Hot Women Campaign Director Louise Burfitt-Dons

Campaigner Louise Burfitt-Dons speaks about what eco-awareness means to her, life in the fifties and the good news for certain types of women about the Hot Women Campaign.

Has anyone else noticed it? The tremendous pressure on a certain type of woman to behave like a self-obsessed shopaholic just to stay cool? You have to carry huge handbags that swamp you, spend the equivalent of the weekly shop on your hair or fit a psychopathic profile when it comes to your attitude to others feelings. Do you feel like me? That over the last twenty or so odd years if you haven’t been spending up on credit cards, injecting with botox and flaunting wealth on a daily basis you have been mistaken for weak victims, doormats or ineffectual and been patronised by the affluent peer group-mostly other women. If so, welcome to the hot women campaign!

I grew up in the fifties overseas which is probably why I’ve often felt out of step with this way of thinking. What we used to refer to as ‘brought up well’ is the new ‘eco-awareness’. There is nothing new about it at all. I suppose I called it ecotoxing to bring it up to date.

Sitting around the lunch table, my father reminded us that we were privileged to have food on our plate, be born in the western world and white. My birthplace was a muslim country and we were educated not to display excess in front of those who were less fortunate. As for glamour and style, if you had to spend a week undergoing various treatments to look good you certainly didn’t boast about it. People who were industrious or inventive with scraps were revered. Interior design was more about making people feel comfortable in your company and your home rather than how much the cushions were worth. Ostentation was vulgar. Good style was an understatement. Performing a sight restoring operation on a poor Bedouin child would have been touching, having to stretch a woman’s skin to look younger – just embarrassing. It was sinful to litter or waste food, paper, anything in fact (long before the environmental awareness); true glamour was something ‘constant’ you developed with as little expense as possible, changing your style constantly was seen as cheap or a ‘a sign of insecurity’, and moaning about what nature had given you bad taste (because so many others had so much less).

Apparently you were supposed to drink 8 litres of water a day to be beautiful, according to media hype. Across the world some children are lucky if they receive 8 litres a month to drink. How can we call ourselves beautiful when we ‘set’ our make-up with mineral water sprays or bully other women into overspending to justify our own excesses?

Help is now on hand in the form of a a new age of austerity, a new green fashion. It’s even better than before because we now have more communication than we ever could have I imagined in the fifties – mobiles, internet, skype, emails and social networking. With 80 per cent of the consumer decisions being made now by women, and bearing in mind that our fossil fuel resources are more depleted than they were in the fifties; with our new knowledge on the state of the planet and the competitive greed amongst all of us, surely it is time to rethink female PR?

Primordially men are the hunter gatherers and women the nesters. With 48per cent of CO2 emissions lost through buildings (house and offices) it seems only sensible to bear in mind the female vote; With men in general happier to be in the green outdoors (hunting, fishing, camping etc) it is women who mainly enjoy the luxury spas, gyms, comforts, bathroom lifestyle. I know it is not PC but generally when you think pretty, packaging, excess, luxurious excess – you think female, not male. And if it’s our domain, then we can make a difference. Why? Because the planet's worth it. And so are future generations.

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