Move Away From Reneé!

Poor Reneé Zellweger. Last week the tabloids and harpies were agog at what's happened to her face. Rumours of plastic surgery were widely discussed. Reneé, who hasn't made a film for three years, denied she'd had anything done but made a typically American explanation about finding herself and being in a good place.

That should have been the end of the matter.

But today the loathsome Daily Mail continues the heckling as we see a picture of Reneé looking very tired as she went about her shopping at the weekend, lashing out at hordes of photographers following her and still asking about her face.

This really seems like bullying in the extreme. Enough is said about internet trolls but is this any better?

If she's had plastic surgery, whose business is it? When you're an actress in Hollywood your sell-by date can often hinge on how unlined and fresh your face remains. I imagine the pressure to put the clock back must be immense. It's stay young or lose your living.

The annoying thing as always is that this is a paradigm that doesn't apply to men. Did we see the same scenes when Mickey Rourke's plastic surgery was revealed in all its gruesome glory? Harrison Ford, Sly Stallone and others are in their 60s and 70s, yet they still get the same roles as action heroes and romantic leads.

I fear that Reneé is a vulnerable lady - she apparently used to run and diet to excess and admitted as much last week. Now, after starting a new film, she's the focus of unwelcome attention and I wish the paps and those tawdry tabloids and gossip rags would leave her alone.

Things that bother me

Trending well on Twitter UK today was the theme "things that bother me".
Contributions included: printers running out of black ink first, bad grammar, people not showering and people who drive Range Rovers. All good fodder.
Off the top of my head, my list - not in any order:
1) People who, joining the motorway, try to overtake you on the inside lane when you actually moved out to let them get on;
2) When the tines of a fork get stuck in the cutlery tray of the dishwasher when you're trying to unload it;
3) Misplaced apostrophes;
4) People walking right behind you;
5)Websites which, after entering your order and credit card info, suddenly throw up error messages. Has your order gone through? Nah. In that case, I won't bother.
6) Websites that allow you to order when they are out of stock.
7) The Daily Mail
8) Christmas in August
9) People who ask you for URLs the whole time without using Google;
10) Being ambushed by charity collectors. As a responsible citizen, I support 2 charities by direct debit,  the Big Issue seller outside Budgens and numerous sponsored walks/silences/marathons by friends and relatives. I am forever donating clothes and books to charity shops. Yet when I go to Sainsbury's, not only do the cubs expect money for packing my bags (which I don't want them to do, as they put potatoes on top of raspberries), but there are two different charities outside the entrance. Stop already! And then people come to the door and look affronted when you won't put money in their tin.
11) Training courses which inevitably have some ghastly acronym you're supposed to memorise, eg: "TACIT" - tact and coaching impact training  (I made that up). Plus any reference to people being "authentic".

As you can see, I have started to get into my stride with some of the big issues. What bothers you?

119/365: Sore Misgivings about Sex and The City II

I have always loved Sex & The City. I have the boxed DVD set of the TV series and the film. When  the first film opened, I scuttled off to Leicester Square to see its inaugural showing. There were lots of corsages on some very highly excited women, and a huge cheer went up when it turned out dear Dame Vivienne supplied the wedding dress.

But I have Sore Misgivings, to quote Mrs Fussey from Carry On Camping, about the latest film, due out on May 28th.

From what we have seen, the odd photo here and there, the fab four end up somewhere that's either Morocco or Abu Dhabi. Somewhere hot with camels. Kim Cattrall on a camel?? And I'm thinking: all too improbable. 

I could understand how, in the first film, they dropped everything to be with Carrie on her wrecked honeymoon. But for four busy women, how easy would it be to do that again?

Plus, I hear Aidan is back. I always thought he was totally unsuitable for Carrie and long gone, married with a baby etc. Yet we hear that he's back. Does this mean her marriage to Big has run into problems? Or is Aidan's reappearance just a red herring? There was a story that Big falls for Penelope Cruz. Well, after all the fuss about the wedding in the first film, and our notion that at last Carrie and Big were together For Good, this would be a crushing blow.

I'm afraid it's all sounding a bit silly. When you look at the first TV series, it was really quite edgy and ahead of its time. Now it's increasingly becoming like Golden Girls. And there's no reason why we won't still be watching it in 30 years' time, with Carrie and co talking about zimmer frames and rest homes. There would be nothing wrong with that provided it still remained edgy and current. Challenging.

By the way I had to laugh at the photo published today by the ridiculous Daily Mail. They chose the most unflattering picture of Sarah Jessica Parker they could find so that they could slate her as "too thin!" A female celebrity is only ever too thin or too"curvy". This is nonsense. In any batch of photos of any women, there will always be one or two where you look odd or have your eyes shut. So why do they always choose the worst one? Why do we let them get away with it?

Privacy laws? Good idea

The Daily Mail and the News of the World are unlikely bedfellows but today, following the hearing in which Max Mosley won his privacy case against the News of the World, the Mail and the other papers are screeching about how it might pave the way for draconian privacy laws.

Good.

Now this wouldn't have been my stance a few years ago. As a trained journalist, I was all for freedom of the press and proud of the press we had in the UK.

But now? Well, the papers didn't even seem repentant last week when Robert Murat won half a million pounds because they made up stories about him in connection with the Madeleine McCann case. Yes, made up stories. Unheard of a few years ago except in papers like the Sunday Sport.

