For Christmas 2005 Selfridges ran a newspaper ad in the colour magazines featuring a tableau of black  pimps and hos in sex kit bra and pants. The strapline read “Get you Christmas booty”. Selfridges weren’t the only ones. Gangsta rap was deemed to be chic at the time and so an upmarket store felt it could cash in on such glamour to sell their “booty”.

Gangsta rap glorifies criminality and violence, often against women. It is, needless to say, hugely influential.

I thought at the time that some appalling line had been crossed. If mainstream media and upper class department stores think gangsterism and prostitution are respectable and glamorous what do you expect young people to make of it?

In Manchester this week Miss Selfridge, which began as the young fashion section of Selfridges, was torched by the mob.

 


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