Okay, Ellen DeGeneres isn’t exactly Pamela Anderson. And Katie Couric is no Kathie Lee Gifford. But I gotta say, it still rings a little hollow when these two broadcasting divas get on that old “sexist culture” soapbox.
I won’t lie, though. I completely agree with what DeGeneres said when she told Couric in a recent CBS web-only interview:
“It’s a double standard” when it comes to women and body image.
“There are men with really beautiful women that don’t have great bodies,” she said. “Yet nobody is saying anything about that.” [Ed: Except Pasta.]
“It’s not fair,” Ellen added. “The way that magazines airbrush everything, women are looking at bodies like that going, ‘my stomach doesn’t look like that. I’m supposed to look like that?’ So they starve themselves and they work out like crazy . . . We put the wrong emphasis on what beauty is, and what health is.”
True. Buuuuut …
In their own small ways, couldn’t both DeGeneres and Couric be seen as just a teensy bit complicit in perpetuating women’s unhealthy obsession with body image? Perhaps, as NewsBusters’ Candance Moore notes:
. . . the reason for [women's obsession with body image] is not because of domineering men. Maybe girls feel pressure to look better because their Idols like Ellen DeGeneres tell them to.
Hmmm. Let’s see if Ellen can explain to her fans how her decision to become a CoverGirl spokeswoman (complete with airbrushed photos) fits in with that whole healthy body image thing. Isn’t trying to make a 52-year-old look like a 22-year-old kinda the same as airbrushing a little cellulite off a celeb’s thighs?
Or perhaps she would care to comment on what exactly it was that she found so attractive about the tall, leggy, and formerly anorexic Portia de Rossi? I’m sure it was her taste in books. Or movies. I mean, is it just me, or doesn’t the Better Off Ted blonde bombshell sort of epitomize our sexist society’s female ideal?
Oh, it’s just me? Oh, okay.
And, yes, I realize this ad is tongue-in-cheek, but I also know there are plenty of young women out there who idolize Ellen. (Don’t ask me why.) They might not completely get the joke. And, well, judging from other CoverGirl ads I’ve seen — she’s not really too far off-base with that first line anyway.
And Couric? Didn’t Her Perkiness take Ellen to task for this blatant double-talk? Peel her like “a raw carrot,” as Phoebe Eaton of Harper’s Bazaar said she did in her interview with Sarah Palin? Not so much.
Sadly, as NewsBusters explains:
. . . the hard-hitting news anchor Katie Couric went right along with [Ellen's] rant, even piping in herself to bemoan the unhealthy lengths some women go to.
Meanwhile . . . Couric is currently featured in Harper’s Bazaar bragging about her shapely legs that helped her succeed in broadcasting. No word on whether a fat girl might starve herself to have legs like Katie Couric.
Like Katie Couric? Eh.
Like Portia de Rossi? Now we’re talkin’.
Related posts:
- Hollywood’s Alec Baldwin Double Standard I’m glad Defamer still exists in some form because once...
- Demi Moore Insists It’s Her Real Body on W’s Cover Demi Moore is at the center of a controversy surrounding...
- I’m Too Sexy for This… Britney Spears Concert??? If you can’t get your freak on at a Britney...
- Brigitte Bardot: Sexy Is Fleeting, Crazy Is Forever Ecorazzi excerpted a Slovenian interview with batshiz-crazy Brigitte Bardot that...
- Mike Huckabee Says Media Suffers From ‘Acute Dishonesty’ Former governor of Arkansas and Fox News Channel commentator Mike...
My apologies because this is unrelated to this story, but I don’t have access to my e-mail from this location, and thought you would appreciate this tip… Looks like Amnesty International is “in bed” with a jihadist, and has suspended their own head of their gender unit after she dared to criticize their relationship publicly…
http://www.hurryupharry.org/2010/02/07/statement-by-gita-sahgal-on-amnesty-international-and-cageprisoners/
Is this the same Katie Couric who makes $14 million per year while CBS is having to lay off hundreds of their workers without giving her a paycut? Maybe she should just stay away from the photoshoots and ask for a pay reduction. She or her legs are not worth $14 million.
This story reminds me a great deal of Madeleine (“Not At”) Albright, who used to yammer on and on and everlovin’ ON about how she loved “using” her “attractiveness” to aid her in her job. Which, BTW, had nothing to do with attractiveness. Not to be catty–well, okay, it’s catty–but neither DeGeneres nor Couric is exactly pinup material, unless you’ve just been turned down for parole for the 50th straight year.
Had DeGeneres been involved with a regular-looking gal, I’d buy the “double standard” business. But both De Rossi and her previous squeeze were/are lookers. One gets the sense that Hollywood really doesn’t allow for women who aren’t, regardless of whether they’re driving stick.
Beige, I couldn’t agree with you more. I have never understood how Couric got as far as she did. As for the Albright issue, the men would also need to be blind.
LN, they’d also need to be completely ignorant of the existence of moray eels, which Albright resembles so closely as to beggar the idea of coincidence.
I think it’s amusing that Ellen makes a claim about our “society” having the wrong attitude about health and beauty when I’ll bet that she has no real concept of health or beauty. For one thing we live in a materialistic society driven by consumerism. People have a tendency to measure their worth by the value and/or quantity of their possessions. For this reason they also only place value on things that directly lead to material gain, such as beauty. Likewise people will place value on physical fitness if a person is a professional athlete but often look down on people who show an equal or greater dedication to it to boost their quality of life.
