First of all, I’m mostly disturbed by Peaches Geldof’s continuing insistence to dress like a 14-year-old crackhead prostitute. She has horrible posture, and it’s not that she has a bad figure, it’s that she dresses to emphasize the weirdest parts of her decent, curvy figure. She also dresses “too young” – and she’s only 21 years old. But she looks like a 14-year-old Alabama mall girl. Ugh. But, on to the real controversy – Peaches’ Confederate flag shirt. Now, she’s British, and I can generally forgive a British person for not knowing the tortured history of what the Confederate flag means to different people and groups. But Peaches is dating an American dude (Eli Roth), and you would have thought someone would have told her “Hey, wearing a Confederate flag is like wearing a t-shirt that reads ‘Hey, I’m a racist f-cktard’ to some people.” Here’s The Daily Mail’s take:
Peaches Geldof risked accusations of insensitivity last night as she wore a T-shirt bearing the Confederate flag to a party in Hollywood. The southern flag is considered by many to be an overt symbol of racism because of its links to slavery, and its use is banned in many schools.
It was used by the Confederate States of America, which supported slavery, during the American civil war from 1861 to 1865. But a smiling Peaches was perhaps unaware of the symbolism associated with her shirt.
The 21-year-old teamed it with a studded dog collar, padlock necklace and a pistol charm for the bash, which appeared to be fancy dress. Her friends wore equally outlandish, although less controversial, outfits.
Updating her fans on Twitter, Peaches wrote: ‘God Hollywood boulevard is a s*** show at night.’
And it sounded like her evening out was eventful.
She tweeted: ‘@jujuSorelli just flashed me and @JonnyMakeup a boob through the window of the restaurant & a group of little kids here saw. One is crying.’
Peaches splits her time between the U.S. and London, but since beginning dating director Eli Roth, 37, two months ago has been mostly based in Los Angeles.
She is currently trying to kickstart her career after American artist Ben Mills posted naked pictures of her in the net, claiming to have had a heroin-fuelled one-night stand – which Peaches’ lawyer strenuously denied.
After losing her lucrative contract with lingerie manufacturer Ultimo, she posed in new shots for her friend Mark Hunter’s Los Angeles vintage store The Cobra Snake. But it’s unlikely to land her a payday anywhere near her reported £100,000-a-year contract for Miss Ultimo.
[From The Daily Mail]
Now, regarding the Confederate flag in general – I grew up in the South, and I still live in the South. You can’t swing a dick in Virginia without running into a Civil War battlefield, and there are many, many Southerners who view the Confederate flag as a simple symbol of Southern pride, as a historical artifact of which side their ancestors fought on, and a celebration of their culture. Of course, there are people who feel that way who are also terrible racists, and who long for the days when African-Americans “knew their place”. I’ve always been shocked when the Confederate flag pops up in some place other than a Southern state – when I worked in Pennsylvania, the flag was very popular in some of the more rural, all-white areas of the state.
Now, did Peaches have any idea about this tortured history? Probably not. She seems like a f-cking idiot, and I can see her picking out the shirt without realizing what signal she was sending. That seems to her modus operandi – do something moronic, get photographed, cause outrage, rinse and repeat.
Peaches in LA on May 1, 2010. Credit: WENN.
