THE inspirational Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the opposition party in Burma who was held under house arrest for 15 years, has been in Britain asking for support in her fight for democracy in her homeland.
This Nobel Prize winner has been described as: “The conscience of a country and a heroine for humanity.”
Also visiting was Kim Kardashian for a book launch.
Who?
I had to look her up and discovered she was an American TV reality star who has become a fashion designer and author. Like you do.
Headmistress Dr Helen Wright caused a furore when she said that a photograph of Kim Kardashian summed up all that is wrong in society today because she has become the iconic face of the want-it-now generation of women whose greatest ambition in life is to become famous.
“I have spoken out a lot over the past two years about the increasing dangers of the premature sexualisation of young people and the objectification of women which accompanies this,” Dr Wright said. “And this is what our young people see around them all the time online, in magazines, on TV.
“It is not too strong a statement, I venture to suggest, to say that almost everything that is wrong with Western society today can be summed up in that one symbolic photo of Miss Kim Kardashian on the front of Zoo magazine.”
Ms Kardashian has actually featured on the cover of Zoo on at least three occasions, each time in a bikini. She is also very attractive. Presumably, if she hadn’t been, she wouldn’t have been a success on reality TV.
I fully agree with Dr Wright which is not the same as criticising Kim Kardashian.
Television is full of cheap reality shows which could, many young women think, be the way to a red carpet lifestyle. Much easier than actually studying and working at a career. This is a sad reflection on female ambition.
Women continue to strive for equality in the professions, business and politics. Slowly, they are getting there. Yet a certain swathe of them would prefer to kick all that advancement into touch to be a ‘babe’, like Jodie Marsh or Katie Price. The belief is that once you are famous for being famous the rest just comes along.
Dr Wright would like them to set their sights higher, to look elsewhere for female inspiration in the sciences, literature, professions and politics. Women like authors Doris Lessing, J K Rowling and Germaine Greer, the brilliant Victoria Wood, England women’s football manager Hope Powell, Olympian Kelly Holmes and, even though I may not applaud her policies, Margaret Thatcher, who went where no woman had gone before to lead the nation as Prime Minister. Women like Aung San Suu Kyi.
Surely these are better role models than Kim, Jodie or Katie?
