It’s OK to wank over Foxy Knoxy now

Amanda Knox has won her appeal, and her conviction for the murder of her flatmate has been overturned.While I am no legal expert, it had seemed to me like much of the evidence against Knox had been circumstantial, and, considering further scrutiny found her innocent, it would appear that Amanda Knox is not a murderer.

Whether Knox was a murderer or not always seemed to me to be the important thing about the story: who killed Meredith Kercher? Was her flatmate somehow involved in the crime? Unfortunately, for many, this was not particularly relevant. Aside from the typical tabloid recounting of grisly scenes of murder, what was more salient was that Amanda Knox was an attractive young woman. The tabloids lapped it up. “Foxy Knoxy”, they called her.

It is immediately apparent that the interest had never really been in whether Knox killed anyone: after all, we never hear of Horny Hindley or Chesty Westy, as both Hindley and West were not deemed attractive or young enough to provide the fascination.

Amanda Knox, on the other hand, was reported on at times in a way that only omega-list celebrities going to the shops are reported. Take for example, the 2010 Mail article about Knox’s slander hearing: the headline read “AMANDA KNOX CHOPS OFF HAIR AND SUFFERS “DEPRESSION” BEFORE SLANDER COURT HEARING”. Here, the hearing–the actual, newsworthy part of the story–is added almost as an afterthought, behind the story of a young woman getting a haircut and suffering from mental health problems, which, with typical Mail sympathy, are hygienically sealed off with quotation marks as though they do not exist at all. The first line is even more telling: “The cool-headed composure and piercing blue eyes remain familiar from her murder trial.” Knox’s looks, to the Daily Mail, are far more important than the news.

The tabloids appeared to have quite the crush on Amanda Knox, and therefore desperately tried to crowbar in as many photographs of her as possible around slight allusions to the actual story. Never is this more apparent than in tabloid discussion of Knox’s sex life: gushingly lurid descriptions, followed by a slight tut-tutting, just so they don’t look too much like they’re cracking one out over someone who might be a murderer–except for those, like this tweeter, who actively preferred the idea that Knox was a murderer.

It must be an utter delight, then, for the crass media types to finally be free from the guilt of a crafty wank over a killer, following Knox’s appeal result. No-one was more open about this fact than Channel 5 televisual torture The Wright Stuff, who proposed as their phone-in question:

Parts 2 & 3: Foxy Knoxy: Would Ya?
So Amanda Knox has been cleared of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher. She’s entirely innocent. She’s also undeniably fit and loves wild sex. Or did. So if you were a guy who’d met her in a bar and she invited you back to hers, would you go? I’m being quite serious. Or would something in your brain make you think twice?

There are interesting, relevant things to be discussed around the story of Amanda Knox’s appeal. For example, what might be the impact of being imprisoned almost four years? How does this reflect on the Italian justice system? What about Raffaele Sollecito, who was also cleared on appeal?

Instead, though, there is the same old tired focus on Amanda Knox as a sex object rather than a human being, except now one can spunk on her photograph without having to fold the Daily Mail article over where it alludes to her crimes.

Our misogynistic media is thoroughly obsessed with two things: attractive young women and lurid crimes They must be utterly delighted that finally some legitimate wanking material has emerged from the story of a murder.