The Caroline Flack tragedy - an invitation to behave differently
When Geeta Sidhu Robb and I featured on channel 5's Rich House, Poor House in the autumn, Twitter was a hell hole. We were insulted by strangers, targeted by trolls, and picked apart, and accused of ridiculous untruths like abandoning our children to do the show. The truth is that the entire filming schedule was arranged around it being the one week of the summer each of our children were away with friends or their father.
That nastiness was just for one evening. It was pretty easy to laugh it off, not to take it too seriously and to forget about it. When the press (Mail on Line and Sun on Line in particular) reviewed our episode, they ignored all the positive comments on Facebook and insta, and purely quoted the trolls's insults. These trolls had no following, no trackable identity (pictures of cartoon characters etc) unlike insta and especially facebook, where people are more likely to use names and pictures. Still, that made a much better story than us getting a ton of encouraging and supportive feedback, let's face it.
What would it be like to be constantly in the public eye, where trolls constantly attack you for your looks, your decisions, your every move, and that's what the biggest press outlets pick up on? Bloody awful. Relentless. Suffocating. Hard to maintain your self-esteem for sure.
Self-esteem and mental health
For someone with mental health issues and a ton of self-doubt because their every outfit, weight gain/loss, relationship and career move is picked apart to sell more copies, it would be horrific.
It is entirely possible Caroline Flack did hurt her boyfriend and deserved to be prosecuted. Who knows. Domestic abuse is very common and it is also very common for arguments to get out of hand, and for the attacked partner not to want to press charges because they fear for their own safety or simply know that it was just a row that went wrong.
However, for her to have become so isolated, so desperate and for it to have got so dark in her head that she felt she had no way out, no way of things ever getting better so that it would be better to end it all, is an utter tragedy.
That the Sun especially, immediately started deleting its articles where they picked her apart not so long ago, says it all. They love to build someone up and then trash them and destroy them. These are people. Not commodities. People.
I hope this is the end of the demand for reality TV shows, for tabloid rubbish, for gossip magazines where celebrities are put in the spotlight and things are twisted and stories created out of thin air.
Is it any wonder Meghan and Harry wanted out...
In my work, I support women who don't feel good enough despite how fabulous they really are. They don't feel good enough about their bodies, their careers, their homes, their potential, their anything. They just feel full of self-loathing and inadequacy.
Why do women feel that they are not good enough?
Why is this? A large part of it is the way the media criticises all women. Did Boris get this kind of scrutiny and career destruction when he was recorded in a domestic situiaont so bad the police were called? No. He became prime minister. The media treats women and men very differently. Men's clothes, bodies, display of emotions, everything, are held to very different standards. Women are 'past it', 'crazy' 'hysterical' and the like when men are distinguished and passionate and entitled to show their anger.
It needs to end.
Actions I invite you to take:
- Stop buying tabloid papers and gossip magazines that profit off this cycle. Remove demand.
- Stop watching reality TV. All of it. Remove demand.
- Hold men and women to the same standards. Notice your own brainwashing by the cultural paradigm and learn to question it.
- Don't just tell your friends in a random facebook post that they can always call you. People who are so depressed they are suicidal are unlikely to call. Call them. Knock on their door. Stay with them in their darkest moments. Let them know it will pass and that you won't leave their side until it does. Show them you're there instead of telling them.
- Look after your own mental health, learn to question your limiting beliefs and painful stories as all of them are untrue.
- See mental health as the same as physical health. The two aren't separate. It's just health. Health is wealth, the biggest asset you have. Nurture it and cultivate it.
- Be kind, to yourself and to others. If you are a kind person, why would you buy those papers and magazines that are unkind, or watch those TV shows that benefit from humiliating the participants?
- Be real on social media. Neither you nor anyone else is perfect.
Love to all. And thank you to those of you that have truly been there for me in dark times in my past. I got through them, and so can you if you can ride it out. The bad times pass and so do the good times.
