Liz Jones in Somalia: How Different are Refugee Camps to Catwalks? by Nick Bryans

Liz, in more familiar surroundings

Liz Jones has historically had a turbulent relationship with *not annoying the entire country* through her *journalism*. Liz is a friend of the site, having giving us streams of material over the last year (which you can read here – The Insane World of Liz Jones in Her Own Words), so when we heard she was going to Somalia to cover the famine, our reaction was a mix of trepidation and horror; a bit like when your embarrassing uncle turns up at a family event with a crate of Oranjeboom.

Liz is hardly known for her compassion and soft touch, so for her to cover such a tender issue was, well, perhaps misguided, considering she has previous. Liz is a fashion/lifestyle columnist, famous for detailing accounts of her opulent spending whilst moaning about how hard it is to afford such ostentatious rubbish. So African famine is hardly a topic she’s well versed with.

Liz kicked off her Somalia 2012 tour with a woefully inaccurate article where she moaned about how, having turning up to her local NHS hospital unannounced and without an appointment, she was not greeted with a Champagne reception, allocated a chaise longue and preceded to have every injection provided within 3 minutes of her arrival from a 6”2 Czech model named Pavel. She did eventually get her injections, and she made it to Somalia to report her surroundings.

A Somalian refugee camp

Entitled ”Somalian famine makes a mockery of the world I have come from”, it implies that Liz has undergone some sort of moral enlightenment, where she discovers at long last that paying £4,000 for a fridge, then writing an article about how terrible it is for her that she runs up credit card debt in the process, probably is not deserving of public empathy. And this is how the article flows. She plays off her past excesses in dieting and cosmetic surgery against what she sees to create this ‘eye-opening’ dynamic.

What on earth is a woman like me — who has spent a lifetime working in the fashion world, and who has long written about her own battles with her weight, her image, her debts — doing in a place like this, where the cost of my recent facelift would feed, what, a thousand children for a year?…

…The chasm between our world and the one I am visiting is brought starkly home to me when, shortly after arrival, I feel tiny fingers probing my pocket. Immediately my hand shoots there. I’m worried about my Blackberry, my electronic umbilical cord to the world I normally inhabit… 

…He wouldn’t understand, because I don’t understand, how it can be that this morning I left my hotel in Nairobi, with its all-you-can-eat buffet, and eight hours later I’ve arrived in a place that is pre-historic?…

…I tell her I used to starve myself to be beautiful. ‘I starve myself to feed my children,’ she says. And then, puffing out her hollow cheeks, she adds: ‘I thought everyone in the West was fat.’…

Another of Osman’s sons is blind in one eye. Yet another has a hare lip. That will never be mended, I think, instinctively putting a hand to my facelift. I have tried to reverse the signs of ageing: this boy will go through life, if he is lucky, with a gaping window to the inside of his skull…

…At 5pm, I climb into my air-conditioned SUV — there is a strict curfew here — and am driven the few hundred yards to the Save The Children compound…

This theme of ‘them and us’ may probably connect well with your average Femail reader, who is so very far removed from a person in a refugee camp. You have Jones, here, wondering around a refugee camp during a drought and famine, talking about her air conditioned car, buffet and face-lifts. And unsurprisingly, is it incredibly hard not to grow slightly angry towards her. It should not take a famine to realise the stuff she historically spends money on is ostentatious rubbish, and it should not take a trip to Somalia for her to realise that some people in the world have nothing.

Although it does read as a ‘coming of age’ tale, certain turns of phrase come across as incredibly patronising:

I think of Sainsbury’s on a Saturday morning, trolleys piled with ready meals. A little girl, whose mum is unwrapping a blanket, is handed a set of primitive cooking utensils. She gives a tired little jig. You’d think it were Christmas morning and she’d been given an Xbox.

What I hate, is this idea that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, is a self-involved consumerist that cannot seem to apply themselves to anyone else’s situation without some sort of materialistic ‘this is like a car to them!’ rhetoric.

It is a savage irony that despite the horror of their circumstance, Somalis are probably the most naturally beautiful women in the world. At the camp’s reception centre, where between 1,400 and 1,700 people queue every day at dawn to be allowed in, I see face after face that reminds me of the supermodel Iman, who also came from Somalia. The difference, of course, is that Iman escaped.

This just seems irrelevant. Why does it matter what the Somalians look like? Do certain nations deserve additional compassion because they are more aesthetically pleasing than others?

The problem with the article is that despite it being phrased as an ‘eye opening’ experience, it’s hard to tell if Liz is any different for it. Even though the prose used argues that she knows how guilty she is about her face lift, you would be forgiven for having scepticism over whether it would make one iota of difference on Liz Jones’ output. The whole article reads along the lines of:

• I spend lots of cash on rubbish
• These people have no cash
• How they live compared to me
• *Sad Face*
• Get on plane and piss off home

Not a Somalian refugee camp.

And her further output would indeed indicate how she has not changed at all. The Daily Mail published an article 2 days after her piece on Somalia entitled “Liz Jones’ Fashion Therapy: She dresses the A-list, but how would Rachel Zoe’s new collection look on you?”, where she detailed her recommendations for people to purchase, including a £580 ‘wrap cape’ and a £580 Jacket Dress. This woman has just been lamenting herself for spending money on grandiose pap, but now she is telling you the best way to spend your £580; the same £580 pounds which – in Liz’s words – “would feed, what, a thousand children for a year?”

I suppose that is what modern Tabloid reporting of social disasters is these days; familiar faces hop on planes to destitute areas where some eye witness stories are accounted, a few paragraphs of ‘western application’, we donate a few quid then switch off and go look at photos of some bit part actress from Coronation Street falling out of a night club.

Here is the thing; what is going on in Somalia is serious. Fucking serious. Far too serious issue for some self-important ‘I found myself’ drivel from a much maligned capitalistic journalist, looking for a humanitarian angle to add to her image. It is the sort of subject which requires a serious journalist to write serious things about, not someone to describe what the equivalent of an Xbox 360 is to a Somalian refugee. I have no problem with fashion journalism. I have no problem with fashion. If you have a ‘passion for fashion’, fine. You’re not evil for wanting to wear frills. A bit self-involved, perhaps, but no more so than someone who spends an excessive amount of money on travelling, sport, art or anything else is, and as someone who freely admits they spend more than they should on certain things, I am not going to tell people what to do with their money. But if you are going to promote £600 garments in your very well paid newspaper column, do not travel to a war torn area deriding the gluttony and greed of the Western World. Because then you are a hypocrite; your word becomes worthless, your opinion void. Liz Jones can write streams about playsuits and maxi-dresses all she wants, and I hope she informs readers of Femail which pastel shades to wear this season. But when she makes this decision, she sacrifices all opportunity she had to have the temerity to get on a plane to Africa and pontificate to us from her air conditioned SUV about how ‘the world has gone wrong’.

Click here to donate to UNICEF’s East Africa Children’s Crisis Appeal

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