When Naomi met Volodya

This annoys me soooooo much...

First of all, I don't really have much respect for Naomi Campbell. All I know about her is that she's a supermodel from the 90s, she's like the emaciated version of Russell Crowe (but don't let that fool you, she can be just as vicious with a telephone!), she was involved in a blood diamonds scandal, and she's dating the Russian oligarch Vladislav Doronin, who according to Colleen and Stuart's friend Nina (she lives in the same building where Doronin has a penthouse suite), is a complete wuss who got freaked out by Nina's mum when he was forced to share an elevator with her and no security.

So when I saw that Naomi had interviewed Putin for GQ magazine, I had to roll my eyes. What could a vacuous model who's had numerous encounters with the law have to say to the prime minister of Russia? Well, not much apparently.

The whole interview is just as vapid and gag-inducing as I imagined. Regardless of how you feel about Putin, the fact remains that he is one of the world's most powerful men and there are surely more interesting and globally important issues to discuss with him than how he stays fit. (Answer: by swimming the butterfly. Naomi informs us that she was just in the Dead Sea in Jordan and "it was the first time I floated in my entire life." I feel so much smarter knowing that now.)

The worst part of the interview in my opinion was their discussion on the erotic calendar that the MGU female journalist students put out back in October in honour of Putin's birthday. I blogged about it previously here. Now my feelings have just been magnified by Putin's response to it:

"I like the girls a lot, they're beautiful. I like the calendar but it's not the most important thing. As for the other one, well, in almost any country, probably in Russia in particular, it's fashionable to criticise people in power. If you come out in support of someone like me, you're going to be accused of trying to ingratiate yourself. The girls in the erotic calendar were courageous and they were not scared. As student journalists, they couldn't fail to understand what might have been said to them after doing this. Nonetheless, they were not deterred and did the calendar anyway. So, frankly, that's what I liked the most."

There are so many things wrong with this! The girls were COURAGEOUS for posing in lingerie with inane speech bubbles over their heads saying things like, "You put the fires out but I'm still burning"?? In my opinion, that's not courageous or commendable, that's cheap and like, two GIANT steps back for women's equality. Plus, of course the women were not deterred from doing the calendar. A) They're going to get noticed, and B) It's not like people who AGREE with Putin are risking their lives or anything.

I'm just really disappointed and disgusted by this article. Not cool, GQ.