The problem with sites about "girls"

When I was in South Korea, I don't remember where I got a link to it, but I followed a link to a site that is all about women in various dress, usually swimsuits. Basically, it's a paparazzi type of site that is all about showing famous women in various stages of undress. And the blogger who runs the site spends most of his time critiquing the women for how "hot" they are in particular pictures, and how hot they aren't based on the same kind of sophomoric criteria.

Now, maybe I'm just getting older, but I was just cruising that site earlier today, and I've discovered that I'm so uninterested in the site and everything it has to offer that I'm not even interested in the famous women that he tends to show nonstop on a daily basis. First off, I find myself somewhat ashamed that there are guys following a site like that to begin with, and even worse, I find myself ashamed that I've ever bothered to look at it myself.

What that site has managed to do for me is actually make me less respectful of the women who seem to go out of their way to build their careers off of pictures like that. I mean, there's a sense of me that thinks "wow, it's cool that Jessica Alba is really hot." When you're seeing nonstop pictures of her on a site like this, where it's VERY obvious that she's orchestrating her career by appearing in such stages of undress that will get picked up by this guy and other sites like his, you start to wonder why someone would demean herself to appear like this. Granted, her career is explosive, as is the careers of a lot of the other women who appear, but honestly, it seems so dirty and disgusting a way to make someone's living.

One other thing I've started to notice is that the more women that appear on sites like that, the more I start to feel that quite a few of them really aren't attractive but are exploiting themselves instead. An example is Megan Fox, who it can be argued has about zero talent for acting when it comes to actual acting. Yet, that page CONSTANTLY shows us more pictures of her puckering her lips and acting sexy. I find myself somewhat disgusted every time I see her. It's like we're rewarding the wrong people for the wrong things.

It's like the old idea of having posters of centerfolds, or whatever we call them nowadays. In the old days, every kid had the Farrah Fawcett poster. I'm sorry, but they did. And if you asked them why, not a single one would have told you it was because he respected her acting in Charlie's Angels because by the time that poster became famous, she was no longer even on the show. Not too long ago, a friend came over to my apartment in South Korea and asked me why I had a poster of Shania Twain. It's one of those hot posters of her. This one:


Now, when asked about it, I said I liked her music and respected her as a great entertainer. The woman just looked at me as if she didn't believe me. That's one of those things that happens because of the basic nature of why so many guys seem to have posters of women these days.

Sadly enough, that guy's site is a good reason why this sort of thing takes place as it does. This is the 21st century, and we're still seeing female actresses as hot models rather than as actresses. And part of the problem is the actresses themselves because they realize they have to do whatever they can to make a career as fast as they can, so they fall right into the familiar trappings and make things so that the next girl who comes after her is treated just as generically and unfairly as she was. It's why, to this day, I don't think we have more than half a dozen women who are ever taken seriously as actresses, although some try. You have the Meryl Streeps, Sandra Bullock and what used to be the career of Julia Roberts, but even those are rare box office draws, catering to a very specific market, like the romance crowd (especially for Bullock). Some of the great female actresses, like Uma Thurman rarely even get a mention, and are often left to make avant garde movies because no one else takes them seriously. So we end up with massive amounts of movies with Jessica Simpson, Megan Fox and (insert generic hot woman who has no talent). And the ones that do have some talent? They're left performing in movies that make fat, funny guys look cool.

You'd think something would have changed over the years, but I see it's still more of the same.

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Reading is for losers

I noticed something very interesting on the Fox News web site. Their entertainment section no longer has any information about books. They have TV, movies, music, celebrities and all that sort of stuff, but they removed any links to books as entertainment.

So, I guess reading isn't entertainment anymore. Kind of sad when you think about it.

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Societal double standards

Well, it appears that the jury is deciding whether or not Britney Spears was a trainwreck on the MTV's Video Music Awards program. While I stopped watching MTV when it actually stopped playing music videos, I am finding the condemnation of Britney to be quite humorous to observe. You see, while it was obvious she was just going through the motions and probably wasn't ready to be out in public doing this sort of thing just yet, what amazes me is that one of the commentaries being waged against her is that not only was she untalented, but she was also fat. Now, look at the picture. Is she really fat? Is she really considered obese? She just had a kid, and who can honestly be expected to keep the weight they wore when they were just becoming an adult?

But even without all that, what I find fascinating is that there is this whole movement in this day and age to "be proud of your body" no matter what size it is. Magazines that ridicule people who aren't "perfect" and then hold up to a pedestal women who starve themselves to death to maintain an unhealthy figure are the same magazines that are ridiculing Britney for being overweight, pudgy, and in the words of The New York Post, her performance was "lard and clear", stating that her "bulging belly she was flaunting was so not hot."

So, young women across the country, expect to be continued to be held to ridiculous standards of perfection to entice men and please women who are as critical as they expect men to be. We haven't moved any further forward on this issue, and we took three steps back. To me, THAT is so not hot, but then I don't write for The New York Post.

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The fine line between the actor/actress and how authentic is the character

I recently started watching Sci Fi channel's Flash Gordon. It's a cheesy type of show, and to be honest, I'm not really convinced it's all that good enough of a science fiction serial, which is what it's based on. It seems more a rehash of "can we tell the neighbors about our secret", the "we like this police officer, but we have to keep him/her in the dark about what's really happening", the "I really like my female co-star, but she's got a boyfriend" and "Oh yeah, there's this other world where we do some science fiction stuff". Personally, I think the show hasn't decided if it wants to be authentic science fiction, which Friday night stuff on Sci Fi generally is (like Battlestar Galactica and the two Stargate shows), or it wants to be camp. It hasn't defined itself yet.

But what actually got me thinking was this bounty hunter character they have who comes from the evil other planet who is always on the run from the people in power. She's one of those "I do things my way" and she knows all about living out in the rough part of society, constantly on the run from those who are out to kill her. Well, at one point, she was changing clothes in Flash's place, and as she raised her hands over her head, I noticed she shaves her armpits. And this really got me thinking. Would a woman like this from an alien society (although she's human) who is constantly on the run living out in the wilderness, really shave under her arms? And then I started to realize that this is because the actress is a TV star who most likely does so because TV society demands it of her. And I'm sure viewers don't even notice, although they would notice if she was actually authentic, and then they'd probably not like it.

Anyway, it was an interesting thought at the time.

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