Just when my faith in the common sense of young women today is restored, some dizzy bitch comes along and destroys it again.
A few weeks ago, Hayley Westenra, all round good girl and New Zealand songstress took a very public stand against her record company’s attempts to sex her up by giving her an ‘image makeover’. They reckoned that she had reached an age where it was okay to start dressing like a slut in order to sell more CDs. Hey if it worked for the Welsh version of our Hayley - Charlotte Church - then it would work for Westenra, right?
Only it didn't work for Church because the people buying her classical CDs were predominantly good, wholesome folk who bought the CDs for their musical content and not their soft porn covers. What music companies seem to not get is that the kind of guy who likes an artist because she wears skimpy outfits is going to get his fix by downloading photo shopped pics of the artist wearing little or no clothes, not by buying their latest CD.
Church also decided to go main stream and started singing pop songs that sounded no different than every other manufactured one hit wonder around at the time. Not surprisingly the album sales dried up not long after and for a while there she was perhaps better known for being the girl that used to sing beautifully but now dresses like a skank and roots a well known rugby player.
Church doesn’t sing so much these days, probably on account of her chain smoking, but she does host a successful TV show in the UK, is good for a few controversial comments and still roots a well known rugby player.
Thankfully our Hayley had the common sense and self belief to tell the record label where to shove their proposed sexing up of her. As she so aptly put it "Occasionally, I have had to stand my ground on image issues. I am not a tarty person and I don't wear those clothes when I am out, so I don't wear them to perform or for interviews either."
Her record label Universal says that talks about her image have always been age appropriate, meaning if they could have tarted her up before the age of 21, they would have.
So Hayley restored my faith in young women and had me thinking that maybe they weren’t all Charlotte Church wannabe’s. But then I saw the story this week of the young girl from Massey that was photographed topless by a man posing as a photographer from a modelling agency. The oldest trick in the book that one. I’ve tried it several times myself but I didn’t strike gold like this guy did.
Now admittedly hindsight is a wonderful thing, but there were several clear cut chances for our young heroine to realise that alarm bells were ringing fucking loud and clear, but clearly the allure of being the next Hills girl was a little too strong for common sense to play a part in proceedings.
The girl was approached in a mall where she worked, offered $500 for the photo shoot and a ‘contract’ posted to her. I suspect if she had turned it over she might have found it to be written on the back of a Weetbix packet, but it was only after she had signed it did she start to notice that things were getting ‘weird’.
The guy took her to a hotel, rather than a modelling studio. Ding ding. The friend that she’d taken for support wasn’t allowed in the room with them whilst Hugh Hefner took his shots. Ding ding. Rather than using a flash camera with a big fuck off zoom lens that one usually associates with a professional, Hugh pulled a dirty digital camera from his bag. Ding ding. Ever the gentleman, Hugh had our girl jump straight into a skimpy bikini and start the provocative posing. With a lollipop. Ding fucken ding. Somewhat surprisingly at this stage, he asked her to take her top off. There was no alarm bell ringing at this stage, it was a full blown air raid siren! Not entirely sure if she should or not, Paris was only convinced when Hugh told her that flashing her boobies would ‘open up options for her’. So she did.
Realising her mistake a few days later, quite possibly when she found she wasn’t in the pages of the latest Vogue like she had been promised, Paris told her father. He contacted the Five-O and surprise surprise, discovered the man had falsified his name and the modelling company. Well I for one didn’t see that coming did you? It’s almost as if the semi he undoubtedly had whilst taking the pics wasn’t a dead give away.
Poor Paris is beside herself, of course. "The photos could be on the Internet for all I know," she said.
Somehow I don’t think she’s going to be too disappointed if they are.
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