Peaches attempts to have her cake and throw it up

The continued belief that Peaches Geldof is the voice of young Britain gets another push this week, when she's given access to Tonight With Trevor McDonald - as close as ITV get to having a current affairs programme - to share her thought-chunks on thin models. It's a little confused:

"Hyper thin is today's celebrity standard. If my friends and I are looking at a magazine and we see a picture of say Nicole Richie I'm like, ‘Oh that's disgusting, look at her, she looks like an old man'. And they're like, ‘No, she looks good'.

"I find that scary and I think it just shows how messed up our society really is."

Yes. Never mind the business with the Pope deliberately flipping the finger at the Muslims and then going "wha... wha? I dint do nuffink." Or people being stabbed, or children gouging each other's eyes with scissors. It's only in the reaction of the hyper-rich to celebrity magazines can we really see how "messed-up our society is." Thank God that Peaches Geldof alone stands against the belief that Nicole Richie "looks good".

(Actually, I've yet to come across anybody who thinks that Nicole "looks good" - maybe because I don't get to hang out with the cash rich, synapse poor, but I've never heard any reaction other than "why doesn't someone hold a charity gig to feed people like that?")

So, Peaches will protect our young folk, will she?

"But the problem is that most of the images we are exposed to every day have been airbrushed and no longer represent reality. To be honest, I think I look a lot better retouched too, but maybe that's because I too am a victim of the media tirade against normal.

"I think that shows a lot about me as a person if I think I look better after I've been airbrushed, but I guess I look more perfect.

"I'm like a weird Primark Barbie. Even though I'm like a size eight to ten, it makes me self-conscious seeing myself thinner. It makes me feel like I need to diet."

Is it just us who gets a migraine trying to work out what she's talking about here? We've drawn a chart to try and understand this a little more clearly - let's not even start with what the hell she thinks she means by "the media tirade against normal" and wonder instead at how she feels she's "a victim" while simultaneously thinking she looks "a lot better retouched."

And while she's wallowing in this "victimhood" - someone call the Adobe Police, please - did she just say she looks even more perfect? Leaving aside the linguistic condundrum of how something can be more perfect than perfection, that would seem to suggest she's quite happy with her current level of perfection. So is she complaining that she's airbrushed because she's perfect to begin with?

But then - having said she looks "a lot better retouched" and "even more perfect" she then says that she looks like "a weird Primark Barbie." Now, we'd have thought the "Primark" was thrown in to demonstrate this is a term of abuse, but if she thinks she looks more perfect, why would she look like a doll from a cheapo chain store?

The trouble is this: Media images send out constant, mixed messages to young women about how where the ideal lays, putting enormous strain on individual hopes and expectations, and creates cycles of self-abuse and depression. There are any number of people who are experts working in the fields of eating disorders, young people and depression, psychology and elsewhere who Tonight could have invited on to the programme to talk about the subject. There are thousands of teenagers who are able to string a sentence together and talk about how the images make them feel. So why waste valuable airtime on someone whose thoughts don't even make sense?

Peaches signs off:

"My advice would be not to try and fit into this unattainable beauty ideal. That's just giving into society's pressures. Be your own woman— fight, power."

Oh. Right. Cheers, then, Peaches. Who knew it would be that simple?

And you'll stop giving interviews to magazines which fetishise those unattainable body images, will you?

Peaches? Hello?

It's gone oddly quiet.

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