Let Katie Price watch the polo!

Today in the Times Katie Price, aka Jordan, talks about how she was snubbed by polo snobs at Cartier Polo International. It really is surprising that she was prevented from buying a table at the event, given that she actually is interested in horses and polo, unlike a vast majority of the population. As she points out, she's written a book on pony care, competes in events and has ridden since she was a girl.

It reminds me of an article I read a while back about Sundance Film Festival, in which Robert Redford scorned Paris Hilton's appearance at the festival. "To the outside world, it's a big fat market where you have people like Paris Hilton going to parties. Now, she doesn't have anything to do with anything. I think the festival is close to being out of control." In that case Redford wasn't being snobbish - he wants to preserve Sundance for film people, not turn it into a Heat photoshoot.

Yet in this case, Katie is no Paris.

Yes, she is a celebrity. She has posed topless. Her "brand" is about appearing in very tiny clothing, sometimes doing very silly things (OK, so maybe they're not that different in that respect). But she's also an equestrienne. As one reader commented on the news story: "I still wouldn't watch or read anything about her, but that's not the point. I think the polo set have had their true colours revealed."

However, the organisers may have inadvertently done themselves a favour. By acting with such snobbery, they have heightened the visibility of Katie Price's horsey interests and legitimised her position more. Compared with the polo crowd, she exudes class. Next year they'll be able to welcome her as perhaps the most high-profile ambassador for polo they've had for ages.

Comments

[lin]

I read the Times as I want to hear reasoned argument, intellectual debate and unbiased views.

If I wanted to read about poor hard done by Katie, I would turn the pages of hello magazine.

The post of Laura Roberts says it all, yet The Times follows every other rag simpering towards this foul mouthed slapper.

Get a grip and print something worth reading!!!

[Phil]

However, bad her performances Paris Hilton has acted in film and tv. Therefore, Robert Redford was being snobbish.

[Ad-Mum]

I would like my daughter to grow up to believe that if you want to be famous you have to strive to be truly brilliant at something.

But, that being famous is not such a big deal anyway.

And that you wait to be invited to a private party, you don't demand an entry.

And if you want to go to an event which requires a paid for ticket, that you pay up through the proper channels before all the tickets have sold out.

What Jordan, and others like her, propagate is the impression amongst all our children that fame for fame's sake is feasible and desirable, and that once achieved it allows you to ignore the rules of general manners and behaviour that ordinary folk abide by.

Shame on the Times for playing ball.

[Sarah]

There are quite a few assumptions going on here, and we all know what that makes.
I really didnt realise how snobbish and rude some people can be, I quite like Jordan aka Katy Price, especially in the last few years, she's had a boob reduction (in case anyone didnt realise and it seems that way to me) and stopped with all the naked or half naked shoots. Just the fact that she was turned down from entering the same tent that Caprice was in is hilarious, who do these people think they are, what does Caprice do again??

[Russell]

Sorry to be the one to point out something that got buried deep down in this story. When the tickets were applied for, the event had already sold out. The rest has just been blown up by the press to make a story with no basis in fact.

Next time apply earlier and save us all the pointless arguments.

[tsk]

Ah, I was unaware that she has been pictured showing anything more than her breasts. If she has posed for very explicit pictures, then I happily retract my 'minor nudity' comment!

I still can't understand the sheer venom towards the woman, though. Is it her extreme plastic surgery, her outspoken behaviour or her sexualised image? Or is it just because she is a bit of a chav and an easy target? Calling a woman a whore is pretty full-on.

[ExPat]

Enjoying the posts but thought I might add that many are referring to Jordan as a topless model and a woman who chooses to make money showing her breasts. This is very polite - to my memory she has shown a whole lot more than her breasts! This is not minor nudity!

[Katie]

I'm slightly surprised that MM agrees with my comment as I strongly disagreed with her previous comments! I would also disagree with comparisons of Jordan to fellow celebrities like Sienna Miller - a beautiful, stylish actress - and Britney - a once-talented, once-innocent young star corrupted by fame. Jordan to me is a calculating, driven woman, hard and unlikeable and desperate to sustain her fame at any cost to her dignity and integrity. As I touched upon in my previous post in categorising her alongside porn stars, I find it disturbing and immoral that she would turn her sexualised image into a role model for children, going so far as to print a picture of herself on the cover of her children's books.

