The Sunday Times (London)
June 24, 2012 Sunday
Edition 1; National Edition
WEAPONS OF MASS DISTRACTION
Last week a headmistress lashed out at the reality TV star Kim
Kardashian, claiming the descent of western civilisation could be seen
in her every curve. Nonsense, says Camilla Long, she is a better role
model for girls than even the Duchess of Cambridge How can she be
blamed for the premature sexualisation of society? She’s over 30
by Camilla Long
Kim Kardashian is a spoilt Californian princess and owner of the
world’s most significant buttocks. She lives in Beverly Hills with her
mother, Kris, and her sisters, Khloe and Kourtney, and is the star of
a reality show called Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
She is well known in America, where she has 15m followers on Twitter.
She is dating the rapper Kanye West and every time they go out, shots
of her golden booty are beamed across the globe. She is the ultimate
21stcentury celebrity, in all its glory and its nothingness.
When she came to Britain a few months ago, few people recognised the
girl with the big arse picking her way across the wastes of Hampstead
Heath in spike Louboutins. Few cared – until last week when Helen
Wright, the headmistress of a girls’ boarding school in Wiltshire,
suddenly made her famous.
Why? Kardashian had posed in her knickers for men on the cover of Zoo
magazine. “It is not too strong a statement, I venture to suggest, to
say that almost everything that is wrong with western society today
can be summed up in that one symbolic photo of Miss Kim Kardashian on
the front of Zoo magazine,” Wright fumed at conference for teachers.
“The descent of western civilisation can practically be read into
every curve (of which, you will note, there are indeed many).
Officially the hottest woman in the world? Really? Is this what we
want our young people to aim for? Is this what success should mean to
them?”
Kardashian was famous for starring in a sex tape with a boyfriend, she
said, a 72-day marriage to a basketball player and a “rather ample
backside”.
Her attack was a shot from a 12-bore. Obviously Kardashian is vacuous
and silly. Few women can relate to her, especially if they have never
so much as seen a solid gold Jet Ski, let alone sat astride one in a
bikini and wedges. But the source of all horror and turpitude? Evil in
a tight dress and heels? Isn’t that Jimmy Carr? Or angry tennis
players?
If anything, I have always thought Kardashian is rather beige – a
workaholic neat-freak who gets up at 6.30am and shuns drink, who
spends her time filming her show or cleaning her room or colour
co-ordinating her shampoos.
What could be a better example for the girls at Wright’s school? Sure,
they can be taught to impersonate the Duchess of Cambridge for fees of
£30,000 a year but is not hard-working Princess Kim a better role
model?
PROBABLY the most exciting thing about Kardashian is that sex tape, an
hour-long special made in 2003 in which she was filmed grunting
lacklustrely into a pillow as a helium-voiced R&B singer called Ray J
“mercilessly pounded” her ample posterior. Kardashian openly admits
that it “launched” her career, because she had only been Paris
Hilton’s best friend until then.
Admittedly, she was also the daughter of Robert Kardashian, an
Armenian-American lawyer who was in the team that successfully
defended OJ Simpson at his murder trial. But now her father is dead,
and Kim is the highestearning reality star in the world, a
multi-millionairess and professional clothes horse, who shops and
gossips and crams her butt into Ferraris and onto banquettes in a
stupid show that is as banal as it is harmless.
And yet Wright sneered at her achievements and attacked her looks,
claiming that she contributed to the “premature sexualisation” of
society. Kardashian possessed a dangerous “value” to women, consisting
of “glitz and sparkle”, and gave off messages about “physical
appearance being more important than character or substance” and
“financial rewards coming with meanness, scandal and boundary-less
living”.
Young girls “are soaking up a diet of empty celebrity and
superficiality”, Wright concluded. The message was clear: burn the
witch and stick her (rumoured) bum implants on a spike.
Wright’s blog, drhelenwright.com, shows that as a headmistress she has
long been concerned about the sexualisation of society and that she
puts a good deal of energy into promoting the development of a
“positive body image” among schoolchildren.
“In this world, we are surrounded by – bombarded by – images of women
focused on appearance, to the extent that this has become a huge
subliminal pressure for girls and young women,” she warns.
