The Reluctant Whore

Ben Widdicombe reports that former model Christie Turlington has Lyme disease. Isn’t that interesting? I mean, here you have two separate parts of a story that would ordinarily probably not get that much press on their own but when you put them together it’s oddly fascinating. Christie Turlington, the extraordinarily beautiful face of Calvin Klein’s iconic 90s fragrance Eternity and Lyme disease – a disease people get from ticks.

Lyme disease is one of those old diseases too, that have a more severe sounding name because it was named a while ago, before all the diseases got mnemonics for names. So, Christie Turlington seems to have been hanging out with ticks, she got Lyme disease.

“Supermodels” aren’t generally associated with “disease” at all let alone one that involves a sort of lesion either. Well, unless you’re talking about the models that are physically ruined so they stay thin to keep working and the horror is immediately evident in their shrunk wrapped torsos.

Turlington’s husband, Ed Burns’ has a rep who says she’s healthy and happy but we all know that’s a party line. Now, for some reason I can’t help but picture her in a stone tower lamenting her ill-health, staring down sadly, while she is quarantined. Quarantined, again – just so we don’t forget – because of Lyme disease [source]