeared on the shelves a couple of months ago, and although there is a reluctance to be seen carrying the thing around, we are told that the Eamon Dunphy photo spread in the latest issue is a "must see".

Eamo's gorgeous pout notwithstanding, Him- self is a sad business for sad bastards.

We had always fancifully thought that the entire market for magazines which set out their stalls along the lines of "works hard, plays hard, stays hard" could be seen on Saturday nights around Temple Bar with their English accents and tight-fitting football jerseys, oppressing the night air with lusty choruses of "get your tits out for the lads."

It's all a larf innit?

Then Himself came along as a sort of homegrown testosterone precursor and RTE stuck its editor on Questions & Answers where the only interesting thing he contributed was a bimbo comment about lesbians with moustaches. Never having met one of these creatures, I half hoped he'd be asked to expand on the subject there and then. The remark suggested the answer to most questions about the editor and his little organ.

Himself is a depressing step back into the swamps for men, but in the spirit of tolerance we told ourselves that titillation wrapped up in the ironic flimsy of new laddism has its ghetto constituency and perhaps, post McKenna judgement, that minority should get the sort of exposure that all threatened minorities receive once in while.

And yet when those who want both "boords" and the approval of the real world around them trespass into that real world they make us so uncomfortable. What a depressing juxtaposition the front page of the sports section of this paper made on Saturday morning. In the top corner we had Alan Betson's wonderful picture of three young camogie players from St Patrick's Senior School, Skerries, celebrating a win in the sunshine of Croke Park with a big hug and mile-wide smiles, the very essence of sport's possibilities. And down below, under the "works hard, plays hard, stays hard" banner, the advertisement for Himself magazine featuring five young women wearing nothing but the vacant looks in their eyes.

It was hard to tell if their presence related to the features on "Aussie girls in Dublin" or the compassionate treatise titled "baby stay, I do love you, besides divorce costs too much". Perhaps they adorn the inside feature on Limerick rugby, although there was no evidence of chips on their bare shoulders.

Why sports? Why target the sports pages to advertise this dreary outrider of limp sexism and nipple counts? In the sports department we thought we had come a long way.

Until recently the sports departments of newspapers were no-go areas for women, places where it was still possible to hear women referred to as "boords", to hear sad sack blokes talking about who they had failed to shift the previous weekend, to tune into discussions about the merits of paying for it, to join colloquiums regarding which women in other parts of the newspaper were reputed to be "good little goers".

It has been hard, slow, work even chipping away at the outer layers of this Pompeii of the Neanderthal world, but finally we have women working in production and editorial in the sports departments of most newspapers in the city. The women involved don't need a patronising pat on the head from anyone telling them they are so good that we wouldn't even know they were women. They know how good they had to be even to get through the front door of Laddism's media embassy.

In all respects, the arrival of women amongst us has had a positive effect, making sports writers and sports editors a little more self-conscious about those dreary, drooling references to Anna Kournikova and, God save us from such alliterations, Gorgeous Gabby. No more do we run with those big close-up crotch shots of Katrina Krabbe's rear end as she bends over the starting blocks. We did it, we did it right here in the most self-consciously liberal newspaper in town.

We still don't cover women in sport with the same deadly earnestness that we cover men, and, when we do, we have a tendency to send women out to do the job as if it were all bound up with midwifery and fallopian tubes and things we are better off knowing nothing about. But we are getting there, we are trying.

And then Himself sticks its "works hard, plays hard, stays hard" banner in the sports section. And nobody raises a whisper. It is difficult to think of another part of a newspaper where the presence of such rampant, inappropriate ugliness would be entertained.

How depressing for the schoolgirls of St Patrick's and Scoil Mobhi to see themselves represented in a moment of sporting glory on the top of the page and to see the staple of real men represented on the bottom of the page. How depressing for all of us who work here.

One woman working in the sports department on Friday night raised objections. She couldn't see Himself as just a bit of fun. Her feelings were noted. The ad stayed.

When you work in an environment which is overwhelmingly male-dominated, you trust that the men you work with don't have one vocabulary and one set of views which they produce in your presence and another more leering side which they reveal when your back is turned. The front of Saturday's sports supplement must have made a few women pause for thought in that regard.

"Women have but one task, crowning the winner with garlands," said Baron de Coubertin, founder of the Olympic movement, a century ago.

We've come a long way, baby. Haven't we?