Today in “Australian commercial radio is a stinking pile of garbage”, Triple M host Mick Molloy is merrily bodyshaming model and I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! contestant Simone Holtznagel, and refusing to cop to it when he was called out.
Okay, let’s back it up a bit. This is Simone.
She’s an Australia’s Next Top Model alumni, who’s modelled for Guess, Playboy and Bras N Things, among others.
Spoiler: she’s an a bit of a babe.
She’s currently doing it tough in the jungle, alongside Shannon Noll and Danny Green. Eating cockroaches, probably. IDK, I’ve never watched it.
Anyway, over on Triple M Drive on Tuesday afternoon, Mick Molloy decided to have a bit of a rant about – you guessed it – her weight.
“She claims to be a world class international model… I call bullshit!” he said, going on to speculate that she could be a “plus-size model”, he supposed.
“She’s been in the jungle for about 10 weeks now and still…” he said, beginning to hum the Baby Elephant Walk.
Apart from it just being crass and low-key misogynistic – do you really need to be making fat jokes on radio? In 2018? – it also holds up the tired values that models need to be impossibly thin, a standard models and various people in the fashion industry have been fighting back on for years. And when you have a public figure like Mick Molloy making these comments, it only spreads the message to others that they’re okay to make.
Molloy’s co-host Jane Kennedy was having none of it. “I beg your pardon. That is so pathetic,” she said. “Come on, that’s incredibly rude of you.”
The backlash to Molloy’s comments even reached the Deputy Lord Mayor of Sydney, Jess Miller, who wrote a letter in support of Simone.
“I, like many other people saw and heard what the idiot *ick Molloy said about you on the radio and we all see it for what it is – a desperate, misogynistic, cry for attention from an old, dull over-the-hill man trying to see your light,” she wrote. “Stuff him.”
TFW you get a letter of support from the DEPUTY LORD MAYOR OF SYDNEY @jem1ller #girlpower #CelebSimone #ImACelebrityAU pic.twitter.com/403JpOuHZL
— Simone Holtznagel (@moan_holtz) March 1, 2018
On yesterday’s program, Mick Molloy refused to back down from his tirade.
“Yes, I joked about her appearance,” he said. “By the way, she’s a model. I think you’re allowed to talk about a model’s appearance and on a comedy show where you’re known as an idiot and you happen to be as fat as a house yourself, I think you’re entitled to make a joke.”
NO YOU’RE NOT. BEING KNOWN AS AN IDIOT DOESN’T GIVE YOU A FREE PASS, MICK. It just means people are slightly less disappointed when you behave like an overcompensating frat boy than if you weren’t.
Jane Kennedy wasn’t too happy with backlash against her, either, taking great pains to point out to listeners that she’d been against Mick Molloy’s comments.
She addressed Simone’s friends directly, who are currently managing her social media profiles while their friend is in the jungle.
“Whoever is doing Simone’s tweets and implied that [Molloy is] such a Svengali and I’m compliant with everything you say and I can’t speak for myself, perhaps you should have actually listened to the segment,” she said, angrily.
Molloy sympathised. “You’ve been misrepresented but only by some nutbags on Twitter,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much.”
He ended the segment by ‘joking’ that he’ll “never comment on a model’s looks ever again, apparently.” Maybe… actually do this? IDK, Mick, seems like commenting on women’s weight for laughs is just a bit fucking tired.
