LOL!

Jackie O as in Vile Scandiland’s sidekick (dropkick?) on 2DAY-FM.

I do, however, see some ambiguity in this paragraph above; “Really, apportioning blame to fashion is every bit as sound as making Grand Theft Auto responsible for violence. Grown women are capable of separating adipose reality from haute couture.”

For a forty something Australian, the catwalks of Milan or Paris, are indeed as far removed from reality as cartoons and the content of video games. However, I suspect that the roots of self esteem issues and a life of yo-yo diets and other problems, are formed in adolescence before someone can consider herself a “grown woman”. For a sixteen year old who is bombarded with media images and standards of “perfect body weight” and “perfect body shapes”, the catwalk models and fashion events are in fact at the very core of the information that is being fed to her, and may indeed have an effect on her self esteem and self perception.

Yes, any healthy 16 year old will know the difference between reality and fiction/fantasy, and I do not believe that children are taught that violence is good by cartoons or video games. But Dolly and Cosmo are not sold as fiction or fantasy titles, and young minds take their cues from what they are offered by these and other titles (and their peers) as being desirable for their self image and self worth - some of those cues will stay with them well into adulthood, and can have a detrimental effect on their development and health. In various ways, the media sells the slim “super” models on the catwalks of Milan and Paris as the body type to aspire to, regardless of the real body type of the reader. For a developing adolescent the reality or otherwise of this information is much harder to determine than the information contained in Grand Theft Auto, or in a cartoon.

I can’t help feeling that there is also something disingenuous about the paragraph that I have quoted. The term “grown women” may have been used to qualify the comment very specifically, or just used to ignore some of the wider implications of the subject being covered. I well remember my own (male) self esteem issues from when I was 16, but while I have grown past them, I don’t discard those issues as being irrelevent to the youth of today. Broadening the range of (healthy) acceptable body types and role models can not be an unhealthy thing for society.

On this occasion I’m a bit confused what the point is and how they have earned a Wankley. Maybe I’m suffering Friday fatigue. But from the small segment I saw I thought lots of the women were magnificent and for a change some of the clothes were even made for wearing. High profile fashion shows are usually freak shows because so many designers try to out-bizarre each other rather than just make good clothes.

A fashion reseller friend years ago told me her theory that models are super-thin because the predominantly gay male designers idealize a boy-like look and are slightly mysogenistic. I thought her theory was a bit out there at first but over time I’ve come to think she’s right.