Profile/Jordan: We're being sold a parody of a surgically-enhanced model as the epitome of female empowerment. Is this the end point of decades of feminist struggle, asks Fionola Meredith
What's the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning? Make a cup of tea? Light a cigarette? Meditate? All of the above? One thing I bet you don't do is have a quick peep under the covers to make sure that an important part of your anatomy hasn't disappeared overnight.
Yet this is exactly what glamour model Jordan (real name Katie Price), the maggot-munching heroine of reality show I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!, feels the need to do on a regular basis. Her fear is that her huge, thrice surgically-enhanced breasts might have done a runner.
She says, "Some mornings I wake up and hardly dare open my eyes in case all the wonderful things that have been happening to me turn out to be just a dream. If that happens, the first thing I'll do is to check whether my boobs are still there. To find they were just a figment of my imagination would be my very worst nightmare. I love them."
It's not surprising that Jordan hugs these precious assets close. She has made a lucrative career out of parading them, like well-trained pets, in the pages of men's magazines. These gravity-defying pneumatic orbs have received blanket coverage on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here! (henceforth known by its catchy sobriquet IACGMOOH), playing a silent but omnipresent role, constantly offering themselves up to the camera's lascivious eye.
So why is it that this 25-year-old glamour puss from Brighton, Sussex, hitherto a two-dimensional tabloid creation, has broadsheet hackettes now lining up to pay homage? In the space of a week, her appearances on IACGMOOH have radically transformed her media persona from trashy, comically-distorted figure of fun to fully-fledged post-feminist icon.
So what that she makes a living spread-eagling her body in provocative poses for male delectation? Deborah Orr of the Independent on Sunday just can't get enough of Jordan, eulogising her "empathy, humour, maturity, brains and charisma" as well as her shrewd business skills: "she's a clever, independent operator - rich, successful, talented".
And who cares that her breasts are artificially inflated to gargantuan proportions? Liz Hoggard at the Observer admits: "After seeing the 34FF model covered in creepy-crawlies in the Australian jungle, I'm transfixed. She has the profile of a European filmstar and the morals of an Essex girl. It must be love."
Hoggard too supplies us with a comprehensive list of Jordan's more favourable attributes: "Qualities like humour, authenticity and loyalty count for a good deal. So do pragmatism and a lack of competitiveness with other women (Jordan has the men eating out of her hand but you never catch her dissing her female peers)'. And Hoggard is delighted to discover that despite Jordan's reputation for bacchanalian excess, "she is also surprisingly moral. She hates one-night stands and makes men wait at least a month before she sleeps with them".
Even arch-dissident Julie Burchill conforms to this new orthodoxy. She loves Jordan, especially her "breathtaking bluntness and lack of hypocrisy, and her stoicism and complete lack of self-pity in an age when we are all encouraged to be neurotic cry-babies or be condemned as 'in denial'. She seems to have been created by some mad feminist genius scientist".
Not to be outdone, tabloid commentators bring up the rear with a chorus of approval all their own. In the Sun, Victoria Coren declares: "If I have ever had so much as a single snide thought about the entire package that is Katie Jordan Price, I retract it utterly and completely. I didn't see her for what she was: a 21st-century goddess."
Vanessa Feltz, in the Jordan-friendly Daily Star crows self-righteously: "Hear that gulping, chomping noise? It's the sound of bitchy female newspaper columnists eating their words. These are the harpies who queued to diss Jordan. Too thick to see through the cleavage to the bright businesswoman inside, too jealous to give the girl her due, they fired spiteful pot-shots at her on a daily basis." (Back in May 2003, Jordan was the Daily Star's sponsored candidate for the safe British Labour seat of Stretford and Urmston. "Breast Minister" Jordan's manifesto included free plastic surgery for all, a ban on all parking tickets, more nudist beaches, tax cuts for anyone having an affair with a foreign footballer and a defence policy that read: "De fence should be six feet high and put up around my garden so nobody can see me sunbathing topless.")
Based on insights gleaned from watching IACGMOOH, Jordan's new feminist pals profess to see "a profound dichotomy" between "Jordan", a cartoonish media construct, a brilliantly ironic parody of our sex-obsessed culture and "Katie", the likeable, authentic and astute businesswoman who creates and controls her.
And it's true that Katie seems to be a reasonably unaffected, straightforward woman, able to laugh at herself. The rumours that she's being paid £100,000 to participate in IACGMOOH while her fellow internees only netted £25,000 are probably true - after all, she's a media-savvy millionaire who delivers exactly what her fans want: a large portion of breast. But to enthrone her as Queen of the Post-Feminist Prom (in absentia, of course - she's blissfully unaware of her imposed enthronement, munching witchetty grubs while the media circus jabbers on) patronises both her and us.
The crown just doesn't fit. To cast Jordan as a sophisticated, ultra-knowing post-feminist role model is as much a restrictive and inaccurate stereotype as "brainless-bimbette-from-Brighton". It patronises her because it's a reductive, impoverished image whose sub-text is "Amazing! Even though Jordan has big breasts and poses for men's mags, she's really quite intelligent." She's still being defined by her appearance - only this time she gets a condescending pat on the head for being "surprisingly moral" too.
And it patronises us because we're being sold a bogus parody of a surgically-enhanced glamour model as the epitome of modern female empowerment. Is this the end point of decades of feminist struggle?
Contrary to the claims of the newspaper columnists, Jordan isn't an amused Machiavellian trickster, a powerful genius who absorbs our fantasies, repackages them and sells them back to us. She's an ordinary young woman who has had troubles in her life. She went out with top international footballer Dwight Yorke, lost him, and then had their child, Harvey, who was born blind. In 2002, shortly after Harvey's birth, she was treated for a rare form of cancer which attacks the muscles.
She was abused as a child. Her father left home when she was four and the disruption caused the family to move 13 times. She then endured a violent relationship as an adult. Unsurprisingly, she does a neat line in self-loathing: "I sleep around, I haven't got brains." And her anxiety about her breasts is sadly reminiscent of Lolo Ferrari, "the woman with the largest breasts in the world". Lolo's freakishly large, size 54G, breasts, designed by an aeronautic engineer, were so gargantuan that they occupied most of the screen in any given shot of her. Ferrari had difficulty breathing, could not sleep on her stomach or back and was terrified of flying in case her breasts - each of which contained three litres of surgical serum - exploded. "I've created a femininity that's entirely artificial," Ferrari observed. She committed suicide three years ago, aged 37.
Like Lolo, Jordan has correctly identified the breast as the very locus of male sexual desire, then has taken that insight to its logical extension - vastly, shockingly, painfully augmented breasts. Protruding spectacularly from her slim frame, they seem almost to have an existence of their own, like Frankensteinian creations, which insist on hogging the limelight. They've certainly increased her chances of winning IACGMOOH, as bookies now widely tip her to do. And even when she will have left the jungle, they're likely to propel her to further heights of fame and infamy.
Yet Jordan's poignant anxiety that they might disappear overnight shows how desperately she needs these precious, unwieldy, imperious constructions strung out across her chest. For who would Jordan be without them?