It's a "pimp and whore" culture, complains multi-millionnaire Dame Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, a 300-store chain of health-and-body boutiques.

Lashing out at pop such as such as Beyoncé and Britney Spears for celebrating the sex industry, Dame Anita recently told a reporter, "A lot of people seem to think it's cool to be a pimp or a whore. It's not cool. The reality is dark and evil and appalling and unregulated. The reality is sexual trafficking, which is about young women being forced into rooms to have sex however many times a day so the pimp can take all the money. I don't get it."

Dame Anita bemoans the imagery and message the pop culture and the advertising industry are sending to girls and young women, saying it makes growing up with high self-esteem virtually impossible.

She said: "There are thousands of ads mostly focused on women and young girls that say you are not attractive, you are not sexy, you are not intelligent unless you look like this... [in] kids' magazines there is a passivity and a stupidity that is seen as the great way forward.

"And then you hear the statistics that we have the most violent young women in Europe because of binge drinking. I haven't got much hope. Something's gone very wrong."


Anita Roddick | Britney Spears | Beyonce