It would be fair to say that Kate Moss isn’t a positive role model for how to live a mentally and physically healthy lifestyle. Much as one wouldn’t consider Gordon Brown a good role model on how to have a raunchy sex life.
She’s currently getting heavy criticism from the media for saying “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels” (a common pro-ana slogan) in an interview. And yeah, the criticism is justified. Even so, aren’t certain elements of the media being just a tad hypocritical here? Could it be that some of those same newspapers that are condemning her bear just a little bit of responsibility of their own?
After all, aren’t they the same media outlets who have marketed the likes of Kate Moss (along with Posh Spice, Nicole Richie and other stick insects) as an undersized icon of female beauty? More specifically, a version of female beauty that’s marketed almost exclusively to other women? (Don’t believe me on that latter point? Line up a dozen of your heterosexual male friends and ask them to list their ten sexiest female celebrities. Chances are that Kate Moss won’t appear on any of their lists)
But this is, of course, entirely unrelated.
And isn’t it the Daily Mail, Daily Express, Heat, Closer, Now and all those other cat-litter-tray-liner publications that constantly bombard women with a non-stop sluice of diet plans insterspersed with forensically analysed shots of some female celeb in a bikini on holiday, with accompanying “OMG Tiny Trace of Cellulite On Her Left Thigh Shock Disaster” headline?
Nah, that’s a separate matter. Nothing to do with it.
And while the Sun has rushed to condemn Moss’s remarks, other Murdoch outlets are happy to broadcast re-runs of The Swan. If you haven’t seen this particular show, it’s a spectacularly tasteless affair in which “ugly” (i.e. a bit average-looking) women are helped to deal with their crime of not looking spectacular by having a bit of self-esteem work with a psychotherapist…before whisking them off for crash diets, exercise regimes and then into the operating theatre for tit jobs, facial reconstruction, liposuction…so much plastic surgery, in fact they ‘re left looking like they’ve just been duffed up by Mike Tyson. Once the bruising goes down, they’re declared “swans”. The series was thankfully cancelled in 2005, but is currently being re-broadcast on Sky Three.
But that’s totally different.
And as we know, eating disorders are overwhelmingly associated with certain social categories (anorexia tends to be the mental illness of white, middle class kids). But that could never suggest that cultural factors have an influence on eating disorders, could it?
So, shame on Kate Moss for implying that there might be some sort of continuum that exists between our skinny-obsessed celebrity culture and the content of pro-ana websites. Because that could never be the case.
I’m working with an anorexic girl at the moment. She’s obsessed with watching The Swan on Sky Three. I’ve had to have a discreet word with her parents about keeping an eye on her TV choices.
They are all as bad as each other. Moss wants attention and knows how to get it. She is pretty much untouchable by bad publicity, they always come back to her, again and again. She’s a dick, we know she’s a dick, the media knows shes a dick. She’s not stupid amd she’s no stranger to talking to the press. This in my opinion was a deliberate act to get publicity in reaction to the ongoing size zero debate and models being skinny shocker.
The papers lap up the crapulent drivel that she spews up, and the rest of the press lap up the media frenzy about the media frenzy. Meanwhile vunerable young people looking for any justification for their miserable existence go completely unforgotten, even though they are the source of the tabloid rucuss. It’s not about media outrage to protect the youff. It’s about stirring up the hype to sell more papers. Those suffering with ED’s are being used as an excuse for a bunch of too-rich-to-give-a-shit-w*nkers to buy bigger houses and faster cars.
I’m not angry, honest.
Lola x
the people (mostly money hungry men I’m guessing) behind the fashion industry and the pop industry and the film industry and the tabloid press, and the advertising industry and the diet industry are sickos who have no respect for women. Real men out ther like women of all shapes and sizes and would put hapiness, natural beauty, personality and sense of humour over body size/shape any day. Women do themselves and others no favours by buying the fahion mags, the crap pop records/dvd’s, the diets, the make up, the fashion, the other shi*te they are sold by these people. We can all do our bit to stop young girls thinking they need to be skinny by disengaging from this sick culture, supporting something real and not superficial and complimenting one another on things that really matter, only we, the consumers, have the power to banish these images. Do you think Kate Moss would do all this if nobody bought into it? If it was the status quo to be natural and healthy and and people supported intelligent and positive, non consumerist things, not Moss and cheryl cole and all these plastic, air headed, capitalist, talentless freaks and the people/industries they work for, then wemight start seeing a healthier society emerge, but people are caught in the grip of the media and by buying their products and those they advertise they support eating disorders by helping to propoagate the ideas that could lead to girls developing them.
ps. look at tv and radio now, tess daily, christine bleakly, that one off this morning who replaced fern cotton, those bloody loose women, the news readers etc. all slim women. On radio one, fern cotton, annie mac, edith bloody bowman, all stick like or closer to the thin end of the spectrum, in film, kiera knightly and co, all sticks, larger aka over size zero women aren’t getting a look in, so talent has gone out the window and skinniness rules the media. You get tghe odd exception like that singer adele, but then it’s someone really plump and it’s just another marketing scheme, the token larger lady, there’s no real balance of sizes and shapes of women in the mainstream entertainment industry, as a result we’re getting a really distorted image of one particular size/shape/look of woman in our faces all the time and unfortunately the media image being the big glossy thing it is is what some people aspire to be like, whether conciously or not and it’s very sad and very irrosponsible of the people behind these things, especially the BBC, they should be ashamed of themselves.
