‘Glamour gap’: Kate Langbroek on the gender beauty divide

Comedian and TV personality Kate Langbroek muses on the so-called ‘glamour gap’ that separates men and women and why she ‘can’t be arsed’ to uphold society’s beauty standards.

Her latest project aims to shine a humorous light on the little things that can ease life’s mental load.

So it’s only fitting that as comedian and TV and radio host Kate Langbroek joins Stellar’s podcast Something To Talk About, the discussion veers in all directions – from her disdain for the idea of shadow labour to the glamour gap that separates men and women and why she “can’t be arsed” to uphold society’s beauty standards.

You appear on television each week and have been photographed for these pages in Stellar today – how do you feel about the process of being styled and having your hair and make-up done? Well, the wardrobe girls would tell you I’m a lazy dresser. Even my boots have to have zips; I can’t be bothered doing laces. My girlfriend Alice says to me, “Are you a toddler?” I try to be less lazy. When I go in to The Project, and the team of stylists [is] there and I’ve got clothes hanging on the rack, normally I try on the first one over whatever T-shirt I’m wearing and go, “That will do.” They’re always like, “Can you try on the others just so we know?” I’m like … “Oh, nah.” I do enjoy [when] you put on a garment [and it’s] transformative, it elevates you. It’s great for the spirit, like laughter. Beauty is also a noble principle. Entire civilisations have been founded on the love of beauty. It elevates and lifts you up, but I’m loath to use that as much as I possibly should, because I’m busy, I’ve got four kids, I’ve got a husband, I work – and I can’t be arsed.

Listen to the full episode of Stellar’s podcast Something To Talk About featuring Kate Langbroek below:

What about the hair and make-up? We talk about the pay gap. I’m sure you’ve observed first-hand the hair and make-up gap. Maybe there’s a fancy word for it. The glamour gap?

Oh, nobody ever talks about that!

Let’s say you’re at The Project. Women on TV can be in hair and make-up for anywhere between 45-90 minutes. Then you’d have co-host Waleed [Aly] or any of your male …

They whip in five minutes before the show.

How does that make you feel?

Any woman who has got ready for an event with her partner would have noted this – the prep, the shopping, the shoes, the fittings. And then the husband, if he even has a tux or has rented [one], puts it on, brushes his hair, squirt of whatever to hide the funk of him and he’s out the door. But if I was on that show, or any other, and offered the opportunity to save 60-90 minutes a day, I wouldn’t take it. Even though we dream of it when we see the guys.

Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

Say you were thinking about going back into TV full-time and they tell you, “It’s

90 minutes every day in hair and make-up, and then wardrobe …” Would it be a deal-

breaker?

I do think of that when I see the sisters who do morning TV: you know, Sylvia [Jeffreys] or Nat Barr. It’s like that Ginger Rogers/Fred Astaire thing, with their male co-host; they’re doing everything he did but backwards, in high heels, and in hair and make-up 90 minutes before, so they must be getting in at, like, 3.30am.

They do come in at 3.30am.

So it would be a consideration. But if you’re wanting people to wake up with you, I think it’s nice that you’ve made that effort. Don’t you?

I do. It’s why I wanted to ask you about it, because I don’t think there are any easy answers. It’s not fair and it’s pretty crazy, but are we outraged about it?

No. It’s just one of those things you clock. It’s like Christmas … [It] wouldn’t happen without the women, generally. But in many ways, your strength is also your weakness – women make the world beautiful and we’re the ornaments of the world, no doubt. We’re not the drab, brown birds. We’re the colourful, beautiful ones. Not always. But that’s something that’s open to us, and I love that we have that capacity.

You recently launched The Buck Up, Kate Langbroek With Nath Valvo, a weekly podcast that promises to “provide a reprieve from depressing news cycles, buzzwords and to-do lists with a lot of laughter and levity”. I definitely need laughter and levity in my life.

The news is just coming at you constantly. There’s only so much the human spirit can bear. And there are other aspects that help you endure everything and make bad times better, and that’s humour and joy and levity, and an exchange of stories. Hopefully everyone has a friend that, when they see that friend, they feel better after. Some people are drainers. And some people are taps. Nath Valvo and I are the tap. We guarantee you’ll feel better at the end, just for sharing our lives, our listeners’ lives, and having a laugh about things – because laughter is the greatest gift.

Picture: Steven Chee for Stellar

Sometimes having a bit of fun and frivolity has a profound effect …

Because of the nature of the world, we’re exposed to happenings that we normally wouldn’t be. Sometimes when I look at the news, I’m just like … ohhh, terrible. And you feel a weight inside you. If you were to live in a more old-fashioned way, you’d know your neighbours, people at school, people walking their dogs. You wouldn’t necessarily have that weight. You’d have a community. “Community” has become a weasel word in many ways – [if] people want to lump people together, they call it community. But real community is linked by knowing each other. When you’re taking on all this stuff from people you don’t know and it fills you with fear for your children, for the world, for people you love, it’s not helpful. All it does is make you scared of your fellow humans.

That human connection is such a critical part of navigating life – none of us can do it without the village, as we say.

That’s right. I’ve been lucky enough to spend most of my professional life rooted in comedy and with comedians. During comedy festivals, when you

sit in a room of people laughing, the energy is so great. It’s so powerful, but it’s underestimated. It’s seen as a flippancy. Sometimes it can be, but it also is one of the basic tenets of my survival. Happiness is such a leavening of the bread of your soul that it makes everything else happy.

When you moved to Italy in 2019 with your husband (Peter Allen Lewis) and four children, there was a huge response because it’s that thing people talk about and dream about and don’t necessarily do. Five years on, what does your day-to-day work/life/family ratio look like?

Some days I’ve done a day’s work by 8.30am: washing, cooked a meal, been to the shops, made lunches. All those things I don’t have to do and yet I have to for the family – but also for myself because it was my idea [laughs]. We talk on The Buck Up about “shadow labour” – which drives me f*cking crazy. [It’s] the work that used to be done by other people: you go to a car park and there’s no person there anymore [so] you have to put your licence number in; you try to book a plane and you’re filling out things. That was once someone’s job and it has all become our job. The labour at home is not shadow labour, it’s my labour, life’s labour. I don’t want to gild the lily too much – it’s not a lily … gild the weed – but I try to find something noble in it. Sometimes I have to project myself into the future and wishfully imagine I’m dead, and imagine how my family will reflect on what I did.

And that helps?

Am I the only person that does that? I’m not advocating it as a thing. It’s just a fleeting moment when you’re looking at the mounds and the hordes. It seems to be a conceit of the times that “We must have a conversation …” Some of those conversations are important but actions are more important. What matters, in every aspect of life, is what you do. Like a lot of things, it’s an honour and a burden – particularly since we went to Italy and

I had my wish come true to spend more time with the family … I’m also like “Why did I wish that?” [laughs] My inclination is, like most people, that I’d like to be selfish, but if you love and care for another creature, the stretch and the growth comes from going beyond what you’d like to do, going outside yourself. It’s powerful, but it can leave you exhausted. I guess that’s just the dance of life, isn’t it?

The cost, or the tax, of unconditional love and caring for people is what brings value to this world but, god, it’s hard work …

It’s hard work. We’ve got all the appliances, and it’s still hard work.

The Buck Up, Kate Langbroek With Nath Valvo is available on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Listen to the full episode of Stellar’s podcast Something To Talk About featuring Kate Langbroek below. And see her shoot inside Stellar on Sunday. For more from Stellar, click here.

Originally published as ‘Glamour gap’: Kate Langbroek on the gender beauty divide