Just as the Libdems announce A Campaign for Body Confidence, the Conservative candidate for Gosport, Caroline Dinenage, was air brushing her photo for a billboard. However, unlike Cameron’s airbrushing, this seems to reflect a cultural attitude within the local Tory party of Gosport. If we cast our mind back, a few months ago, the Chairman of the Gosport Conservative Association said that he would be happy having a female candidate “if they are attractive”. To assume this had no effect on Dinenage’s airbrushing would be naive.

As well as this specific local party attitude, it is important to remember the ever growing wider cultural pressures on women to conform to a unrealstic, fake ‘beauty ideal’. This is where campaigns such as the Campaign for Body Confidence is important. Jo Swinson is really shinning, and personally I think she is a key contender for future leadership.

The Real Women campaign seems to be our own Clare Short Page 3 Bill when you look at the types of responses it is intitiating from women and even men. Lynne Featherstone’s blog is worth a read to gain a greater insight into the power that this movement could have for creating a fair and liberal regulation system that respects the interests of everyone involved.

It is pleasing to see a feminist inspired movement developing within the Libdems. Hopefully the movement can carry on making inroads, as more women (and men), as what happened with Short’s bill, are becoming more aware of their rights and liberty and are fed up of being made to feel as though they are some how inferior to some kind of ‘ideal’ but at the same time they have to shut up and put up – otherwise they are seen as threatening liberty, or more likely – male power.

Whilst I would not advocate a censorship of these types of images, I support the Libdem’s approach of regulation – only through this can we achieve a society that is more liberal for everyone. Only through these types of proposals will we achieve a society where women and men can feel confident in who they are and be judged less by how they look but more by who they are as a person.