Nicola Sturgeon 'conflicted' about magazine photoshoots

Scotland's First Minister has revealed she was "internally conflicted" about appearing in a photoshoot for a glossy fashion magazine.

Nicola Sturgeon posed for Vogue while saying in the accompanying interview there is a discussion about her clothes and hair "literally every time I'm on camera".

Comments about her appearance are often "written in the most hideous and quite cruel way," she added.

But she told journalists she did "sometimes suffer from a bit of internal conflict" about whether she should take part in such photoshoots.

The SNP leader told journalists: "I have the dilemma of knowing whatever I do people are going to talk about what I wear and what my hair looks like, and I could and maybe should just decide that I'm not going to engage with that on any level.

"Or I can decide, as I sometimes do, that I'll try to turn it into a positive in some way. Most of what I ever do there will be trying to use a platform to promote Scottish designers to turn it to an advantage.

"But you will find people with different opinion, sometimes I'm a bit internally conflicted by it."

She added: "I do feel strongly on the fact that people focus not so so much on what I wear, it tends to be mainly women.

"If there was a general interest in what politicians wear, male or female, that wouldn't be as big an issue."

She quipped that since Jeremy Corbyn's election as Labour leader, "male politicians are getting talked about for what they wear just as much as female politicians".

Ms Sturgeon added: "His dress sense has been subject to as much commentary over the past couple of weeks as mine has been."