In an article for The Guardian, she writes of “a heavily sexualised
society where fantasy and reality mix unhealthily, and where
generations of girls and young women feel insecure and unhappy about
their bodies and themselves”.
I am always wary of women who tell other women to put their clothes
on, just as I am wary of women who appear to think other women are
stupid. Wright seems to believe that most women are poor, soft-headed
sheeplets who take one look at a spread-eagled Kardashian and want to
self-harm.
The truth is that massive boobs and fake nails, orange skin and
straggly hair extensions are funny, and women read about them because
they are funny. Over-coiffed celebrity marshmallows such as Kardashian
and Victoria Beckham provide a constant flow of exploding dresses,
unruly boobs and outfits that make them look “like Princess Leia gone
wrong”, as Kim did last Tuesday, according to one celebrity rag.
I am sure even the most impressionable teenager would think
Kardashian’s life is absurd. Nobody believes a diamond-covered arse is
the answer to anything except a thong. Her booty is not the
apocalypse.
So what is? Wright slut-shamed Kardashian in her conference speech but
barely examined Zoo itself or its rival Nuts, a magazine that is proud
of being named after testicles.
Zoo and Nuts are the bastard sons of Loaded and Maxim, lads’ mags that
epitomised the sexual smash-and-grab of the early and mid-1990s. They
championed the idea of the “high street hottie”, a cute girl next door
whom you could “surprise” in Foot Locker and who would lace up your
Reeboks as a thank you afterwards.
If I were a teacher, I would be far more worried if my pupils were
reading these magazines – publications aimed at football-gobbed
mouth-breathers who actually believe a half-naked Kim Kardashian
“wants” them – than if they followed her daft antics on the telly.
Lads’ mags worship men such as the actor Danny Dyer, who was Zoo’s
agony uncle until he was sacked for advising that a reader should
“cut” his ex-girlfriend “and then no one will want her”. Dyer is now
the star of low-budget films such as Pimp, an underground thriller in
which he plays a hustler with issues.
If Wright wants to know about the apocalypse, it’s inside Danny Dyer’s
head. It is a place of beery urges and fading strip joints, of
violence, idiocy and sadness, where every girl is a prostitute or
glamour model, and every boy is horny or angry, usually both.
Zoo is not the natural habitat of an exotic creature such as
Kardashian, a manicured glamourpuss who spends much of her time
walking poodles in Hollywood. In fact, her sex life is generally the
very opposite of rough. Most of it seems to have been decided by a
committee.
On Oprah last week, she revealed she had lost her virginity after
consultation with her mother, Kris,a fearsome Cruella de Vil type, who
suggested her daughter go on birth control pills at 14.
Cruella-Mom micromanages Kim’s career and is even said to have dreamt
up the sex tape, but Kim denies this and calls the experience
“humiliating”. “No mother wants to hear something like that,” Kris
said. “I could tell she was in a lot of pain.”
The Keeping Up with the Kardashians shows are packed with trash,
endless sex chat, fashion disasters and pregnancy tests in the loo,
lustily enacted by all three sisters, as well as their younger brother
Rob, and two half-sisters Kendall and Kylie. One is always pregnant;
another is always having fertility problems. They say things like
“she’s late and she’s nauseous”, or “it looks great with one boob
exposed”.
I suppose this is what Wright is referring to as “boundary-less”
living. Kardashian is bad because she flaunts her body and cannot keep
a husband, although most people suspect she never wanted her husband
in the first place.
Last August, she got married in a lavish but soulless ceremony in Los
Angeles to a gigantic Neanderthal basketball player with a monobrow.
Rivetingly, he was called Kris, like her mother.
The wedding was watched by 4m viewers and included footage of Kris’s
prewedding facelift (the mother not the groom). But Kim wasn’t into
Kris (the other one) so she dumped him three months on, much to his
astonishment, or at least he looked astonished. He is now suing her
for using him as a publicity stunt.
So Kim not only takes off her clothes for money, she openly profits
from the institution of marriage, in the same way as Katie Price does
and the Duchess of Cambridge, certainly does not.
