ditto treatment

Beth Ditto is big news, you'll have noticed, although it seems to me that she is being totally patronised by pretty much every magazine and newspaper who laud her as being, wow, fat and intelligent, such a remarkable combination, when in fact she is just a normal, brightish confident woman in no need of fawning treatment, particularly when it is thoughtlessly meted out.

She's on the cover of the NME this week and, oh my god, she's naked! Naked and fat! Wow. I think the NME is trying to make a point about something with this but, alas, I can't work out what it is. Simon, over at No Rock And Roll Fun, has a go at unravelling it, and gets further than me. Excerpt below:

The trouble is, it's all a bit muddled.

Because NME, for all its other faults, doesn't usually have FHM-style covers, so the value of putting Ditto on the front, without pants, is a little lost. Kate Jackson, it's fairly safe to say, hasn't been lined up to slip out of her corset for the next Long Blondes piece, because that would bring a stream of letters calling them for trying to flog magazines with sexist pictures. Likewise, the Twang don't turn up with only a well-positioned tree to preserve their modesty.

So, is NME they saying it's okay for Beth to be on the front nude, because she isn't 'conventionally attractive'? And if that is the case, isn't that simply endorsing the idea of there being 'conventionally attractive' in the first place?

Or does the paper feel that a naked Beth Ditto is, from its reader's point of view, every bit as desirable as, say, a naked Amy Winehouse? In which case, isn't it a little bit Felix Dennis to be selling music magazines with female flesh?

Well meaning, but not thought through.

Click here to read his full article.