Kate Moss, right, with model Cara Delevinge. (Photo: Burberry)
At what point does a woman talking on board a flight become a national news headline in which she’s accused of having “a meltdown?” The answer is, of course, “when the Daily Mail gets a hold of the story,” because right now a lot of people are talking about Kate Moss’ supposedly erratic behaviour on an easyJet flight, despite there being no evidence of her behaving like anything but an ordinary passenger, albeit one with £5 million cash in the bank.
Now I realise that discussing the failings of the Daily Mail is akin to beating a dead, racist, abhorrent horse, but this particular instance of them taking their own distorted view of the truth and presenting it as fact is noteworthy because of how brazen and astoundingly arrogant it is. The tabloid has a habit of misrepresenting the truth, but in the case of the story regarding Kate Moss being “disruptive” while travelling aboard an easyJet flight, they quite simply take the facts, present them, and then decide to go ahead and concoct their own version of events anyway.
Here’s what a witness who was on board the flight had to say about Moss’ “disruptive” behaviour, as reported by MailOnline – note that this fact is presented alongside a list of controversies that have “dogged” the model’s career: “Whilst on board they [Moss and her accompanying passengers] kept themselves to themselves but appeared to chat to the family next to them… including playing hairdressers with a young girl.”
Not hairdressers?! Lock her up and throw away the key! Is there anything more disruptive a human can do whilst on board a flight than playfully engaging with a child?
She was not aggressive to anyone and was funny really.
Police were called to meet Moss when the flight landed, but a spokesman for the Bedfordshire Police stated that “no formal complaints were made against her and she was not arrested.” So why were police called to the scene in the first place? Well, if the plane’s passengers were to be believed (which they probably should be considering they were actually on the flight with Moss, unlike the Daily Mail reporters who are branding this incident her “mid-air meltdown”), the crew “overreacted”.
“She was not aggressive to anyone and was funny really,” another passenger said. “The crew were acting out of proportion.” That last quote is, again, taken from an interview the MailOnline conducted with another passenger on board the flight, yet in a follow-up MailOnline post by Alison Boshoff, who is either the world’s most joyless human or is simply masquerading as such for a paycheck, the following question is raised: “Has the gulf ever been greater between the Kate Moss you see in magazines — all effortless grace and designer clothes — and the real thing: drunk in the afternoon, swearing, aggressive?”
Photo: Peter Lindbergh
I don’t know how the leap has been made from “Kate Moss was not aggressive to anyone” to “Kate Moss was aggressive,” but my guess is that it’s because Alison is, for reasons unbeknownst to the average, reasonably minded individual, weirdly resentful of Moss. If that sounds like a leap on my behalf, then get a load of these few sentences:
“You might think that was bad enough, but worse was to come. One passenger claimed: ‘She called the pilot a “basic b***h” as police led her off the plane.’
“What does this mean? The phrase, popular in certain sections of American rap culture, is a horribly mean way to describe someone as ordinary, banal or dull.
“All the things which Moss, of course, believes that she isn’t. It’s the perfect insult for a celebrity to dish out to a non-celebrity — especially a celebrity who knows she is going to face humiliating publicity and is desperate to retain her feelings of superiority.”
Woah, hold on a sec there, Alison – that’s a tremendous assumption to make about a woman I presume you don’t know much about. While I do enjoy how Alison has explained the meaning of the phrase “basic bitch” to the Mail’s target demographic, which is mostly old, angry, white people, that still doesn’t detract from the fact that insinuating a stranger whom you know little about wishes to retain their “feelings of superiority,” or that they harbour any such feelings in the first place.
Alison also describes how Moss is “starting to look all of her 41 years,” which obviously has very little to do with the story at hand but the Mail’s writers will be damned if they let a woman get away with actually looking her age. But outside of her branding the pilot with a phrase “popular in certain sections of American rap culture,” whatever the fuck that is, what did Moss do to justify her supposed disruptive behaviour on board the flight being deemed equivocal to her having a meltdown? According to Alison’s “sources,” Moss was unhappy that “unflattering photographs were being taken of her during the flight,” and that “somebody was taking pictures of her luggage.”
Photo: Playboy
Now this, as is the majority of this story, is complete speculation, but if it is true, then am I right in assuming that Alison wouldn’t find herself a little perturbed by passengers snapping photographs of her whilst she was simply attempting to enjoy her flight, or that she’d perhaps consider someone taking photos of her luggage a little invasive and rude? While it’s certainly not as rude as, say, beginning a news story with an irrelevant jab at the subject’s appearance and her succumbing to the natural aging process that we humans are unfortunately prone to doing, it’s still pretty rude to get out your iPhone and take a few snapshots of someone else’s possessions, regardless of whether that person is a model.
But apparently Moss taking umbrage at this clear breach of her own personal space (which, with her being a female celebrity, the Mail wouldn’t understand that she’s entitled to as they view women as walking upskirt photograph machines), and her not being particularly happy with a cabin crew that had called for her to be arrested for “playing hairdressers” with a child and “talking to other passengers,” is enough to warrant this being branded as a meltdown. A real meltdown, I think, is pursuing a career in journalism for the majority of your life, then coming to the conclusion that you’re so emotionally vacuous that you’ll settle for a job in the Daily Mail, living out the rest of your career making embittered jabs at celebrities.
All I know is that I’d much rather find myself seated next to Kate Moss on a flight than I would Alison Fucking Boshoff.
