LIZ JONES: The world’s most famous women think they have to be naked to be noticed. Utterly desperate, they’re driven by fear

It is billed as the Oscars of the fashion world. The annual red carpet Met Ball takes place on the first Monday in May at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (although based on the photos here it should be renamed the Metropolitan Museum of A**e), organized by the global editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.

It is intended as a showcase for creativity. It is referred to to show how the fashion industry is truly an amazing art form, encompassing completely different shapes, races, genders and ages today. The aim is to raise money, ostensibly from ticket sales of $350,000 (£279,000) per table of ten, for the work of the museum (although I wonder if the biggest stars have a soft spot) and appoint the invited guests to that end every year a different theme on which they base their outfits.

This time it was flowers. What’s not to love and think about?

And yet, in one fell swoop, this year’s dresses, and the bodies put into them, have managed to set the cause of responsible, female-friendly fashion back by more than 100 years.

Shakira wore a barely-there dress with thigh-high boots to a Met Gala after-party on Monday

Actress Sydney Sweeney was equally revealing as she posed for the Met Gala

I’m talking about the fact that powerful stars underline the belief that a woman must be naked to be noticed. That the kind of publicity that actresses, models, and talented individuals need and want can only be achieved through self-exposure of the most literal kind.

Despite the price tags, the garments worn by many of those who walked the red carpet on Monday night – all by the most expensive couturiers in the world – were not made to enhance, support, conceal, amplify or enhance. They were just wisps, a smokescreen that proclaimed the wearer’s Olympic hours in the gym or the prowess of her cosmetic surgeon to the world. They showed women not how beautiful or creative they were, but how little they ate, or how preternaturally young they were.

Here was Jennifer Lopez, in silver Schiaparelli consisting of 2.5 million beads and basically nothing else. Her legs, buttocks and more were almost completely visible. The Met Ball was called The Garden of Time, but it should have been The Garden Where Time Stood Still. At 54, isn’t Lopez at an age where she might want to take her foot off the pedal?

Jennifer Lopez’s legs, bum and more were on display in a silver Schiaparelli dress made of 2.5 million beads and not much else, writes Liz Jones

Rita Ora’s Marni tabard exposed just about everything

Emily Ratajkowski’s sheer spiderweb dress from Versace made her the sum of her feminine parts…

…while Elle Fanning’s Balmain creation made her look like a piece of meat wrapped in cling film

Singer Rita Ora, 33, was another perpetrator. She wore a Marni tabard, which exposed not only the side breasts, but also the sides everything. One commenter noted that her outfit resembled the beaded curtain at the back of a dodgy cell phone repair shop. It covered virtually nothing.

Seeing spy model Emily Ratajkowski in a Versace spiderweb dress, with her entire breasts and butt clearly visible, changed my opinion of her as a woman who stood up for herself against the male gaze. I’ve always admired the 32-year-old for fighting against the male photographers who own and profit from images of her body, and I’ve seen her as a woman who actually has brains (she wrote a well-received book, My Body, in 2022 ). But now I can only see her instead as weak, a bleak victim, just the sum of her feminine parts.

Even worse for me was young movie star Elle Fanning, 26, in a Balmain dress. I’m sorry to say that she reminded me of a piece of meat wrapped in cling film: pink meat about to be consumed by the tyranny of youth, fame and notoriety. Everything was transparent, see-through – not even a peephole, but shamelessly on display.

These women have careers, fame, money and fans, so I wonder, as I scroll through the parade of pubic bones, why they go out dressed like that? No one looks happy or comfortable. (The only wide beams that evening were from women who dressed more modestly: Kylie, in the bargain basement Diesel, and actress Ayo Edebiri, in Loewe.) Instead, in my opinion, these young stars looked the opposite: with dark eyes , solemn , unhappy, frozen by the flashlights that would capture everything they had to offer as online clickbait in minutes.

Donatella Versace, who ‘dressed’ Ratajkowksi, is a woman, remember, so let’s not make the argument that it’s gay male designers treating us like plastic mannequins. These women are also not intimidated by pushy stylists who need publicity to boost their careers.

So why, after the decade of MeToo, after the focus on breaking the equal pay ceiling in Hollywood, are the most powerful, beautiful women in the world so eager and wantonly to humiliate themselves?

Dame Anna Wintour showed real power by opting for an understated coat dress by Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson, writes Liz Jones

Of course, real power doesn’t mean giving in to passing fads or the pressures of social media, a truth witnessed by this meat-fest’s hostess, Dame Anna Wintour, 74, who chose to wear an understated jacket dress by Loewe’s Jonathan Anderson. You can imagine her rolling her eyes at all this silly, easily influenced flibbertigibbets.

There were also many corsets on display, that old-fashioned method of female submission. Pop star Ariana Grande was tightly tied in pristine white ribbons, while singer Dua Lipa’s black lace number was pure Victoria’s Secret, worn with matching pantyhose that barely covered half of her behind.

Dua Lipa’s black lace number was pure Victoria’s Secret

Cardi B needed no fewer than five helpers to arrange her black lace dress around her, ready for this red carpet pose

Model Gigi Hadid, meanwhile, wore a Thom Browne dress with so many ruffles and frills that she could barely walk

Others could barely move. I almost laughed when I saw pop star Cardi B trying to pose for a photo: She needed a whopping five red carpet fluffs to arrange the folds of her black lace dress around her. Model Gigi Hadid wore a Thom Browne dress with so many ruffles and frills that she could barely walk. Instead of these women going out for a night, loud and proud, strong and bold, they were hobbled, like invalids in a nursing home. Shuffling like beached whales, but not a hint of blubber anywhere.

This particular silhouette is much more inaccessible than the distance of the 1990s, which could only be simulated by not taking food and water on board. No, this silhouette requires hard money. As former beauty editor Ellen Atlanta notes in her new book, Pixel Flesh, the likes of Kardashian and Kendall Jenner (who wore Givenchy’s Nineties on Monday night) are part of a digital culture that powers a £500 billion global beauty industry. Buttock lift surgery causes one death per 4,000 operations. Almost a million Botox injections are purchased in the UK every year. In my day, I used to leaf through Vogue once a month. Now? Girls click airbrushed photos thousands of times a day.

Kendall Jenner repeated her no-pants look from last year’s Met Gala in 1999 Givenchy Couture

It wasn’t just the women who looked ridiculous… Norwegian salmon fishing billionaire Gustav Magnar Witzoe’s chiffon dress had to be held down by helpers

A minority of men looked crazy too, most notably Norwegian salmon fishing billionaire Gustav Magnar Witzoe in, appropriately, salmon-colored chiffon. How handsome and superior was Jude Law, in a classic tuxedo, in comparison. But it was mainly the women who seemed completely desperate.

And I think I know what drives these women. And it’s the age-old fear of not being seen, of growing older, of being unloved, of becoming irrelevant.

Where are the stars who will be brave enough to break this trend? As it turned out on Monday evening, fame and success are unfortunately no longer about a woman’s oeuvre. It’s purely about her body.