Surely I can't be the only one whose Facebook newsfeed has been covered in boobs and butts as of late.
Now I'm no prude. In actual fact I'm all
for embracing the naked form.
However, I get a little bit uncomfortable
with nakedness in the public eye when it's forced down our throats with a
negative message about body image, or when it's used to make a point that
would have remained unheard if the clothes were on.
I'm talking about Kim Kardashian and Keira
Knightly. I know right, who would have thought those two could ever be lumped
together in one blog post. But I'm getting old school here and going back to
the GCSE English comprehension days of 'compare and contrast.'
Two women, getting their kit off. However,
their reasons for doing so couldn't be more far apart. The result? Well I'll
get to that.
Let's start with Kim Kardashian. I have
done myself the favour of trying to steer clear of anything she's remotely involved
in, despite the fact she's done a pretty good job imprinting her naked arse
onto my retinas like a well-oiled Jack-in-a-Box. I may
already be a bit biased in this analysis since I don't really respect or have
time for anyone who climbs the fame ladder on the back of something like an OJ
Simpson murder trial or a sex tape. I don't despise her, it's just that the
more famous she got, the more irrelevant she became to me, and oh how I wish
that could have remained the case.
Now Kim K's arse has been mysteriously
growing since day one, and stealing the limelight of its owner. So why is it
now that I'm getting irate about it? Well Kim Kardashian titled the blatant
publicity stunt as 'breaking the internet'. Well actually love, all the
internet's done from what I can see is plaster photoshopped horse behinds and
peaches over the god damn thing.
What it's ignited in some areas of society
is a lot more damaging I feel.
I was at home with Loose Women in the
background whilst the ladies read out some responses that the audience at home had text in regarding Kim's pictures, with one saying
the images help to 'promote a healthy body image' to which I responded with my
'I hate ignorance' deflated groan.
Ok that was one person's comment, but do a
bit of research and you'll see that's the opinion of so many women out there
right now, mothers included, and it literally makes me want to weep.
It's still not certain what Kim K's had
done to her arse, but there's no way that's just protein and killer squats.
With rumours that she's had fat from her stomach sucked out and blown back into
her behind, as well as the likes of Nicki Minaj apparently resorting to bum
implants, there's an unhealthy haze surrounding these now covetable
bodies.
Young girls have died travelling to
Thailand to get buttock augmentation operations for god sake, and I even hear
girls saying how they want to look like these women. It's gone from one extreme
to the other.If a young girl starving herself to look like a celebrity on a
magazine being hailed for her size 0 dress size is WRONG, then so is young
girls putting themselves through surgery for a body shape that just isn't attainable.
What happened to us being individuals? Why do we have to look like someone
else, or have a body feature someone else has got and if we don't have it well
goddamit bring the knife and scissors. When you strip it back, the notion is
barbaric.
ON THE OTHER HAND...
We have Keira Knightly in a topless photoshoot to make a point about body image and retouching. She says, and I quote " OK, I'm fine doing the topless shot so long as you don't make them any bigger or retouch.' Because it does feel important to say it really doesn't matter what shape you are."
I applaud Keira and what she's trying to do here, I really do. In fact with Kim's waist being dramatically retouched to look impossibly slim in her picture, I like that someone is using their position to bring the topic to light. But not in the best way, I feel. It doesn't sit right with me, and feels uncomfortably ironic that for her to make a point about body image, the fact that her body is fine the way it is and that us as viewers should accept that, she had to get naked. It's like she's trying to combat misogyny and objectification with the one thing that spurs it on.
Retouching, airbrushing and photoshop in regards to body image has been an issue for longer than I can remember now. Ok, it's a topic now back in the limelight, but I can't help but feel if Keira had tried to make this point with her clothes on, it wouldn't have even made it on to a single news website, let alone only half being listened to by people oggling at what her untouched breasts actually look like. Either way I don't really feel her message has been heard, but in getting her tits out, she's spurred on something I don't think she intended.
If I was sitting next to you saying all this completely topless, I'm sure all you'd here me saying is 'boobs boobs boobs boobs boobs.'
So the moral that both Kim and Keira are giving us here is that whether you want to be successful, or be heard, the best way to go about it is to don your birthday suit and maybe, just maybe, people will hear what your trying to say, or see balancing a champagne glass on your arse as a credible talent.
So what do I feel the results of all this will be?
Well we live in a world where celebrities and their bodies seem to be
owned by, well, us. The celebrity phone hackings that took place for the soul
purpose of retrieving their private, naked images proves that. We (the public)
hack them, distribute them all over social media, view them, talk about them
etc etc, Obviously when I say 'we' i'm not tarnishing us all with the same
brush. Not all of us hacked the celebs, but I'm sure a larger percentage of us
viewed those images, creating a supply and demand situation regarding pictures
that should remain private (if you didn't view them, well done you). When
Emma Watson stood up and spoke out as UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, the desire
for people to see her naked was not only used as a threat, but to completely
downplay and overshadow everything she had said.
In the wake of all that, with celebrities
like Jennifer Lawrence fighting back with a strong and dignified statement, it
doesn't sit right with me that certain celebrities are so happy to get naked
for so little. I appreciate that there is a key difference between the two
circumstances I'm looking at, and it involves the word CHOICE. I get that it's
Kim and Keira's choice to release naked pictures of themselves into the public
domain, whilst the celebrities whose phones were hacked had no control over the
situation. HOWEVER, I can't help but feel the effect of the former will be the latter.
The people who hacked the phones of these
celebs did so because they obviously felt that privacy doesn't apply to people
whose private lives are so easily accessible to us. We see them naked in films,
we can find out the ins and outs of their relationships at the click of a
button, and photographers can follow them everywhere they go and at worst
receive a slapped wrist.
It seems that the arse wipes who hacked
these phones had a sense of entitlement about them. They felt they had a right
to view what was before un-viewable,
and acted as if they were doing the rest of us a public service. I mean, Kim
Kardashian's already revealed her goods, so if we think the way these hackers
think, how is there any harm in hacking phones to retrieve something we've
already seen. If you imagine an attitude of entitlement, sprinkled with a pinch
of wanting what you can't have, and topped with a layer of disregard for other
people, then you've got one of these hackers. They don't distinguish between
celebrities and circumstance. At the end of the day, we've all seen Kim K and
Keira naked, and that will set the ball rolling. The more that nakedness amongst celebrities becomes commonplace, the more encouragement and right to view these people will feel they have. They'll want more. When that desire gets strong enough, I'm
pretty sure they'll go and get it.
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