Miranda Devine in The Sydney Morning Herald:
YOU ONLY have to watch the tragic life trajectory of Britney Spears and her hollow-eyed Hollywood gal pals to understand the damage done by the premature sexualisation of girls and the extreme commodification of female bodies.
Spears is the ultimate incarnation of our girl-poisoning culture - as both victim and role model. From cute performing Mousketeer to a grim, self-loathing, substance-abusing, pole-dancing parody, her psychological unravelling has played out on the public stage. Bouncing between failed relationships, weight ballooning up and down, the mother of two exists to party joylessly with fellow tragics Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton, casually flashing their shaven crotches for the paparazzi to immortalise.
Even our own Nikki Webster, who starred as a bubbly 13-year-old at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, before a TV audience of billions, has aspired to reinvent herself as pop trash ever since. She is often quoted as being unhappy at her inability to shrug off the sweet-girl-next-door image. Her latest attempt at street cred was to pose in a silk bodice and hot pants on the cover of men’s magazine FHM, a fast-track way to jettison any remaining shreds of dignity.
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Miranda Devine goes on to echo an imbecilic claim made by the immigration minister, that Haneef has a responsibility to “front the media”.
Any credibility she has as a journalist or commentator is undermined by her willingness to die in the ditch as a second rate spokesman for the Howard government.
A private citizen such as Haneef has no duty to speak to the media, nor should he feel compelled to do so. It is sufficient to see that Andrews, (whose is compelled to do so) perform it with the characteristic incompetence he brings to every task.
As for Devine, it is the manifest failure of her religion to be taken seriously in the west that has allowed this objectification to occur.
Note, though, that people who regard Britney et al as trash for the peasants would not put (say) ballet dancers in skin-tights, athletes in ditto, artworks depicting naked people and so on in the same camp. Ms Devine is arguing against bad taste not against the human body on display.
A good point, my perspective is that the cultural context is irrelevant, but rather it is the actual display that is problematic
I understand that - I’m also criticising it as *ahem* silly. You can’t posibly regard a ballet dancer as Hell-bound merely for wearing leotards, for example. Well, you might, but it’s absurd.
Come over to the dark side Antish, you know you want to. Put aside your sceptic’s mask.
BTW, I don’t regard the wearing of revealing clothing as marking one for the hell-fire, merely as inappropriate. People and societies have differed on this.
Where one sets the bar as to the affront to public decency is all culturally contextual. Surely you would agree that the wearing grey zip-up shoes, a ponytail and a shiny suit merits a flogging.
Trash culture rules!!
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