London - Chrissie Hynde has said that today’s more outrageous female pop stars have created a pornography culture which is harmful to young women.
So true. They have. It is.
In an obvious reference to stars such as Miley Cyrus and Rihanna, the former Pretenders singer likened them to “sex workers” because they sell their music by “bumping and grinding”.
She didn’t add, but I will, that they do so in the kind of shredded scanties usually favoured by strippers in the last five seconds of their act. These risqué performances, said Hynde, during an interview this week on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, were doing a “great deal of damage” to girls.
Too right. While a little bit of sex has always been a big and important part of rock ’n’ roll, there has been a terrible disconnect over recent years. Now, sometimes it seems that it is all sex; the more sequinned groin thrusts the better.
Even someone like Beyoncé, who could always be depended upon to bounce around cheerfully in fishnets and leotards, has gone all cringe-perve on her fans.
In recent videos, the singer writhes around on stripper-poles, groin-ahoy, wearing flasher macs and not much more, while having her thighs pawed at by her husband and her breasts caressed by women.
That’s not soft pop, it is soft porn.
And how do you explain it to all the little girls who loved to dance along to her Single Lady routines?
“Beyoncé’s not feeling very well, darling. Somebody silly put a wasp in her pants and she’s trying to set it free. Now, let’s go and see what Peppa Pig is up to.”
Meanwhile, mad Miley delights in getting naked at every opportunity, while the overtly sexual Rihanna treats clothes as if they were obsolete- or optional at the very least.
The singer Rita Ora was pictured this week in a quilted red leather bustier with matching hotpants and jacket. If an outfit could speak, this one would be screaming: “Hurry! Which way to the Chanel-themed Bad Taste Trans-Sex-Worker Barndance?”
Either that, or it was a metaphor for the inner turmoil she now feels, having realised that becoming a judge on ITV’s The X Factor was a big mistake.
By itself, for the delectation of an older audience, all this would be harmless enough. However, in the highly sexualised world of pop and celebrity, it has skewed teenage perspective on what is, and is not, appropriate to wear.
Most parents of teenage girls will be all too familiar with the struggle to stop them going out the front door on a Saturday night looking like the keenest new employee at the Den’o’Vice brothel.
Indeed, I thought of Chrissie Hynde’s wise words when I saw how Chelsea football manager Jose Mourinho’s daughter had chosen to dress herself to attend a do with him this week.
At the GQ Men Of The Year Awards dinner in London, the 18 year old went braless in a deep-plunge tuxedo dress that wouldn’t have kept a mouse warm.
The £2 000 (about R160 000) Balmain creation was open at the front, the way a bag of crisps looks after I’ve torn it apart during a hormonal meltdown.
Heaven knows what happened to the outfit’s technical dynamics when Matilde Mourinho sat down, but “modest” is not the word that springs to mind.
Is this an appropriate moment to mention that her friends and family call her Tita?
Many who are unfamiliar with the sensation of sympathising with the controversial Chelsea boss felt his pain as photographs emerged of him with Tita.
She had the slightly scalded look of someone who has just been given the razor-tongued Premier League manager’s hairdryer treatment; he had the thunderous Dad-face of a man who had spent much of the previous hour yelling: “You’re not going out looking like that, young lady!” Clearly to no avail.
But look at what Matilde has grown up with, surrounded by images of the brutishly sexy icons she has no doubt come to accept and admire as normal.
Her outfit was exactly the kind of barely there festival of cling and clutch so beloved of the Kardashian girls. Even the way she had applied contouring make-up to enhance her cleavage was pure Kimmy K.
If she scrubbed all that off and put on a nice frock, she’d look lovely. I sound like my mother, I know. But it’s getting ridiculous.
No wonder parents are tearing their hair out. But the cruel insouciance of the young knows nobounds.
Take Miley Cyrus, for example. The 22-year-old likes to show her breasts because she believes in a movement called Free The Nipple: the right for women to flaunt their points in public and challenge conventional standards of dress.
It’s pure bubblehead nonsense of course, but unlike poor Miss Mourinho and her glowering father, Miley’s dad is, seemingly, onside. She told a chat show host: “He’d rather me have my t**s out and be a good person than have a shirt on and be a b***h. When you’ve got your t**s out, you can’t really be an a***hole.”
So here is poor little Miss Mourinho, still at school, dressing like a Fifty Shades sex croupier.
What is sad is not that this young girl feels she has to dress like this, but her innocent assumption that it was okay and that her father would think it was appropriate.
Well, she was wrong about that one. And, where was Mom in all this? You’ve got to wonder.
Jan Moir, Daily Mail