JAN MOIR: How today's sleazy pop culture makes young girls dress like Vegas croupiers 

Chrissie Hynde's likened singers like Miley Cyrus and Rihanna to ‘sex workers’ because they sell their music by ‘bumping and grinding’

Chrissie Hynde's likened singers like Miley Cyrus and Rihanna to ‘sex workers’ because they sell their music by ‘bumping and grinding’

Chrissie Hynde has said that today’s more outrageous female pop stars have created a pornography culture which is harmful to young women.

So true. They have. It is.

In an obvious reference to stars such as Miley Cyrus and Rihanna, the former Pretenders singer likened them to ‘sex workers’ because they sell their music by ‘bumping and grinding’.

She didn’t add, but I will, that they do so in the kind of shredded scanties usually favoured by strippers in the last five seconds of their act. These risqué performances, said Hynde, during an interview this week on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour, were doing a ‘great deal of damage’ to girls.

Too right. While a little bit of sex has always been a big and important part of rock ’n’ roll, there has been a terrible disconnect over recent years. Now, sometimes it seems that it is all sex; the more sequinned groin thrusts the better.

Even someone like Beyoncé, who could always be depended upon to bounce around cheerfully in fishnets and leotards, has gone all cringe-perve on her fans.

In recent videos, the singer writhes around on stripper-poles, groin-ahoy, wearing flasher macs and not much more, while having her thighs pawed at by her husband and her breasts caressed by women.

That’s not soft pop, it is soft porn.

And how do you explain it to all the little girls who loved to dance along to her Single Lady routines?

‘Beyoncé’s not feeling very well, darling. Somebody silly put a wasp in her pants and she’s trying to set it free. Now, let’s go and see what Peppa Pig is up to.’

Meanwhile, mad Miley delights in getting naked at every opportunity, while the overtly sexual Rihanna treats clothes as if they were obsolete — or optional at the very least.

The singer Rita Ora was pictured this week in a quilted red leather bustier with matching hotpants and jacket. If an outfit could speak, this one would be screaming: ‘Hurry! Which way to the Chanel-themed Bad Taste Trans-Sex-Worker Barndance?’

Either that, or it was a metaphor for the inner turmoil she now feels, having realised that becoming a judge on ITV’s The X Factor was a big mistake.

By itself, for the delectation of an older audience, all this would be harmless enough. However, in the highly sexualised world of pop and celebrity, it has skewered teenage perspective on what is, and is not, appropriate to wear.

Most parents of teenage girls will be all too familiar with the struggle to stop them going out the front door on a Saturday night looking like the keenest new employee at the Den’o’Vice brothel.

Indeed, I thought of Chrissie Hynde’s wise words when I saw how Chelsea football manager Jose Mourinho’s daughter had chosen to dress herself to attend a do with him this week.

At the GQ Men Of The Year Awards dinner in London, the 18‑year-old went braless in a deep‑plunge tuxedo dress that wouldn’t have kept a mouse warm.

The £2,000 Balmain creation was open at the front, the way a bag of crisps looks after I’ve torn it apart during a hormonal meltdown.

Jose Mourinho with daughter Matilde, who stole the show with her revealing outfit at the GQ Men Of The Year Awards at The Royal Opera House this week

Jose Mourinho with daughter Matilde, who stole the show with her revealing outfit at the GQ Men Of The Year Awards at The Royal Opera House this week

Heaven knows what happened to the outfit’s technical dynamics when Matilde Mourinho sat down, but ‘modest’ is not the word that springs to mind.

Is this an appropriate moment to mention that her friends and family call her Tita?

Many who are unfamiliar with the sensation of sympathising with the controversial Chelsea boss felt his pain as photographs emerged of him with Tita.

She had the slightly scalded look of someone who has just been given the razor-tongued Premier League manager’s hairdryer treatment; he had the thunderous Dad-face of a man who had spent much of the previous hour yelling: ‘You’re not going out looking like that, young lady!’ Clearly to no avail.

But look at what Matilde has grown up with, surrounded by images of the brutishly sexy icons she has no doubt come to accept and admire as normal.

Her outfit was exactly the kind of barely there festival of cling and clutch so beloved of the Kardashian girls. Even the way she had applied contouring make-up to enhance her cleavage was pure Kimmy K.

If she scrubbed all that off and put on a nice frock, she’d look lovely. I sound like my mother, I know. But it’s getting ridiculous.

Miley Cyrus, left, likes to show her breasts because she believes in a movement called Free The Nipple
If an outfit could speak, this one would be screaming: ‘Hurry! Which way to the Chanel-themed Bad Taste Trans-Sex-Worker Barndance?’

Miley Cyrus, left, likes to show her breasts because she believes in a movement called Free The Nipple. And If an outfit could speak, Rita Ora's would be screaming: ‘Hurry! Which way to the Chanel-themed Bad Taste Trans-Sex-Worker Barndance?,’ writes Jan Moir

No wonder parents are tearing their hair out. But the cruel insouciance of the young knows no bounds.

Take Miley Cyrus, for example. The 22-year-old likes to show her breasts because she believes in a movement called Free The Nipple: the right for women to flaunt their nips in public and challenge conventional standards of dress.

It’s pure bubblehead nonsense of course, but unlike poor Miss Mourinho and her glowering father, Miley’s dad is, seemingly, onside. She told a chat show host: ‘He’d rather me have my t**s out and be a good person than have a shirt on and be a b***h. When you’ve got your t**s out, you can’t really be an a***hole.’

