Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

Fatty! Skinny! The Mail’s bed of Procrustes

I should emphasise that it isn't the Mail who are the chief culprits here - that dubious honour belongs to those garish women's magazines you see blaring out at you in vivid yellows and magentas from the news-stands. But it does go to show exactly how far from the principles of journalism and newsgathering the Mail, and its rivals in the national press, have fallen.

But a quick look at the Mail's website - specifically that crock of shit down the right-hand side that gives the same space to celebrity bollocks, tittle-tattle, flim-flam, bric-a-brac and assorted "Ooh look at this bitch!" shite as is given to things that are actually news (regardless of the Mail's treatment of them) - reveals exactly the kind of impossible standards to which people, and more specifically celebrities, are held.

So let's have a look.

Fatty!

Bond girl Gemma Arterton is too fat for the Mail's exacting tastes:

The 22-year-old actress appeared at the Orange British Academy Film Award nominations looking distinctly jowly, as she posed up before making the announcements.

Skinny!

Lindsay Lohan, on the other hand, is apparently too skinny:

Wearing a pair of skinny jeans, Lindsay's thighs looked almost as slim as her calves as she strolled along the street in Beverly Hills.

Fatty!

Boy George tips the scales the wrong way for the Mail's journalists, who no doubt have perfect figures:

Bloated, sullen-looking and unrecognisable from his Eighties heyday, it seems bad karma has caught up with the Karma Chameleon.

Even when there's a relatively positive weight story, with Kerry Katona talking about her diet, if the Mail won't put the boot in, the readers certainly will:

Those pictures of her in the past few days in shiny silver leggings, she certainly did not look "too thin" or even at all thin in my opinion. What is she on?

Cunt. Another reader says:

Her current husband Mark would also like Kerry to put on: 'I would like to put on half a stone back on.'
Katona: 'I'm eight stone now but I want to be eight and a half. I'll be happy then because I don't like being this thin.'
She should have said: "I want to be eight and a half. Mark will be happy then, because he doesn't like me being this thin."
Seems to me that no matter what she does, Mark will never be happy.

Hmm. That attitude reminds me of someone. Well not 'someone' but an entire newspaper...

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