THE super-rich seem to assume we want what they’ve got. Since they live in a world where everyone is accumulating designer bags, cars and mansions, they imagine everyone else must want them. So, when we criticise them, they write it off as jealousy. That’s what seemed to happen last week following the first episode of Tamara’s World, a new series following the life of Tamara Ecclestone, super-rich Formula 1 heiress.
Plenty of people on social media expressed outrage at the show in which we glimpsed into Ecclestone’s, giant 57-room London home and watched as she presented her three-year-old daughter, Fifi, with the enormous private soft play area she’d had constructed in place of the house’s swimming pool. We even heard Ecclestone declare herself “down-to-earth”.
Perhaps, in the world of the rich, this is what down-to-earth looks like. It’s baking cakes with your daughter and cooking a bacon sandwich for your husband, even though you could get your staff to do all that for you.
“Jealousy is a terrible disease,” wrote Ecclestone’s husband, Jay Rutland, in response to a critic of their lifestyle. He hit back at another who declared his wife “detached from reality”. “I think you’ll just find our reality is different from yours,” was his reply. “Because if you’re saying your reality is what we should judge by, then by that standard you would be detached from reality for someone starving in Africa. It’s all relative.”
Rutland is right there. The world contains many different realities, and the super-rich are, regretfully, real. But writing criticism off as jealousy avoids the real issue. Yes, a lot of people will think the Ecclestone lifestyle is unfair. They might even think they too would like a bit of that wealth. More likely, though, they’ll see Ecclestone as symptomatic of a bigger global problem of extreme inequality, privilege, and the profligate greed of the human species. They’ll be looking at that giant soft play area and wondering why tens of other children aren’t gambolling around in it.
It’s hard not to feel despair at the narcissism on display in shows like these. It’s the same feeling we get in the face of many reality and lifestyle brands, from Kim Kardashian through to Gwyneth Paltrow. What squeals from every scene of Tamara’s World is a feeling that Ecclestone desperately wants to make a mark in the global popularity contest. She doesn’t just want to be rich: she also wants us to love her, admire her, and perhaps even buy her Fifi & Friends products.
As ridiculously rich people go, Ecclestone is actually quite likeable. There’s something endearing about her child-like enthusiasms and her earth mother approach to child-rearing. I like the way she defends still feeding her three-year-old. But given she has created a brand of organic cosmetics around her daughter, flown Fifi to Beverley Hills to do a photo shoot, and populated their home with a theme-park like collection of toys, this looks like earth-mothering gone solipsistic.
Nevertheless, the show is a laugh. Some describe it as a guilty pleasure, and programmes like this do offer the thrill of ridiculing those who seem to have it all. But that is a false catharsis. For the rich still win. They keep on making money, selling us their products, and passing their wealth onto their adorable, over-indulged children.
THE REAL PURPOSE IS OBJECTIFICATION
BEAUTY pageants should be dead and gone, slain by feminists years ago, or erased from the calendar because they're dull. But, decades after feminists stormed Miss World in 1970, the contest is still sending women out in their bathing costumes and ball gowns to talk about how they would like to change the world and also help children’s charities.
“Beauty with a purpose” is one of the messages of Miss World these days. Anyone who watched the contest final last night will know that it’s not just about glamour and perfect hour-glass figures, but consciences. And where Miss World goes a lot of other pageants follow. The result is a car-crash blend of political activism and good old-fashioned sexual objectification.
Of course, it isn’t all bad. There have been moments when this has to be applauded. For instance, Peru’s Miss Universe Pageant, earlier this year, in which 23 contestants cited shocking statistics on violence against women instead of their bust, waist and hip sizes. But mostly, “purpose” seems like an excuse for parading all that beauty. And I find little feminist in that at all.
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