Oh what a degrading year for us women
HAS there ever been a more depressing year for feminism than 2014: the year that Cheryl Cole disfigured her posterior with a giant rose tattoo and Kim Kardashian ‘broke the internet’ by posing with a glass of champagne balanced on hers?
When not flaunting their derrieres, it seemed the world’s most famous women — whose every move is avidly f ollowed by millions of impressionable girls on social media — were busy throwing buckets of ice over themselves or posting ‘ brave’ pictures without any make-up on.
Ostensibly, this was for charity, but it was really to show off about how much better they look in a wet T-shirt or without cosmetics than the rest of us.
It was also the year when every B-list celebrity, from Kelly Osbourne to Kelly Brook, started taking risqué pictures of their cleavage or bottoms and posting them on Instagram and Twitter, with legions of fans inevitably following suite.
Meanwhile, a cartload of overpaid, under-fed and perma-tanned supermodels rolled i nto town, courtesy of lingerie store Victoria’s Secret, and proceeded to prance around semi- naked while the biggest selling pop star of the day, Ed Sheeran, drooled over them like a fox in a hen house.
SUDDENLY the most shocking image of 2013 — Miley Cyrus twerking on stage with her tongue lolling like some half- drugged porn starlet — seemed almost tame.
not since the slave markets of Ancient Rome have women been judged so blatantly by their appearance, analysed so openly as little more than a collection of body parts. And the worst part is this: the sisters are doing it to themselves.
For women — and women alone — are responsible for this rampant self- objectification. This time, we really cannot blame the patriarchy.
no one is forcing young women to have their breasts enhanced (one of the most popular plastic surgery procedure of 2014) or to leave the house trussed up like living, breathing blow-up dolls.
From the preoccupation with ‘thigh gaps’ (that faintly obscene obsession of super- skinny models) to a seeming inability to pose for a photo without pouting l i ke a demented trout, all too many women seemed to engage in ever more vacuous vanities. Eyelashes were so over-the-top that girls were straining to see past the end of their noses and cleavages had more suspension than the Severn Bridge.
So there you have it. decades of feminism and it seems the best use we can find for equal pay is to spend it on buying ourselves a body like Barbie’s and a wardrobe like Katie Price’s. Was it really for this that Emily davison fell under the King’s horse?
And if all of this is confusing for a woman like me, who thought the whole point of equality was that I could at last be judged on my ability to converse fluidly on foreign policy, not how I look in a bikini, imagine how unfathomable it must be for the poor male of the species.
Men have always struggled to understand women; now it must be nigh on impossible. Can he look? Should he touch?
And how the hell do you tell the difference between hooker’s heels worn ironically and a real pair? Talk about mixed signals.
If I could wish for anything in 2015, it’s for this insanity to stop. For women to stop making such fools of themselves, to rediscover some dignity. Above all to stop frittering away the freedoms so hard won by our predecessors and that, let’s not forget, are still denied to many.