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Piers Morgan Was Called A Tw@t For Slut-Shaming Little Mix

By Kristy Puchko | Celebrity | November 20, 2018 |

By Kristy Puchko | Celebrity | November 20, 2018 |

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Stateside, we know Piers Morgan mostly as a Trump-loving big mouth who uses Twitter to tell women how to feminist. He’s basically the poster child for Self-Righteous Straight White Men as he feels he knows best on all things because of his qualifications as a Self-Righteous Straight White Man. And in his latest adventure, the British morning show host has decided to use his platform to dictate to the girl group Little Mix how to be proper role models.

It all began when Little Mix decided to address the body-shaming and slut-shaming they have been subjected to over the course of their career with a new song and accompanying video that reveled in body positivity and self-love. “Strip” includes lyrics like:

Take off all my make-up ‘cause I love what’s under it.
Rub off all your words, don’t give a (uh), I’m over it.
(Jiggle all this weight, yeah, you know I love all of this).
Finally love me naked, sexiest when I’m confident.

Their music video includes images of a diverse range of women celebrating their bodies through dance, as well as the above image of the singers naked, scribbled in the insults used against them like, “slutty,” “fat,” “too loud,” and “stupid.” Essentially, the whole video is a big screw you to the idea of letting others define your sense of self, but especially to those men who will only regard you in terms of how you fit their ideas of womanhood. Cue Self-Righteous Straight White Man of the hour, Piers Morgan.

Daily Edge reports he took to his TV show Good Morning Britain to totally miss the point of Little Mix’s “Strip.” There, he declared:

If men stripped off like that we’d be arrested but women do it and it’s ‘empowering’. They’re stripping off to sell albums, that’s what it’s about. The rest of it is baloney…They don’t have any flaws, they’ve been airbrushed to look perfect. They’re fake. There’s not a mark on them. You can’t even see the surgery…Do you find Little Mix empowering when they strip off and put offensive words all over their naked bodies? Or like me do you find it a cynical assault on the records market?

Digital Spy reports Little Mix responded to these comments in a radio interview with DJ Nick Grimshaw. Leigh-Anne Pinnock didn’t want to dignify Morgan’s attack by even mentioning his name, while Jesy Nelson called him “a silly tw*t.” And ooooooooh! Apparently, Morgan can go on national television to imply these women are talentless harlots, but calling him a tw*t on national for doing that is just uncivil! Naturally, Morgan is trying make this a bigger scandal to get himself higher ratings. On his show, Morgan declared Little Mix “needs to make a public apology… to me.” While on Twitter, he took another swing at the group:

Yeah, Little Mix. Sure, he was absolutely insulting to you and your empowering message. But you should totally go on to his morning show so he can do it to your face. It’s not like he has a history of being a condescending c*ckwomble to female guests, or barrelling over them to try to keep them from arguing their point. Oh. Wait. Sorry. ~Checks notes~ THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HE DOES. Morgan lives to pronounce bad takes and declare others are easily offended opportunists. Then when they respond, he immediately rolls over and behaves as if he is the wronged party. Sure, he suggested Little Mix are opportunistic sluts. But hey, at least he didn’t use any naughty language. So who is the real hero here?

Really though, Nelson shouldn’t have called Morgan a tw@t. But not because he isn’t and not because he didn’t deserve it. But because it plays into his hand, which is the hand of conservatives who want to cry out to the heavens about the abuses of the “so-called tolerant left” who interrupt dinners and protest vicious propagandists, while the conservatives willfully ignore domestic terrorism committed by their extremists in their own ranks. Nelson played into Morgan’s hand by giving him the opportunity to make this story about him.

But it’s not all bad news! Because Stateside we don’t hear very much about Little Mix, and now—because Nelson called out Morgan—we have. And you know what? Their video for “Strip” is pretty damn fantastic.

Try as he might, Morgan’s self-aggrandizing campaign cannot detract from how Little Mix’s song and video has reached out to many. It has encouraged them to love themselves and their bodies just as they are, and Little Mix fans are continuing to spread that message of body positivity and self-love through social media.