Without reducing myself to unnecessary bitchiness, I would like to add that I followed the Amazon link to her pony care book and had to stifle a few giggles - a " funky and ultra-fashionable [!?] gift book on pony care" It upsets me that her superficiality is allowed to infiltrate the innocence of little girls' love of ponies, and her continuing promotion as an icon of a "hard-working, successful woman" infuriates me.

[Tim]

Aren't these the same polo snobs that make fun of Prince William's girlfriend's mom?
If these types of people are common in the UK, I'm glad I live in Canada.

[MM]

Katie - That is exactly what I've been trying to say. She's not what most of us would perceive as a role model, although I think I've seen somewhere that she's trying to bring herself back to her natural self. I just don't understand the angry comments about her. To me, she's just one of those celebrities who is always doing something to get into the papers, and just as with all those others, Paris Hilton, Britney, Sienna, and so forth, I have no feelings about her at all, good or bad.
I'm going to bow out of this hornet's nest now. Bye!

[Helen E.]

Crumbs! What a little spat! Reading these recent comments, it all deteriorated when MM replied to Tom Franklin and got all catty. Others responded and she got worse! So to say she never stoops so low is funny to read, having just read the thread.

[Laura Roberts]

Some further points for clarification:

1. Jordan's article shows gross stupidity. She has a social life that depends on the very exclusivity (to be exclusive, they've got to exclude someone!) she criticises, only when she's the one being excluded. Nobody likes a hypocrite, and perhaps that's why people are in such a furore over her silly article.

2. She doesn't write her own books. Please stop calling her an author.

3. The Chinawhite tent had nothing to do with horses or polo. She wanted to be - and be seen - with celebrities. She was free, as we all are, to go and watch the polo. I understand that her interest in the horses wasn't strong enough for her to do that. Her absence from the spectator crowd of ordinary people, and desire only to get into the Chinawhite tent away from the "little people" speaks volumes.

4. I think it is fair to call somebody whose body shape is so deformed and out of proportion through the insertion of massive silicon pouches underneath their breasts, a freak. Definitions of "freak" include: a thing that is markedly irregular, abnormally formed, regarded as a curiosity or monstrosity. She is undeniably all of these.

5. I think Jordan needs psychiatric help. This is not merely because of "mild nudity" TSK, but her self-admitted obsession with plastic surgery and the strong desire she has to have more and more of it for bizarre reasons. Objectively speaking, I actually thought she had quite a pretty face, and then she went and had a nose job - the one tiny bit of individuality and natural physical character that she possessed. And her lips. And she wanted her already-sucked out stomach to be further operated on, but the plastic surgeon refused as there was simply nothing to suck out. I would think she has a combination of mental illness and self-obsessed arrogance and a lack of real intelligence. The former is sad and she needs to get treated. The latter is not.

[Katie]

"Freak. Disgusting. Degrading. Screwed-up. Aren't these terribly strong words used for minor nudity?"

I wouldn't cite "minor nudity" as a cause for vehement contempt for Jordan. More the superficial sexualising of her body by way of abnormally large breast implants, a wholly unnatural image which appears to promote a female body mutilated at the cost of thousands of pounds for the singular purpose of sexual attraction for men. This immediately equates her with porn stars. I have much admiration for Jenna Jameson & co and have no issues with the mainstream porn industry but would in no way see them as role models, or attribute them with "class". Or let my (future) children read novels associated with their image!

Add to her career and reputation her dayglo fake tan, plasticky hair and absolute lack of any hint of style, and I can completely understand not only why any vaguely discerning event organisers would not go out of their way to entertain her, but why she draws scorn from so many people.

She is defended as a "good businesswoman" but what virtue is there in moneygrabbing and greed that is not backed up by talent? There is much more to life than making one's fortune through slutty outfits and ghostwriters.

[tsk]

Fair point, I wouldn't want my daughter to build a career from by being ogled. But in all truth, I don't want her sweeping streets, either. Or serving big macs. I don't disapprove of any of these professions, but that's not to say I find them aspirational.

[MM]

James,

It is I who is advocating some kind of tolerance, and you who is jumping up and down saying awful things about someone.
This comment: "Sit down, get your breasts out, and have a cup of tea luv" was made by you. I chose to ignore it, because I'm a tolerant kind of person. Perhaps you have a different definition of 'pathetic' and 'schoolgirl' or 'schoolboy' in this case. Fortunately, I haven't ever needed to stoop to that kind of nonsense. Any way, sleep tight.

