Today is day 1. Day 1 of giving up the following for 14 days:

• Nicotine
• Laughter
• Carbohydrates
• Caffeine

Laughter is not meant to be on the list. But its loss is an inevitable byproduct of my self-denial. Nicotine shouldn’t be there either since I, technically, gave up smoking at New Year’s. But sometimes, not often, but sometimes, when I’m having the most mind-crushing day ever, it’s that or cheesecake.

Spring is here. I need to drop a few kgs to get back into last year’s wardrobe. Damn you, Chinese food. Why are you so delicious? Stop it, you artery-clogging temptress, you.

Today, I’m talking Jade Goody. She’s sick, and she’s dying so I am not going to badmouth her at all. But I am going to challenge the notion that what she is doing – this theatre of deterioration and manipulation that she is conducting – is somehow noble (noble!) and praiseworthy.

These things are always subjective, and it’s tough to blog about anything without giving away an opinion, and, insodoing, seeming judgmental. Jade Goody is a 27yr-old, terminally ill, mother of 2. Only someone with a heart of stone would not think that someone in such a position deserves to be cut some slack but….but…this, this thing that she is doing, it’s pornographic. Minus the sex.

• Laying herself bare.
• Fixing the lens of public scrutiny on her most private, vulnerable moments
• Pandering to the voyeur in all of us
• Asking us to get off on it

So here’s the question, Jade: why didn’t you just make a porn film? I mean, if you wanted to be graphic, if you wanted to give no holds barred access to everyone, if there was no voyeuristic stone you wanted to leave unturned, why not just set up a camera in your room and invite us to subscribe for $<insert exorbitant amount here> per minute of footage?

If it’s the exhibitionist sex that puts you off, you don’t even have to be the one who does it. You could hire actors. It can be Tragedy Porn. Cancer porn. Chemo Porn. Dignity and privacy be damned, right? I haven’t googled these terms. I’m too scared to. But there’s a market for pretty much everything. You know that as well as anyone. You could just stand in a corner while they go at it and say: “I’m Jade Goody. I’m dying. I endorse this”. At least that’s honest. Unlike this stage-managed concert of gloom orchestrated to feed your bottom line.

And if the bottom line is money, why hire, I’m guessing, (one of) the most expensive publicist(s) in the country to be your voice? The ubiquitous Max Clifford is on every single media outlet telling us how you are feeling. That’s right: Max Clifford is tuned in to your feelings. How does that not horrify you? Max Clifford, for goodness sake! And yet, with a single camera and a steady Internet connection, you could’ve achieved the very same effect – without lining any publicists’ pockets – and we’d get to choose if we wanted to have an unrelenting torrent of …well…you forced down our constricted throats.

I’m full, Jade. Enough. Please. Enough. I’ve tried to dial back the insensitive jerk in this post. Of course I have no idea what being you is like. But, for what it’s worth, you should’ve made the porn film. I might not have tuned in, but at least I’d respect the what-you-see-is-what-you-get nature of it: my few bucks in exchange for your utter and complete exposedness. That would’ve at least been honest. Unlike this.

Add new tag, cancer, death, dying, graphic, Jade Goody, Max Clifford, porn, pornography, terminal, voyeur