Kerry Parnell: Celebs need to stop the ‘stealth-boobing’ on Instagram

Columnist Kerry Parnell has an issue with ‘stealth-boobing’ and is urging celebs like Halle Berry and Liz Hurley to stop adding ridiculous captions pretending they’re about something else.

Forget humble-bragging, now it’s humble-boobing.

You can’t scroll through social media for fear of having your retinas scorched by a 50-plus female celebrity getting her boobs out – whilst pretending she isn’t.

The thing is ladies, you are fooling nobody. I’m looking at you, Halle Berry, Liz Hurley, Demi Moore and Jennifer Lopez.

While you all have astonishingly hot bodies and deserve congratulating for the effort you put in to maintaining them, can you at least be honest about your addiction to posting tit pics?

I don’t have a problem with the boob parade, what I have an issue with is stealth-boobing – instead of being upfront about posting bikini snaps, it’s the ridiculous captions pretending they’re about something else.

Take Liz Hurley, 56, who needs no excuse to pose in her own-brand swimwear and quite right too, as she looks amazing and has made a business out of it.

But a post on Instagram on Thursday about spraining her ankle, alongside a bikini selfie, is a bit of a stretch.

It’s almost as bad as her post a few weeks ago of, “Yeeeessssss! Covid booster today. Thank you,” with a photo of herself in a leopard-print bikini. If she went for her jab in that get-up, she’d have finished off the whole queue of over-50s.

Halle Berry's boob pic which she posted on Instagram.

Same for Halle Berry, 55, who has turned Hootie McBoob, Marge Simpson-style. Last week she posted, “I felt the sun on my face today and my soul smiled… more of that please in 2022! POW POW!” with a snap of her looking into a ray of light and effectively causing a solar eclipse with her chest.

I wish they would just write, “boobs” and be done with it. At least it would be honest.

Humble-boobing has replaced that early Instagram phenomenon of the humble brag, where celebrities were #blessed and praying-hands-emoji galore about their freebies, until legislation came in that they had to declare it an #ad and suddenly nobody was fake-grateful anymore.

Interestingly, stealth-boobing seems to be mainly embraced by older celebrities. The younger, from Kim Kardashian, 41, to Laura Dundovic, 34, don’t waste their time with false modesty and simply post boobelage for what it is.

One of the images Madonna posted on Instagram.

Then there is the exception, Madonna, who at 63, is — and always was — upfront about her sexy shots. She doesn’t need to humble-anything, because she’s Madonna. The pop star recently posted images of herself writhing on and under a bed, clad in fishnets and peekaboo bra and was furious Instagram barred them because they showed a bit of nipple. She blasted the site for its hypocrisy.

“I’m reposting photographs Instagram took down,” she wrote.

“It is still astounding to me that we live in a culture that allows every inch of a woman’s body to be shown except a nipple. As if that is the only part of a woman’s anatomy that could be sexualised. And what about a woman’s ass which is never censored anywhere. Giving thanks that I have managed to maintain my sanity through four decades of censorship… sexism… ageism and misogyny.”

Now she really is hashtag blessed.

22 words I want cancelled in 2022

Let’s start the new year by putting these words to rest, once and for all:

1-17: Covid, virus, pandemic, lockdown, masks, lateral flow tests, Delta, Omicron, vaccines, border closures, travel restrictions, Covid passports. The day these terms stop being everyday parlance cannot come fast enough.

We are all sick of hearing about Covid and Kerry Parnell hopes we can finally move on from the pandemic in 2022. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Flavio Brancaleone

18. Mindfulness: If ever there was a word that has been overused, it’s mindfulness. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fully behind the concept of understanding your emotions, in fact I am so aware of mine, I am begging for everyone to stop going on about mindfulness all the time.

My kids’ school sends out so many mindfulness emails, info-sheets and surveys, it’s stressing me out. The final mindfulness survey at the end of term, asking me whether I was mindful of mindfulness threatened to tip me over the edge and into the Christmas abyss, which I would imagine was the opposite of their intention, so I simply deleted it instead and instantly felt much better about my mental health.

19. Mental health: Which leads me to the sibling of mindfulness, mental health. Again, of course it is great that as a society we are all much more aware of mental health issues, but instead of talking about them incessantly “to raise awareness”, we need to actually do something.

It’s time to stop paying lip service to it and start paying for it – funding the frontline with more therapists, more beds, more real-time help for those who need it.

20. Teat pipette: I just hate the words, thank you.

21. Panties: Dear men of 2022, do not use this word, ever. It’s the serial killer of underwear descriptors, enough to terminate any relationship on utterance. Haven’t you ever noticed the lady in your life doesn’t call her undies “panties”? Never wondered why? I’ll tell you – it’s because it is impossible to say without utilising a particular pervy breathy tone. Don’t try. Really, don’t.

In my twenties, me and my friend once broke down near the Belanglo State Forest (yes, that one) and had to be towed back to Sydney late at night by two guys who regaled us with stories of their mate who kept a blow-up doll sitting in his car in his garage, dressed in a mini-skirt and … yes, you know it’s coming, here it is, “panties”. This conversation happened 25 years ago and their voices and that word has been indelibly imprinted in my mind to this day.

Author J.K. Rowling was “cancelled” in 2021. Picture: Angela Weiss/AFP

22. Cancelled: Finally, after we’ve cancelled all the above, can we stop cancelling things? Call me crazy (and yes, everyone does) but there was a time when people managed to get along with each other whilst holding opposing views about such things as politics, sporting teams and other outlooks on life. I think … and I may be wrong, here, but do you know, it was a time before, yes, I’ve got it … Twitter.

In ye olden days pre-social media, a pile-on was either a footie term or electricity pole, being in the TERF club had nothing to do with J.K. Rowling and everything to do with racing and the only thing being de-platformed was your train home.

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