I was intrigued to read an article yesterday which was essentially estolling the virtues of minor celebrity and ex glamour girl Jodie Marsh. It compared her (in an essentially rather tenuous way) with Louise Mensch and Laurie Penny. The latter 2 ladies were on Newsnight the other evening, actively being ignored by the nation, whilst Marsh was trending on twitter as some sort of guerrila anti bullying afficionado.
In case you are unfamiliar with Marsh, she is a former glamour girl, originally made famous from a minor TV documentary 'Essex Wives'. She became a tabloid favourite, simply because she seemed desperate to get attention for any reason whatsoever. Her most famous 'outfit' was a belt squashed over her breasts. She also waxed lyrical about being a glamour model but having 'real tits, not fake', as though being bestowed with a pair of breasts like all other females of the species is somehow something to be admired and emulated. Oh, er, OK, then. Well done you for being born female, excellent stuff...........
Her attention seeking escalated from merely flashing her tits to having a series of 'encounters' with various males of the species; such luminaries as Calum Best, an ex bouncer of Westlife and an ex of Jordan (whom she subsequently 'married' in an MTV show but let's not dwell on that). She wore a shirt with her ex lovers's names on with rankings out of 10 - classy stuff. Not only did she share the minutaie of her everyday shags she also had a spectacularly entertaining blog which detailed EVERYTHING you didn't want to know. (As an aside, she even quoted me on there and argued the toss about something I'd written - well a forum alias that I have. It may just be one of my proudest moments).. Interspersed with all this, was the continual assertion that Jodie is highly intelligent, got 300 GCSE's at A* and 'could have been' a lawyer or a vet - if she hadn't chosen to get her tits out of course)..... Whilst all this was brewing and she was getting into spats with celebrities and civilians online, she also set herself up as some sort of anti-bullying amabassador. Jodie was bullied at school, oh yes. Jodie doesn't milk this every 2 minutes, oh no...Her Mother paid for a nose job because Jodie was bullied about her nose. Jodie knows all about bullying and as such was appointed as an ambassador for anti-bullying charity, BeatBullying. Unfortunately, Jodie's tenure in this role was short lived; they dumped her for essentially being a bully. Jodie, with her 300 GCSE's, was essentially hoisted by her own petard and too stupid to realise that blogging vitriol about her fellow celebs post her appearance on CBB was at best, completely misguided and inappropriate. Here is their statement:
"Beatbullying has been asked by members of the public to make a statement on text contained on a blog on ambassador Jodie Marsh's website.
It is central to the Beatbullying ethos to speak out against bullying whenever and wherever it happens and by supporting and working with thousands of young people from across the UK we make a real difference to the lives of those affected by bullying. This work is helped by the generous support of our celebrity ambassadors, one of whom is Jodie Marsh.
We have examined Jodie Marsh's blog and we regret that some statements have been perceived as conflicting with her Beatbullying work. We can confirm that Beatbullying does not endorse any of our ambassador’s personal opinions.
It is important to point out that over the last 18 months Jodie has made an enormous contribution to the work of Beatbullying, and we have had hundreds of emails from young people who felt comforted and supported by Jodie’s very public anti-bullying statements.
Beatbullying continues to be hugely grateful to Jodie for choosing us as her charity during her stay in the Celebrity Big Brother House. The money raised will continue to ensure that we can reach out to 100’s of young people who lay in bed at night terrified to go to school the next morning."
Jodie skimmed over this of course and continued to appoint herself as a bullying guru; no-one has suffered more than Jodie, of course (eye roll optional).
Fast forward a few years and Marsh has continued on this theme. These days she seems to have stopped the glamour modelling, although she did buy herself a pair of massive comedy knockers. She is now also a bodybuilder, to some degree of success it would seem. She is still championing the bullying though and has done various TV documentaries on the subject. One of them elicited a #JodieAgainstBullying hashtag campaign on twitter. The article I mentioned earlier waxed very lyrical about Marsh and states that 'Jodie is amazing; she was a straight A student at school, she was smart enough, but was bullied for being ugly.' Marsh herself states 'If I hadn't been bullied, I would have been a vet'. Right. OK then, everything is somebody else's fault, and despite your effortless intelligence, you were bullied and therefore flopped your tits out and acted like a cunt. Great; glad that's cleared up then. In addition to championing anti bullying, this article then goes on to champion Marsh as a modern figurehead of feminism. This, I'm afraid, is where I almost fell off my chair laughing.... Jodie Marsh - a feminist role model? Purlease.
'Feminism is, ultimately, about girls like Jodie Marsh. It’s about the girl wants to be a vet but learns that she will get more respect by taking her top off.'
No. Feminism is about making choices. It is about being bloody accountable for your actions. If you were bullied at school (and let's be honest, who wasn't to some degree or another), if you are insecure and wrapped in self loathing, you have a CHOICE to not get your tits out to NOT act like a prick, to NOT be famous for the sake of being famous and to not be such a hypocrite that you don't have the emotional intelligence to practice what you preach. If Marsh WAS a feminist paragon, she would admit her failings, admit that she isn't a vet or a lawyer because it was easier to make money through infamy and not because someone flushed her coat down the loo at school. Jodie Marsh, you are not a feminist in my eyes - and never could be.
Thanks, I'm studying these body celebs and they're not feminists. They flog their private lives, dramas and bodies, they are valued for these things. Jodie didn't say "sod the bullies" and not bother with a dangerous, expensive operation and then carried on with buying a Frankenstein body. Her only real achievement was getting eye popping mussels without eating meat but really this is just another way of selling her flesh and it got dangerous she could be in peril just like the screaming girls in the h movies in an old school horror flick. Women must be sculpted by surgeons, fake tanned and having a crisis, the new rules of femininity, yuck.
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