Hallo Readers,
This is what WTF has learned from this week’s Twitter uproar.
First, we should acknowledge that the Twittertwats target, abuse and threaten men and women of all races, religions, beliefs and practices. Second, there are some men out there who are so frustrated, angry and inarticulate that their only response to an articulate woman is to retaliate with threats of rape, bombs or insults. Whether they mean it or not is irrelevant because they want to humiliate her and to “teach her a lesson”. The lesson being not to assert herself. Third, it is not just about education. Educated men do it too, like Oliver Rawlings who, irritated by Mary Beard, called her a slut and added “I bet your vagina is disgusting”. Fourth, the old language is creeping back into public, adjectives like “strident”, “demanding” and “shrill”. Feminism is a dirty word, synonymous with “bitch”. Apparently, feminists do not want to even things up, they want to be more than equal, which then drives men to behave unreasonably. Beside himself with fury that some strident feminist is demanding that a woman in an Empire-line dress and bonnet should replace Charles Darwin on a ten pound note, what can a man do but tweet the shrill bitch and threaten to rape the arse off her?
Fifth, the level of casual sexism is rife. Only yesterday, after WTF took to task a youth whose comment on a Lads’ “This is what a Feminist Pin Up Would Look Like” post (answer fat with huge tits, gosh that’s witty) was “Kill it (note the it) before it lays an egg” (WTF will pause here to allow you to wipe away those tears of mirth). The youth, without a hint of irony, replied by calling WTF, whom he has never seen, “a fat ugly fuck” and a “sad feminist c**t” who had bingo wings and who needed to “loose (sic) some weight”. Further up the food chain, when challenged by Stella Creasy MP about a reference to another MP’s tits, political commentator James Delingpole asked her whether she was coming onto him – twice. WTF is only surprised no one suggested that Stella must be “on the rag”.
Which brings us to Stella, Caroline Criado-Perez, and the other women threatened with rape and violence this week and the sixth thing WTF learned this week. Both men and women have turned against them all, declaring that they are “milking it”, that if they don’t like Twitter they should just log off or block their attackers, that they are provoking responses and then complaining about those responses and running to the cops about them, that they are fame-whores. This rather misses the point. If they have been going on about being threatened with rape, it is only that the police and Twitter itself did nothing to help until they were shamed into it. Actually, that is not quite true. Twitter did do something. The bloke CC-P appealed to initially blocked her. This also misses the other point, which is there is something fundamentally wrong with a society where men behave like this.
So WTF is not having this “middle-class feminist conspiracy against freedom of self-expression” bollocks. Because threatening rape against a woman or sending her a bomb threat or calling her a whore or a slut or a c**t, whether with or without bingo wings, or speculating about her vagina is totally and completely unacceptable and whilst men do it they bring this shit-storm on themselves.
Let us now turn to the sartorial stories of the week….
We start with the 2013 Monaco Love Ball where the Munsters (aka the Monegasque Royal Family) mingle with the very rich and the very, very rich. On the left we have Princess Caroline wearing Chanel and on the right we have Princess Charlene wearing Atelier Versace. In the middle we have model Natalia Vodianova wearing Dior.
Charlene and Nadia look lovely in their frocks. Charlene’s is just the right side of a net curtain but has some beautiful delicate embroidery on the bodice and fits her like a glove, and WTF rarely has anything nice to say about Versace. Caroline, on the other hand, is wearing a nightie with straps like something on a kiddie car seat, a floppy black bow and Pat Butcher earrings.
Say hallo to actor and drag queen RuPaul on his way to Fergie’s baby shower (that is Fergie the singer not Fergie the Duchess of York.)
A suit in a particularly virulent shade of Germolene pink with white facings, white buttons and white bits along the pockets and down the trousers, worn with white toe-post sandals? Oh dear…. even the bag has white piping. RuPaul! Step away from the white piping!
Some chaps will love this, but WTF is all bristling disapprobation. I give you Naya Rivera off Glee in not much Norma Kamali.
