Agyness Deyn winks up from the cover of i-D, four bold letters blazoned beneath her immaculate cheekbones: ICON. (In smaller letters, to the right “the Agyness Deyn issue”.)

What, I wonder, has Miss Deyn done in her life to commande the appellation “icon”? She hasn’t written a novel, painted a fine picture, startled the world with her pure clear singing voice, she hasn’t starred in a film, undertaken a feat of daring, set a record, she hasn’t even designed any of the clothes she parades in so prettily. So she’s an icon because…? Because… she has gazelle legs, lurid blue eyes and geometrically correct bone structure. Because she was born with a double portion of what early 21^st century Western culture reveres as physical beauty.

You’d never see a man who’d done precisely nothing of compelling interest with his life publically labelled icon. Male models – even the most finely chiselled and highly paid – are much less highly paid than women (a fact used, ludicrously, to argue that the real problem these days is reverse sexism. As if we should be striving merely for equality of objectification). And how many can you name? The only one whose name pops into my head is Markus Schenkenberg, who I believe dated Pamela Anderson. So really, I remember him not for his face but for something he did. Action.

That’s what makes men “icons” – activity, achievement, doing something. It may be as insignificant as the ability to do physics-defying feats with a football; or as meaningful as leading a nation out of apartheid, but an iconic man is always a man of action.

Guilefully, men have persuaded women to believe this is to their advantage. Many men would, presented with the Agyness Deyn issue, express how “unfair” it is that she gets to be an icon just by being rather than by doing. Implying injury and the injustice of a world that demands men work.

But remember: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day… not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their characters.” When it’s a case of black and white we understand clearly, instinctively, that to be judged primarily by physical appearance is morally wrong and psychologically stultifying. Yet by some trick of lights we believe that for a woman to be praised principally for her beauty is positive, empowering even.

There is no effective difference. To be categorised on the basis of appearance is to be removed from adult, human discourse; to become nothing more than a graven image. Being heralded an icon for having flawless skin and plump lips is quantitatively different from being treated like a second class citizen for the colour of your skin; but the underlying quality of judgment is indivisible. It still renders you helpless. It makes your value and identity dependent on someone else’s whim.

Plainly, to elevate Agyness’ perfect cheekbones to ICON status is to dismiss the 99.9% of the female population who were born without her exquisite angles. That’s what it takes, it says. Go on, educate yourself, make a great scientific discovery, become CEO of a company, raise happy children, run a country, do something that makes the world a better place… it doesn’t matter. You’ll never be an icon because you were born without the one thing you need to validate your femininity (beauty) or the one thing you need to validate your activity (a penis).

I have a dream. That one day women will refuse to be judged by the shape of their skin and demand respect for the merits of their character.

Where do I begin? I guess this all kicked off on an unassuming plane journey to Ibiza to be re-united with my anti-Plastik co-founder Cila. (Something to do with the air pressure led to a light bulb shaped moment at 30,000 feet.) There are some things we accept in this throwaway life as simply an unfathomable “given”: Michael Jackson’s skin colour, Britney Spear’s balding head, James Blunt’s chart success…

One “given” I’ve always accepted is the dominating presence of womens magazines in my life. It’s kind of like the horoscope page in the London Lite – I don’t believe an iota of what the “astrologer” is whittering on about, yet I still flick to it every day and somehow attribute what it has to say as comparable to what is happening in my life. The fact is, the world of womens glossies is just about as redundant as that horoscope page I robotically glance at each morning: it paints an unrealistic and fanciful image of what it is to be a “woman” in 2008, creating the same myth as my Aries prediction which talks about my planet’s alignment with Venus. When did I start to read these magazines as fact? 

