Blog | 21 July 2026
Katie Price, Jordan and the Women Society Can't Quite Understand
We discuss how the Katie Price docuseries explores themes of survivor-hood, hypersexuality and celebrity.
Okay, so we’ve just watched the Katie Price docuseries on Sky. And it’s safe to say… she’s a complicated woman.
For reasons lost somewhere in Survivors’ Network folklore, we have a small cut-out of Katie Price’s head Blu-Tacked to our office door. We can’t actually remember why. Maybe because she’s a Sussex girl. Maybe because she’s spoken so openly about surviving child sexual abuse. Maybe because she’s challenged online abuse, raised awareness of neurodiversity, or been unapologetic about bodily autonomy. Maybe it’s all of the above.
Whatever the reason, the documentary left us thinking.
When presented with Katie’s two “personas” (KP & Jordan) and her war between the two, for me, it shines a light on something feminism has talked about for decades: the Madonna-whore complex. The idea that women are expected to fit neatly into one of two boxes. You’re either the “good” woman: nurturing, maternal, modest, respectable. Or you’re the “bad” woman: sexual, provocative, attention-seeking, someone whose body exists for public consumption and public judgement.
The problem is, real women don’t fit into boxes.
Katie Price is a mother. A daughter. A businesswoman. A survivor. She’s also Jordan: overtly sexual, glamorous, provocative and someone who has built a career around her image. Society seems deeply uncomfortable with the idea that she can be all of those things at once. We celebrate women for motherhood while shaming them for sexuality. We expect complexity from men but demand consistency from women.
One of the most powerful moments in the documentary is Katie talking, once again, about the child sexual abuse she experienced. She has spoken about it many times, and she reflects on how those experiences shaped the relationship she has with her body.
It’s a story we’ve heard before.
When we wrote about the Pamela Anderson documentary, we reflected on how early sexual trauma can sometimes shape a person’s relationship with sex, intimacy and visibility. For some survivors, hypersexuality can become a way of reclaiming ownership over a body that was once taken from them. Not because trauma causes one inevitable outcome, but because survivors find countless different ways to survive. Katie describes craving men to look at her…but not touch her. That distinction feels significant. Being seen was on her terms. Being touched once wasn’t.
Of course, Katie isn’t beyond criticism. Many survivors who admire her felt disappointed when she appeared at Wayne Lineker’s O Beach alongside Conor McGregor; a promotional trip that, for many, sat uneasily given the wider conversations around violence against women and accountability.
It’s also impossible to ignore that some of the ways Katie has coped with fame and trauma have likely had an impact on the people closest to her, particularly her children. That doesn’t erase her experiences, but it does remind us that trauma, public life and parenting can be deeply complicated. It’s okay to hold that discomfort. Survivors, celebrities and campaigners are all capable of making choices that leave others feeling conflicted.
But perhaps that’s exactly the point.
Katie Price isn’t a symbol. She isn’t just “Jordan”, nor is she simply a survivor. She’s a person. Messy, contradictory, resilient, impulsive, vulnerable and flawed. We often demand that survivors become perfect advocates or morally spotless public figures. We want them to embody empowerment without contradiction. But healing has never looked like perfection.
Maybe the most honest thing about Katie Price is that she refuses to stay in the box people built for her. She keeps climbing out of it, even when the world tries to push her back in.
And whether you admire her, criticise her, or feel somewhere in between, perhaps that’s the point. Women have always been more complex than the stories society tells about them.