Saturday 1 August 2009

The tawdry dreams of The Daily Mail

Obsession with WAGs led to the murder of a young lady, says the Daily Mail.

Amy Barnes, the young model recently murdered by her ex-boyfriend, was in fact "killed by a tawdry dream". It's the Daily Mail's latest verdict, according to an article by Paul Bracchi.

"How the obsession to become a WAG", the headline goes, "led this beautiful girl into the arms of a violent psychopath", with the conclusion that "had she not been sucked into the tawdry world of nightclubs and footballers - she would probably have never met [her killer Ricardo Morrison]".

Sure enough, according to our Mail churno, Amy Barnes' Facebook memorial page is "the subplot to this tragedy", as it contains a flurry of pictures of girls -including Amy- in revealing outfits, cleavages, panties and stilettos. So disgraceful are those Facebook pictures that the Daily Mail decides you too should have a look at them, including one of the victim sucking a lollypop. "Sucked into the lifestyle" is the accompanying caption.

Then Bracchi goes on with his portrayal of Amy's world, "where nightclubs, glamour modelling and the ultimate prize - 'bagging' a footballer - are a full-time career for many girls; like getting a normal job would be for most other people". "You might call such girls the Hollyoaks Generation" Bracchi adds, "Off screen, the cast of the Channel 4 soap - 'about babes and boys' - are forever stripping off to their underwear for calendar shoots".

So what may this cruel, cheap and "tawdry" world look like? Who exactly is behind this increasing obsession with the lifestyle of the rich and the famous?

It may be that Bracchi doesn't read the paper he works for, because the number of stories glamourising WAGs shopping about town, displaying scantily clad models in the company of Premier League stars as well as pictures of glitzy Footballer's Wives-style parties is just unbelievable.

It really is that blatant. In fact, right next to Paul Bracchi's article online, there is a picture of Eastenders star Kara Tointon (sister of Hollyoaks actress Hannah) "showing off her curves as a lingerie model".

Scroll down one bit and there's Victoria Beckham seen "in ripped denim hotpants and tiny vest", further down Boris Becker's new model wife as well as Cheryl Cole at the X Factor auditions.

Or simply google the words 'Daily Mail WAGs' and you'll be presented with full pictorial reports of Chelsea star Joe Cole's wedding, Frank Lampard's ex in a plunging red jumpsuit as she enjoys "England WAGs social circle", or the "England WAG's weeny bikini brigade".

It is truly a tawdry, tawdry world those young girls are drawn to.

This Quail was brought to you by Claude. Cross posted from Hagley Road to Ladywood.
To submit a Quail, click here.

5 comments:

  1. Oh yes that headline and angle was a new low for the Mail. How odd that no comments have been published, especially any about trawling through a dead girl's Facebook friends' pages to get a juicy hatchet job out of them.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Mail has a consistently disgusting take on these kinds of stories. If a 'lower class' girl gets into some type of personal shenanigans the story will tell you how horrible her life was - and comments will be 90% "CUT WELFARE NOW!". If its a middle-class girl then the article will be spun along the lines of "How did a nice girl who lived in a £300k house and go to private school end up like this?" and imply that she was led astray by an illegal/evil chav/black seducer & deserved it for living the sleazy life of the tartish poor. Just looking at the article in the paper now and the first paragraph tells you about the posh school she went to...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Another staple for the Mail is the 'Middle-class girl runs off with welfare dosser she met via the Internet'. Such stories (do a search on their site for 'run away man Internet') will explain the girl in question is terribly shy, did well on her GCSEs but for some out-of-the-blue reason decides to go off with a 30yr old unemployed father of six she met off Facebook/Bebo etc. The Mail's take is basically to warn middle-class parents that unemployed dossers will prey on their innocent daughters and use Svengali-like powers of hypnosis to pry them away from their hard-working families. And in best Wail tradition if the men aren't unemployed then they're... a bit foreign. There's an important issue about warning teens not to get involved with shady characters, but the Mail only cares if the parents live in a big house...

    ReplyDelete
  4. Love their tweet asking that you remove this. Stand firm, o noble Quail!

    ReplyDelete
  5. As an unemployed father of 6 in my early 40s, can the Fail offer me any tips for persuading middle class 19 year old girls with long blond hair and good GCSEs to run off with me?

    ReplyDelete