Amanda Platell Says Some Fashion Designers Are Misogynistic

Daily Mail UK style writer Amanda PlatellA Charge of Fashion Industry Misogyny

Daily Mail UK writer Amanda Platell has written very cogent protest against the fashion industry’s new found love for Andrej Pejic. To be clear, Amanda Platell has high regard for Andrej’s looks as well as his personality and intelligence. Her issue isn’t with Andrej but the fashion industry that obsesses with him.

Platell echoes key points that we have made consistently about some fashion designers.

For years now the debate has raged over size zero models, yet each year they became skinnier and less like women. No breasts, no curves, so desiccated by starvation they’d be unable to have a child even if they wanted to.

They became utterly defeminised.

Now another issue is looming around the size 0 model and size 0 woman, one that seeks to eliminate women all together, writes Platell.

Platell continues:

It’s the ultimate in woman hating, to create a half-man, half-woman creature because the girls are simply not up to the job. They’re too — let’s face it boys — womanly, even when they’ve been starved to within an inch of their lives.

What an act of abject misogyny.

Preparing for an onslaught of criticism against a ‘hysterical’ Amanda Platell, let me say that AOC stands with her on this subject. We adore Adrej and our focus is not on Andrej Pejic.

Nor do we take issue with all male designers. Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs are big loves of mine, and I would feel comfortable confessing my fears to them because I trust their support of strong, vibrant women.

Having acknowledged all the body image issues like the luxury market is moving to Asia where women are smaller and inevitable changing beauty standards for women over the decades, we must understand that even ballerinas have been slimmed down fit this new beauty standard.

Are Women With Curves Just Jealous?

We moved from a post-feminist decade of size 4-6 US Supermodels setting a strong, sexy vision of beauty to women who must look like boys. I sound like a broken record asking this question every week.

Especially in America, fashion is not known for having an intellectual side. Anyone who asks serious questions about the meaning of fashion, model size, beauty and women’s rights is just a jealous, insecure, potato-chip eating mommy lacking self discipline, as Karl Lagerfeld calls us.

I am one very intelligent American woman who is getting nervous about what’s up with the female sex.

My relations with men are superb generally and I have a career of working great with men. Many of my men friends — some quite Conservative — agree that American women are getting hit from every angle.

I can’t speak for women in France — center to most of the intellectual side of fashion. For certain, there’s not a full court press going on to take away their hard-won rights to control their own bodies.

Religion, Fashion and Phylis Schlafly

Politically I’ve got Phyllis Schafly hammering me in a new book that as a feminist who wants American women not to stand with Swaziland and Papua, New Guinea as only three nations who have no family leave policy to help new mothers, I am the curse of the earth.

The men of South Dakota pulled back from an abortion bill that would have given men the rights to shoot a wife assisting her daughter in obtaining a legal abortion in another state as justifiable homicide. They only pulled back because women like me wrote every defaming headline we could think of to save another seizure of women’s rights and now our very lives from becoming law.

A woman in America is first and foremost an incubator in the minds of these men. ‘Incubator’ is not my word to describe American women; it belongs to former Democratic pro-life Rep Bart Stupak.

Karl and Phyllis

Karl Lagerfeld is on record also preaching monasticism and sex with prostitutes because passion never survives in marriage.In many of his views, Karl Lagerfeld and Phyllis Schlafly sleep in the same Conservative values bed.

When you accept that idea, a holistic examination of women’s worlds make much more sense. Lagerfeld agrees with Schlafly that women are the caretakers, which is why he doesn’t support gay marriage.

Women Want To Be Dominated in Bed

Then I read on Ask Dan and Jennifer’s blog ‘3 Sex Tips To Give A Woman An Orgasm Without Using Your Hands!’

Women have come very far, when it comes to equal rights in both the job and the home. Women can achieve anything men can achieve in our modern world. However, when it comes to sex, most women still have primal instincts that need to be satisfied. And these instincts tell her she NEEDS to be “owned” by a dominant man.

Telling a woman to come is one of the most powerful ways to get her to orgasm when having sex. This primal urge goes all the way back to our caveman days – she gets off on you being in control of her body.

I hate to tell Dan and Jennifer but I am hotter than Hades in bed, and it doesn’t work for me. I’ll take up this subject shortly because the nuances of this barbaric approach to handling women in the bedroom should not be generalized in this way.

Thankfully, after steaming over this article for a few days and reminding my own FB friends that women had multiple sexual partners before we became the chattel of the patriarchy, I saw a PBS nature show where a female tiger not only fought two male tigers successfully but then had them lying at her feet as calm prevailed.

