Morning:
6°c
Another day, another airbrushing scandal. Earlier this week, Snappy Snaps netted itself some fine publicity on the back of claims that customers were increasingly requesting their holiday photographs be digitally enhanced to iron out the blemishes.
Fat thighs, yellow teeth, ill-advised trysts with Stavros the waiter … all can be erased with the flick of a brush.
The papers were awash with indignation(hubris/foolishness/end of civilisation as we know it, etc) but quite why anyone is surprised by this news I'm not really sure. A cursory glance at Facebook will tell you all you need to know about the vanity of your fellow folk. Do you really think any of them look like that in dear old real life? Most folks these days have photoshop or some other image manipulation software on their home computer: rare is the person who doesn't post his or her party snaps on Facebook, Bebo or Flickr without first brightening teeth, shading in cheekbones or, at the very least, getting rid of red eye. It's just the way things are.
Which brings me to Kate Moss. This week, photographs have surfaced of her holidaying on a yacht in St Tropez looking — hold the front page! — wrinkly. The wrinkles, it is alleged, are the result of too much sun, fun and cigarettes.
She might be enjoying herself now, runs the subtext, but look at the dire consequences! Let Kate Moss be a lesson to all women that fun is bad, punishable by saggy jowls and crow's feet.
Honestly, we're damned if we do and damned if we don't, it seems. I mean, let me get this straight: if we retouch our photos, we're vain and shallow. But heaven forfend we allow anyone to snap us as we really are, on holiday and without make-up. We live in an über-critical world where, for women at least, the merest signs of weight gain or ageing are pounced upon as evidence that we have let ourselves go/lived a louche life/been a Bad Girl. If Kate Moss — by anyone's standards still a babe at 35 — can be slated so mercilessly, is it any wonder that the rest of us are queuing up at Snappy Snaps to get the Palma pics retouched?
But here's the thing that really rankles. Just as photographs can be retouched so the subject looks better, so they can be retouched so the subject looks worse. We don't hear so much about this dark art: after all, who in their right mind would employ it? Who, indeed.
I've seen Kate Moss in the flesh, though admittedly not on a yacht in St Tropez (my invite for that one must have got lost in the post).
Guess what: she doesn't look that wrinkly. Nor, I'll wager, does one-time EastEnders actress Natalie Cassidy look that fat, former model Jerry Hall look that dimpled or Madonna look that sinewy. We live in a pretty sick world where our ageing bodies are used as a stick with which to beat us, and our vanities are mocked when we fight back.
Hillary Clinton's outburst
With one small gesture — the pulling of her headphones out of her ears — Hillary Clinton's approval ratings shot through the rafters.Whatever your political persuasion, the question “… and what does your husband think?” is surely one that unites all women in an ardent dislike of the asker.
I loved Mrs Clinton's angry reaction but something still puzzles me. French might be the most common language spoken in the Congo but even if Hillary's interpreter was translating from Munukutuba, Teke or Mbosi, what are the odds that he got the words “President Obama” muddled up with “Bill Clinton”, as has been claimed?
Covering up the gaffe only succeeded in adding insult to injury.
Children don't profit from this television
Have you been Waybulooed this summer? Viewing figures for CBeebies' new flagship programme have just reached the three million mark but I'm not convinced. It's like Hollyoaks for the under-fives: badly scripted, poorly directed and mostly unintelligible (and if I don't understand what the Piplings are mumbling on about, I don't know how a four-year-old will manage).
Filmed in Renfrew, at least three of the children who appear as “Cheebies” are Scottish, yet they all seem to have been dubbed over to have the same posh English accent.
There is something cynical about the whole programme that galls, particularly when you compare it with the labour of love that was Teletubbies or In the Night Garden. So why am I not surprised that 15 different licensees have been granted the right to churn out Waybuloo merchandise this autumn? Profits first, quality second, it seems.
I'm itching to bathe in some sunshine
As if the crappy weather isn't enough, now news breaks of a wasp epidemic. Brilliant. Is there any point in getting out of bed at all? I didn't used to be afraid of wasps, until a singularly cheeky one flew up my shorts and stung me where the sun don't shine. Sore, but I'd rather endure 10 wasp stings than the hell of being bitten by a mosquito.
Mozzie repellent wasn't top of my list when going for dinner at Geales in Notting Hill. We chose to sit outside because a) for once, it wasn't raining and b) one of my companions had brought her charming Irish wolfhound, Nancy, who wasn't allowed indoors. Not only was the meal disappointing (as a Scot, reared on lard, I can't abide it when restaurants don't change their frying oil often enough), the next day my legs were covered in mosquito bites. Be warned: London's damp and humid summer comes with a sting in its tail.