[tsk]

Thanks James.

Do you truly think that there is something 'very, very wrong' with us? Ouch.

Freak. Disgusting. Degrading. Screwed-up. Aren't these terribly strong words used for minor nudity?

[James]

There you go again MM with your silly schoolgirl comments. Pathetic.

Yawn.. anyway, back to the topic. I just don't get people like you MM. You say you wouldn't want your daughter to do what Jordan does. So you must have something against it. Well, surprise surprise, so do other people, myself included. But it seems if *we* say we don't approve of what she does, and think she's been incredibly stupid and hypocritical to complain about the Chinawhite refusal, we're dreadful parents on some perfection drive. But you're not somehow, yet you wouldn't want your daughter doing it.

MM, let people have their opinions. Don't chastise and insult us because we vehemently dislike something. I'm appalled by this woman at the best of times, but her Times article here really takes the biscuit for me, and why not? Let me loathe her and I'll let you.. well, it's stlll not quite clear, admire/whatever it is, her. We've got as much right as you to detest her as much as you may like her. Your attacks are unnecessary and do not show you in a good light. I hope your daughters do no see much of this side of you. Farewell.

[MM]

Getting a bit uppity James?
Tell us, James, were you breastfed as a child?

[James]

I'll answer you TSK: Nobody said showing one's breasts is like prostitution. Living off the sexualised baring of one's breasts, and very nearly every single other part of her anatomy in various media and in person at various events (for which she is paid to turn up), as a career, is no different to prostitution. Both earn their living through the sexual use of their bodies for payment.

If you TSK, and MM, really cannot see the difference between "a woman showing her breasts in a photograph", Sarah Ferguson on holiday, a mammogram and mothers breastfeeding - and Jordan - I'm afraid there's something very, very wrong with you.

[tsk]

Hear, hear MM, it's a relief to read sense.
The baying crowd mentality toward a woman who has done little more shocking than show her naked breasts in a photograph is particularly disturbing.
No-one answered - just how is displaying one's breasts tantamount to prostitution? Are we to believe that so many actresses are whores? What about models? Or sun-bathers? Where does middle England draw the line?

[HG]

MM - Mammograms? Sarah Ferguson? Oh my god, what are you on? I seriously pity your children with a mother who seems very bitter and defensive about something and can't differentiate between a work of art and Jordan. I mean, seriously worrying. I wish you well selling your "I'm so proud of my topless model daughter" story to Hello. Bye MM!

[MM]

Oh, no! Where's the CCTV camera?

[James]

Silly MM, getting all uppity and contradicting herself all over the place, extrapolating statements to silly levels to suit her scrambling argument. Sit down, get your breasts out, and have a cup of tea luv.
Jordan, you're disgusting and embarrassing. I don't have a lot of time for the Chinawhite crowd, but if even those low-lives won't let you in, my god, you must really be a piece of trash!

[MM]

PS, I've never seen her breasts. How come you have?

[MM]

First of all, I don't think that getting your breasts out in public is tantamount to prostitution, whatever the intention is behind it. At what point, exactly do believe it does? We have a scale ranging from mammograms, to breastfeeding in public, to having your chest measured for a bra, to sunbathing topless... Would Sarah Ferguson be considered a prostitute and would you be prepared to put your real name and address to that claim? At what point does it become a public scandal? Just above the nipple? Half a nipple? They're just breasts for goodness sake and if people want to pay to gawk at them, then more fools them. I'm expecting to see on the news a rash of paintings vandalised with Tippex in galleries across the globe as 'Shocked from Shropshire' deletes all of the Devil's Dumplings, especially those of the Madonna. Disgusting.
No I don't agree with prostitution, by the way, which is a totally different issue.
What she does isn't immoral, or illegal, but I wouldn't want my children to emmulate her for the same reasons that I wouldn't want them to have a spider's web tattooed across their faces, which incidentally, is not immoral or illegal either.
HG and Tom, you both put in me in mind of those people years ago who went to circuses institutions to laugh at the inmates so as to feel superior. If you have children, beware, fate can turn around and bite on your modestly covered, uptight behinds, when you least expect it. It can happen to the best of us, and given your unforgiving stance, I pity your children should they turn out to be anything other than the perfection you require.