Poor Kate Moss — and I am serious. I do feel bad for her. She was recently featured on the cover of the British tabloid The Daily Mirror doing lines of cocaine. After the image appeared, Moss lost her modeling contracts with numerous agencies, and it appears to be the end of her modeling career.

My interest in Kate Moss started in college when my friend Alicia made a comment about how when it came to models, Kate Moss was the only one she liked. I, of course, didn’t know who Kate Moss was, so we did a Google Images search for Kate Moss and eventually found the picture to the right. I’ve always loved that picture.

Then in summer 2003, one of my favorite bands, Primal Scream released Evil Heat. On Evil Heat Kate Moss joined the band to cover the old Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazelwood duet, “Some Velvet Morning.” Hearing Kate Moss sing one of my favorite songs only cemented my love of her.

(In addition to Primal Scream covering the song, another one of my favorite bands, Slowdive covered the song on their Souvlaki album. In addition to all of that, Art Bell loves Nancy Sinatra, and “Some Velvet Morning” in particular, and often uses it as bumper music on Coast to Coast AM. The song is beautiful, and I highly recommend finding some version of it and studying up on the Greek mythology surrounding Phaedra.)

Along with the cool picture and her work with Primal Scream, Kate Moss also ushered in that rail-thin, junkie supermodel look, which, as much as I hate to admit it, I really am a huge fan of. I know that these anorexic-looking (and often anorexic) models are extremely dangerous when it comes to perpetuating unrealistic body images and cause all sorts of body image dysmorphia, but I cannot help finding that look attractive. Maybe it has to do with growing up in the ’90s and liking grunge and goth-type music for a long time or maybe there are all sorts of other personal reasons, but nonetheless, I like it… and I admire (???) Kate Moss for starting that trend.

So when she got in trouble the other week, I was a bit sad. But that was about it.

Then Salon.com (as they always do) had a great article about Kate Moss and her legacy that I highly recommend checking out: “The rise and fall of Kate Moss.”

As always, the media (with the exception of places like Salon) are focusing on the fact that drugs ruined Moss’ life and career and that drugs are bad and what is the fashion industry thinking promoting such unrealistic body image types. Yeah yeah. We all know that. But obviously there is something else going on here — otherwise that “heroin chic” would have starved itself years ago. Instead, Kate Moss is even considered “not that thin” compared to contemporary models. I smell some hypocrisy… and so does Rebecca Traister at Salon:

Now, 15 years later, in a set of circumstances that have exposed the hypocrisy and sanctimony of everyone involved, Moss and the fashion industry are becoming accidental and unwilling poster children for a new anti-drug message.

As Traister notes,

News that models do blow is akin to news that rock stars have casual sex: not news at all… The fashion companies’ professions of surprise are hard to believe. Would it be more embarrassing for them to admit they hired a model who they knew had done drugs than it is for them to admit to never having picked up a paper?

So if we know it is such a big deal already — and most of the agencies that she had contracts with could pretty easily assume that Moss was doing drugs often — why is it that when confronted with “proof” we are forced to change our minds. To me, this is an extremely reactive decision — and reactive decisions tend to be made in haste in order to save face rather than really address root issues.

The big hoopla going on in the news, then, is not about Moss’ drug problems, but:

Moss’ real error was in getting caught on tape

Again, the drugs and Moss’ waif, abused body is not of concern to people. Traister rightly points out:

the body that is appealing to designers — and thus to consumers — is a body that looks like it has been ravaged by drugs. In order to stay employed, models must maintain this shape; to maintain the shape they must do something besides eat right and exercise regularly. Whether it’s cocaine or speed or heroin or caffeine or cigarettes or anorexia or bulimia or some combination of the above, most adult women cannot get bodies that look like Moss’ healthily, because hers is not a healthy body.

In addition to Salon.com, Slate also considers Moss’ predicament. In “Kate Moss: The ironies of her downfall,” Amanda Fortini makes similar observations.

Fortini’s more interesting observation demonstrates why people like me seem to be fascinated with Moss:

The irony is that the rumors of bad behavior, the rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle, have always been part of Moss’ allure. For years, the fashion world has courted, and profited from, her edgy, bad-girl image and her gaunt, post-hangover looks.

I’m not sure where all of this leaves us with Kate Moss as a person. She has, essentially, like many women (and it tends to be women — Lyndie England, Terri Schiavo, etc.) who have issues/ideas/criticism projected onto them. It’s like their bodies become empty shells in which the rest of us dump our cultural problems so we can hold these women up as non-human things and deprive them of their personhood.

Now, Kate Moss has become a symbol of the dangers of drug use and the vixen who brought us the trendy emaciated model.