The spread of indigestible body images
The Huffington Post has published a series of photographs of bikini-clad comedian Kathy Griffin taking part in a concert for the US troops.
Griffin has revealed in an interview that she stays thin by starving herself, which means that she is constantly hungry and irritable.
It genuinely amazes me that celebrity culture has not moved beyond the need for thinness. When will the focus be on health?
The comments at the bottom of the photographs are unsurprisingly critical of Griffin, zoning in on aspects of her body and personality they do not like.
One of the wonders of the internet is that information is immediately available and disseminated. Sharing articles, images and ideas is so very easy and we are much better informed because of it.
However, as Charlie Brooker has written in today’s Guardian, does this mean we can expect embarrassment to come with everything we do?
Brooker argues that we will get to the stage where we all have personal details and pictures splashed on the net, quite probably without permission.
There are quite obvious differences between images celebrities put out for publicity and those shared on social media sites. But with the growth of both and the friction between freedom of speech and freedom for privacy, it will be interesting to see where this takes us politically.
As for Kathy Griffin, I can only hope that her need to starve herself thin is not used to further exploit the insecurities of many women’s body politics.