Reader views (10)
Rob(erta?)
Glad to hear reading all those trash mags hasn`t made you depressed, Rob - sure seem a bit defensive, though!
Just be beautiful INSIDE as well, that`ll be fine.
- Darius, London UK, 17/08/2009 07:56
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Hi Darius
I'm female, just so you know. I don't think this should be about gender. Men's health magazines for a good example, have extremely attractive men in them - and I'm assuming fairly healthy ones too!
Its possible to be thin and healthy, and attractive! If you have all these qualities, then modelling is a great job to have. I wouldn't say no myself. Unfortunately I'm 5ft 4. However, I happily accept this, and my prolific reading of magazines with beautiful people in them has not spun me into a deep depression.
- Rob, Ealing, UK, 14/08/2009 17:05
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Who cares about all this. I ask, where does her daughter fit in all this? I have hardly seen a pic of Kate and her child. At her age she should be slowing down and making more time with her kid, not running around yachts etc and acting like a reckless teenage.
- Cath, Europe, 13/08/2009 23:35
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Move over darlings! Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss and Twiggy all started out as very, very young teenage models. They're all on an impossible treadmill now - trying to look almost the same as they looked decades ago. How mad is that? It would make sense if they let the natural order prevail - let the young models take centre stage for the young fashions. And let the senior age models aim at the markets their own ages. Without the paranoia of using ALL the photo tricks to knock off the decades.
Says it all that older women aren't going anywhere when Eddie Mair has just announced that the Govt has today appointed Arlene Phillips as our new 'Dancing Czar'. Strike up the music...dancing already!
- Carrie, London, 13/08/2009 17:14
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Jon and Rob - you’re falling into the same trap - confusing HEALTH with BEAUTY.
"Average weight for their height" does not mean unattractive - it means more typical dress size to aspire to.
The "average" unattractive girls YOU refer to are way, way above average weight/height.
Anyway, we’re discussing health here, and not your sense of female beauty or sex appeal as dictated by girly trash mags, the ones that put most effort into peddling the lie of "size zero"
Start looking at the product, not the girly selling it, you might see beyond the slick, suspect marketing.
Also, your wives or girlfriends should be enough for you!
Best of luck!
Darius
- Darius, London UK, 13/08/2009 15:45
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Darius, do you really want to look at "average" English girls all day in adverts and television? That would suggest fat, muffin tops and badly fitting saggy jeans, smoking, stupid and generally unattractive. Would sell a lot of products I'm sure.
- Jon, london, 13/08/2009 13:34
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Darius, I don't want to buy a magazine to look at photos of average people. I can look at my own holiday pics or just around me at work to do that! Most advertising is aspirational, otherwise we wouldn't want the products they're flogging. That goes for almost everything from cars to perfect looking newborns in nappy ads. If people are insecure looking at models, they have deeper issues!
- Rob, Ealing, UK, 13/08/2009 13:16
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Kate Moss and others in the industry don't get slated for ageing. Like Twiggy, they get slated for earning a living by continuously denying the ageing process. Their photo's hit the public from screens, press and mags looking quite literally impossibly young. That's as a result of airbrushing, touch-ups and all the bags of tricks of photo fake-ups. It keeps a high proportion of the average Jane Doe's on an endlessly hopeless cycle of spending hard earned dosh trying to look like that. This week, it's been reported that desperate middle aged/older women are taking to the knife (and £200 a pot face creams) not just to look good anymore, but in actual FEAR of losing ordinary jobs and careers. Good enough reason to slate a fantasy industry. Twiggy, Kate Moss et al just ramp up the stress for all women. On the real Kate Moss, that stress now shows.
- T. Jeffries, London, 13/08/2009 12:13
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Has Kate Moss let herself go... No, she never really had it in the first place. She was never anything special, a ten a penny skinny girl from Croydon who got lucky. Interesting it seems to be women who think that she anything special, most men really don't see her appeal.
- Nj, London, 13/08/2009 11:46
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It`s about time a few rules were dictated concerning any model used in advertising.
For example;
All must be AVERAGE weight for their HEIGHT (-0 percent, plus 5 percent)
Images that have been digitally airbrushed MUST state so, and list the changes made.
Just these two rules ,if enforced should drag (?) females back to reality of what a REAL person looks like, as opposed to the extremely disturbing view that fashion designers are peddling of "perfection" (i.e their designs only look acceptably "good" on tall skinny coat hanger models) .
We go on about healthy lifestyles - well, for the physical AND mental wellbeing of our young and easily led fashion addicts, this generalised and deliberate misinterpretation of "perfection" HAS to be stopped.
- Darius, London UK, 13/08/2009 09:55
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