This judging of ‘fashion fails’ is vicious and depressing

You just know the people passing judgment are sitting in a pair of grubby trackies

Icannot bear the widespread “fashion shaming” of women who have had to go to all the trouble of dressing and making-up for a televised and widely photographed event.

The vicious “fashion fail” features have become commonplace in the meeja these days and I expect more of the same after the Oscars this year.

We have just suffered the fallout from the National Television Awards and I, like many others who did not watch the event, have nevertheless seen plenty of pictures of women wearing outfits deemed unacceptable or – shock horror – the same as someone else’s.

My browsing of magazines featuring fashion commentary is limited these days to trips to the hairdresser and I have to say, they make for depressing reading.

Pages of pictures of slebs in frocks being judged by panels of “experts”. How is that entertaining?

Of course, it is all the more prevalent now that people can broadcast their views on social meeja. You just know that the people passing judgment are sitting in a pair of grubby trackies while poking fun at someone’s so-called fashion fail.

We try to teach our children to be kind and not to say anything hurtful to other people but the nasty judgments on the dress sense of people in the public eye – from the PM to soap stars – seem to be accepted as fair comment.

While I have never been to a do quite as starry as the people in these circumstances, I have had to attend plenty of events at which I’ve had to hoick myself into the kind of clothes that are the opposite of comfortable.

It’s exhausting for us ordinary mortals to glam up. You have to enter a type of shop you would normally walk straight past, try on expensive frocks you think you may only wear once, possibly buy underwear specifically designed to stop bits of you bulging out in said frock, then wear shoes that start hurting before you’ve even left the house. At least we don’t then face the public shaming after the do.

I know it’s not specifically a female problem but the judgments seem harsher for women – whatever Piers Morgan may think.