Virginia Trioli receives viewer letter berating how she moves her hands

Virginia Trioli is an esteemed journalist and broadcaster with a list of professional achievements to her name.
 
Yet all that great work has been completely brought undone by her hands. Or so says a disgruntled viewer of the morning show Trioli has helmed for a decade.
 
On Monday, the ABC's News Breakfast host tweeted a photo of a handwritten letter she’s received berating, in painstaking detail, the “most annoying habit” she exhibits on screen.

“You have a most annoying habit of deliberately shifting your hands from one position to another when you could just clasp them in front of you like your co-host.”

So far, the scoreboard reads Michael Rowland: 1, Virginia Trioli: 0.

Not content to nitpick at just Trioli’s on-screen behaviour, the viewer then shares the results of what seems to be a careful anthropological study of all Australian news presenters.

“Several women have the same habit, having to hold a pen or their fingertips like Melissa Doyle,” he or she writes.

“Others stretch their arms out to the side of the desk. Ray Martin has always had this problem. He never knows what to do with his hands.”

LISTEN: Speaking of habits, our Life Bites podcast has some clever tips for breaking them - or sticking to new ones. (Post continues.)

 
Among the many Twitter users who responded to Trioli’s post were fellow TV personalities, including Sunrise’s Edwina Bartholomew.
 
“Such lovely penmanship. Shame,” she wrote.

RELATED: TV host tells other women what not to wear
 
Journalist and commentator Jane Caro recalled a comment she’d received from a viewer during her appearance on Q&A: “Her tiny, tiny hands are driving me crazy”.

The criticism of Trioli’s hand movements is just another example of the truly ridiculous level of scrutiny TV journalists and presenters - especially women - are subjected to.

“Never in my career have I worn a dress that has attracted more conjecture. For the record, I adore it and as you know choose everything I wear,” she wrote on Instagram. 
 
“For those I have offended, I’m sorry it’s not to your liking, but at the end of the day it’s not my day, the day belongs to the magnificent Meghan.”