Self-styled lethario of the Commons Lembit Opik has hit the headlines for his “relationship” with a 21-year old lingerie model, ostensibly anchored in a mutual interest in a campaign on eating disorders. This is familiar territory for the serial sleazeball, who made big play of his relationships with weather presenter Sian Lloyd and Cheeky Girl Gabriella Irimia.
In the media offensive with model Katie Green, Opik opines:
If the fashion industry is organised to celebrate the ‘dangerously thin’ look, it’s no wonder thousands of people die from eating disorders in the UK every year.
In the last parliamentary session Opik signed a whopping 198 Early Day Motions and sponsored 13 on such pressing issues as Tracking Near Earth Objects and Segways and the Snow. Given his apparent interest in this subject, one assumes he has been pursuing the matter in parliament. Perhaps he signed last October’s Early Day Motion expressing concern at “the clear pressure on models to achieve a size zero body”? Or maybe he backed Richard Younger-Ross in welcoming the launch of the Model Health Inquiry? And how could we forget Eating Order Awareness week in February?
The fact is that Opik has signed none of these. To miss an EDM on one of ‘your issues’ is unfortunate; to miss two is careless; but to miss three probably means you didn’t give a monkeys in the first place. It seems the only time our ladies man has mentioned ever eating disorders in Parliament was in a written question which was answered (surprise surprise) one day before Katie Green’s campaign was launched in The Sun.
The charitable might ask what is wrong with an MP widening their parliamentary interests or their attention being drawn to a particular issue by a celebrity campaigner. This argument might stand up were it not for Opik’s weekly column for for newstand pornographers the Daily Sport.
This publication is soft-core porn dressed up as a red top tabloid, keeping its readers on a daily diet of upskirt photos of celebrities getting out of cars and stories such as “WAG in Hotel Roasting Sex Vid” and “Credit Crunch Turns Girls Lesbo”.
Hey, Lembit! You don’t suppose your employer is a paragon of publications which, erm, drive unrealistic and unhealthy conceptions of body image in young women?
What a complete and utter hypocrite.
4 Comments
“20 Times More Boobs Than The Sun or Star!”
And five times as many as MailOnline!
http://tabloid-watch.blogspot.com/2009/07/mailonline-proves-that-sex-sells.html
To be fair, the red-tops, softcore porn… or hardcore porn for that matter aren’t the problem in terms of women’s body image. Guys like looking at girls with boobs.
The ‘size zero’ nonsense is in media aimed at women, such as fashion magazines. Although the editor of Vogue has made some noises in the right direction over the last month, if Lembit wrote a column in Vogue the accusation of hypocrisy would carry more weight, as it were…
Size zero is a component of the media’s construction of women’s body image as a whole. In the red tops having massive breasts takes primacy over being unhealthily thin but it is damaging nonetheless.
Also the the buyer is not the same as readership (which is what advertisers are interested in). Plenty of women buy/read red tops and will even pick up a copy of The Sport if its lying around.
Perhaps the post does conflate size zero/big tits but the point is that Opik is opportunistically using a serious issue to flatter his own vanity.
The post was nearly titled “Liberal Democrat has mid-life crisis in public”. Why can’t he buy a Harley Davidson or something?
3 Trackbacks
Eating disorders, softcore porn and the hypocrisy of Lembit Opik – http://is.gd/1RFWf
@jamesburdett @KerryMP That he can lecture on eating disorders while writing for the Daily Sport is just astonishing. http://is.gd/1RFWf
The hypocrisy of Lembit Opik | Political Scrapbook http://bit.ly/5Dc10