The day I sunbaked topless next to Elle Macpherson
SUNDAY LIFE COLUMN: Every morning when I wake up, I’m glad I’m not Elle Macpherson. Aren’t you? I think it would be a huge drag to be known as ‘The Body’, especially when that nickname was bestowed on you at 19 and you are now 45. No matter how incredible Elle looks (and she does)…
…comparisons with your youthful self must be a bitch, surely. And a pressure.
An even greater bitch and pressure? Comparisons between supermodels and ordinary people.
I know this because when I was 20 and briefly dating a friend of hers, I sunbaked topless next to Elle Macpherson on Bondi Beach. I did this to learn what humiliation felt like. The answer is bad.
And yes, I looked. Oh how hard I looked. For the men who are wondering? They are spectacular. For the women? They’re real. I’m delighted to report that The Body’s bosoms did not salute skywards when she lay on her back, they slumped a little bit into her armpits like real boobs do. Miraculously, no paparazzi pictures of this incident ever appeared so the brutal comparison between Elle’s boobs and mine will remain etched in my memory alone. This if fortunate because next to her, I looked a lot like Gollum.
As a girl, I used to think it was the ultimate fantasy to be a model, famous for your beauty and your body. Imagine being a gold standard for hot. But modelling is a profession with diminishing returns. The longer you do it, the worse you get.
Until one day, you wake up to read the following headline in the newspaper:
“IS THAT CELLULITE ON ELLE MACPHERSON’S THIGHS? EVEN ‘THE BODY’ CAN’T ESCAPE THE AGING PROCESS!”
Underneath these appalling words are several photos of you on a red carpet. One is full-length; the other is an extreme close-up of your bare legs. The story is a shocker:
So extraordinary and enviable is her physique, that Elle Macpherson is known as The Body. Yet at the grand old age of 45, positively ancient in supermodel terms, she appears to be showing the first signs of wear and tear.
On closer inspection, the knee and thigh on the model's right leg appear to be suffering from the dreaded appearance of sagging loose skin… 
Despite appearing to defy the ageing process, eagle-eyed fans can spot some evidence of her middle-age thanks to her wrinkly knees.
She wore a glittering dress teamed with a pair of vertiginous heels. While the ensemble was undoubtedly a stunning combination, the micro mini and gold sequins could be seen as a rather mutton-dressed-as-lamb look for the forty-five year old.
How’s that for a start to your day? And it’s not just Elle. The British press have turned this type of misogynistic cruelty into a tabloid genre called ‘Body Shaming’ and they use it with great effect to sell newspapers. It works like this: if you are famous, attractive and successful, you must be punished. To achieve this, the paparazzi will zoom in on some obscure part of your body – a saggy knee (Elle), a freckly chest (Kate Moss), some pimples (Victoria Beckham, Cameron Diaz), a veiny arm (Angelina), dry hands (Nicole Kidman) – and turn something very ordinary and human into a flaming stick which they will then use to poke you in the eye.
Very occasionally, they will point the body shaming stick at male celebrities. Like The Office’s Ricky Gervais. "I never knew I was fat until I got famous” he said in an interview earlier this year. “The other day, I was trying to keep fit by going jogging with my iPod, and the paparazzi leapt out a bush and got me. The headline the next day? 'iPODGE' What can you do?"
Tom Cruise copped similar treatment recently when he was unwittingly snapped changing his shirt and the photo appeared under the headline:
DAYS OF BLUBBER: TOM CRUISE REVEALS HIS UNSIGHTLY ‘BACK FAT’ ON HIKING TRIP!
What noble journalism.
Understandably perhaps, Elle seems to have a love/hate relationship with her nickname. In 2006, when rival supermodel Heidi Klum appeared in a Victoria’s Secret commercial for ‘The Body Bra’, saying, "They call me The Body — and now I have a bra named after me," Elle launched legal action. Pointing to her 1986 Time magazine cover anointing her ‘The Body”, Elle’s spokesperson told the media: "We have numerous press clippings in the office referring to her as 'The Body.' Everything from Harper's Bazaar to Vogue to the recent Sports Illustrated calls her that. In terms of public record, that name belongs to Elle."
But then Elle met the Dalai Lama and dropped her suit and I’m not even kidding. “A few people have made me stop in my tracks and the Dalai Lama would be one of them,” she explained, adding that she is now willing to share her nickname with Heidi, “It’s no big deal for me. She can have it.” Given that Heidi is currently pregnant with her fourth child, I bet she too is happy to pass on that particular poisoned chalice, if she can find anyone brave or foolish enough to want it…
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Well, if that article were about someone I liked I’d tut-tut too at the invasiveness of the press however since I cannot abide Macpherson it gives me a good, satisfying, schadenfraude-esque chuckle (hey, at least I’m an honest bitch!)
Why don’t I like Macpherson? I think I have very good reason. Firstly, the whole ‘Body’ thing was dreamt up by her own team and perpetuated by them. Its a case of; tell people something often enough and they’ll start to believe it. The reason I take umbrage to that is she doesn’t have a typical or an ideal female form. The woman has absolutely no arse and shoulders wide enought to rival a grid iron player so to deem her the epitome of female perfection is incredibly insulting to the rest of us who do have more normal female forms. To cap it off, the woman is an Europhile who abandoned Australia and by all accounts (the WW) is now a demanding diva. HARUMPf!