London: Labour's new women's spokesman Gloria de Piero yesterday defended doing a topless photoshoot when she was a schoolgirl, saying she understood why girls make the decision to strip off.
According to the Daily Mail report, the glamorous 40-year-old former GMTV political editor was 15 when she posed for the pictures to earn money to buy herself some new clothes.
Newly promoted to Ed Miliband’s Shadow Cabinet, she revealed yesterday that she thought topless Page 3 were ‘totally out of date’.
But she added: ‘I’ve always said I don’t blame the girls. I understand how they might think it would be a way out.’
Ms de Piero said that when the truth about her photos emerged, Harriet Harman – who was the women and equalities minister at the time – provided her with ‘amazing’ support.
She told her: ‘Don’t worry, it’s absolutely fine Gloria, we wouldn’t judge you for that,’ and urged her not to ‘change’ or get ‘buttoned up’.
Born in Bradford, to Italian immigrants, Miss de Piero – who once came ahead of Kate Moss in FHM magazine’s list of the Sexiest Women In The World – has rarely spoken about her risque photoshoot.
After her secret was uncovered in 2010, the then-parliamentary candidate explained how she had been motivated by a lack of spending money after her father was forced to give up his job due to ill health.
‘It was simply that I needed some money to buy clothes,’ she said. ‘When you are 15 or 16 and you want to fit in and wear nice things, but you don’t have any and put on your school uniform even when you are allowed to be in your own clothes, nothing matters more.’
And she said that when her parents found out, they ‘went a lot less mental than I thought they would’.
Explaining how the memory still helped motivate her to campaign against sexism, she said: ‘I can understand why a girl might feel she has no option but to do something like that.’
The former breakfast television presenter, who married her long-term partner last year, also revealed yesterday that at the age of about 37 she decided to concentrate on her political career rather than starting a family.
She said: ‘I’m 40 now and I’ve always said I don’t want kids, but that decision will be removed from me incredibly soon.'
But Ms de Piero, who was elected in 2010 and succeeded the disgraced Geoff Hoon in the Nottinghamshire seat of Ashfield, insisted that choosing not to have children would not harm her politically.
She has previously said she ‘never had that maternal urge’, and reacted angrily to former Tory minister Tim Loughton’s comments that Lib Dem Sarah Teather made a poor families minister because she was childless.
‘Different rules seem to apply to women,’ she said. ‘When do you ever hear someone saying “oh you might not want to employ a dad, he might have to take time off for the kids”? The most important thing is being fulfilled and this job makes me very fulfilled.’
Ms de Piero went on to say she wanted to get more ‘real’ women involved in politics. And she explained that she is still more comfortable with the style of politics outside Parliament, adding: ‘A lot of people think politics is something that men do when they’re shouting at each other.
‘I want to bring women’s views, particularly the sort of women not normally consulted, to the top table of the Labour Party.’
Ms de Piero was one of three female former breakfast presenters promoted in last week’s reshuffles by the main parties.
Former GMTV host Esther McVey became Iain Duncan Smith’s number two at the Department for Work and Pensions while Anna Soubry, a presenter on This Morning in the 1980s, became the first woman MP to serve as a defence minister.