There speaks a woman who has never seen racing pundit John McCririck in his underpants on Celebrity Big Brother.

So here is poor little Miss Mourinho, still at school, dressing like a Fifty Shades croupier.

What is sad is not that this young girl feels she has to dress like this, but her innocent assumption that it was OK and that her father would think it was appropriate.

Well, she was wrong about that one. And, where was Mum in all this? You’ve got to wonder.

 

 Becks didn't play fair over mascot Romeo

Quite a week for record-smashing. Queen Elizabeth out-reigned Queen Victoria and Wayne Rooney out-goaled Sir Bobby Charlton.

While there are many similarities in the lifestyles of these Queens (Liz still lives in Vicky’s houses, they share cloaks and crowns, both quite short), it is the gulf between Wayne and Bobby that shows how much society has changed.

Bobby earned £20 a week while Wayne earns £300,000. Bobby felt so embarrassed about driving a flash Mustang sports car, he gave it back. Wayne has a fleet of luxury cars, including a Lamborghini and an Aston Martin.

Romeo Beckham enjoys being a mascot, standing in front of Wayne Rooney at the start of the Euro 2016

Romeo Beckham enjoys being a mascot, standing in front of Wayne Rooney at the start of the Euro 2016

Today, sportsmen are richly rewarded and lionised in ways that are sometimes hard to comprehend. They are the royals in modern society, comporting themselves like emperors of excess.

That’s why I think it was so wrong of David Beckham to fix it for son Romeo to be the England team mascot for their match against Switzerland this week.

Romeo seems a nice kid, but already has a gold VIP ticket on the journey of life. Did he really deserve the honour? There are only a handful of England games at Wembley every year. Surely the opportunity of leading out the national side should go to a more deserving child?

For Romeo Beckham, it was just another gilded twinkle in his calendar of privilege. For another little boy, it would have been the moment of a lifetime.

 

I'd have given British Airways luggage-huggers a thwack

Your plane is hurtling down the runway when one of the engines catches fire. The pilot aborts take-off and orders an evacuation.

Passengers run down the aisle, screaming that the fuselage is on fire. Black smoke is billowing. What do you do?

What you are supposed to do, according to the safety instructions broadcast on every flight, is ‘move quickly to the closest usable exit, taking nothing with you’.

That’s not what happened on the British Airways flight 2276 from Las Vegas to London this week. Footage shows that many passengers had grabbed their hand-luggage and rucksacks before fleeing. Some had even stopped to liberate trolley bags which they cling to as they slid down the emergency chutes. It’s terrifying.

In any public emergency, we’re all in it together: the stranger at your elbow; the mother and child who need to be helped. In those first moments of panic, the decisions we make could spell the difference between living and dying, between escape and injury.

So don’t you find it enraging that the luggage-huggers endangered the lives of other passengers just so they could grab their duty-free vodka?

If someone did that in front of me in a smoking cockpit, they’d receive my patented Moir Shoulder Smash. And, believe me, they don’t want that.

 

 Pudsey has turned into a pious monster

Ferne Cotton dressed as Debbie Harry to mark the return of Children In Need

Ferne Cotton dressed as Debbie Harry to mark the return of Children In Need

Oh, no — Children In Need is back!

I know we are all supposed to think: ‘Ooohh, marvellous charity, wonderful stuff, feel-good evening, lovely Pudsey.’

And the BBC’s annual charity phone-in marathon is, indeed, all these things — and more.

However, may I raise a bat-squeak of criticism?

Looking at all those pictures of overpaid, flinty-eyed television stars taking part in expensive fancy-dress photoshoots to launch the damn thing just makes me feel queasy.

The Children In Need images are somehow pious and self-aggrandising in ways that seem unearned. Especially as it is our money that is being donated, not theirs.

And it hasn’t even started yet. Prepare yourself for a beg-a-thon to make us feel awful about every child in the land, even though we already give £12 billion a year in aid.

I know, I’ll shut up. Goodnight.

 

Is Bond theme mission impossible

Congratulations to lovely Sam Smith, who is composing and singing the theme tune to the new Bond film, Spectre.

Let’s hope he makes a better job of it than Adele (pictured) did with the eponymous Skyfall last time around. Even though the song won an Oscar, the mangled lyrics sounded as if Adele was singing about a high-carb diet rather than a high-calibre spy. ‘Here’s a Piefall/Ate some crumbles,’ she crooned.

The Bond task seems to bring out the worst in composers and singers. They go mad and strain for profound bombast, always singing as if in pain.

Stop the rot, Sam. We are depending on you.

Brit-award winning singer Sam Smith has been confirmed as the voice of the new Bond song for Spectre

Brit-award winning singer Sam Smith has been confirmed as the voice of the new Bond song for Spectre

 

Bob Geldof and Steve Coogan — the Pinky and Perky of pinko politics — wasted no time in attacking George Osborne at an awards party this week.

On the one hand, how cheap of them to do this at a social occasion. On the other, why do senior politicians indulge these idiots by attending such gaudy soirees?

Last month, David and Samantha Cameron went to the opening party of Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire, queuing for the free wine and snacks alongside Princess Eugenie (of course) and model Daisy Lowe.

Now, I like a complementary cheese straw as much as the next freeloader, but I don’t expect to find members of the Cabinet helping themselves to Bombay mix and ogling celebs. It’s unbecoming.

Did Winston Churchill turn up for a glass of tepid sauvignon blanc at the Gaslight hoping to swop quips with Kathy Kirby and George Formby?

No, I don’t think so either.

 

 

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