Friday 22 June 2012

Julie Burchill on top form

I can't remember ever agreeing with a word she's written before, but Julie Burchill is spot on with every word of her article in yesterday's Soaraway Sun (of all places):

Dr Wright, headmistress of the £30,000-a-year girls’ school St Mary’s Calne said: “It is not too strong a statement... 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.”

Let’s get one thing straight. Kim Kardashian is a beauty — a world-class, grade-A, ocean-going beauty. She is not a brain, a talent or an entertainer. Zoo magazine did not vote her Most Likely To End World Poverty or To Reverse Climate Change — they voted her the Hottest Woman In The World...

With all due respect, I haven’t seen Dr Wright’s BTM, and I don’t really care to. But all this seems to me like a chronic case of Bum Envy...

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm with the good Dr. To trivialise the comment she made as "bum envy" is a childish strategem to avoid having the debate.

I can't blame Kardashian for her "rent-seeking" behaviour (in her case, trading in an artificially-stimulated market for tits'n'ass), but I think a measure of despair about the shallowness of what we've managed to teach our children is entirely justified.

Tim Almond said...

Let's compare the situation. Dr Helen Wright is headmistress of a school in Calne and 41 years old. My guess, maybe £100K salary? £150K? Kim Kardashian is 10 years younger, earns $6m/year and can attract the likes of NBA basketball players (good providers and physical specimens).

So, in terms of evolution, who has the advantage?

And is a degree in medieval languages any less pointless than knowing the best places to go shopping? Unless you're going to get a time machine to take you Tudor England, no, it isn't.

Anonymous said...

Nevertheless.

I think we're not comparing like with like. In the red corner(nothing to do with politics!), Dr Wright is involved for better or for worse in the business of education and is entrusted with the offspring of a large number of parents. Her role is to educate and prepare kids for the real world. I'm quite happy to assume she does it because she wants to and is comfortable with - and good at - doing so.

In the blue corner, a woman with the good fortune to have big tits and a comfortable-looking arse. It doesn't hurt that she's astonishingly good looking, or that she was "discovered" because she made a sex tape when she was a kid. Since then, in return for large sums of money she's contributed little other than helping to persuade the next generation down that they're entitled to fame and fortune as a celeb. Oh, and providing some wankfest material for teenage boys.

At the root of it all is almost certainly some prejudice on my part - but I'm not uncomfortable with that.

Mark Wadsworth said...

FT, hang about here, KK is not the only attractive woman in the world, there are lots of them.

Surely the point is that if Dr W is indeed an educator, she should care about teaching people interesting and useful facts, not engaging in wild and baseless polemic and blaming the downfall of Western society on the fact that people (men and women) like looking at pictures of attractive people. If Dr W had done an article slagging off the EU, or bankers, or Home-Owner-Ists or Islamic terrorists or something, then yes, they are a threat to Western society. But KK's botty certainly isn't.

TS, agreed.

Bayard said...

The prospect of getting something for nothing, for earning a fortune without doing any real work, or having any real qualifications, has always been attractive to the young. Not everyone has the right parents to be able to inherit a large estate, or the right connections to be a quangocrat or a non-executive director, so what is left? Celebrity. It's attractive, people want to read about it and so it fills the news media. Just supply and demand, really.

Tim Almond said...

formertory,

The problem is that you're applying your own biases here, that formal schooling (regardless of subject and application) is "worthy", where knowing how to dress well is "unworthy".

Answer this: how many jobs are there for people with degrees in medieval literature compared to millionaire bachelors looking for a wife?

Fact is, there's a lot of wealthy men out there that want a wife that will look after them, have good taste in decor, dress well, host parties and so forth. And there's a lot of women that like doing that and are good at it.

Feminism has become pretty nasty because it's no longer about women being able to choose to study, be welders and so forth. It's now run by some god awful women, that tell women that that's what they must be, and never mind what they'd like.

Men don't do this to each other. We might laugh at each other - scientists being nerdy, footballers being a bit thick, hairdressers being camp, but no-one would publicly say that Gok Wan is letting the brotherhood down by not studying physics.

