Jodie Marsh: Of Guardians and girls.
The Guardian seems to have developed something of a worrying obsession of caring for vacuous young greedy women. Since the start of Celebrity Big Brother, the Guardian has carried a larger number than usual of stories about programme, mainly because of George Galloway's involvement, but also because the entire series seems to have been the nastiest, and involving the most dysfunctional set of "celebrities" they could actually bring together.
To start with, I haven't been watching the show, and have only either seen the little adverts on Channel 4 with snippets of the upcoming programme or seen some goings-on when flicking through the channels. I was unfortunate enough to do this last night during what seemed to have been a huge set-to between Galloway and Barrymore, over which one of them was actually the most self-obsessed. Pete Burns, a man who if they were ever to be someone who should be sectioned just for what they look like, fits the bill, stuck his oar in, while Chantelle and Preston, two non-entities who seem to share the personality and brains of a soggy cardboard box, also clamoured and shouted. The only ones who seemed to be disgusted with what was going on, were amazingly Dennis Rodman, who seemed sickened with the argument, and Maggot, the rapper in Goldie Looking Chain, who seemed concerned for Barrymore's well-being. Maybe I'm just getting old, but is the whole show like that? I switched it over and felt dirty just by watching about 5 minutes of it.
But I digress. Jodie Marsh was the first to be evicted from the show. She was apparently bullied somewhat by Galloway, Barrymore and Burns, to the extent that Germaine Greer wrote a comment piece defending her. Greer also alleges that the producers of Big Brother edited the show as to make Marsh look vain, miserable and envious. Today's Guardian features an interview with Marsh by Laura Barton, in which she is given a very sympathetic benefit of the doubt, but which ignores both her own hypocrisy and her startling greed.
The piece starts by mentioning a brief history of her "celebrity". She first appeared on another reality show, and has built herself up to be a rival to Jordan, the blow-up glamour model. Laura Barton seems to consider that she's superior, because, err, her breasts are real. I'm not sure how that matters in the world of things, as Jordan's were originally quite big before she had numerous augmentations, but hell, apparently that makes her better. Nevermind though, because Marsh is clearly on a different intellectual plane to those who she rivals. She has 11 A and A+ GCSEs, along with 3 A A-Levels, apparently. Why when she had such good results she decided to use her body instead of her brain is explained quite easily: money.
But I've taken the quickest and easiest route to making as much money as I can, and having as much fun as I can, and I don't regret that." She has, she points out, recently bought herself a splendid new home, she has worked in Australia and Cyprus and Barbados, she has made a lot of money and written a book. "You can't knock that."
In other words, she's taking the incredibly easy route to greed. After all, if you've got the assets, flaunt them, right? But then she wonders why she's been knocked by the tabloids and called a slag in the streets. Could it be that, as the beginning of the article states, she went out in an outfit involving 3 belts? Could it be that she's told the tabloids about numerous relationships with other men? Could it be that the book she's supposedly written (I'm willing to bet it was ghosted) is full, apart from her memories of childhood, with numerous tales of orgies and her sexual antics? Marsh grins in the article about being paid the most amount ever for a page 3 shot. Nevermind that though, her final thought is about why men who sleep with a lot of women are called studs while women who do the same are slags:
It's like that old thing, if a man has slept with loads and loads of women, he's a stud. But if a woman has slept with loads of boys, she's a slag. Well, why? Why? What makes a man a stud 'cos he's pulled loads of women? And what makes me a slag 'cos I've slept with more than 10 men? It's ridiculous!" She rumples her tanned brow in despair, and blows out an angry stream of smoke. Jodie Marsh: unlikely feminist bitch.
Could it be that those that do don't tell the newspapers and write books about it? Could it be because that those few men that do probably have some idea of personal privacy? Irony to Jodie Marsh seems to be something she also doesn't understand:
Big Brother, Marsh says through drags on a cigarette, was full of "the most fake, hideous people I've ever met"
Well, congratulations on realising that years after everyone else did. Except that she fits the bill perfectly as well. She goes on tell about how she's gone back to brunette after being blonde. She spent most of the show coarsening and talking about sex, exactly as she did in her book and the tabloids before-hand. She thinks she knows why this is though:
She talks about "feminist bitch women" in the press "who don't like glamorous girls who don't like intelligent women - they want to be the one and only intelligent powerful woman, and they don't like anyone who can challenge that or rival that."
Except that, err, the most famous "feminist bitch woman" in the country, Germaine Greer wrote an article defending her, even if she said that eventually Marsh would drop the pretence and wash off the fake tan and realise that's she been very silly. I'm sorry Germaine, but this article shows that's she nowhere near that stage yet, and it seems to show that's she's an incredibly stubborn woman who can't face up to what her own individual actions have brought on her. Charlie Brooker, in his often very funny piece on television in the saturday Guardian Guide said exactly the same thing.
Jodie Marsh obviously does have some intelligence. Perhaps one day she will grow up, get her hideous lower back tattoo removed (having one of these seems to have become a ritual for girls, especially in America, when they turn 18, and horrifically seems to be catching on over here) perhaps go to university and get a decent job and be ashamed of her past. At the moment, she is doing herself no favours. The Guardian should know better than to give space to people who so obviously need help, especially when it seems to be encouraging her to carry on in her ways. Still, perhaps she could replace Zoe Williams as a comment page writer, as I'm sure she could still manage to do a better job.
Oh, and it was almost impossible to find a picture of her in which she isn't either in a state of undress, her underwear, or completely topless.
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