The intention, obviously, was to create a momentous stir, a stunt that would ripple through celebrity culture and society as a whole. Looking back it was all too clear that something of the sort would come to the fore and act as the catalyst, the culmination of many minds, the tidal shift from which the waves would be unable to break back.
The new brand of feminine rebellion – or ‘neo-feminism’ as it became known – had been ricocheting through the mainstream’s subconscious for a long while, commonly attributed to a radical magazine cover story that was catapulted around the blogosphere until the theories presented had been adapted and warped to such extremes and conclusions that it barely resembled the original article any longer. The writer was some woman who, whilst initially elevated to a level of cultish notoriety, was now languishing in some obscurity of her own creating.
There had been an epidemic of ‘tell-all’ interviews and gossip columns in which glamorous movie stars, pop stars, models and media personalities came forward and ‘outed’ themselves, with identical protestations of sincerity and bursting pride, as having taken vows of celibacy. There were even cover stories featuring stars like Britney Spears revealing in lurid detail the hymen reconstruction surgery that they had undergone. Jordan sensationally did a naked cover shoot following her 90% breast reductive operations to which there was revulsion amongst the public, but at the same time an undeniable compulsion to keep on looking, as though they were decelerating to crawl past a traffic accident.
So when, at the premiere of one of the year’s biggest summer blockbusters starring Hollywood’s leading power couple – ‘Brangelina’ – both turned up on the red carpet in front of the waiting media, they were fully aware that together they were about to push the bizarre phenomenon into a whole new arena.
At first the banks of zoom lens paused like an army ceasefire, as the couple began to strut hand-in-hand up the carpet, but within an instant, as soon as everyone became fully attune as to what they were witnessing, the place exploded in a grand mal seizure of flashbulbs.
Brad Pitt was wearing the finest tux with his hair cropped into a shorter cut than it had been in recent years. Purposely short to be able to reveal as much as possible of his famous face that smiled wide and shameless for the waiting lens. Across his left cheek there ran a striking deep gash, clearly recently inflicted since the surrounding tenderness of the flesh looked like it would weep blood at the slightest provocation.
It was clear that the wound needed stitches, as it was nearly 6 inches long from the base of the jawline upwards and flirting with the eye socket, although as yet clearly no medical treatment had been sought.
Angelina Jolie beside him had an identical facial laceration, carefully hewn into her porcelain features by a caressing hand. Everyone in the immediate vicinity knew that these injuries, these scars of protest, had been inflicted upon each by the other; there was a loving symmetry in the way the wounds snaked their course deep into the facial tissue like a gorge.
The hysteria generated by the couple’s self-mutilation was enough to ensure the film’s box office success; in fact so healthy were the profit margins that many began to question whether the stars had been pressured into the stunt by some clause written into their contracts by scheming film executives.
Once the defining line in the sand had been traced there was no limit to the level of depravity that such celebrities were prepared to go to in order to instate their commitment to this protest against their sexualisation. Pop star Beyonce stunned fans when she appeared on stage for the first night of her American tour with an impressive array of body scars, all emphasised by the scant costumes worn throughout the show. Jude Law expanded the parameters of method acting when he agreed to undergo facial reconstructive surgery in order to play the part of a car crash victim in a heart-wrenching drama-biopic that won him rave reviews and his first Oscar.
At publicity junkets and celebrity parties in exclusive nightclubs, the beautiful people revelled in the genius of their self-abuse, and gushed over champagne cocktails at how they were getting one over on the public that until recently had idolised and envied their glamour to such obsessive levels. They would stand around spontaneous bonfires upon which effigies of past sex icons like Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Audrey Hepburn and Jim Morrison were cast.
Madonna, never one to be outdone by the younger generations, appeared in public with her sinewy, muscular left arm having been amputated, as part of some desperate appeal for late-career relevance to support a fledging new album campaign. Former supermodels like Naomi Campbell, Cindy Crawford and Claudia Schiffer launched a new fashion campaign that adorned billboards the world over with their hair shaved into a punk skinhead and sporting a myriad of bruises and shining black eyes, beneath the tag line ‘Don’t hate us because we’re beautiful’.
The peak of this anti-sexual revolution came a few weeks later at a London fashion show amongst a galaxy of scarred stars, where Kate Moss was set to model a new range by Tom Ford. Rumours had flourished and spread like a virus through tabloids and internet forums that the style icon would attempt something sensational in order to lay claim to every headline across the western world. Perhaps due to the level of hype and expectation surrounding the event at what perversities might follow, there was a grim predictability about what happened.
Clearly doused in gasoline that ran down her face like mascara threads, Kate strutted to the end of the catwalk amidst a blizzard of flashbulbs, sat cross-legged on the stage and focussed in to meditation as she set herself alight. There was an almost forced uproar amongst those in attendance as they tried to find the right expression of shock to wear and stagger back away from the catwalk.
It was the perfect culmination of the celebrity protest, the act of self-immolation on fashion’s most glamorous stage, cameras capturing every minute detail as her perfect features rippled and burnt as the flames engulfed her waif body. And yet no one in attendance sought to extinguish the blaze; they could all see so clearly, through the smog and smoke, how fantastic the protest, the mimicking of Vietnamese monks, the self-destructive climax through a cornucopia of exquisite pain. They all knew what a defining moment this would be and all they could think about, as the smoke plumes danced higher amidst the spotlights, was that they couldn’t believe they were lucky enough to have witnessed it first hand and cement their own small footnote in contemporary culture.
As it happened, in the aftermath the excitement and hysteria returned to normal, like an awkward and bashful post-orgasmic chill. The estimated circulation of Vogue and Hello magazines and online traffic to celebrity websites, were roughly parallel in their drop of about 18%.
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