Pretty / Ugly
Everybody judges everybody by looks--at least at first, appearance is one of the first clues we have about anyone we meet. But it has always been harder for a woman to overcome that, not least because American culture is so strongly tilted in favor of the beautiful (or at least some ideal that many accept as beautiful). Even the female TV and movie characters who are supposed to be the plain one are prettier than the general average (and certainly thinner). Remember Kate Jackson on Charlie's Angels? (Yes, kids, there was a TV show before the movies. Look it up in your history books.) She was supposed to be the average-looking one. Yeah, right. More recently, I read somewhere that Teri Hatcher of Desperate Housewives was refreshing for looking like a normal forty-year-old woman. Teri Hatcher?! Please.
just ran across a couple of things that suggest that maybe, just maybe, media is open to the idea of acknowledging that looks-ism for women is a reality. Nike is running an ad on the US Open coverage (you can see the ad at the Nike site) with Maria Sharapova. Sharapova walks through her hotel, rides a cab, passes reporters and fans, and enters the stadium accompanied by all the people around her singing "I Feel Pretty" with what's clearly intended as disdain. (And none of these people are conventionally attractive.) You're just another Kournikova, only here for your looks, they seem to be saying. Then Sharapova demolishes a shot for a point--and everyone shuts up about her looks.
Meantime, there's a new series debuting this fall called Ugly Betty, about a chunky Hispanic girl with braces on her teeth working at a fashion magazine. It's adapted from a Colombian telenovela which has reportedly been adapted in numerous languages and countries, and is hugely popular around the world. Entertainment Weekly (my bible of popular culture--I don't actually have to watch TV or see movies or listen to music to know what people are talking about--and it helps me get my money's worth out of TiVO) asked when Betty would get prettied up. She won't, the producers promise. I hope they're good as their word.
The actress who plays Betty, America Ferrera, came to notice in Real Women Have Curves is actually quite pretty out of the Ugly Betty drag, but she's not rail-thin--she is shaped like a real girl. At the same time, Sara Ramirez, who won the Tony award for her role in Spamalot on Broadway, has a regular role on the romance-novel-disguised-as-a-doctor-show Grey's Anatomy--Ramirez is another woman who probably wears a dress size with two digits but both on Broadway and in this program, nobody's casting her as the fat girl.
So perhaps we are not moving as far away from looks-ism as I might like, but at least we're starting to acknowledge a broader range of beauty--and that beauty and accomplishment are two different things. At least I would like to hope so.
just ran across a couple of things that suggest that maybe, just maybe, media is open to the idea of acknowledging that looks-ism for women is a reality. Nike is running an ad on the US Open coverage (you can see the ad at the Nike site) with Maria Sharapova. Sharapova walks through her hotel, rides a cab, passes reporters and fans, and enters the stadium accompanied by all the people around her singing "I Feel Pretty" with what's clearly intended as disdain. (And none of these people are conventionally attractive.) You're just another Kournikova, only here for your looks, they seem to be saying. Then Sharapova demolishes a shot for a point--and everyone shuts up about her looks.
Meantime, there's a new series debuting this fall called Ugly Betty, about a chunky Hispanic girl with braces on her teeth working at a fashion magazine. It's adapted from a Colombian telenovela which has reportedly been adapted in numerous languages and countries, and is hugely popular around the world. Entertainment Weekly (my bible of popular culture--I don't actually have to watch TV or see movies or listen to music to know what people are talking about--and it helps me get my money's worth out of TiVO) asked when Betty would get prettied up. She won't, the producers promise. I hope they're good as their word.
The actress who plays Betty, America Ferrera, came to notice in Real Women Have Curves is actually quite pretty out of the Ugly Betty drag, but she's not rail-thin--she is shaped like a real girl. At the same time, Sara Ramirez, who won the Tony award for her role in Spamalot on Broadway, has a regular role on the romance-novel-disguised-as-a-doctor-show Grey's Anatomy--Ramirez is another woman who probably wears a dress size with two digits but both on Broadway and in this program, nobody's casting her as the fat girl.
So perhaps we are not moving as far away from looks-ism as I might like, but at least we're starting to acknowledge a broader range of beauty--and that beauty and accomplishment are two different things. At least I would like to hope so.
posted by Maines at 3:12 PM
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