Yesterday I stumbled across this “interview” with violinist Nicola Benedetti in the Scottish Sun, in which Matt Bendoris – ostensibly a grown man and not a fifteen year old Nuts columnist – gives a masterclass in female objectification.
In it, Bendoris tastefully focuses on Benedetti’s appearance, not her music:
So I guess Nicola won’t be posing for the lads’ mags anytime soon. Pity, because she looks fit as a fiddle when we meet at Edinburgh’s plush Sheraton Hotel.
But Nicola doesn’t always take the bonniest photo — she’s beaky in pics sometimes, which is weird because in the flesh she’s an absolute knock-out.
The classical musician is wearing skinny jeans which show off her long legs. She’s also busty with a washboard flat tummy, tottering around 5ft 10in in her Dune platform wedges.
He also urges Benedetti’s cellist boyfriend Leonard Elschenbroich to get her pregnant:
The one possession she never lets out of sight is her 1712 Earl Spencer Stradivarius — made by the legendary 18th Century Italian violin master Antonio Stradivari himself.
No wonder as it’s worth £2million and is on loan from American banker Jonathan Moulds.
Me: “Gie’s a shot.”
She gasps: “Absolutely not! No one gets to touch this baby.”
Talking of babies, she’d like those too.
Nicola says: “It’s eight years since I won Young Musician of the Year. In the next eight years I’d hope to be a better violinist and I’d like to have started a family. I’ll be in my early 30s so I would probably like a baby or two by then.”
Better get busy making sweet, sweet music, Leonard. Lucky boy…
After reading the article, I had a question for Mr Bendoris:
.
@mbendoris Quick question: did you masturbate before, after or during writing this horrible piece of ‘journalism’: thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepa…— Alan Williamson (@AGBear) August 28, 2012
I guess there’s a certain skill in writing about a artist and focusing on their physical attributes instead of their art. It requires you to wilfully ignore all of that talent. Bendoris must have trained in the Sun’s cultural isolation chamber, watching endless streams of Big Brother repeats and reading nothing but his own previous columns. Two weeks later, he emerged sweating and crying, screaming “Art is dead”. He was ready.
It’s like interviewing David Hockney and writing about how long and thick his willy is, asking if viewers would enjoy “elitist” painting more if he’d tie a brush to his dick and shake it at a canvas. Except that wouldn’t actually happen cause, you know, every Sun reader knows willies are horrible – not like lovely boobies though, eh lads?
Why do they bother including words at all if they’re just pushing wank fantasy material? They’d get more suggestive pictures in without all that bloody text. There’s an irony in deriding classical music as “elitist” and then sexually objectifying one of its best modern proponents. It’s not the general public who are wrong for ignoring classical music; it’s Nicola Benedetti for arrogantly refusing to get her tits out and bringing it down to “their” level.
Bendoris’ retort was that he loved “folk who get outraged on someone else’s behalf” which is disingenuous. I’m personally outraged that someone would actually write this shit and try to sell it to me as news. I’m offended that a company thinks I am that stupid, misogynist and ignorant – and you should feel insulted, too. But you know, mostly I’m not offended. I’m just disappointed that in 2012 this passes for journalism and there are still numpties out there willing to defend it.
I don’t think most Sun readers are as lecherous and paleolithic as Matt Bendoris and his editor Simon Houston. I hope they vote with their wallet. Right, enough of this filth. Let’s have some nice classical music.
Alan Williamson is editor of Split Screen, where this post originally appeared. He tweets as @agbear.
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