THE duchess is the opposite of Kim, all glossy and pink and silent,
the ultimate wife in a bell jar. On Tuesday, as Kim made her mistakes
in the Princess Leia dress in Paris, Kate’s £415 nubuck waistcoat was
causing hysteria at an inner-London primary school, where she sat
lusciously at a camp fire and talked to eight-year-olds about tepees
and rope challenges.
The duchess is a human tea-towel with perfect hair and the world’s
least offensive collection of shoes. She is the poster girl for the
re-emergent cult of the “good wife”.
Hers is a life of cupcakes and pearls, of Cath Kidston and petticoats,
of hems and tights, a place where a woman is judged not by her brains
but her muffins – a cult as frightening and insidious to me as the
cult of Nuts.
I cannot help feel that 21st-century politics is to blame for this
blandness, with its endless photocalls and glassy meet-andgreets,
where our leaders talk baseball and Guantanamo while their wives
discuss aubergines and finger puppets.
Even Carla Bruni, one of the baddest girls of the whole of the 1990s,
fell into line when she netted her goaty little politico. I can just
imagine her baking the madeleines along with Michelle Obama and Sam
Cam, bright university graduates who have left meaningful work behind
and now haul on their pearls and silk skirts daily for cardboard
barbecues in diplomatic gardens and tea parties with brownies and
MasterChef’s Gregg Wallace.
Valérie Trierweiler, the Elysée “Rottweiler”, is the breed’s last
hope. She is yet to be tamed unlike latest British recruit Justine
Thornton, a Cambridge-educated barrister and mother of Ed Miliband’s
two children.
She was not married to the Labour leader when he was anointed in 2010,
but in a rather tragic sequence of events, dictated by political
necessity, she was sprayed with foundation and lipstick and sent down
the aisle at what looked like a baronial, rain-sodden version of Kim’s
dazzling multimedia nuptials.
If Wright wants to know where “everything that is wrong in western
society” resides, perhaps she could look at this victim of “forced”
marriage.
In fact, the only person who has not been entirely resurfaced by
marriage is the power-arsed Kardashian, who quickly moved on to a more
suitable boyfriend in the shape of Kanye West, a trainer-obsessed rap
star who is enthralled with her and plans to appear on her reality
show as a prop.
He seems happy to adhere to her career plans, following her around at
press launches and at fashion shows.
In return, she wore a pair of his shoes once. He is obviously not
bothered by Zoo, or Kim’s overt sexuality. In fact, he might be
surprised at Wright’s words, that his girlfriend is responsible for
the “premature sexualisation” of society, when she is well over 30.
WHAT is “premature sexualisation” anyway? I have always wondered if it
isn’t a wishy-washy media concept based on worries about bras for
10-year-olds and high heels for babies, the “spread” of “porn” and
precision-waxed bikini lines – anathema dreamt up by teachers and
nannies to stop girls even thinking about sex.
Wright may fret about Kim Kardashian’s suspender belt but what of the
real, hard evils that women face now? The economic recession is
driving them out of their jobs and severely limiting their choices.
There are more than 1m women unemployed; the pay gap between sexes is
now 15%.
Only last Monday, Cherie Blair lambasted yummy mummies, saying she
despaired of women whose attitude is “why can’t I just marry a rich
husband and retire?”. Non-working mothers “put all their effort into
their children”, she said, but career women such as herself “also want
to be the best possible mother. I know that my job as a mother
includes bringing up my children so that they can actually live
without me”.
Blair may be gobby and vulgarian, but she is correct. Even Wright’s
views on working mothers are not so different.
Commenting on her blog about a recent provocative article in this
newspaper, headlined “When mums go mad”, she writes: “Our society is
very quick to criticise those who do not conform; it is even quicker
to lambast mothers, whatever their choices in parenting and mothering.
Mothers are often caught in an impossible place in what they choose to
do – open one of our tabloid newspapers and you will see them
criticised for not remaining at home with their children; open
another, and you will see them criticised for not bringing enough
stimulation into the home by working.”
She signs off with the words: “Let us value diversity.” Shouldn’t that
include Kim Kardashian, Dr Wright?
” Kate’s is a life of hems and tights where a woman is judged by her
muffins, not by her brains – a cult as insidious as Nuts