Hair Apparent
It’s very easy to have a pop at the Daily Mail. So that’s precisely what I’m going to do.
This morning, it published an article in which it appeared genuinely appalled that talented, beautiful, Oscar-winning actor Kate Winslet had been seen at a premiere with ‘unsightly peach fuzz’ on her face.
Now, at this point, I was going to insert some quotes from the article, the general tone of which suggested that Ms. Winslet had turned up with, at the very least, a full Dick Strawbridge moustache with matching sideburns. However, when I came to insert a link to the unutterable vileness, I discovered that the article was completely different from the one I’d read with such annoyance at 6 this morning. Gone were the half-remembered references to ‘letting herself down’ and ‘perhaps if she’d put her makeup on more carefully’, to be replaced with a much more flattering piece about how lovely her dress was. I began to wonder if I’d imagined the whole thing.
Thankfully for the sake of my sanity, though, a helpful blogger has posted the original here – every last horrid, grubby word of it. And by way of comparison, for those of you who don’t mind giving the Mail the satisfaction of a click, here’s the updated article.
So the Mail has clearly thought better of its snide little bitching session, but the fact remains that, at some point, someone on its staff thought that the presence of a little bit of downy skin on an actress made for a good news story. It may have escaped the Mail’s attention, but we have just effectively declared war on one of the most dangerous men on the planet, there has been a devastating natural disaster in the world’s third largest economy, and there is a Budget tomorrow. How, then, is the slightest of slight cosmetic faux pas on the part of a celebrity a good use of column inches in any way?
And who cares, anyway? Personally, I find it quite comforting that impossibly glamorous A-listers really aren’t as perfect as they appear; that Julia Roberts sometimes forgets to shave her armpits (which, for the information of any boys reading, is The Most Pointless And Annoying Girly Ablution In The World – have you ever stopped to consider how difficult it is to see properly under your own armpit, or who first decided it was necessary anyway?), that Kate Moss has cellulite, and that La Winslet has better things to do than to wax her face every day lest anyone spot that she is a Real Person With Real Skin. So if newspapers insist on publishing this kind of story, I’d rather they did it with a reassuring, ‘see – famous people are just like you and me, and we still love them because they’re talented and human’ than with a sneering, smirking unpleasantness and a pointing, inky finger.
But the reporters are probably all too busy waxing their own faces and scrubbing their elbows with a pan scourer to think about it as deeply as that. Because I’m sure that every tabloid journalist always makes a very special effort to look perfect in public… aren’t you?
Something Blonde 