I entered my first year in university at the crest of the sullen wave of grunge. We listened to the plaintive screams of Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots and Pearl Jam, wore grubby flannels and Doc Martens and decorated our dorm rooms with pages torn out of hip magazines like Details and the Face.
Most of those photographs featured the wan, countercultural features of the new generation of models: those heroin chic waifs with shaved eyebrows and empty stares.
One face stood out of the scrawny crowd plastered on our walls – that of the newly-discovered English model Kate Moss. Her features were irregular and her legs slightly crooked, yet, with her narrow, boyish body she was like a fallen angel, at once innocent and corrupt, dangerous and sweet.
In just a few short years grunge went the way of the shoulder pads and bell bottoms, but Kate remained. Some women are like flowers – at their most beautiful when young and dewy fresh – others are akin to a fine wine, getting more beautiful and exquisite with age. Kate is of the latter variety. With years, she lost her teenage awkwardness and became one of the world”s most beautiful women. She also became an icon of effortless chic, looking equally stunning on the red carpet and out on her daily errands.
Still, despite her newly acquired polish and significant wealth, Kate Moss retained a dangerous edge. She destroyed hotel rooms with former boyfriend Johnny Depp and checked herself into rehabs. She talked openly about her abuse of drugs and alcohol and had a cigarette attached to her hand in nearly every candid shot. She was the perfect millennial rebel child – wild enough to keep us interested, yet always managing to keep it together and retain her gloss of respectability.
That is, she managed it until a few weeks ago when grainy photos of the lovely Ms. Moss snorting up line after line of cocaine appeared in the British press and, nearly overnight, all, but destroyed her career. Much ink has been spilled over the sordid affair, with many of the commentators railing at the hypocrisy of the fashion industry. After all, went the common refrain, everyone in the fashion business knew about Moss” drug problem, but chose to turn a blind eye until she got caught with her hand in the cokey jar, thus threatening the image of her employers.
Yet, Kate Moss” employers in the fashion industry are not to blame. Yes, they certainly knew of the model”s problems and chose to ignore them – not a major misstep in an industry where Donatella Versace makes a public disclosure about her extended battle with cocaine addiction and where many models subscribe to the “three ine”s” diet: caffeine, nicotine and cocaine. They dropped Moss as the face of their brands in response to the pressure from their customers, a move that is only logical for companies whose profits derive almost exclusively from brand image.
The real hypocrites in this grimy tale are the public and the Fall of Kate Moss is just another sad example of the perversity of celebrity culture. After all, it wasn”t just the supermodel”s fellow fashionistas who were aware of her problems. Her drug use has been an open secret for quite some time and even those who did not read her confessional interviews could hazard a guess – there are reasons why a woman in her thirties who has had a child retains the body of a prepubescent girl, and none of them are likely to be particularly healthy.
We turn celebrities into idols and then we begin to resent them and cheer thunderously when they fall. We expect them to be perfect and then hate them for their seeming perfection. The intense scrutiny does not apply only to the mega-stars, the ones whose flawless faces grace dozens of magazine covers and sell millions of movie tickets and bottles of perfume. Open any of the newly minted Romanian gossip rags: their stock in trade are unflattering “gotcha!” pictures of even the most minor local celebrities.
It might seem difficult to feel much sympathy for Kate Moss. After all, she is a famous, gorgeous young woman worth tens of millions of dollars and her problems are all of her own making. Perhaps following acts of public contrition and a well-publicized stint in an exclusive rehab, she will emerge, phoenix-like, to an even greater fame, wealth and public adoration. Still, in using this scandal to point an accusing finger at the fashion industry”s hypocrisy, the media and the public have forgotten to take a long, hard look at themselves. If they did, they might see something far more sordid than a supermodel”s late-night coke binge.
* Lola Gusman is an U.S. attorney working for the Marco Group in Bucharest. She has lived in Romania for three years.