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full screen Gender Equality and Working Life Minister Paulina Brandberg (L) has received attention in the past week for her banana phobia. Archive image. Photo: Claudio Bresciani/TT
Equality and Working Life Minister Paulina Brandberg’s (L) banana phobia became big news this week.
– It is sad that it was a discussion that was largely ridiculed and derogatory, she says to Aftonbladet.
It was Expressen that first wrote about the minister’s banana phobia, which led to her employees sending out instructions before meetings that there must be no bananas nearby.
When Speaker Andreas Norlén invited Brandberg to a chat, for example, he received email information that “no traces of bananas must be in the room”.
The news spread internationally.
– I could not in my wildest imagination understand that it would become such a big deal, says Paulina Brandberg in an interview with Aftonbladet.
Brandberg says she has had the phobia “for as long as she can remember” and doesn’t know why she got it. She says that she sometimes calls it an allergy because “it simply sounds less weird and you get fewer questions”.
The minister calls the uproar double. If it leads to a greater discussion about phobias, then perhaps it can lead to something positive, according to Brandberg.
– But then I think it’s sad that it was a discussion that was largely ridiculing and derogatory. It’s a weird phobia, I agree. I can understand that you can lash out and think it’s funny. But I’m a little worried that the mocking tone might add to the stigma surrounding “weird” phobias.
She wishes that more focus in the media had been on her work against men’s violence against women, violence within intimate relationships and oppression of honor.
– Then it gets a bit skewed when the issues that I think are much more important don’t get the same focus, that you suddenly become known for this instead, she says.