The Unbearable Tightness Of Corset

(Image: Daily Telegraph)

I just read a Daily Telegraph story about how Australian model Abbey Lee Kershaw fainted shortly after leaving the runway in an Alexander McQueen show at Paris Fashion Week. The cause: an incredibly tight corset. Look at her in the picture, poor duck: she looks absolutely miserable. But the kicker was this little hyperlink:

Yeah, I bet Abbey Lee felt pretty stupid with the air supply to her brain cut off! As she tottered off the runway and keeled over, she was probably saying something like: “LUK AT ME IN DIS KORSUT, I’Z ALLAGAYTA, RAH!”

There seems to be so much schadenfreude in watching models come to grief and calling them “stupid”. Perhaps it’s a way of expressing our jealousy at not being as thin, young, poised and beautiful – after all, being smart is something that depends on none of these things. But nobody seems to be pointing fingers at the designers who create clothes so uncomfortable that even people whose job it is to wear them for only a minute at a time can’t help falling over or fainting. Annoyingly in this industry of artifice and hyperbole, being known as “the designer whose corset made a model faint” will likely add to McQueen’s reputation for creating ‘challenging’ fashion.

Putting the “Phwoarrr!” in Politics

Is it just the overheated economy, or is there something sexxxy in the corridors of power? Apparently the latter, according to “internet blog sites” (as opposed to telephone blog sites or construction blog sites – whatevz, it’s old media’s default way of describing online sources of any sort). Yesterday The Age reported a list of the “World’s Hottest Politicians”, as compiled by lad mag Maxim. Sarah Palin was pipped to the top spot on the women’s list by – oh, the irony! – Italy’s Minister for Equal Opportunity, Mara Carfagna. Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, with her Princess Leia-esque braids, also scored highly. Barack Obama dominated the men’s list, ‘hotly’ pursued by Russia’s foxy president Dmitry Medvedev and sometime-shirtless prime minister, Vladimir Putin, plus French prez Nicolas Sarkozy, clearly a pocket rocket at 165cm tall (why else would his height even be mentioned?).

If I’m being facetious here it’s only because it seems self-evident to me that ‘hotness’ is utterly irrelevant to a politician’s ability to do his or her job. Yet more and more, politicians of both genders are being assessed on their sex appeal rather than their intellects or policies. Of course Maxim is going to pull this stunt (and that’s what it is, an editorial stunt) in an election year – but what bothers me is that media outlets in a position to be more thoughtful, like The Age, jump on the bandwagon and even consult a psychologist, Grant Brecht, to ask why Kevin Rudd didn’t make the list:

Dr Brecht said tall, well-built, attractive men more often than not had successful careers and became leaders – which then magnified their attractiveness.

“And with women, it’s literally their attractiveness, how well they’re groomed and how well they present (that draws people),” he said.

Is it a problem that Kevin Rudd isn’t ‘hot’?

Some Thoughts On Melbourne’s Anti-Abortionists

I was in the city on Saturday for a function and we walked past Parliament steps, where an anti-abortion protest – “Matt’s Protest”, according to their homemade sign – was in progress. The protesters – count ‘em: two – were at one point outnumbered by Police and Parliament security staff. Both protesters were men, and both over the age of 35 (at least).

It was all I could do to stop myself from ducking into the 7-11 and giving them a few more eggs, since they seem to care so much about zygotes, in the face. Fortunately, I counted to ten and kept walking. But why is it that:

- Those who have the most to say about abortion are, inevitably, older males?
- That anti-abortionists care more about embryos and foetuses than about women?

And just who has been plastering those odious “arty” pro-life posters all around Carlton and Fitzroy North? At first you think, “Oh, that must be a Fringe project”, and then you look closer. I would like to congratulate whoever did their best to remove the paste-ups from the Rathdowne and Princes Street intersection this past weekend.

Some things to think about with your Monday morning coffee.

Sunrise Asks Its Viewers: “Are Women To Blame For Footballers Behaving Badly?”

Thanks to keen-eyed and early-rising reader Christine for the heads up on this little doozy: Channel Seven’s Sunrise (those storied social justice merchants) chose for their “soapbox” topic this morning, “Are Women To Blame For Footballers Behaving Badly?“

I missed the on-air discussion so can make no comment about that, but here’s the website’s slug:

Scandals plagued all codes of football in Australia in the last year.

The worst incidents gaining national coverage were often blamed on alcohol or drug abuse, but could the women around the footballers be to blame?

A study called “Rogue men and predatory women – female fans’ perceptions of Australian footballers’ sexual conduct” has just been published in a Sociology journal with very revealing findings.

That introductory paragraph doesn’t bode well for the findings, does it? Said research revealed the following: