Once again, top model Naomi Campbell has spoken of the obvious racist dimension to the western fashion industry, her latest condemnation making page three headlines in The London Evening Standard 8/12/10. Despite her high profile modelling career, Campbell stresses that it is still near impossible for models of Black and Asian origin to capture the top fashion posts. Pandering to the Eurocentric notion that blond is beautiful, the industry ensures there remain very few people of colour strutting the catwalks in London, Paris, Rome and New York, despite the fact that these cities are demographically multinational and pride themselves as being global cities.

Sporting Polemics takes up this issue given that sport, fashion, film and popular music have virtually fused into one gigantic entertainment industry, the obvious and grotesque failings of the one clearly tainting the reputation of the others.

The most celebrated example of the fusion of sport, fashion and music comes with the Posh and Becks brand where it is sometimes difficult to remember just what it is that David and Victoria are famous for. Ronaldo too has cleverly exploited the sport/fashion nexus and Rafael Nadal is soon to travel the same road. Swanking about in Armani boxer shorts seems to earn a top sportsman as much dosh as kicking or hitting a ball, and there are no niggling injuries to worry about.

Campbell should take some pride in the anti racist stand that she takes but there are even bigger questions concerning the fashion industry which need to be addressed. Yes, I can appreciate that designing clothes is a form of art, and as such can be considered a legitimate form of human expression. But the blunt reality of the global fashion industry is that it is not only a white, wealthy preoccupation, but that it is narcissistic in the extreme. What sort of monsters are we, where billions of human beings are still forced to eke out a primitive and degrading existence from the rubbish tips of the global economy, while at the very same time a handful of ‘beautiful women’ prostrate themselves at the feet of an even smaller handful of mostly male designers who amass huge wealth for something of arguably negligible social value?

Of course these self-same criticisms can be levelled at all aspects of the global entertainment industry, and what is true of top models is equally true of footballers and pop stars. The status and wealth we bestow on these performers, particularly at a time of chronic global poverty, says legions about our collective morality at the end of the first decade of the 21st century. At least the boxer Chris Eubanks had the honesty to declare boxing a barbaric sport and one he participated in purely for the money. It would be most refreshing if Kate Moss and Co could make similar pronouncements about their respective entertainment sector. At least it appears that, on the question of race, Naomi Campbell is travelling in the right direction. For this she should be applauded.