By Dr Julie Whiteman, Department of Marketing, Birmingham Business School
As a middle-class woman of a certain age, it will be no surprise that I have plenty to say about the recent news of Greg Wallace’s alleged sexual misconduct. Co-host of the long-running TV reality shows Masterchef and Celebrity Masterchef, Wallace has been accused of making inappropriate sexualized comments and of sexually harassing women on and off the show. To my knowledge, the complaints are continuing to grow in number and seriousness as news of his behaviour becomes increasingly public. In his defense, Wallace said there had been just 13 complaints out of the 4,000 plus contestants he had worked with and that they had all come from “a handful of middle-class women of a certain age”.
This comment in particular has been picked up and challenged by the public for its lack of actual apology and inherent misogyny, and quickly resulted in a number of viral memes in support of middle-class women of a certain age, and has even been commented on by the Home Secretary. What Wallace has unwittingly revealed with this jibe, however, is the power dynamics that continue to allow this type of behaviour to permeate social and professional spaces.
In his attempt to distract and deflect, Wallace has highlighted the fact that it was this specific group of women, women with access to adequate power, to the authority and security that age, professional success and financial security bring, that were able to publicly challenge the one-time national treasure and Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). The flood of complaints that have followed (as they always do when women without the social and economic capital begin to feel safe to speak out and challenge their more powerful abusers) demonstrate his actions were not only directed at or offensive to this group.
By singling out middle-class and middle-aged women in this way, Wallace attempted to silence them and draw on popular support by referencing the ‘Karen’ trope.
Karen is a pejorative term that originated in America to characterise White women who use their intersectional position (that is white, female, middle-class) as a form of racial privilege at the expense of, typically but not exclusively, black men. The term has evolved and is often now also used as a sexist and ageist term to silence women who speak up in public, and in particular online (Lewis, 2020).
That sexist ageism is rife will come as no surprise to those of us women aged over 35, and there is a growing academic literature that exposes the materialisation of this (see for example Gopaldas & Siebert, 2018, Whiteman & Kerrigan, 2024). What Wallace was perhaps assuming here, and perhaps relying on, was that the culture of misogyny that underpins sexist ageism and sexism more broadly, was what facilitated the culture of silence that allowed him to treat women this way for the 17 plus years the original complaints dated back.
In a recent interview with former contestant Jackie Kearney, Kearney likened the working environment on the show to a 90s lad mag, claiming Wallace’s comments were normalised as ‘banter’ and that staff on the show did not challenge the one-time popular host. The reluctance to challenge the ‘talent’ in this story is reminiscent of the recent Huw Edwards BBC case and reiterates the power relations that allow the continuation of abuses of power and position.
In the words of one of my favourite of the many memes circulating in response to Wallace’s comments, though, “It’s important to remember that many middle class women of a certain age grew up as working class girls who were, and are, fierce as f**k. With long memories.”
The dynamics of sex and power are shifting, the young women who came of age in deeply sexist 90s lad culture, are part of a new generation of women of a certain age. Among them is Kirsty Wark, former Newsnight presenter and longstanding BBC journalist and presenter of standing, who was one of the original 13 to formally raise the complaints with the BBC. Let’s hope more establishment figures, women and men, use their positions of power and security to push back against those who abuse their authority.
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The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Birmingham.