If you watch the clip of Australian prime minister Julia Gillard being bundled away from Aboriginal rights protesters in Canberra at a ceremony for Australia Day, you could be forgiven for assuming that a bomb had gone off or that the building was collapsing.

In truth, a couple of hundred protesters, who favour the term "Invasion Day" heard that the opposition leader, Tony Abbott, was present and they were angry at a remark he'd made earlier, about how the Aboriginal Tent Assembly should "move on". They were chanting things such as "shame" and "racist", but nothing was thrown – no punches, not even an egg.

Nevertheless, Ms Gillard was bundled away so quickly that she stumbled, losing a shoe, and, at one point, appeared to be cradled by a bodyguard. The scene evoked a movie, with photographs resembling stills of Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston in The Bodyguard. With her stockinged foot, crushed against her security man, Gillard looked a poor, pathetic, helpless little Sheila. The online forums erupted in mockery: to paraphrase the famous advertising campaign, right now, who would give a Castlemaine XXXX for her chances of re-election?

Ultimately, this episode was a non-event; the protesters even gave Gillard her shoe back. So why was one left with a niggling feeling that some terrible damage had been wreaked? That, brief non-event though this was, it had produced enough vivid imagery, and subliminal messages, to be a boon to Gillard's political enemies – and anybody out there with an interest in undermining powerful women?

How the world loves a reductive visual take on women in power. Remember Margaret Thatcher leaving Downing Street for the final time "in tears"? Except this didn't happen. To me, in tears means someone who is crying uncontrollably, into sodden hankies – the works. Thatcher's eyes glistened and there was one small tear, maybe a couple. Still, this shot, of her in the back of the car pops up frequently, perhaps less as evidence of Thatcher's innate humanity and more her disappointing femininity. The Iron Lady successfully recast as a big old crybaby.

With Hillary Clinton, some put her success in the 2008 New Hampshire primaries down to her showing her "feminine" side, with some strategic eye-misting. Finally, everyone rejoiced, here was the "real Hillary"! Really? I'd have thought that the real Hillary was not The Crying Lady, but the political fireball who wasn't going to let being female, and being married to a serial shagger, get in the way of her long-held ambitions. When Condoleezza Rice refused to lose self-control in front of the cameras, she was branded a frigid robot.

This is not, I hope, to concoct specious links between such examples and Ms Gillard. Take it, rather, as an attempt to illustrate just how difficult it can be for all politicians, 'especially female ones, when visual images race out of their control. Indeed, this is what felt unsettling about Canberra. In a wider sense, it's good that the world was reminded, at least in passing, of the Aboriginal point of view. However, it was also a gift for those who enjoy seeing powerful women cut down to size.

In the end, it didn't matter that not much happened, or that Gillard's bodyguards probably overreacted. What mattered was the footage of the female PM stumbling along, shoeless, apparently cowering, being "saved" by a male. It doesn't take a genius or a paranoiac to deduce how that played to the macho hordes. In many ways, it was a female take on the Neil Kinnock falling into the sea money shot – footage that fundamentally meant nothing, but could be exploited forever more as "proof" of the subject's inherent unsuitability.

Time will tell whether the Canberra footage keeps resurfacing during future election campaigns. My bet is that, irrelevant though it is, Gillard won't have seen the last of the footage.

Hey, Branson and Brad would make a happy couple

Brad Pitt has spoken about past times when he became depressed, and smoked too much cannabis. Was this around the time he sported that giant beard that always looked as though it had cat litter in it? If facial hair could talk, that beard was screaming: "Help me!" But I digress.

As an actor, Pitt is contractually barred from simply stating that he felt a bit down – it has to be more dramatic, better scripted, than that.

Thus, he describes his depression as: "A great education, one of the seasons of a semester – this semester I was majoring in depression." Pitt says that he sat around, "turning into a doughnut", which sounds a tad risky – if other dope smokers were around, they could have got the "munchies" and eaten him.

In the end, Pitt became "irritated with himself" (who said: "Join the queue!"?), but snapped out of it while visiting Africa. Wow, deep, man.

Let's hope Richard Branson was listening. Why bother campaigning to legalise drugs when you could use your own airline to fly self-absorbed dopehead depressives out to Africa to gawp at poor people? That should sort the whole sorry mess out.

Don't damn the jimjam brigade

A social security office in Dublin has announced that people will not get their benefit cheques if they're wearing pyjamas. Sadly, this is not the first instance of pyjama-discrimination: in Middlesbrough, a school asked parents not to turn up in PJs; certain supermarkets have banned pyjamas altogether. There is even talk of a "pyjama index" being used to gauge levels of "economic blight". For some, pyjamas appear to have taken over from the shellsuit as a key marker of the underclass. How snobbish, and inaccurate.

As it happens, daytime pyjama wearing is surprisingly complex and diverse. I've seen mums working the semi-PJ-clad school run, and who's to judge? During an extended hospital stay, I lived blissfully in pyjamas for weeks, a bit like George Clooney living in airports in Up in the Air, only I was wandering hospital corridors, and nipping to local sandwich shops.

In common with many homeworkers, I've also conducted great swathes of my career in pyjamas. Indeed, these days I wouldn't be surprised if some homeworkers associated pyjamas more with work than rest, and were only able to sleep when clad in pinstripe suits, clutching briefcases. Well, maybe I'd be a bit surprised.

Joking apart, this all goes to prove that pyjamas are not some kind of lowlife litmus test. That jimjam-wearing weirdo, with the coat thrown on top, and the mussed hair, buying Nescafé and Quavers at the corner shop, could just be popping out from working from home, as, say, um, for instance, a newspaper journalist.

Indeed, in this era of flexitime and homeworking, daytime pyjama-wearing can just as easily signify work (hard, lonely, selfless work) as lack of work – unless the humble homeworker is now considered to be part of the "underclass"?