The real Julia fan club

AMONG certain women there's a jarring disconnect between what they're thinking and the narrative they're being fed that is "Julia".

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IT felt something like blasphemy.

A declaration as risky, difficult and defining as an admission to church-going, or loving a book you wouldn't be caught dead reading on a train but have secretly downloaded on your e-reader. Just three simple words, setting off a little explosion of shock within the collected school gate psyche. "I adore Julia." Dead silence. The perpetrator added, emboldened, "I'm coming out." Another mum piped up, "I adore her, too." They looked at each other, amazed; it was like stumbling across some secret society of disparate females expressing deeply unfashionable, unspoken sentiments. Why? I ventured. "Because if I had a dinner party she'd be the one who'd stay back and help me do the dishes at the end." Unlocked, the mum added, "We're all scared of saying we love her - in front of men, especially. It's like saying you're a feminist."

Among certain women there's a jarring disconnect between what they're thinking and the narrative they're being fed that is "Julia". What they see: a woman getting things done. In a man's world. Quietly, differently, effectively. Amid the great roar of vitriol, and not flinching. They think it's extraordinary. Because usually, as women, we flinch. It's just too hard. We bleat our vulnerability. Gabble too much about our personal lives and the toll it's taking, make excuses, give up, bow out. She doesn't play the victim, just keeps on going, audaciously blindsiding the media now and then - Peter Slipper, Bob Carr - and for these women it's becoming an exhilarating sport to witness. "She's such a strong role model for our daughters," said one of them.

She's doing her job with a mental toughness reminiscent of John Howard: no matter what's thrown at them they keep on at it, with focus and tenacity and a quietly effective steeliness. She's gone through the intense media vitriol that many women in the public eye - daring to do something beyond the confines of what's expected of them - endure. The rite of passage: that predictable process of tearing down. I went through it with my novel The Bride Stripped Bare. It's extraordinarily lonely within the eye of the storm; you feel a loss of control over the personal narrative of your life - that no matter how many times you try explaining what you're doing, no one wants to listen. They prefer their own, sparkier, more destructive narrative. It makes a better story. Opinion's hardened into fact, gossip and downright lies become news and the overwhelming feeling is that they want to break you, make you go away, be silent, stop. You're like a fox hounded by a gaggle of fevered pack dogs who've scented blood. The singer Lana Del Rey recently went through that depressingly familiar hammering; she cancelled her Oz tour following relentless criticism of her looks, talent, voice - and reinvention of her image. Yet male performers don't?

Julia Gillard doesn't crack. "She's being held up to unrealistic standards of perfection when no one's perfect, and when many male politicians seem to have their flaws regularly on display," said a mum. "The tear-down Julia game is a big distraction from what she's actually doing." Professional women don't just have to be good to get somewhere - they've got to be so damned good. There was something of the ex-lawyer in her after Kevin Rudd declared his hand; a passionate articulateness, a fire in her belly coupled with a reasoned, quietly angry determination; dare I say something of an Atticus Finch in her demeanour. But you'd be hard-pressed to find that perception in a media who set her up as ineffectual and untrustworthy, and constantly seek tension, dissention, drama and spark in a relentless 24-hour news cycle. That disconnect between what these women are being told by headline makers and what they're perceiving is what's prompting school-gate outbursts. It's a fascinating story of one particular Australian woman and the affronted psyche of a nation, and it's still unfolding.

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