Here's an uncomfortable truth: we are absolutely obsessed with how women in public life look, and we've become remarkably skilled at disguising that obsession as admiration.
Abbey Gelmi, the ABC journalist who hosts Insiders, has shared the beauty trick she relies on to appear as though she's had a full eight hours of sleep. Given that Insiders airs on Sunday mornings and political journalism rarely operates on civilised hours, the implication is clear: she probably hasn't.
The trick itself is, by all accounts, perfectly sensible. A targeted eye product, some considered skincare, the kind of routine that takes minutes but registers on camera as effortless composure. She's also noted a pair of celebrity-endorsed jeans that have become a wardrobe staple. Practical, relatable, and entirely reasonable.
So why does it bother me slightly that this is news?
Not because Gelmi shouldn't share it. She's engaging with her audience on terms they clearly appreciate, and there's nothing remotely frivolous about a working journalist discussing how she manages the physical demands of her job. Political reporters, especially those in broadcast, operate under conditions that would flatten most of us. Early calls, late nights, the constant requirement to appear authoritative and composed regardless of what's happening behind the scenes.
The discomfort, if I'm being honest about it, is directional. We don't ask Karl Stefanovic which moisturiser stops him looking like he's been awake since the Hawke government. The question flows predominantly one way, toward women, as though their visible effort in maintaining an on-screen appearance is inherently more interesting than, say, their editorial judgement or their line of questioning.
Gelmi, for her part, is an accomplished journalist whose work on Insiders and across the ABC reflects genuine political literacy. She's sat across from ministers and shadow ministers and asked the kinds of questions that Sunday morning political television is built around. That her jeans have also become a talking point is, well, very 2025.
There's a charitable reading here, and it deserves to be taken seriously. The rise of beauty and lifestyle content from journalists and public figures is partly audience-driven. People want to know how professionals manage the gap between the polished version they see on screen and the ordinary human reality behind it. That's not shallow; it's relatable. In an era of curated social media perfection, a journalist admitting she needs an eye product to look rested is, perversely, a form of authenticity.
The ABC, as a publicly funded broadcaster, also operates under particular scrutiny around the personas and public profiles of its talent. Audiences feel a degree of ownership over public broadcasters that commercial media doesn't attract in quite the same way. Gelmi engaging openly with lifestyle content is, in that context, a reasonable way of being accessible without compromising the journalistic function she actually performs.
Both sides of this are partially right, which means both sides are substantially wrong. The critics who see lifestyle content from female journalists as inherently diminishing are applying a standard that ignores audience agency. The enthusiasts who consume it without ever questioning the asymmetry are missing something real about how public expectations of women in media continue to operate.
Strip away the rhetoric and ask the simple question: would this article exist if Abbey Gelmi were Andrew Gelmi? The answer tells you most of what you need to know.
None of this is Gelmi's fault, and none of it diminishes what she does on screen. The Australian media industry, including its public broadcasting arm, has made genuine progress on gender representation at the presenter and journalist level. Women lead major programmes, anchor flagship news coverage, and host the political programmes that used to be an almost exclusively male preserve.
But progress on representation doesn't automatically dissolve the older, stickier expectations that trail behind it. The assumption that women's appearance is fair game for public commentary, even when framed as admiring interest in their beauty routines, is one of those expectations.
Gelmi looks great on television. She also asks sharp questions. We deserve a media culture that finds both facts equally interesting, rather than one that treats the first as the story and the second as the credential that earns her the right to be asked about the first.
The trick to appearing like you've had eight hours sleep is, apparently, a well-chosen eye product. The trick to pretending our cultural obsessions have changed more than they have is considerably more complicated.