It's been a good week for … gender equality
It's been a good week for … gender equality
THAT the internet serves as a valve through which the bile of a million bitter misfits may spew is nothing new. But it was perhaps still a shock to the actress Emma Watson, below, to find that her rip-roaring speech about feminism, delivered to launch the HeForShe campaign, the United Nations' new initiative to get men involved in fighting for gender equality, stirred up so much antagonism.
Despite looking a little apprehensive before she stood to make her address, the speech delivered was badass. Sadly, not everyone agreed. On the internet, keyboard cowards threatened to release naked photos of the Harry Potter star (although the website, emmayouarenext.com, turned out to be a hoax) and an angry mass of idiots swamped Twitter in an attempt to push her back in her box.
Would the speech have received so much attention if it hadn't been coupled with a promise of Hermione Granger in the nude? We'll never know.
And let's hazard a guess: I imagine Watson doesn't give two rats' hoots what nasty, small men lurking in the swampy realms of the internet say.
She blithely continued to tweet her support for the campaign as a young, successful and passionate feminist role model for other young men and women.
Result: Watson: 1, misogynists: 0.
It's been a bad week for … male body image
UH-oh. Marks & Spencer has let loose the fox amid the hen house - the fox being flexed, tanned and buff model David Gandy, wearing naught but pants and some devilish stubble.
Gentlemen shoppers, plucking fretfully at the saggy grey elastic of their boxers, know not where to look as life-size, cardboard cut-outs of a nearly naked Gandy lounge around the smalls department.
Will this gamble - a foray into modernity - pay off for M&S or will men abandon ship, intimidated by the rippled pecs and prominent package packed by Gandy?
It remains to be seen. But let's not pretend the ladies aren't enjoying the sight of men sampling a taste of their own medicine. We've been owed payback since Eva Herzigová's enhanced cleavage loomed large from billboards across the land in the Wonderbra adverts, causing car accidents and a mass inferiority complex.
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