This was published in The Huffington Post last week.
I dedicate this piece to all girls & young women in my life. Never forget that your brain is your greatest asset so don't be afraid to flaunt it!
Whilst possessing a sexist streak wouldn’t be part of
his job description, as a columnist for the Mail, it’s unlikely to hurt Piers
Morgan’s job prospects. Earlier this month Morgan was so offended by the sight
of Susan Sarandon’s cleavage, he took to twitter to give her a public dressing
down. Yesterday, his guns were pointed at Kim Kardashian and her naked selfie.
Morgan’s atavistic rants about Madonna’s “age
inappropriate” antics are as perfidious as they are pernicious. There’s something
inherently unedifying about a middle aged man lecturing women on what they
should and should not wear. It’s hard to imagine that Piers Morgan was once a
national newspaper editor. As a journalist, words are his craft and there is an
expectation that he should employ them to better effect. Rather than articulate a case to illustrate a point, he
resorts to the sloppy short hand of prejudice.
Morgan’s personal attacks on women’s appearance, using
patronising, value laden adjectives like “tacky”, “inappropriate”, “grotesque”,
“embarrassing”, pollute the social media landscape. There’s no basis for his
invective except his own disapproval, making his comments seem like old
fashioned bullying.
I’m not going to defend Kardashian’s naked selfies. As
someone who spent the last 8 years covering lads’ mags with copies of Good Housekeeping every time I went to
the shops, it pains me to see women reduced to the sum total of their body
parts. Twenty year old actress, Chloe Moretz, made a legitimate point when she
tweeted Kardashian, "I
truly hope you realize how important setting goals are for young women,
teaching them we have so much more to offer than just our bodies”.
As a feminist, journalist and therapist who has worked
with women made ill by sexism, I would argue that portraying women as sex objects perpetuates gender
inequalities and that objectification is dehumanising. That’s the point. It’s
much easier to abuse (or discriminate against) a non-person reduced to mere
body parts. The sex industry, which includes lad’s rags, has vested interests
in normalising the objectification of women. To them women, and girls, are just
commodities.
Last year it was reported that half of school girls were considering plastic surgery
to make themselves thinner and prettier, 90% of eating disorders are amongst
females, teenage gang rape is on the increase and 1 in 3 girls have reported
unwelcome sexual touching at school.
There
were so many crucial issues that Morgan could have used his column (which was
published on IWD) to highlight.
Yesterday Labour MP, Jess Phillips,
stunned parliament into silence when she read out the names of 120 women killed
by men they knew in the past year. On average, two women a
week are killed each year by a current or former male partner and 25% of young
women (aged over 13) experience physical violence.
According to End
Violence Against Women, nearly a quarter of young adults
aged 18-24 report having experienced sexual abuse in childhood (31% of young
women and 17.4% of young men), 90% are abused by someone they know and 66% are
abused by other children or young people under 18. In 2012-2013, 22,654 sexual
offences against under-18s were reported to police in England and Wales with
four out of five cases involving girls. The UK is a significant site of
internal and international child trafficking. The vast majority of trafficked
children in the UK are aged 14-17, with many girls trafficked for sexual abuse
and exploitation.
The internet has broadened the ways in which women and
girls can be sexualised, dehumanised and exploited. Piers Morgan could have
used his column to expose these, and any of the above, evils but he didn’t. He
chose instead to be part of the problem women face on social media, not the
solution.
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