Yes, she is gorgeous with abs to die for. But here’s the thing. She is in Hollywood en route to a TV interview and she is wearing a bikini top whilst everyone around her is fully dressed. There is only one word for Naya’s almost-outfit. Trashy.
This is actress Paula Patton wearing Basil Soda at the premiere of her movie 2 Guns.
Paula’s stylist, a person receiving money under false pretences, has elongated the front split, added some nasty white shoes and over-emphasised Paula’s tits. WTF will say it again – tits are not meant to be spherical. Tits are not meant to start just under your clavicles. Tits should not be worn with genitalia curtains. And genitalia curtains should not be worn at all. Ever. Paula should sit down with her stylist and utter these 2 words – “you’re fired”.
Here is an abominably dressed man in the form of Entourage actor Adrian Grenier at the première of Blue Jasmine (a film that he is not actually in).
Look, Adrian, if you can’t be arsed to go out to a première, just refuse the invitation. However if you do accept the invitation have the decency to change into something (a) suitable (b) laundered and (c) which does not make you look like the pool cleaner on his way to the cash and carry to stock up on chlorine. And whilst you are about it, buy a razor and a hair brush. You see, Adrian, turning up looking like a sack of shit says “Look at me! I am so much more important than your poxy film”. Which, Adrian, is rude.
Now this is just terribly, terribly terrible. Here is Zosia Mamet off Girls wearing Rebecca Minkoff.
WTF took against Zosia when she and her sister asked the public to cough up for the cost of their cutting an album. To which the public responded “you can pay for your own album”. And the public was quite right. Zosia earns a good living from Girls and does not need to go about looking for a sub. Anyway I digress. Zosia always looks unkempt and depressed although to be fair anyone would look depressed in these ugly red silk shorts and a shirt with bits hanging out and other bits tucked in and so swirly that it should carry its own Government Health warning.
OK Readers, that’s your lot for this week. Pass the word around, post your comments and we will meet again next Friday. Be good.
Nothing to do with fashion or the lack of it…but I repeat my tweet from yesterday lest you WTF or anyone missed it. The very sad @AdamTapboi is the tweeter who got onto @WTF_EEK’s case for having the temerity to take him to task over his sexist tweet. This is what I said back on my @secondofclarity Twitter account – :
Surely @WTF_EEK you noticed @AdamTapboi ‘s HUGE mortar board above his head in his profile pic. It’s his car. #dickextension #enoughsaid
Paula Patton’s dress looks like a Rorschach test…
Now you’re just showing off. Readers: it’s the inkblot test thingy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rorschach_test
I have to differ from WTF’s assertion that James Delingpole is a respected political journalist. I sometimes doubt if even he respects himself.
OK – I am going to amend it to political commentator.
I don’t do Twitter but from what I’ve heard of it is seems to be some sort of Dantean place, populated solely by frustrated 15 year old boys who live with their mothers and have to show they’ve washed behind their ears and the backs of their knees.
I love Twitter for the political news and views you don’t get on the MSM – it’s not entirely populated as you say at all.
I will have to take your word for it, but the type of abuse documented in the media over the last couple of weeks is not what I would call ‘news and views’ and is more like small boys struggling with hormones, who think it’s funny or grown up to abuse women.
I agree with your first comments about Twitter abuse, but ethnic minorities & especially Muslims have been getting extreme racist, threatening and appalling abuse for years & no MP or body (apart from organisations like TellMamaUK) has done a thing about it. I find it disheartening that casual and extreme racism and Islamophobia are so prevalent and not taken as seriously as abuse against high profile white women. Note again that I agree with your comments about the vile misogynist abuse – I am just making a point about the glaring double standards.
No, as I say at the beginning of the blog, there are scumbags out there abusing all sorts of people, many of these abusers should have either a policeman or a psychiatrist round at their door post haste. As you say the high profile white women know how to attract the right publicity
Please remember though that white women (and men) can be subject to racist abuse too. Not all white people are British and non-Brits face racism the same as Moslems, Asians, Afro-Caribbeans …