The last time Denmark’s prime minister was in the U.S. news cycle, she was going up against President Trump
over Greenland. Now Mette Frederiksen is
back in the news stateside, and this time her adversary is slightly less consequential: an anonymous man on social media. The PM is the latest woman in public life to deal with unsolicited commentary on her appearance.
Frederiksen posted on Instagram a message that she received
from a male plastic surgeon. The unidentified doctor messaged her, unprompted, that he could “fix that little spot on [her] nose.” Frederiksen posted a screenshot of the Danish-language exchange. “I’m happy with my body—I really don’t need a male plastic surgeon to have an opinion about it!” she told him.
The message was hardly out of the ordinary. As any female public figure knows, unsolicited opinions on your face, body, clothing, hair, and almost anything else are common. “I’ve lost count of how many messages I’ve received over the years about my appearance,” the PM wrote in her caption. “Especially that I have ugly teeth and thin hair. That I have an ugly ‘wart’ on my nose and well-meaning advice to get some Botox.”
But this message seems to have struck a nerve for her, given that it arrived as she was returning from an actually important part of her job as one of Europe’s longest-serving heads of state: a visit to Ukraine, including air raid sirens and promises to defend the country against Russia. “If you’re going to write to me (and you’re more than welcome to), I hope you’ll use your time to talk about something more meaningful,” she wrote in her caption.
On the one hand, this is just a typical day in the life for a woman in leadership. Whether it’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
freezing her eggs or a Danish politician just doing her job, people have opinions. That comes as no surprise. On the other hand, one element of this conversation
is new. This doctor might have been emboldened by a shift in our culture: the
mainstream-ing of plastic surgery, which has turned serious medical procedures into another beauty expectation and even a form of “self-care.” Spend enough time immersed in the bizarro world of aesthetics, where every slight imperfection is something to be changed, and you too might start to believe it’s not rude, but simply helpful to offer to fix something a woman hasn’t said is a problem.
Frederiksen is practicing self-acceptance and says that, at 48, “such as it is.” Or, maybe, she just has more important things on her mind.
Emma Hinchliffeemma.hinchliffe@fortune.comThe Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’
s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Subscribe here.
