24 Mar 2014
Early reports of her death referred to her primarily as his “girlfriend”. Others chose to emphasise her physical attractiveness, labelling her “the blonde” “the stunner” and “the model”. The fact that she was a person in her own right, with a name, seemed irrelevant to most news channels.
The recent suicide of L’Wren Scott has been reported in an equally disgraceful manner. The New York Times tweeted: “Mick Jagger’s Girlfriend Found Dead”. BBC Radio Two didn’t even name her in their news bulletin, defining her throughout by her relationship alone. Initial coverage from five of the major British tabloids told the story only through the narrative of Mick Jagger’s reaction. The first BBC news headline was slightly less dreadful: “Sir Mick Jagger is “completely shocked and devastated” by the apparent suicide of his girlfriend, fashion designer L’Wren Scott” but even here the primary reference was to her relationship, and not to her.
Critics will argue that, outside of the fashion world, L’Wren Scott was not well known, and so the reference to her relationship is a necessary part of identifying who she was. This excuse is both lazy and dishonest. It’s not difficult for a journalist to tell us who someone is; it takes a sentence at most. Ms Scott dressed celebrities, created costumes for films, and owned a fashion label. That’s more than enough information for us to identify her, regardless of who she is dating. The truth is that without the celebrity boyfriend, those journalists do not consider her death newsworthy at all. This is not a story about the loss of a talented woman, but the story of a famous rock star suffering a personal tragedy. The woman in question could be anyone, and so she loses her identity not just in death but also in its telling. She is reduced to a bit part in a tragedy that is happening to her man.
Worse still, the indifference to Ms Scott as an individual was tinged with that pervasive, low level sexism that dogs women who live outside of a traditional family unit. Reports followed that she wanted to marry Jagger, but that he wouldn’t agree; that he had refused to bail out her struggling business; that they had recently parted; that she was a childless spinster of almost 50, and that these things had plunged her into a depression from which she could not recover. All utter nonsense, but all pointing to the ridiculously held view that a woman is happier if she is married, with children, to a financially secure man. The stories also fuel the myth that depression can be triggered by bad luck, rather than being identified and treated as an illness, which makes them not just sexist, but dangerous.
L’Wren Scott said herself in a recent interview with The Times that she was a fashion designer in her own right, and did not want to be known as someone’s girlfriend. She was an interesting, intelligent, capable woman, whose depression caused her to take her own life. That we continue to reduce women like her to a set of trite clichés is something for which the media should be thoroughly ashamed.
Photo: Andrew Crowley for The Telegraph
