Oh for god’s sake.
I was looking at something (reluctantly) in the Daily Mail, and noticed another headline, so took a look at that…
Young girl has short hair shock-horror!!!1111!!!!!!!!!!!
I know the Mail specializes in being as stupid as possible, but honestly………….
Angelina Jolie’s little tomboy Shiloh unveils her very short haircut
Angelina Jolie has said daughter Shiloh prefers to ‘dress like a boy’ and ‘thinks she’s one of the brothers.’
And now the five-year-old has a new short back and sides like her older male siblings.
Shiloh dressed in utilitarian black for the fun day out with her mother and two of her brothers, Knox, three, and eight-year-old Pax, which exacerbated the effect.
Exacerbated the effect?? Made a bad thing even worse? Because a child of five has short hair? Jeezis, police gender roles much?
I feel like starting a Butch League or something.
When I was a teenager it was fashionable for boys to have long hair. By this time long haired males had been around for long enough for it to have become mainstream but earlier the old squares would rag long haired youths for looking like girls. It is what old squares, like DM readers, do.
Her haircut is cute. I don’t see what the big deal is.
http://britishsmiles.tumblr.com/post/5128596506/abe-look-at-them-sideburns-he-looks-like-a-girl
(The sideburns remark refers to Joe Namath.)
From the PCC Editors’ Code of Practice “Editors must not use the fame, notoriety or position of a parent or guardian as sole justification for publishing details of a child’s private life.”
I guess you could argue that since she was in a public place they weren’t commenting on her private life, but any other small child’s hair style or clothing wouldn’t be considered anything other than a private matter, so the sole justification is surely the fame of her parents.
Remember, the PCC is a voluntary self-regulation body. It was set up and run by the newspapers themselves and they wrote, and signed up to, the Code of Practice themselves. This would be the same group of newspapers and editors who are squealing that the Leveson inquiry is a witch hunt and the PCC does a marvelous job so there’s no need for anything to change.
I actually don’t think statutory regulation is desirable, but I’d have very few objections to criminalising this kind of public hypocrisy.
Bad, but not as bad as Pitt’s remarks a year ago when he was talking about the girl they adopted from Ethiopia and commenting how it took them a long time to figure out how to “deal with black people’s hair” or something. I was like, WTF???
My hair was shorter than that when I was five. I didn’t have a choice about it. My mother cut it that way in a stupid attempt to make my baby-fine then-blonde hair look “thicker”. Mia Farrow had helped make super-short hair really popular around that time in Rosemary’s Baby, and I used to get a lot of, “She looks like a little Mia!”
I hated that.
Little girls hate to have long hair with snarls brushed out. they hate it.
The Daily Mail openly displaying reactionary idiocy? That is not surprising, even though it is disappointing that such stupidity even exists, let alone that it finds such a prominent platform.
The Mail clearly cares not a jot about the effect of its articles on children, let alone wider society. It persistently exploits the children of celebrities and non-celebrities alike, often merely by appropriating their pictures or as a flimsy pretext for tittle-tattle celebrity stories.
It has been noted previously that the Daily Mail often rails against sexualisation of children whilst filling its online content with tutting articles about young female celebrities (often 17 year-olds) not wearing enough clothes or being a bit racy. All acompanied by pictures so that everyone reading it can see exactly what is so offensive.
The Daily Mail also undertook not to use paparazzi shots after the death of Princess Diana. Yet there they are in the articvle linked to above; children hiding their faces from paparazzi in the street.
The Daily Mail has been the subject of many complaints to the PCC about invasions of privacy, many involving children specifically. (The Mail on Sunday, has also been subject ot a number of complaints under clauses 3 and 6 of the Editor’s Code).
The Mail clearly cares not a jot about the effect of its articles on children, let alone wider society. It persistently exploits the children of celebrities and non-celebrities alike, often merely by appropriating their pictures or as a flimsy pretext for tittle-tattle celebrity stories.
Don’t feel too sorry for the celebrities. Most of them are in the tabloids because they put themselves there. Angelina Jolie is feeding 99% of the crap you see about her in the tabloids. She’s the one with the publicist who is calling to tell them, “Angelina will be here at this time. Oh, and here’s a neat tidbit you might like about her life.”
Angelina Jolie puts herself in the media. Angelina Jolie puts her kids in the media. And that can make both her and her children fair game to a surly tabloid like the Daily Mail, like it or not.
If you doubt that anyone but Angelina Jolie is behind most of the tabloid dirt about her, consider this: Without looking it up, tell me how many kids Liv Tyler has, if she has any.
There’s a reason 99.9% of us have no idea if Liv Tyler even has kids never mind how many, and we know all about the ones Angelina Jolie has. The reason is obvious: Liv Tyler isn’t constantly feeding the tabloids the intimate details of her personal life, or about the people in her life, like Jolie is. She isn’t parading her kids before the media constantly, like Jolie is. And–gasp!–the tabloids leave her kids alone!
This isn’t rocket science.
I’ll give Jolie credit: She’s keeping the rags fed enough not to turn on her. But that won’t last. The tabloids always turn on their darlings, sooner or later. She won’t be an exception.
I have little sympathy in many respects, although the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics has highlighted the methods tabloids use to cultivate such pacts. Cooperation can be a Hobson’s choice if a person has ever been seen to receive favour from the tabloids. Charlotte Church recently told the Inquiry of how she was manipulated and cultivated (as a child) by the Murdoch press in order that they would gain access in return for making her career.
I have a lot of sympathy for the children. The Mail and UK papers have a history of using children of celebrities and young celebrities with callous disregard for their well being.
Many PCC complaints and those of critics also stem from incidents where non-celebrities were targeted; interviewing children in the absence of responsible adults, invading Facebook tribute pages, miappropriating photos from social networking sites, using sexualised and titillating images of children and young people (the Daily Mail does so love to publish pictures of pretty young girls jumping around in summer dresses on exam results day), etc, etc.
Ugh. When I was five or six I demanded my hair be cut short and it was ace, no more ouchy brushing and plaiting. (Rene is right.) I wore tracksuits. Strangers sometimes mistook me for a boy. I remember thinking then, ‘how stupid, why does it matter’. Nice to see that society has moved on. *eyeroll*
I liked Persis Khambatta’s haircut on the first Star Trek movie. I thought she looked feminine and sexy.
Take that, Daily Mail.
Exacerbated the effect?? Made a bad thing even worse?
This is the Daily Mail, Ophelia. They can do basic English, sort of — you know, without the hard bits — but when they start exacerbating all over page one you know they’re striving for effect.
I find it hilarious that the former archbish writes for them.