The article that kicked this all off for me was in this month’s edition of Glamour: ‘DOS AND DON’TS’. Check out those capitals. Authoritative, eh? Glancing down, I nearly spat out my complimentary almond nuts when I read the following header: ‘DO PUT A BUN IN THE OVEN.’ I actually did manage to choke on my free complimentary almond nuts when I came face to face with Satan’s commandment…bear with me…it’s a corker…I’m going to have to upgrade this to it’s own line altogether:

‘APRONS ON LADIES’

Now…I like to think of myself as a fairly accepting kind of person, but in all honesty I’ve never read anything so fundamentally patronising in all my days. The shocking aspect in all of this is that it wasn’t even written by FHM. This was written by women for women. I mean, surely this is a comment designated to a Stepford Wives film. At least there it would be granted some degree of satire. Cause there sure as hell ain’t any at Glamour magazine…

…If there were, they firstly wouldn’t have handpicked pictures of each celebrity in 50s floral dresses for starters. Aprons on ladies. Oven mitts at the ready. And make sure your Laura Ashley is ironed. 

My personal favourite quote is by Southern belle Jessica Simpson. Now, forgive me if I’m wrong, but isn’t this the very same southern belle who couldn’t cook a batch of southern fried chicken  for her husband in ‘Newlyweds’?  What a transformation, because it seems that overnight, Simpson has turned into a regular Fanny Craddock. She gushes, “I make cup cakes here and there. I love to bake.”

So here we are. It’s only taken us a hundred years to battle for the right to get ourselves out of the kitchen, only to have publications supposedly written for the progression of womens’ individualities instructing us to get back in there quick smart and bake our man a cake.

Right on sisters…

Kat Plastik

Guilty party: OK! Espanol… 23 April 2008

It’s your standard, harmless-looking OK! spread with Kate Hudson and Anne Hathaway giggling on the set of their film Bride Wars. There’s just one thing wrong: the sentence about Kate that reads, “the girlfriend of Owen Wilson, who is also the producer of the film….” [italics added] Because, obviously, it’s more important she’s boffing some awkward-conked depressive than that she is a FILM DIRECTOR?!

-Cila Plastik

The guilty party: OK! Espanol 16 April 2008

This pissed me off so much I’ve had the magazine folded open to the same page for over a week. Whenever I start to feel complacent I look down at it and feel my blood return to a fine simmer.

The article is headed “This is daily life in the house of Britney Spears”. So you’ve got the obligatory reference to weight-loss (through diet and exercise, it assures us. No pill binges on Daddy’s watch) and pictures of her kids. Then you have, above the caption ‘the other face of an idol’, a three-snap spread of a frumped-out Britney (tatty extensions, horrible pink boots, baggy tee-shirt) cleaning garden furniture. I shit you not. (“She loves to clean and put things in order” the sub head murmurs, sinisterly.)

This is a woman who one of the richest stars in the world. A woman who has broken more music biz records than most artists have guitar strings (her debut album alone sold 25M copies). Probably the most recognizable female celebrity on the planet. And what does she do in her downtime? Break out a fucking bottle of Windex and wipe down the patio table. Jesus loving Christ. Is this what the 21^st century has come to? Is this where the suffragettes, The Feminine Mystique and 40 years of so-called feminism has got us – to where the world’s most famous woman is only able to be publicly rehabilitated by doing fucking housework?!

Don’t tell me to calm down because “those shots were obviously staged.” That’s the whole fucking POINT. What’s so infuriating it makes me want to stop breathing is that in this day and age these are the pictures you have to stage to prove that a woman is “good”. Had a bit of a bad time? Gone off the rails? Been caught in “un-ladylike” behaviour? Just go tidy up like a good girl and all will be forgiven. Forget bra-burning, by this mentality we should still be wearing corsets and petticoats.

How fucking ridiculous. When Pete Doherty (an artist of far lesser stature, by any means of comparison) wanted to make a good impression at court hearing 4958 or whatever it was he turned up carrying a guitar case. When Michael Jackson was acquitted of child molesting he got on top of his limo and busted a few dance moves to prove it was business as usual in Neverland. Clearly if men fuck up their path to redemption is exercising their talent. Women though? They’d better get back to their char duties.

The message about Britney is as loud and clear as one of the Times Square billboards that used to advertise her fame: if she’d just stayed in the kitchen where she belonged none of this unpleasantness would have happened.

-Cila Plastik