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‘Everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner’: how Karl de-fanged Lily Allen

I felt strangely sad when I read about Lily Allen’s big debut onto the fashion scene, performing at the Chanel show in Paris last week.

Strange because, well, she certainly seemed happy about. She’s ‘one of them’ now: friends with Kate Moss, one of Karl Lagerfeld’s British darlings. I wouldn’t call it ‘selling out’, because it’s not like it has affected her music - or like she ever wasn’t a mainstream pop star to begin with. And yes, she does look pretty fabulous in the photo above.

But I’m wondering if this newfound ‘fabulousness’ comes at too high a price - namely, her shrinking body. In this week’s Grazia, Maxine Frith writes:

After the show, Karl gave Lily a massive bunch of roses and told her she was a Chanel girl now. Her appearance came after months of dieting and exercise to ensure she looked her best.

“She and Karl had been talking for ages about what she should do for the show,” says an inside source. “Lily’s really slimmed down but she’s never going to be a size zero so she didn’t want to walk the runway and be compared to the models.

Now, Grazia is the classiest of the weekly magazines, but I’d be silly if I didn’t consider that the above was probably at least a bit made up - like most celebrity gossip stories. But the overall narrative strikes me as true. Allen has dropped a dress size or two over the past year or so.

And, well, ew. It’s not like she’s alone in her body shrinking as her fame grows (the same could be said of almost any female celebrity), but there’s something particularly uncomfortable about it in her case, because she’s always been so open about her insecurities - in her lyrics, her blog posts and her comments to the media.

I wish my life was a little less seedy
Why am I always so greedy?
Wish I looked just like Cheryl Tweedy
I know I never will

One thing some people seem to miss about Lily Allen’s lyrics (I’m thinking all those people who hate the song 22 here) is that they tend to be three things at once: part facetious comment on society, part facetious comment on her own shortcomings, and part painfully honest admission of her insecurities.

So in the case of 22, when she says of a woman in her late-20s “it’s sad but it’s true that society says her life is already over”, I don’t think she’s saying that she, Lily Allen, thinks that women are “past it” once they hit 30. I think she’s saying that certain segments of society imply this is the case, and that if you’re the kind of woman who believes that her value resides entirely in her looks, ‘it girl’ qualities and ability to attract a man, there’s an element of truth to it.

Similarly, when she sings “I’m not a saint, and I’m not a sinner, now everything’s cool as long as I’m getting thinner”, she’s a making a social comment, yes, but it’s a comment that works because it’s something a lot of women actually think, if only secretly. Including, I’m willing to bet, Lily Allen.

Which is why the Karl Lagerfeld connection is so off-putting. Because it hinges on her meeting his ridiculous body standards. And because it backs up what her lyrics suggest she has long believed, at least on an emotional level - that social acceptance and affirmation come from being as thin as possible.