Guardian in Pretty Girl on Front Page of Website SHOCKAH!!

Gosh.

Another day, another toothsome filly featured on the front page of the Guardian website, this time highlighting the Burning Social Issue of skin whitening.  The fact that she is a bit famous (in Brazil) and fairly easy on the eye has nothing to do with the positioning of this story, of course.  We're ALL whitening our skin these days, dahling.  I burned my Epidermis right off the other day, thorough careless application of bleach.  What a silly cow I am!

Perhaps it's a new campaign.  Forget poverty, forget unemployment, forget education, Syria and global warming.  To Hell with Female Genital Mutilation.  Who cares about disabled rights?  Why bother about the badger cull when some bird in Brazil has been photographed under very different conditions and the photos don't look the same?

You're not OUTRAGED?  I'm burning a Brazillian flag as I type (not as easy as it looks, you know) and next time I get the hair ripped off my crotch I'm going to call it a Freedom Wax!  That'll teach 'em.

Or perhaps not ...

The fact that her winesome visage will generate a lot of clicks (including mine ...) has nothing to do with anything.  Nothing.

This hypocritical foregrounding of attractive women on trumped up, non-story reasons is a bit pathetic, really, and the silly 'social concern' angle just makes the blazoning of this young woman's pictures across the front page even more distasteful.  The Guardian used to be a paper worth reading.  Now there might be a certain prurient pleasure in looking, but its criteria for what makes a story 'newsworthy' are depressingly obvious and tabloid.

I would have hoped the ready availability of endless amounts of smut and salacious imagery on the internet would have meant the Guardian didn't have to demean itself with such titillations.  The image brought to mind is of a (late) middle aged successful writer or (being the Guardian) broadcaster, gurning rather shamefully at the paparazzi camera after being snapped clubbing with some blonde doxy who is enjoying her five minutes of fame with a Top 30 hit with a cover of a Cyndi Lauper song.  You should know better, act your age, and all that.

At least The Sun is open and honest in its use of pretty birds to generate interest.  The Guardian is only a couple of notches above the Mail, these days.