When women go outside
Speaking of bullies – a news show host in Australia tore a strip off the Daily Mail for its habit of degrading and shaming women. One of the examples he gave was so bizarre I googled it and found the details.
To be fair, this weekend’s Daily Mail Australia story about Channel Seven television host Sam Armytage wearing granny underwear didn’t set out to demean and humiliate me. It only set out to demean and humiliate Armytage, and Armytage alone.
How else would you explain taking a photo of her on the street, from behind, without her consent, and plastering the results on the internet: “Sam Armytage dares to bare with her giant granny panties showing visible line in Sydney”. (Firstly, she didn’t “dare to bare” anything. She was wearing a dress over her underpants. That is why they are called underpants.)
Wow. What can you even say about that?
Armytage has told Buzzfeed Australia that the matter is now with her lawyers. I hope this means they won’t continue shaming every semi-famous woman who wears normal underwear to the shops.
But the whole tawdry exercise speaks to a wider issue. There has been much talk in the past few weeks of ideas that seemed unacceptable a few short months ago slowly being normalised.
In an essay for the New York Times Magazine, Teju Cole wrote about the days following Donald Trump’s US election win: “All around were the unmistakable signs of normalisation in progress. So many were falling into line without being pushed. It was happening at tremendous speed, like a contagion.”
Normalisation is a choice. When you are part of the chain of production that enables a story like Armytage’s undies to even exist – when you commission, write, click, consume – you are normalising cyberbullying, stalking, sexism and just all-round general creepiness.
It’s not “teasing.” It’s not “irony.” It’s not “free speech.” It’s not “criticism.”
Updating to add the smoking gun:
Sam Armytage's giant granny panties show a visible line https://t.co/ACda8eDJbq pic.twitter.com/NsYuLhvsGo
— Daily Mail Australia (@DailyMailAU) December 11, 2016
The DM’s attitude is not significantly different from Saudi Arabia’s (whom I’ve been assured is just a backwards little backwater that does not speak for Islam, despite controlling its two most holy cities and proselytising with all the oil monies). Both posit the public ownership of women. Both are heartbreakingly wrong.
And if she had gone outdoors wearing thong underwear or no underwear, she would have been branded a slut. Women can do nothing without someone else taking it on themselves to explain why they are wrong, bad, stupid, or offensive.
Wasn’t it the UK Daily Mail that ran a count-down to Welsh child-star Charlotte Church’s sixteenth birthday (‘cos that’s the day the readers could perv about her without having to feel guilty that she was underage), then repeated the trick with Emma Watson? Or maybe one was the Mail, the other the Sun
I know that the Mail used to (maybe still do; I haven’t read it for years) regularly feature pictures of scantily clad young teen female stars on the beach or whatever, along with the tagline ‘Look who’s all grown-up’ or similar.
The pants in the OP? Hardly ‘granny pants’ ( or ‘apple catchers, as my darling wife calls them, and yes, she has a couple of pairs), just comfortable full knickers rather than the uncomfortable-looking ‘arse floss’ that pass for underwear yet contain less fabric than the average pirate’s eye-patch. Maybe we should be grateful for small mercies; at least it wasn’t an actual up-the-skirt shot, but that’s the best one can say about it – that at least it’s just on the right side of legal. Hardly glowing praise for journalistic integrity.
Well, it is after all a Rupert rag.
Of course they’ll continue to do it, it’s traditional now to have an unhealthy fascination with what female celebs are or aren’t wearing under their clothes. It’s why, whenever the paparazzi are surrounding cars discharging the women at showbiz events, at least one photographer will be on the floor trying to get the money shot. It’s why, at the end of the evening, the same
scumballsphotographers will be eagerly anticipating the celebs being a little worse for wear and so less cautious about how they climb back into their cars and less aware of skirts riding high.Remember the media frenzy about Britney Spears comitting the awful crime of exiting her car whilst knicker-less?
Back to the OP, it’s clear what the reporter was really thinking – Hell, what every reporter who joins in with these creepy articles are thinking. If they thought they could get away with it (or worked for the Daily Star or The Sport) the story would run “TV Celeb in Big Pants Shocker. This woman went out in public wearing pants that were not intended to give men a boner. Lesbian or feminist? You decide.”
Seriously, though, what the merry fuck makes men (and some women can be as bad) think they can police what women wear in public and shame them if they do it ‘wrong’? It’s almost as though they think women should dress with those men in mind and woe betide any that fall below their standards. Christ, I wouldn’t even dare tell my wife what to wear, let alone a complete stranger. Mind you, my wife has an excellent line in making sure I’m dressed to her satisfaction. “Oh, are you wearing that?” is enough to tell me that maybe no, I’m not wearing that.