Strictly Come Dancing is one of Britain’s best loved television programmes, with the 2019 finale drawing in 12.5 million viewers at its peak. However, the audience voting system, which the show relies upon, tends to highlight an underlying social issue: people have an inherent dislike of strong women. Alexandra Burke, Ashley Roberts and this year Maisie Smith have all displayed some of the best dancing that the show has seen, however year upon year these confident young women find themselves branded ‘unlikeable’ and lack public support.

Maisie Smith has been in the public eye since she was just six years old, when she took up the role of Tiffany ‘Tiff’ Butcher on EastEnders. Throughout her time on Strictly, the media have repeatedly commented on Smith’s body and clothing choices, with the star being described by various outlets as ‘showing off’ and ‘flaunting’ her body. This is hardly exceptional news. In fact, it is perfectly normal for dancers to wear form-fitting clothing to rehearsals as this is most similar to their performance outfit, and also allows them to be corrected by the professionals. Smith is 19 – only two years younger than her Strictly co-star, HRVY, who has received no criticism for his outfit choices or for ‘flaunting’ his body, despite the fact that his TikTok account features multiple videos in which he is topless.

The fact that Smith has been unable to ‘win the hearts of the nation’, as judge Craig Revel Horwood put it, suggests not that she is dislikeable as a person, but that she is threatening. In terms of intimidation, she is a triple threat: confident, young and beautiful. When a young and attractive woman is shown to be as confident as Smith, people often brand her as ‘arrogant’, despite the fact that the same confidence is praised in young men. One Twitter user wrote: ‘No they don’t have a problem with confident young women she’s a good dancer but there is a fine line between confidence and arrogance and people don’t like arrogance’ – a comment which is highly ironic, as it shows the common misinterpretation of confidence in a young woman as arrogance.

Harriet Prior comments that the targeted attacks on talented young women on programmes such as Strictly sends girls a dangerous message: ‘To be liked, it’s probably best to downplay your ability and to take a backseat.’ This is such a harmful precedent to set at a time when feminism is progressing, but still has such a long way to go. Young women should never be forced to minimise their abilities in order to please society, but rather, society should learn to embrace and support confident young women just as they would do with confident young men.

Young women such as Maisie Smith ought to be upheld as role models to encourage girls to be confident and love themselves. It can only be hoped that she will progress as far in the competition as she rightfully deserves, based on her talent as a dancer rather than any unwarranted dislike from the public owing to her confident personality. In time, we must hope that people will learn to see female confidence as the positive attribute that it is.

Read more on celebrities and feminism from Life&Style:

Little Mix: Celebrities and Social Media Scrutiny

Elle Woods: the Underdog Feminist Icon

Billie Eilish and the Battle Against Body-Shaming: Has Nothing Changed?