Sam Leith has it I think:
The very notion of the "role model" seems to have been
invented to license the worst sort of wilful moral imbecility. Take
Kate Moss, the more sympathetic of our protagonists. Because she is a
"role model", runs the argument, teenage girls will copy her in a
"monkey see, monkey do" fashion. Perhaps so.
This
might lead teenage girls into various things that are bad for them:
smoking cigarettes, drinking champagne out of tiny bottles, hating
their own bodies, and competing with each other to waste their money on
cynical fashion-industry tat.
Oh. Sorry. That part
of it is OK. In fact, it’s her job. It’s the reason we made her a role
model in the first place. But when she’s caught, by subterfuge, doing
cocaine in secret, moral panic reigns.
If it gets
out that she snorts cocaine, teenage girls will think it’s cool to
snort cocaine. (Let us say, for the sake of argument, that teenage
girls could afford £50 grams of charlie, and that ruthless pushers were
queuing up outside school gates across the country, hoping to corner
that lucrative market.) This must never be allowed to happen.
The
only way to protect the precious, precious youth of the nation from the
pernicious influence of their role model is, then, to announce on the
front page of the newspaper that the coolest woman on earth takes
cocaine. Brilliant.
Leave a Reply