In Defense of Kate Moss

Well, I hate to see that Kate Moss's only defender seems to be Naomi Campbell. I mean, really. Kate Moss uses drugs. Big surprise. Why is everyone acting so shocked? Of course Moss uses drugs. Supermodels don't just spring forth from the earth that thin. You get that thin by not eating. You stomach self-imposed starvation by doing drugs. If you are a company that wants to show off your products by placing them on tall, skinny women with gaunt spacy looks, it only makes sense to hire drugged out models. That's the easiest way to get skinny, gaunt, and spacy. We all know slim women who are slim because they eat well and exercise. They don't look vapid and scare-crow-esqe and they are not supermodels. So, what's interesting about this whole incident is not Moss's drug use, which is hardly surprising, but the rapid response of the companies she was working for, who fired her, not because she was using drugs, which clearly, they had to know, but because she got caught using drugs. I really wonder how much of this is punishment--not for the drug use directly--but for letting the illusion slip. In order for advertising to work, it must create in us a need and then provide us with the means to fill that need. Burberry, for instance, wants us to buy their clothing, so their advertisements show glamorous women and men wearing their clothing. We're supposed to look at those images, wish we had lives like that, and think to ourselves "maybe if I owned that coat, I could have a life like that girl, at least a little bit. I, too, could be thin and pretty and stylish and have a jaunty boyfriend with a dog." But there's Moss, making it obvious that, if you want to be like that girl, it's going to take more than the coat; it's going to take a wicked coke habit. So, she's kicked to the curb, not for her drug use, exactly, but because her drug use reveals the many ways in which the stuff she advertises can't even give her the kind of life the advertisements promise.