Terry Richardson's Still A Scumbag

It's no secret that a lot of shady stuff can go on behind the scenes of the fashion and entertainment industries: People are imbued with a level of power, money, and influence (those three often go together) that allows for a whole lot of abuse. These people can be frustratingly hard to get rid of, even when those abuses become public: Name power and resumes have a lot of sway. But we really should be paying attention, especially when those abuses of power are brought to our attention like with this tweet from a model of a text Terry Richardson allegedly sent her, saying she could be in Vogue if only she's sleep with him.

Richardson's people have already responded to the tweet — sent this weekend by model Emma Appleton — claiming it to be false. And, sure, photoshop is easy these days. But considering this is far (far, far ) from the first allegation of this type of abuse of privilege Richardson's been on the receiving end of? We probably shouldn't dismiss it.

Appleton has since deleted the tweets and seemingly removed herself from Twitter entirely, perhaps unprepared for the flood of attention something like this brings. But amongst the rabble of near-constant allegations of this nature towards Richardson, her claim that this text is real rings true:

Richardson remains an incredibly successful, heavily employed photographer. But while mistreatment of models and other talent is nothing new, you'd think publications like Vogue would see something like this and feel something, do something — if not to protect the people who work for them from the other people who work for them, than maybe to protect themselves from how horrid this makes them look.

Image: Twitter