No More Skinny: The Sun ‘fat-shames’ Steve Wright but not good Dan Wootton
The Sun wants readers to know that BBC DJ Steve Wright is not slim. The paper’s Bizarre columns notes:
RADIO 2 favourite Steve Wright appears to have increased the bandwidth of his trousers again.
Look, everyone, it’s Steve Wright from the show Steve Wright In The Afternoon, aka the Sun’s…
It’s Steve Wright CHIN the afternoon
Not too long ago the Sun’s “Head of Showbiz” Dan Wootton – read him every day in Bizarre – was cheering on his ‘No More Skinny’ drive, calling for fatter models and the end to the skinny obsession “madness” that does “so much damage to our body-conscious youngsters”.
Wootton wanted to end the cult of skinny models. He invited not-skinny reality TV star Gemma Collins to tell his readers:
“Encouraging girls to be thin is no way to produce a generation of confident healthy women”
Singer Alexandra Burke added:
Beauty should not be defined by waist inches.
The Sun told us that what went for women was true for men:
Around 15-20 per cent of those affected by eating disorders are male. Over 300,000 men were hospitalised with an eating disorder last year. For help and support, visit Men Get Eating Disorders Too at Mengetedstoo.co.uk.
Wootton told us how great he was:
Despite being a Sun man through and through, I’m also about as far from the tabloid stereotype as you can get. I only moved to the UK from my homeland of New Zealand when I was an adult. I’m also gay – something I’ve been open about since my first job on Fleet Street when I was 23.
I’ve also very openly struggled with my weight for the last decade, with fluctuations of up to four stone across a 12-month period pretty normal for me. As a result, when I became a showbiz columnist I made it a policy to never comment negatively on the weight of a celebrity. This was a sea change from previous male showbiz columnists who didn’t have the same background as me.
So why does the Sun’s showbiz team think it fine to mock Steve Wright?
Posted: 28th, September 2015 | In: Celebrities, Key Posts, Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
