Caroline Flack’s One Direction magazine attack: “Zero engagement ring because nobody wants her”

Girl’s Guide to One Direction, supposedly “the greatest magazine dedicated to the greatest band in the world” according to iTunes, released an issue in May with a feature dedicated to Caroline Flack.

You might think it’s a typical “How to tan those pins” or unoriginal “Shorts again” type article, but in fact it goes even further and lists all the things you should hate about the presenter – with your own cut-out voodoo doll.

Targeted at One Direction fans and published by Topix Media Lab LLC, the magazine can be bought via iTunes and list the article as “Go Away! Flack, foul mistress”.

It was reported that Flack had received death threats at the time of dating One Direction singer Harry Styles – with dedicated teenage fan clubs leaving messages on Twitter.

This feature would only act to encourage, not admonish, any such behaviour from young fans – which is particularly worrying as the band have nearly six million followers on Twitter.

With comments such as pointing out her crow’s feet “caused by old age”, that she has “zero engagement ring because nobody wants to be with her”, advice such as “date boys your age, not your shoe size” – which would make Harry around five/six years old – and, more unimaginatively, that she looks like a goat, this type of bullying sends out a vicious message to young fans. It teaches them: to adopt jealousy and hatred of other women getting what they want; that winning a man is a war to fight in; that youthful (under 30) is the only way women should look, and, ultimately, that bullying is acceptable, because, if it wasn’t, why would it have been published?

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• emilypunkhurst

  Yeah, surely there’s some despicable man out there to fawn all over because of his mildly left political credentials instead of writing a story about vile, abusive misogyny in the media. Silly Indie.

• jamie

  “You might think it’s a typical “How to tan those pins” or unoriginal “Shorts again” type article…”

  Actually no, I thought “Who on earth ARE these people??”

• stonedwolf

  Try the “news” section instead of “blogs”.

• reverend61

  They have a right to *say* what they like, for sure. But printing it is a different matter. There’s a line between silly gossip and hateful, borderline libellous material. This crosses it.

• http://twitter.com/LouMcCudden Louise McCudden

  “They are allowed to say what they like” doesn’t mean YOU aren’t allowed to say what you like. You either see the problem with this kind of article or you don’t. That they have a “right” to say it doesn’t stop anyone else from taking a view once they’ve said it.

  After all you seem perfectly happy to be critical of the Indy piece. Why not critical of the feature it’s referring to?

• Lilly Naylor

  Here here Rosie, couldn’t agree more!

• ragething

  quite the opposite. freedom of speech is about what you don’t like to hear. not about what you want to hear.

• ragething

  It means i can call you anything i like. If i say you murdered someone then there is a line of libel that is crossed. bitchiness is the teenage life. You know it and i know it. not repeating it in print wont make that go away. The reason im not critical of the piece is because its some bitchy teenage nonsense that is of no consequence. the indy piece is an embodiment of the prudish world that now exists where people think they have the right to be happy and free of insult…. you dont.

• http://www.facebook.com/rosie.milton Rosie Milton

  Indeed!!