ten sexiest female celebrities:
i. Kylie – as a mechanic in Neighbours
ii. Betty Joan Perske
iii. umm?
over to you boys…
Not a boy, but in no particular order…
1. Janis Joplin. As she was, obviously. Not so attracted to a jar of ashes.
2. Alex Kingston
3. Skin (her off Skunk Anansie)
4. Queen Latifah. Oh yeah. *fans self*
5. Amanda Palmer
6. Patti Smith. As she was on the front cover of Horses and Easter, but also as she is now. Saw her live a few years ago and she’s magnificent
7. Jude Abbott (her off Chumbawamba)
8. Samantha Ferris (her off Supernatural)
9. Melissa Auf Der Maur
10. Katee Sackoff
I like thin okay when it’s kind of wiry and muscular. Particularly in older women who look like they’ve been around a bit and can look after themselves. Not so much dead-looking and waif-like.
Also not a boy, but Big Yes for Amanda Fucking Palmer – she is brilliant! And Alex Kingston. Who we can vaguely link to Mental Nurse, as I saw her play Nurse Rached in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in the West End a few years ago. Would like Angelina Jolie somewhere on the list though.
Okay Socrates, I’ll take up that challenge.
1. Natasha Kaplinsky
2. Kate Silverton
3. Cerys Matthews
4. Kirstie Allsop
5. Nigella Lawson
6. Charlotte Hatherley
7. Angelina Jolie
8. Paloma Faith
9. Kari Byron from Mythbusters
10. Lady Gaga
Not a stick insect among them.
OMG. Nigella? Seriously?
Hell yeah!
Strange, I thought the double takes would be about Kate Silverton rather than Nigella.
I would never trust a woman who can make chopping a parsip look like a sexual act. The woman gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Zarathustra, how can you fantasise about somebody who mixes chile with chocolate. In a Xmas cake. That she then doesn’t ice. Grounds for a Section 4 at least, I’d say.
There’s a very good singer-songwriter from Wolverhampton, now based in America, who looks worryingly like Nigella Lawson at times. Carina Round. She’d've been on my list, except I’m not sure she’s a celebrity. But she’s beautiful, and very talented.
Lady Gaga has the dancer’s physique – she is pretty thin. I LOVE her wardrobe though.I want those shoes and boots!
I know a lot of people read this site without commenting so for you lurkers: the best website that helped me to stop caring about my weight (and I am technically overweight) was Kate Harding’s, at http://www.kateharding.net. I also stopped buying womens’ mags and this made a big difference. I’ve never had an eating disorder, just some years of the ‘normal’ western female thinness obsession.
Kate Moss is not a classy girl. I don’t care how much money she has. Now, Cindy Crawford, otoh, would never have said something like that.
Yes I know this is another comment from me but…. do you remember the ruckus when Slash from Guns ‘n’ Roses started appearing in Black Widow Vodka ads in the US? People were up in arms, saying he was being a bad role model for the kids.
Slash’s reply was that he liked the vodka and would not stop promoting it, and that if any kid already saw him as a role model, then their mum and dad needed to take serious stock of their parenting skills.
the sexiest female celebs are definitely all TV nurses, Donna from Holby city, Michelle from Doctors and of course Nurse Gladys from Open All Hours.
I don’t get what all the fuss is about with Kirstie Allsop? Maybe I’d be won over if she appeared on property snakes and ladders in a nurses uniform.
Next we’re going to have Kate endorsing some food company. McDonald’s maybe. “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels… except a Big Mac”.
she’s missing a trick there, she should definitely get beefed up on mickey d’s, start the ‘super-size me super-model’ campaign.
Get the Lardy Look!
Never have liked the woman – I mean she has very odd looking eyes and god awful teeth for a model. Thankful she doesn’t spout that bloody ‘get the London look’ drivel anymore on the Rimnel adverts!
Teeth can be retouched.
Models generally aren’t that good-looking. I guess once you’ve narrowed the female population down to unusually tall, then narrowed it further to unusually thin, then narrowed it further to actually-wants-to-do-this, you don’t have a great deal to choose from.
Kate Moss made her comments on the Womens Wear Daily website, a site the vast majority of UK teenage girls wouldn’t be accessing, I’d wager. However, they certainly would be more likely to see the front page of The Sun. Were The Sun truly worried about the effect Moss’s comments would have on teenagers, they would have ignored them completely.
Kate Moss is incredibly beautiful, if you ask me. But then, as a gay man, I’m probably a misogynist who wants all women to look like boys (copyright The Chatterati 2009)
For me, the pursuit of ‘skinny’ in young girls is part of the wider phenomenon whereby celebrity and talent have parted company. Kate Moss is a model but there are young women such as Paris Hilton, Abi Titmuss et al who make a very good living from being a certain type, which includes being thin. As the public buy into it, no wonder young girls have made the association between ‘thin’ and ‘success’. Kate Moss was silly to make that remark but the die had been cast and the damage was already done.