Section:OBS 2N PaGe:20 Edition Date:190804 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 3/8/2019 16:51 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Observer
20 04.08.19 Comment & Analysis
It’s turning into the greatest
environmental challenge of our age- how do we transport celebrities
safely and responsibly to global eco-
summits, so that they can do a better
job of lecturing the rest of us about
carbon emissions?
The world has been agog at
Camp Google , the three-day mass
gathering at the luxur y Verdura
resort in Sicily, of 300 or so celebrity
environmental activists, including
Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg,
Leonardo DiCaprio, Bradley Cooper,
Katy Perry, Orlando Bloom, Bono,
Chris Martin and more – too
many to list, even a rumoured
(but unseen) Barack Obama. Not
forgetting Prince Harry , who
reportedly gave a stirring speech
about the environment – barefoot!
A startling image springs to mind
of a Google aide shrugging off the
carbon footprint of Harry’s journey
(private jet and helicopter), but
saying: “Uh, prince-dude, you need
to lose the offensive shoes.”
Presumably the £16.5m eco-
knees-up was at least partly enabled
by Google’s ongoing tax avoidance,
but let’s not spoil a beautiful
moment with facts and stuff. A
total of 114 private jets ferried
the celebrities to Italy, releasing
hundreds of tonnes of CO 2 into the
atmosphere. As they arrived in Sicily ,
they transferred to Camp Google in
luxury vehicles and/or helicopters.
There followed what must surely
have been intellectually invigorating
A-list debates about how “we” (they
mean us, not them) must conserve
the Earth’s resources. After that, the
celebrity activists retired to relax
in their gratis £730 -a-night-plus
rooms, perchance haunted by the
spectres of global eco-catastrophe
and Coldplay agreeing to perform.
Perhaps, like me, you’re thinking:
“If only self-awareness could be
solar-powered”? I mean, did anyoneat Google realise how all this starry
eco-activism might look to the
outside world? The tiny disconnect
between what Google and its guests
were saying and what they were
doing? Apparently not.
However, and this is a serious
question: how do people expect
eco-celebs to get around? When they
lend support, as Emma Thompson
did for the recent Extinction
Rebellion rally in London, they risk
being roasted under the hot sun of
public and media condemnation. Is
this fair – presumably the publicity
a celebrity generates justifi es the
carbon? Should the famous stick to
local events and video links or justBarbara
Ellen
It’s easy to mock eco-celebs. Better
to give them the benefi t of the doubt
Yes , G o og le ’s g ues t s
generated tonnes of
CO2 but at least they
are raising awarenessDamn right I’m
steamed up
about this
‘beauty spa’
This iron age
woman seems
strangely
familiar...
British women with
hideous, unsightly vaginas, rejoice –
help is at hand! New York company
VSPOT plans to open a “vaginal
spa” in London’s Knightsbridge
this autumn. Treatments could
include vaginal steaming (I’ve
always presumed this must be akin
to crouching knickerless over a
steaming kettle, but even better );Not to get all “judgey”
on iron age women, but at least one
was a lazy, sweet-munching fashion
victim , say Swiss archaeologists.
They discovered a hollowed-out,
tree-trunk coffi n in the Aussersihl
district in Zurich bearing the body
of a well-to-do Celtic woman,
wearing fi ne clothes and jewellery,
with indications that she had a
sweet tooth and did little physical
work.
Could this be an ancestor of
mine? There are eerie similarities, if
you take away the upper-class bling,
replace sweet with savoury and
add “evidence” of entire weekends
sprawled on the sofa watching
RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars, with no
movement visible to the naked eye.
How did the y get all this
information from a 2,200-year-old
corpse? And surely she could not
have imagined that, in a couple
of millennia, the world would be
raising a censorious eyebrow over
her amber necklaces and sweet-
toothed indolence.
Perhaps th e trend will catch
on and henceforth people will be
buried judgmentally with their
consumer detritus – mobile phones,
KFC buckets and Amazon vouchers.
“It’s what she would have wanted- I mean, seriously, she really did
want that Accessorize bracelet.”
Modern people are criticised for
sedentary, over-indulgent lifestyles,
but it would appear we are merely
following tradition.
“V-tightening” with a laser ; and a
mysterious herb-infused vagina
“facial”. They do realise this isn’t
where a lady’s face is, right?
This is serious. Like labial surgery,
popularised by pornography, it sends
out the message that female genitals
are unacceptable left alone and need
to be prettifi ed. That something very
wrong is going on “down there”
and should be attended to. Never
mind that medical people point out
that the vagina is self-cleaning and
doesn’t require such treatments.
Also, that steaming might not onlyburn the vaginal walls, but alter
the heathy balance of bacteria,
leading to infections. Astonishing,
isn’t it? Who’d have thought that
going boil-in-the-bag with genitals
would be a bad idea? Trust qualifi ed
gynaecologists to ruin a spa day.
Another major alarm bell is that
Gwyneth Paltrow appears to have no
involvement in this company. Wasn’t
Paltrow one of the intrepid pioneers
of steaming vaginas? Didn’t she
also champion inserting jade
eggs until, again, some spoilsport
gynaecologists said somethingabout toxic shock syndrome and
bacterial vaginosis?
Sorry, but I can’t take anything
in the arena of vagina maintenance
seriously unless Gwynnie’s face
is attached. She is our queen of
down-below quackery. She should
be alerted that someone is trying
to steal her vaginal thunder. In
the meantime, I’ll continue to feel
thrilled that women are being
encouraged to worry about the
actual insides of their bodies. Next
week: women, are you satisfi ed with
the shape of your kidneys?The luxury
Sicilian resort
of Verdura; and,
below, Leonardo
DiCaprio and
Katy Perry.not bother? It’s not as if Harry could
have micro-scooted to Sicily or
descended in a hot-air balloon, like a
woke, royal Phileas Fogg.
Not that this excuses the
gargantuan excess and repellent
insincerity of Camp Google. (Note
to Silicon Valley: if you want to
throw grotesquely smug A-list
beanos, spare us the ghastly faux-
worthiness.)
However, it’s worth asking if
mocking the motivations-cum-
emissions of eco-celebs is fast
turning into a socially acceptable
blood sport. While A-list hypocrisy
is always great fun, our own isn’t
entirely without its amusements.Hotel Photography, Shutterstock/AP, Invision/AP, Getty
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