Lily Allen this week launched a sex toy in partnership with the adult company Womanizer.
The popstar released a video in conjunction with the launch, in which she said “free yourself, feel yourself, love yourself” alongside a lot of other clichés on the same subject that I am far too prudish to quote here.
Allen has never been one to shy away from comments that might be perceived as provocative. In 2010, she took aim at David Cameron’s coalition government in her song F*** You, prompting the then-prime minister to tell BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour “my daughter is obsessed by Lily Allen, who I think is slightly unsuitable. So a bit of a fight takes place.” Allen has described herself as “straight down-the-line labour” and she was admirably active in criticising the government’s response to the Grenfell tragedy of 2017. So much so that Channel 4’s Newsnight programme cancelled her appearance to speak on the subject. “I am politicizing [sic] #Grenfell tower because, it is governmental policies that have lead [sic] to so many unnecessary deaths”, she Tweeted at the time.
“Let’s be open about it” says Allen. Or – let’s not.
However, in launching a sex toy to the mass market and colouring the promotion with unnecessary detail about her intimate life, she has crossed a line: activism is here dwarfed by over-sharing.
“Let’s be open about it” says Allen. Or – let’s not.
Allen is no anomaly. Public figures and celebrities have, in recent years, increasingly used their platform to give the populace Too Much Information that we neither want nor need.
Earlier this year, actor and comedian Rob Delaney wrote an article in The Guardian that opened with the line “I got a vasectomy a few months ago” before going into toe-curling detail about the procedure. Journalist Emma Barnett in 2016 became the first broadcaster to announce that she was menstruating live on television. So many celebrities have spoken out about their sex lives – telling us what they think we would like to hear – that the term “sex-positive” has been coined. And of course, the men that have relations with significantly younger women (Silvio Berlusconi, Leonardo DiCaprio and more recently – sob – Brad Pitt) is a tale as old as time.
Without challenging stigmas, we do not progress.
On the one hand, these figures are indeed breaking taboos. The counter argument to this is oft-repeated: without challenging stigmas, we do not progress. If we didn’t energise ourselves to make change, women would still be baby-making machines chained to stoves and homosexuals would still be ostracised. This defence is echoed time and time again because it is surely correct. But there is a difference between activism and over-sharing. One that is increasingly ignored.
You may remember Heads Together: the mental health initiative spearheaded by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry, back in the days when he still spoke to his family, in 2017. It was, at the time, sensational. That the royal family should be so open about personal frailty was ground-breaking. Prince Harry spoke about the devastating effects that his mother’s death had on his mental health, telling the press he had been “very close to total breakdown on numerous occasions when all sorts of grief and lies and misconceptions are coming to you from every angle.” It is likely that the work of Heads Together, and other similar causes, have saved lives.
But if mental health is a stigma worth challenging and so-called “self-love” is not, where is the line to be drawn? When promoting our causes, let us remember that activism can bleed into over-sharing. That, and that some things are sacred.
Constance Watson is assistant editor of the Catholic Herald. She also contributes to The Spectator, The Telegraph, The Oldie and Literary Review and others.
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