Tim Almond said...

Personally, I don't find KK particularly attractive. That brassy, fake tanned look just doesn't do much for me. Send Anne Hathaway round in her catwoman suit...

A lot of it with these women is personality. They're often very confident in themselves, and other women like that. Jordan is hard as nails.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, agreed. And top of the celebrocracy tree are Royal Families.

TS: "no-one would publicly say that Gok Wan is letting the brotherhood down by not studying physics"

I don't think any man would even think it. GW is a genius, he's managed to wangle himself a job where he grabs women's boobs and gets paid well for it. Well done Gok!

Anonymous said...

"engaging in wild and baseless polemic"

I thought she'd decided to theme a presentation to an educational conference on KK and make a general point. Wild and baseless polemic is what it's been elevated to courtesy of the meejah and people like Julie Birchall who need to keep themselves in the headlines.

The Stigler: yes, I freely acknowledged that my own bias is involved here.

I acknowledge and largely agree the points you make but I'm still quite content with my take on the story.

Mark Wadsworth said...

FT, I agree that KK and her ilk are overrated, but my view is that if Dr W wanted to make a serious point rather than pandering to the Daily Mail crowd, she had nominated "any television programme involving Kirsty Allsop" as the symbol of the decline of the West. Home-Owner-Ism has wreaked far more damage and undermined far more people's lives than teenage boys having a wank.

Mark Wadsworth said...

"she would have nominated" not "she had nominated", obviously.

Bayard said...

"And top of the celebrocracy tree are Royal Families."

And the hardest sleb status to achieve: two women in a thousand years, but still, shows it's possible.
Our Royal Family are more state-sponsored front people for that huge theme park, Historic Britain, that sells so well to foreigners. The renumeration is a bit high, but it's a tough job to qualify for (see above).

Tim Almond said...

But that's it, isn't it. Never mind how stupid, vacuous and wrong Krusty is (and is now doing some TV about home improvement, presumably because the housing market went titsup and C4 had her on a contract), someone who has some intellectual accreditation is going to go for an easy win like Kim Kardashian.

It's mostly about class divisions. No-one is going to be sending their kids to school that thinks much of Kim Kardashian, and they can collectively sneer at the lower classes for it.

Like you say... islamism, the EU, homeownerists, the MSM, statists, politicians, those working in our law and order system are the people that are coming closest to screwing civilisation. I'm pretty sure that the women who were on Miss World were just as vacuous as KK.

Kj said...

I'm just in my early thirties, but according to people older than me, teenage boys and girls seemed to be easily sold on sex and celebrities before as well. I've seen a lot of commercials and magazines from the 50s, and I don't really see that big of a move towards hell and damnation, sans bonus-material like sex-tapes...

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, TS, yup.

Kj, anybody who's over 40 has always wailed on about "increasing sexualisation of younger generation" ever since time immemorial, I heard all this crap in 1970s when I was growing up, it wasn't true then and it isn't true now, never will be true.

There's plenty of evidence that old fogeys were saying it in the 1950s and 1960s, no doubt they were saying it in the 1850s and 1860s as well. Same old same old.

Kj said...

MW: exactly, where is this promiscuity we were promised a few generations ago, damn it.

Lola said...

Anyone with a bum that good has to be good for something...

Lola said...

...anyway what this all teaches you is that in your next life, arrange to come back as something decorative and useless. I am. (I know this as I am the reverse of that in this life, and I am not rich and no-one would write me a cheque for wearing a very small swimsuit and doing nothing else).

Lola said...

...Oh and one other thing. I am the father of four stunning daughters and none of them have suffered from being exposed to the images in the Red Tops. Mind you, if they had I could have been their manager....hmmmmm...er, hang on a minute....

Lola said...

KJ. When John Betjemen was asked at age 80 ish was there anything he regretted about his life he answered, that 'he wished he had had more sex'...

Kj said...

L: don't be too sure, there's a niche market for everything these days.