As for beauty, what people are really talking about is sexual attraction. Beauty is a component of sexual attraction because a healthy body looks a certain way. To be specific I am referring to weight, muscle tone, body fat distribution, healthy skin, hair, nails and teeth as well as properly developed bone structure. While some of these things we may not have control over, such as our bone structure, most of them we do. So what does it say about a person who willingly destroys their health because of their own insecurity. Furthermore when magazines put an attractive woman on the cover of a magazine what they are selling is sex not beauty. The reason sex sells is because it is a fundamental human need that is as important as food. As Westerners most have no real concept of how health interrelates to sex because we have a tendency to think of the body and mind as being separate. We also have a gross immaturity when it comes to sex. Let’s be honest about something, many adults have the maturity level of a horny teenager without the health.
As for health. The food industry processes the hell out of our food to the point where there is no nutrition left in it. Eating that much processed food causes vitamin and mineral deficiencies because our bodies have to use up their supplies to digest it. After a while people start suffering from multiple vitamin and mineral deficiencies that can cause everything form mental illness to cancer.
What people like Ellen don’t get is that people are resorting to drastic measures to lose weight because weight problems are becoming so prevalent. And what she also doesn’t get is that many of these girls are already suffering from depression, hormonal problems which can also affect mood and the beginnings of other health issues. Now people like her will complain about women losing weight to become more attractive but she doesn’t say anything about someone like Carnie Wilson getting a gastric bypass to lose weight. Carnie Wilson is also a good example because even after the surgery she still refuses to take proper care of her health. Ellen also doesn’t get that the medical industry in this country uses every opportunity to push drugs on people. And a country full of people who don’t take care of their health with an older generation with no concept of what health is an ideal market. Furthermore she also doesn’t get that traditionally the wealthy tend to have more health problems because they can afford to far more than they need including junk food. Many celebrities do exactly this. They earn far more than their worth and have no idea what to do with it. They are exploited by doctors and plastic surgeons because quite frankly many of them are not that bright.
Ellen and Katie Couric have no business commenting on any health matter because they are not knowledgeable enough to do so. They also have a lot of nerve when the revenue for their show are generated by the revenue from advertising. And much of that advertising is for junk food, processed food and medication. I don’t want to sound mean but these people need to shut the Hell up and not get involved with things they don’t know anything about.
So I’m alone thinking Katie Couric is hot?
No, Katie herself also thinks so, Pasta. So that makes…2.
yeah, but would Jrod hit it?
And when discussing animal rights activist (though I don’t know for sure she’s a PETArd) Ellen’s Cover Girl ads, let us not forget that CG’s parent company Proctor & Gamble likes to rub mascara in little bunny’s eyes. It was only last year that I last read about P&G’s animal testing, and they MIGHT have stopped, but I have yet to hear about it. I think I’ll go look that up now…
Okay, I sort of retract my comment. P&G does not test cosmetics on animals. They do test some other things, like their IAMS products, on animals.
Well, since both Portia and Covergirl were mentioned tangentially, I’ve gotta to ask:
Has anyone else noticed DiRossi’s pancake makeup on Better Off Ted?
Her neck looks like she’s been lounging in a pot of Old Bay boil and her face is Lilo Orange #21. I wasn’t aware that she suffered from leprosy, but three cheers to her for making necrosis sexy.
Couric is lit and airbrushed to whatever degree of “perfection” she is under the impression that she is under such stress to maintain.
See, Couric totally lost any vestigial hawtness she’d ever had when she did that non-erotic “Let’s take a camera tour UP MY BUTT” moment. It was for a good cause and all, but ew. The total absence of bamp-chicka-WAAH-WAAH probably killed the artistic value of the whole piece.
Shannon Breem – Fox News
Soledad O’Brien – CNN
Darla Miles – WABC-NY
Dana Tyler – WCBS-NY
Hot newscasters for you there Pasta. And whenever I flip through my issue of Men’s Health, I see plenty of airbrushed men, so sell that double standard elsewhere. If hot women are with drab men, blame the hot women and credit the men for not thinking the hot ones are “out of their league”.
Remember that time Katie Couric had her on-camera body slimmed down a good 20 lbs or so? It was done for some news broadcast at the beginning of her big career change and caused a pretty big controversy at the time. Yeah way to go Katie- fight that evil “Man” who’s trying to project an image of perfection for women!
I think the “hot women with drab men” has a lot less to do with a double standard and a lot more to do with what attracts the sexes to one another. Not to stereotype, but it’s fairly obvious that MOST men are very visually oriented. While women do notice attractive men, we’re a lot more likely to be turned on by a guy’s intelligence, his attitude toward us, and his personality overall. And also how much money he makes.
Have to give SJS dubious credit for her obsessive persistence… Throwing in a negative Palin reference at every turn, and somehow making it seem relevant to the post… Kudos for the incessant consistency. However, I can see your left-leaning house of cards from my back porch…
It’s one thing to point out double standards. It’s another thing to fight them. Fighting the double standards are harder and sometimes not worth the trouble for some people.