Letter: Model victims

Jenny Lewis
Saturday 28 March 1998 20:02 EST
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IN A WORLD of "heroin chic" and "refugee chic", we now have the ultimate fashion victim - Waris Dirie - interviewed by Angela Neustatter in the Sunday Review (22 March). It could be argued that the victim in question is asking to be treated as the Miss World of the UN. But it could and should also be argued that this model actually has something to say - something the interviewer glossed over in an attempt to reconcile what she obviously thought were contradictions in Waris Dirie.

What Dirie is trying to do is publicise the practice of female genital mutilation (of which one in four women die from complications). In this so-called post-feminist world, exploitation and repression of women continues. Surely we should be taking Waris Dirie more seriously.

Jenny Lewis

London N1

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