{"id":152467,"date":"2026-08-25T18:45:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T18:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/152467\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T18:45:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T18:45:10","slug":"denmarks-pm-and-the-enduring-scrutiny-of-women-in-public-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/152467\/","title":{"rendered":"Denmark\u2019s PM and the enduring scrutiny of women in public life"},"content":{"rendered":"

The last time Denmark\u2019s prime minister was in the U.S. news cycle, she was going up against President Trump over Greenland<\/a>. Now Mette Frederiksen is back in the news<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n

Frederiksen posted on Instagram a message that she received from a male plastic surgeon<\/a>. The unidentified doctor messaged her, unprompted, that he could \u201cfix that little spot on [her] nose.\u201d Frederiksen posted a screenshot of the Danish-language exchange. \u201cI\u2019m happy with my body\u2014I really don\u2019t need a male plastic surgeon to have an opinion about it!\u201d she told him. <\/p>\n

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. \u201cI\u2019ve lost count of how many messages I\u2019ve received over the years about my appearance,\u201d the PM wrote in her caption. \u201cEspecially that I have ugly teeth and thin hair. That I have an ugly \u2018wart\u2019 on my nose and well-meaning advice to get some Botox.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s longest-serving heads of state: a visit to Ukraine, including air raid sirens and promises to defend the country against Russia. \u201cIf you\u2019re going to write to me (and you\u2019re more than welcome to), I hope you\u2019ll use your time to talk about something more meaningful,\u201d she wrote in her caption. <\/p>\n

On the one hand, this is just a typical day in the life for a woman in leadership. Whether it\u2019s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez freezing her eggs<\/a> 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<\/a>, which has turned serious medical procedures into another beauty expectation and even a form of \u201cself-care.\u201d 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\u2019s not rude, but simply helpful to offer to fix something a woman hasn\u2019t said is a problem. <\/p>\n

Frederiksen is practicing self-acceptance and says that, at 48, \u201csuch as it is.\u201d Or, maybe, she just has more important things on her mind. <\/p>\n

Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com<\/a><\/p>\n

The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune\u2019s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Subscribe here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

ALSO IN THE HEADLINES<\/p>\n

Not so good good.\u00a0The golf brand Callaway had to apologize<\/a> after running an ad on social media that showed a man tackling a woman to the ground as she reached for his driver (a new one, in partnership with the golf brand Good Good). The spot was accused of promoting violence of women; Callaway says it does not represent its values.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mikie Sherrill is betting on vets.\u00a0The New Jersey governor is positioning herself as an influential voice in the midterms, with a slate of endorsements in Democratic primaries<\/a> across the country. She insists it isn’t “moderates versus DSA candidates.” But she sees veterans as another kind of “change agents” within the Democratic Party.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissent on mail-in voting.\u00a0While SCOTUS just handed Trump a victory, allowing him to restrict mail-in ballots via executive order months before the midterms. In her own dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accused the conservative majority of “taking its eye off the ball”<\/a> by focusing its opinion on a technical legal argument rather than the administration’s larger goals before November elections.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What to know about OpenAI’s new chief revenue officer.\u00a0Denise Dresser’s replacement<\/a> is Dali Rajic, who has been president and COO at Google’s Wiz. One former colleague calls him “one of the most intense people you will ever meet,” my colleague Emily Forlini reports<\/a>. And his cybersecurity background likely appeals to OpenAI as it seeks to grow in the category.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ON MY RADAR<\/p>\n

When the choice to be childless is not your own\u00a0NYT<\/a><\/p>\n

How Phoebe Bridgers became her generation’s defining songwriter\u00a0Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n

Sherman’s march: How fashion learned to fear a newsletter\u00a0Vanity Fair<\/a><\/p>\n

PARTING WORDS<\/p>\n

“I learned to accept this crazy face a long time ago. I\u2019m attractive in my own way, but not at the standards for great beauties. I\u2019m proud that I\u2019ve stuck with that and let my vanity go. I get wonderful roles.”<\/p>\n

\u2014 Dale Dickey, who’s nominated for her first Emmy<\/a> for\u00a0Widow’s Bay<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The last time Denmark\u2019s prime minister was in the U.S. news cycle, she was going up against President…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":152468,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[15651,27,26,71764,71765,63651,4201],"class_list":["post-152467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-denmark","tag-career","tag-danmark","tag-denmark","tag-most-powerful-women","tag-mpw-daily","tag-no-copyright","tag-prime-minister"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@dk\/117157634213059615","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152467"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152467\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/152468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}