Thank you Keren Woodward, singer and star of the all-female 80s pop group Bananarama, for saying what I’ve been dying to express for some time. I’d been a bit reluctant in case people thought I’d turned into a puritanical old fuddy duddy, which, I assure you, is not the case.
But this week Keren said, ‘I can’t get my head around what some singers wear these days.’ I’d argue the problem is not necessarily what they wear but what they don’t wear.
‘I have friends who have teenage daughters and these girls already have terrible body image and insecurities,’ she continued, ‘and I don’t think that kind of woman on stage helps with that.’
Keren is absolutely right. Everyone from Dua Lipa, who recently announced she’d be headlining Glastonbury, to brilliant Oscar nominee Florence Pugh, seem to feel they must always appear in public half naked. Similarly Beyonce, one of the best-selling music artists of all time, is adored by young girls and women.
They love her music just as they think the megastar Taylor Swift’s songs touch their hearts and souls. But why do such talented, successful and powerful women feel the need to appear virtually naked in jewel-encrusted leotards on stage or, in Beyonce’s case, naked except for strategically placed jewellery astride a horse?
Everyone from Dua Lipa, who recently announced she’d be headlining Glastonbury, seem to feel they must always appear in public half naked
These stars must have worked extremely hard for the bodies they delight in showing off. There are no bingo wings, no bloated tummies, no chunky ankles. They must exercise every day and have expert chefs to prepare nutritious healthy meals.
Quite unlike the teenage fan who has to eat her way through school meals, maybe has a bit of puppy fat and the only exercise she gets is copying a TikTok dance in her bedroom. No wonder so many girls have body hang-ups and, according to the NHS, more young people than ever are receiving treatment for eating disorders.
I have friends whose girls have simply stopped eating and lift weights to achieve the strong, handsome arms of their idols.
The sad reality is that, far from being inspirational, many of today’s female pop stars are a danger to a young person’s mental health.
Then there’s the risk girls put themselves in by copying the outfits. Like Keren, I have friends whose teenage daughters spend hours listening to the music of the women they adore, doing their best to look and dance like them. They hope Mum won’t notice if they sneak out wearing the required barely-there attire.
Nothing can be more distressing to a parent than witnessing their little girl going out dressed like a porn star, unaware of the dangers that might attract.
In the Eighties, Bananarama’s heyday, and even up to the 2000s, if re-runs of old Top Of The Pops on BBC 4 are anything to go by, it was not about flashing the flesh.
Keren says they are proud they became pin-ups without being overtly sexy: ‘We became sex symbols in donkey jackets. We didn’t have stylists or make-up artists. It wouldn’t happen now.’
Keren Woodward, singer and star of the all-female 80s pop group Bananarama, said: ‘I can’t get my head around what some singers wear these days’
But why wouldn’t it happen now? Since the turn of the century, we seem to have lost the sense that talent matters above all. Think Annie Lennox or Debbie Harry; huge stars valued for their beautiful voices and quirky sense of style, who always came across as intelligent and thoughtful in interviews.
For me, as a feminist, journalist, interviewer and cultural commentator, it felt that women were achieving something on the back of what we’d fought for.
Women were valued for the quality of our minds, not primarily for the size of our breasts — or how willing we were to flash them.
It is, of course, not just pop stars who’ve begun to appear in only the bare essentials. On every red carpet, be it the Oscars or the Baftas, there’s always a number of beautiful, well-known women wearing what seems to be as little as possible.
Beyonce unveiled the artwork for her new album this week
They love Beyonce’s music just as they think the megastar Taylor Swift ’s songs touch their hearts and souls
Sometimes the frocks are sheer and see-through, leaving nothing to the imagination, or the cut is so skimpy a large, fulsome breast struggles to break free.
I have no doubt this is a result of the proliferation of porn, an arena where women perform almost exclusively for men’s delectation.
But it’s the hugely talented, half-naked, ripped women oozing sex and suggestiveness that bother me most. Why don’t they consider the impact on their impressionable young fans? And the impact on womankind as a whole.
We worked so hard to be seen as the intellectual equals of men. Please don’t consign us to being perceived as nothing more than glorified strippers.
A fitting farewell for Charlie
Derek Thompson as Charlie Fairhead in BBC’s Casualty
Once required viewing, I hadn’t watched BBC’s Casualty for some time. But on Saturday I couldn’t miss the departure, after 38 years, of Charlie Fairhead. I was so relieved he was saved from being stabbed in the chest and went off to retirement in a yellow VW Beetle, the same car he’d arrived in all those years ago. For once, a happy ending.
Don’t dare put adverts on the BBC
This is not PepsiCo, your former employer. This is the BBC!’ For my whole adult life, I have willingly paid the license fee knowing it would give me beautiful programmes without any hint of the influence of the commercial world.
Yes, the BBC is short of money — it always has been. But successive DGs have argued with governments when the Charter came up for renewal and won a rise.
Who’ll willingly pay the license fee when they know the BBC’s no better than its commercial rivals? I won’t and it will break my heart.
