Savita Halappanavar became iconic but she hasn’t been legislated for By Gerard Howlin

THE Calvita Girl is gone and she will likely never return. Once in my youth I searched for her without success.

It is not a quest I intend to go on again. It is not just the bitterness, baldness, or maleness of middle age, though it is all of that. It is the realisation that she was a one-dimensional, cardboard cutout. She apparently stood for something. But she didn’t. Goodness and wholesomeness aren’t fashions, they are values. She was cheap and on the make.

The Calvita Girl, all blonde and unblemished, was a triumph of cheesy marketing over substance. It’s not just that she is gone and we are bereft and blondeless. Worse; if she were ever found she could in future, unless she changed the recipe, only be seen by other children accompanied by a health warning.