Nothing aggravates me more than men who reinvent history with the science behind their assertions. What I know for certain is that sex in nature in full of fun and frolic, and women are often on top, not dominated. We know that early humans were not monogamous. I want to see the science behind Dan and Jennifer’s assertion that women want to be dominated in bed, due to our ‘natural’ as opposed to ‘forced upon us’ history.

Note: I am not suggesting that many women don’t enjoy being ‘taken’ by their strong man (or woman) lover, and I will discuss the topic shortly in another essay.

But wait. We have more talk about the natural civilizing benefits of BDSM.

Next up is a quote from a deliberately anonymous person who wonders aloud about feminism and submission, writing:

That BDSM has become a hot topic is evidenced all around us, in magazine ads, the creation of erotic art, and the proliferation of adult novelty items sold in high-end lingerie stores such a Coco De Mere. But whether we will find ourselves collectively chatting about the latest gadgets to tie, bind and pleasure us (hmm, we have a new feather tipped flogger, and is it ever exquisite!) in the process as casually as we discuss, say, the best coffee makers or summer camps for the kids is another thing altogether.  For most of us, and by that I mean those who call themselves feminists and those who aren’t sure if the shoe fits, sexual liberation hasn’t yet matriculated to that level of openness, never mind the political climate that wants to put discussions about ordinary sex back in the closet.

Not that I think that’s a problem seeking a solution; being pleasure bound may intuitively and correctly lead us towards a safer society, sexually speaking, but that doesn’t mean diarrhea of the mouth should supersede couth with regards to our private play. Language that is raunchy for the sake of gratuitousness will only serve to alienate those who come to this table timidly to begin with. Let’s not get bound up by an inability to share our views on eroticsm, and thereby miss all the fun of blindfolds.

I asked several of my friends to read the post and especially the line “Not that I think that’s a problem seeking a solution; being pleasure bound may intuitively and correctly lead us towards a safer society, sexually speaking … “

How, I ask you, does BDSM intuitively and correctly (now that’s a loaded word) lead us towards a safer society? My group is clueless.

The argument that women submit our bodies to men (90% of submissive are women) because we should or it’s good for society is coming from so many ardent Conservatives, Congressmen, fashion designers and sex bloggers that I want to just get under the covers and stay there with a strong Conservative man I know well.

Thankfully, he prefers femme fatales like Dagny Taggart, the heroine of Atlas Shrugged and would differ with Schlafly’s assertion that I am a good for nothing example of a woman. Give me Dagny or give me death.

Alexander McQueen and BDSM Forniphilia

Back to the fashion size 0 patriarchy — which is not all gay — by the way.

Like so many people in fashion, I loved Alexander McQueen’s fabulous fashion talents. I always regarded him as a man who loved women, but honestly got a bit rattled the day I saw the photo of McQueen and his table.

I was writing Is Forniphilia Essentially Women’s Sex Slave Work? and stumbled into a photo of the guy I revered. McQueen’s table didn’t use a real live submissive to host his dinner parties but I couldn’t help wondering about the mind of the man who spent a lot of time with this relationship with the female form.

Visually, it looks like a love-hate relationship to me, but I’m not a sexual psychotherapist. I know the drill. It’s just art, Anne.

A documentary about Alexander McQueen airs tonight in Britain and offers insights into the extent of the brilliant designers demons and extensive drug habit that came with his success and pressure to top his great collections every season while remaining true to his own vision.

As part of the conversation that Amanda Platell launched today, it’s relevant to mention that McQueen’s design assistant says in the documentary, describing a Givenchy show:

‘There wasn’t a lot of space, people were running around and I remember (McQueen) running over to Eva Herzigova and cutting the laces on her corset saying ‘You f***ing bi**h and you know dragging her to get her to exit on time.”

‘She was in tears by the time she was out there. No one had ever treated her that way before.’

Truth Serum

I adore Andrej Pejic, but it has gone through my mind more than once that this new trend is just one more example of the female body under assault.

Because I worked around the great Supermodels — who were kick butt women with big personalities and Amazonian bodies, to quote Crystal Renn — there is no doubt in mind that many men prefer that women be taught their proper place in life.

As a consultant I’ve received incessant praise for my ability to connect seemingly unrelated dots into large cultural patterns. Fortune 100 clients have learned not to call me crazy.

The fashion eyebrows will rise and the fingers will be wagging over Amanda Platell’s diatribe. From the bottom of my heart, I wish it didn’t ring true to me.

The fashion industry would be more honest if they admitted that they have huge influence on how women see ourselves. The ideal woman today is a disempowered, size 0 version of her nineties larger-than-life self, with no breasts and what the heck — perferably she’s a nice-looking man.

We should wonder how we got here and why. There is something rotten in the state of Denmark and it extends beyond the fashion industry in America. Anne