The truth is that Britain's press has become entirely inconsequential. How many papers honestly have world exclusives these days? How many genuinely reveal stories that are in the public's interest (rather than providing titillation, in the case of the NOTW, and the Mail in its salacious repeating of the story today)?

Answers on a postcard.

Recently I mentioned to a French colleague how our papers, including the broadsheets who are frankly just as bad, swoon over Carla Bruni's every move. She gave a shrug and said the French weren't bothered about Madame Sarkozy. Nor were they bothered when President Mitterand's mistress turned up at his funeral. They didn't care that he had a mistress, if they knew at all. Imagine what would happen here. I do remember in fact "Paddy Pantsdown" as the memorable headline which ended the career in UK politics of Paddy Ashdown.

A few privacy laws might do us all some good. It might free celebrities and royalty from paraparazzi everywhere they go, and put an end to the cruelty of pictures appearing in national papers pointing out celebrity cellulite or "curves."

Maybe with less trivia in the papers they would have to go back to being proper journalists, stop rehashing stories from their competitors (on Mondays the Daily Mail serves up everything that was in the Sunday Times) and stop trying people before their cases have been heard in court (let me suggest a couple of names: Robert Murat, Colin Stagg).

Finally, I heard the NOTW's lawyer bleating yesterday that Mosley wasn't fit to shake the hands of royalty around the world and lead the F1 gravy train. Oh yes? And I'm sure that the overpaid pampered men who live and work in the F1 world, with access to dozens of eager groupies, are all squeaky clean! Next joke please.

A misogynist fest of weighty matters

The Daily Mail quite often renders me apoplectic with indignation at the way it villifies women (yet conversely claims to be a women friendly newspaper). But today The Sunday Times has got me going.

In their report about the "I'd Do Anything" TV show a male writer tells us that "the competition was won by Jodie Prenger, a size 14....."

And this follows last week's assertion by impresario Cameron Macintosh that Jodie was too large for the role of Nancy in Oliver. Listen Cameron: size 16 is the average in the UK: a size 14 is not fat. Real life is not about size zero women, even if you think it makes it easier for you to sell tickets.

Last night he and the panel were studiously avoiding any mention of weight but were trying to steer the public in the direction of pretty but raw and gawky Jessie from Ireland.

I was a bit of a Jessie fan myself, but in the end I'm glad the public stayed true to their principles. Jodie had never been in the bottom two; the public clearly thought SHE personified their idea of Nancy, not an 18 year old with tumbling curls and an Irish lilt. Or the frightfully bland Sam from the Isle of Man.

But to get back to the size matter: Jodie has lost 8 stone, and hasn't made a big deal about it on the show. Even during the programme's eight weeks you could see she was still losing weight. I seethe when male writers brazenly write about someone's size in the opening paragraph of a story. Do they ever write a man's neck or waist size in stories? No they don't. I don't recall when Paul Potts won "Britain's Got Talent" that the papers introduced the concept of him being fat in the opening paragraph.

I wish we could see an end to the way writers of both sexes perpetuate the warped view that women have to occupy the narrow range of a size 8 to 12 and if they're at the opposite ends of that scale they're too skinny, skeletal etc or too fat, obese, lardy. Even Allison Pearson, who writes in the Daily Mail and has a daughter, thought it was sensible to take a pop at Princess Beatrice, who is not fat but has a curvy figure. The ridiculous Amanda Platell also wrote one of her "analytical" pieces about pear shaped women, and all I can say about that is "pots and kettles."

Allison I hope when your daughter is 19, and wearing a bikini, she hasn't got a pair of bitchy middle aged women spitting venom about her being pear shaped in a national paper.

Incandescent: it's the Daily Mail again

I shouldn't ever pick up the Daily Mail. Remind me not to. It always renders me incandescent with rage; apoplectic; nay, I become "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" (if I lived there, of course).

Anyway, I somehow found myself reading the tired old rag today. What aroused my ire was a story about a woman's record £4m divorce settlement. The woman is pictured "beaming" at the news, and the underlying message from the Mail's story is that yet another poor hard-done-by man has been fleeced by his ex-wife.

The Daily Mail hates women. If you analysed the paper's coverage, you would find it regularly adopts a negative approach to women on anything relating to work (women should stay at home), single mothers (beyond the pale), career women (women should stay at home) and older women who try to look good (beauty is only for the young, old hag).

Whenever there's a story about a successful businesswoman deciding she can't have it all, and giving up work, the Mail crows about it triumphantly and the next day runs an article where more women state the same thing, giving it the chance to refer to "a trend."

Yet women who have "only" been housewives are similarly derided by the Mail when they have the cheek to expect a decent divorce settlement. Take this into account, misogynists of the Mail: often a woman has given up her career prospects to stay at home and have children. She contributes directly to the husband's career by making it easy for him to work. She makes ends meet in the early days of his career. If you priced her contributions individually - cleaning, washing, childcare, ironing, shopping for his family's birthdays and so on - it would come to a high price.

I guess what bugs me the most is that women continue to buy the Mail. They don't see how it diminishes them. The Mail in its advertising used to be directly pitched at women. Ironic, isn't it. I often wonder if the editor and his team laugh at the irony of persuading women to read a newspaper written by men who hate them. I guess they would see it more as an opportunity to re-educate foolish women about the error of their ways.