Reshaping your wife’s body is a little bit sinister… as well as bullying and controlling
Sun columnist says far too much air time is given to who is fat and who is thin when we should all just be getting on with our lives
A FEW stories caught my eye in the last couple of days, all showing that although we’ve come a long way with equality, in some areas we’re still in the Dark Ages.
The first was about the plastic surgeon who talked about how he has re-designed his wife’s body.
Phillip Craft, 47, runs his own clinic in Miami and says he’s been “fine-tuning” his wife Anna’s body since she gave birth to their two sons.
To me that just sounds a bit like a contemporary version of Frankenstein’s monster. And, frankly, just a little bit, well... yuck!
Over the course of their 21-year-marriage he has given his wife a boob job, liposuction, butt “enhancements”, body-contouring surgery, waist and abdominal sculpting, Botox, cheek and lip fillers.
The thing I found really depressing was her saying she has what she believes is the perfect body thanks to her husband’s surgical handiwork and would like more.
She said: “Phillip loves redesigning his sports cars, our furniture and, most of all, me. After having two kids, I decided to let him fine-tune me.”
Craft meanwhile sums it up as follows: “After my surgical tweaks to her body, I think she’s even more beautiful now than when I met her, aged 22”.
At best, it’s definitely more than a little bit distasteful.
But at worst, it’s bullying, controlling and sinister.
He is treating her like an object, or a Barbie doll, surgically sculpting her into “perfection”.
If I was her, I’d take the “gifts” he has given her and use them to find someone else.
Personally I think it’s her who needs the upgrade!
Annoyingly, the papers were full of similar stories over the past week.
One was an interview with the former Towie star Dan Osborne talking about how his partner Jacqueline Jossa doesn’t “feel sexy” since giving birth to their daughter.
It’s hard to imagine why he might have chosen to share that with the world, even if it is true.
But whatever his motivation, his comments are the opposite of loyal and seem designed mainly to further erode her confidence.
And then there was Ola Jordan’s husband, James, revealing to the world that his dancer wife suffers from severe confidence issues regarding her weight.
“She can look at food and put on weight, whereas I’ve got a very fast metabolism. If she ate what I ate she’d balloon,” he explained in an interview. Charming.
Not only that, but he also told everyone that she was worried about going make-up free in her stint in I’m A Celebrity as she’s suffered with severe acne for the past decade, leaving scars on her face. Er, thanks a lot, James!
It’s not surprising though. Earlier this year on Loose Women, Ola revealed that James kindly tells her when she has put on weight, in a bid to help her lose it again, which sounds pretty controlling to me.
With a husband like that, who needs trolls, right?
And then there was an interview with Geordie Shore’s Sophie Kasaei who talked about being trolled online about her looks.
Her boyfriend Joel Corry, she said, couldn’t be more supportive.
“He’ll never say I look fat,” she declared. “But if I’m down about it and crying to him, he’ll tell me to do something about it.’
What kind of world are we living in where a woman is almost grateful that her boyfriend doesn’t call her fat?
The truth, I’m sorry to say, is that every woman battles with body insecurities.
And almost all of us are guilty of automatically asking, “Does my bum look big in this?” without wanting the true answer.
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Part of the reason is that women are still scrutinised, judged, and criticised about their bodies and their weight from dusk until dawn.
We are constantly being invited to compare ourselves to airbrushed images of “perfection”.
Far too much air time is given to who is fat and who is thin when, frankly, we should all just be getting on with our lives.
It’s just a suggestion, but ladies maybe we should stop asking whether our bum looks big and do just that!
DISCIPLINE IS THE ISSUE FOR ROCCO
IT’S every mother’s nightmare. And this week it became a reality for Madonna when her 16-year-old son, Rocco, was arrested after being caught with cannabis.
Also last week photos reemerged from early this year of Rocco walking around smoking and hanging around drinking alcohol under a bridge looking as if he could be homeless.
I know it’s easy to comment from the sidelines but, to me, this situation looks like a major lack of discipline.
Yes, we all know that teenagers experiment and that they like to push the boundaries.
But it’s stopping experimentation from becoming a habit that good parenting is all about and the way that you do that is to come down hard.
Sadly, Rocco looks like a boy who doesn’t have any discipline in his life.
It’s not his fault, of course, that his parents split up and had such a public custody battle and that must have been hard for him.
But maybe if he had gone to live with his mum, who seems to have a lot more discipline than his dad, he wouldn’t be hanging around under a bridge swigging from a bottle.
I hate to say it but it looks like Guy Ritchie is making the mistake of trying to be Rocco’s friend, not his parent.
Meghan's made her Mark-le
THIS week my heart belongs to Meghan Markle and what she wrote in a magazine in her role as UN Women advocate:
“With fame comes opportunity, but it also includes responsibility to advocate and share, to focus less on glass slippers and more on pushing through glass ceilings.”
Who knows, of course, what will happen with her and Prince Harry?
But I can’t help thinking that she is the perfect princess for the modern day.
A breath of fresh air is just what the British monarchy needs.
THE STING IN HIS TALE OF SUCCESS
DID you see the interview this week where Sting – apparently worth £200million – said he had to move to the US because Brits are so jealous about him climbing the social ladder so successfully?
Maybe all that tantric sex has gone to his head?
To be honest, until I read this article I had forgotten all about him.
Cure for pines and needles
NOW Bonfire Night and Thanksgiving are done and dusted, there’s nothing cushioning us from Christmas.
So when is the right time to put up the tree?
If you’re a last-minute type, don’t ask Holly Willoughby, Jodie Marsh or the Osbournes all of whom have already tweeted photos of their trees in all their decorated glory.
They should take a leaf out of my book and put the tree up a week before – and take it down the day after.
I love Christmas but if you get a real tree it moults everywhere and gets on my nerves.
When it comes to mulled wine, Quality Street and Christmas pud – I’m there.
I love the spirit of Christmas, just not the tree for more than a week.
— DUBAI passport control is a miserable experience. No one looks you in the eye or smiles, and no one talks to you.
Even when I had to spend an hour in a side-room while some issue with my husband’s passport got sorted – by the way, I never did discover what the issue was, as no one spoke to us – they spoke over us, to each other, but never actually to us.
Contrast this with our great island.
When I arrived in London, despite the cold, windy, miserable weather, I walked up to immigration and the chap on the desk smiled and said: “Hello, young lady.”
Young lady indeed. God, I love our country.
— TEENAGERS drink a bath full of sugary drinks each year, according to Cancer Research UK.
Why don’t they use a glass like everyone else?