In the January 11 Portland Phoenix, book reviewer Charles Taylor lauds Kate Moss — the notoriously waifish model — as the "most extraordinary photographic muse of our era." He takes great pains to chide the "moralists" (don't you just hate moralists?) who objected to her well-paid gig (about $9 million a year) as the icon of ultra-skinny female beauty, concluding that it's "cheering" how she's "outlasted the moralists." Meaning, I suppose, those stolid folks who dared to observe and report that super-skinniness could have a deleterious effect on impressionable girls and young women?
What's up with the Phoenix for running this review? Thankfully, the Huffington Post commenters ran roughshod over the book, especially her comment that she "didn't really have to write anything" for it. Good on ya, HuffPo.
If Taylor was a journalist worth reading, he would have given some even-handed time to the issue of women and body image. Yes, the photos are artfully striking, but there's a huge social conundrum at issue here. You can't just blow it off as the screechings of those damned moralists.
Anyway, ask Mr. Taylor to give me a call the very minute he advises his teenage daughter to look just like Kate Moss. But I kinda think some of that reprehensible moralism might be catching up to him by then.
ROGER MCCORD
CUMBERLAND
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