Lads’ mag model, Kim Kardashian, represents all that’s wrong with Western society’s obsession with image over character, a headmistress says.
Our society tells young girls to think success is all about looking “hot”, and force-feeds them a diet of empty celebrity and superficiality, Dr Helen Wright warns.
Dr Wright has warned previously about the “increasing dangers” of premature sexualisation and the objectification of women.
Success
In a speech last week she particularly highlighted Miss Kardashian who was named as the world’s “hottest woman” in lads’ mag Zoo.
Dr Wright said: “It is not too strong a statement, I venture to suggest, 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”.
The headmistress added: “Officially the hottest woman in the world? Really? Is this what we want our young people to aim for? Is this what success should mean to them?”
Dr Wright cautioned: “The pupils in our schools really are soaking up a diet of empty celebrity and superficiality. They are under a huge amount of pressure, buffeted by these images and messages.”
Rife
Dr Wright, who is headmistress at a private girls’ school in Wiltshire, was speaking at a education conference where she also warned that sexual images are rife on TV, the internet and in magazines.
Earlier this month the former editor of another lads’ mag admitted his publication encouraged young men to access hard core pornography.
Martin Daubney edited Loaded for eight years and said that he became a “skilled defender of the indefensible” as he took on critics of his publication.
Critic
But becoming a father and turning 40 changed his life, and now he says he is ashamed at the way he used to defend his magazine.
He said: “Offering excuses for pornography when Loaded was attacked left me feeling cheap and hollow. I became a person I wasn’t, and, looking back, one I didn’t like. Today, I find myself agreeing with some of my fiercest former critics.”