In order to see feminism in casting, you have to watch America's Next Top Model. Not only was Tyra Banks pushing the heavyset girls, in later seasons she openly declared that she "wanted to re-define the concept of beauty" (as though it needed a new definition).
To that end, she cast every manly, tattooed, weird-looking, or misshapen girl she could find, especially brown and black ones. She had at least two trannies (I guess they got lost on the way to the RuPaul auditions), one girl with vitiligo, one burn victim, and several who could have passed as boys. When audiences got tired of her liberal agenda and quit watching, Tyra doubled down on her odd choices, then hectored her audiences about being closed-minded. (Unfortunately, the UK and Canadian versions of the show do the same thing, but luckily Australia's franchise still cast beautiful girls on its show thanks to its head judge and sponsor, designer Alex Perry, who won't be cowed by PC casting trends.)
I have no idea whether these choices are being made at Tyra Banks' initiative, or whether it's something she's been instructed to do by her network bosses. Either way, it's a little ironic that Banks would pursue that agenda given that her own success is due at least partly to a nose job which made her more "conventionally" beautiful:
The idea that the Left can somehow succeed in reprogramming what people find attractive is really no different in spirit than those gay conversion camps that the Left decries so bitterly. I happen to agree with them about conversion therapy: the idea that you can simply "pray the gay away" is silly.
But, neither can you get heterosexual guys to be attracted to a type they never found attractive to begin with. We're attracted to whatever we're attracted to, and no amount of heterosexual conversion therapy in the guise of a media campaign will change that.
The hypocrisy is glaring.
Political correctness can force us to watch our words in public, but it can't change our natures.
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I caught a promo of the Bachelorette contestant, Rachel Lindsay, on the Today show talking about the upcoming show. The woman is a gap-toothed black woman who is at best okay as far as looks go. What I found interesting was the fact that most of the men on the show (who are supposedly vying for her affection) are white. I had the thought - how many of these white men are actually attracted to this black woman or any black woman for that matter? Are they really keen on winning her "love"? The show is pushing the PC agenda that whites and blacks are just naturally attracted to people who hail from other races.
- Susan
Tyra Banks does look better after she had the nose job.
- Susan
Susan --
If you look at list of various "most beautiful" people you'll usually see them distributed fairly evenly/proportionately across racial lines. The thing to remember is, every editor who compiles these lists knowns that his career is dependent on doing that, and that if he just picks a type he personally finds attractive, he'll find himself in a maelstrom. Add to that the fact that half of the editors who compile these lists, like many of the judges at beauty contests, are gay. And a lot of them have been instructed by their bosses to be inclusive. So what we're left with is a lot of falseness.
Disagree with Susan; both pictures are hot for a black woman*. The nose job doesn't make much difference in this case (although it does for some famous women).
*I'm a white guy, I'm mostly sexually attracted to white women, this is pretty normal as documented in Dataclysm by the OK Cupid guy.
My father always appreciated a nice looking woman. When I say nice looking, I mean the way she looked, the way she carried herself, her confidence and what she chose to wear in a given situation. He was somewhat conservative and practical in the area of what a woman chose to wear because he felt this showed she had good judgement. At times, we would run across a woman who were wearing something absolutely hideous but knew she paid a fortune for it. He always warned me not to make clothing decisions based on an industry which had a large base of gay men telling women what they should or should not be wearing. Regarding models and nose jobs. Some models who had very obvious nose jobs are Kate Moss and Cindy Crawford. If Gisele B. (married to Tom Brady) had not gotten a nose job, she would have never been able to be photographed from the side. I do give Tyra B. credit, when she became older, for letting young girls know that a striking model on the pages of a fashion magazine is usually the work of make up, lighting, a good photographer and photo shop. Also, I have noticed that Tyra is now allowed to eat unlike her modeling days. She is by no means "skinny" but looks much more healthy. If you look at some of the top models today and in the past, there is no way that they would be considered beautiful by the standards of our society. Some of them are just plain odd looking and maybe that is their allure. I might look at that page in a magazine just a little longer.
I totally agree with Susan's comment about the Bachelorette. i(an old straight white guy with three kids) watch it because my youngest watches with her friends. the show is something to share with her as it seems baseball is not on her list of trending topics. but the show has definitely taken on a role of demonstrating acceptable and contemptible behavior and endorsing the left view. in this season, as Susan notes the black bachelorette is tossing aside black guys left and right while keeping white guys and expressing she is "open". to me some of these guys look and act gay which is a delicate for them to handle since a big part of the show is about the connection and attraction. last years bachelor Nick seemed a lot more ready to be the object of the gays than thirty chicks although the chicks uniformly shouted their enthusiasm for Nick.Disney is surely trying to advance their agenda. Disney is clearly playing for the left given Hollywood has always been left and their constituency probably likes portrayal of gay guys as hetero targets.
but yes, i frequently see this stuff about fat chicks showing off their beach outfit as if blake Lively needs to be concerned. and i agree they are not going to convince the whole world
Anon (of 1:27PM) --
It had never even occurred to me before that Kate Moss or Cindy Crawford had nose jobs. I just looked them both up and can see it with Moss, whose nose has actually started to look a little weird recently; still can't see it with Crawford though. One person I always thought had a really obvious one was Megyn Kelly; I think hers was actually overdone, it's now unnaturally thin and comes to almost a point at the bottom.
After I wrote this post it occurred to me that maybe the agenda of America's Top Model was not so much to get guys to be attracted to women who weren't their type, but to make all those other types feel better about themselves. If it's the latter, I would be more sympathetic. But some of the feminist agenda actually includes criticizing men for their choices in women, as if those men actually have a choice about whom they find attractive.
Agree, a lot of models are just weird-looking. And strangely, the models who get the most publicity are those whose looks are "striking" without being beautiful. And those are the ones who are used for the latest trendy styles. If you want real beauty, look at the ads for less trendy clothes, models for, say, Sears, are inevitably classically beautiful.
Anon of 2:40PM --
I suspect that a lot of those Bachelor and Bachelorette types are instructed by their producers whom they should pick and discard; after all, the ratings come before actual romance. And political correctness comes before actual attraction.
Or, have a look at LL Bean's catalog models. They are pretty 'natural' looking women, with minimal artiface. I relocated from Southern California to the Coastal North East. You'd be hard pressed to find many faces splattered with make-up and/or over the top cosmetic procedures. A very welcome change. Fashion shows are absurd. And I do care a lot about my appearance. Just not a place where I find inspiration. Probably off topic. On a side note, I love your blog, Mr. Craig.
Clara O'Neill --
Thank you very much.
Yes, LL Bean's is a perfect example. I find that a little makeup usually helps, but you're right, too much just makes someone look depraved or degenerate or cheap. And I couldn't agree more about cosmetic procedures; a fair number of people don't know when to stop with that, and the results end up just looking like permanent disfiguration. Plus, they all seem to want the same thing, so they end up looking like fourth-rate Faye Dunaways with a pair of twin torpedoes attached.
ESPN has also been big proponent of PV nonsense ( disney owned) . that is one reason i believe espn ratings are down.
"Agree, a lot of models are just weird-looking."
I have a friend whose sister-in-law was a B-list model (not internationally famous but good enough to make a living at it). When I was at the friend's wedding and the sister-in-law walked down the aisle as a bridesmaid, she looked like some kind of space alien; definitely striking but not in any kind of sexy way.
(She's also one of the few cases I know of a sister being taller than her full-blooded brother. Since there's at least two sigmas of difference between men and women and height is like 90% heritable, this almost never happens.)
Anon of 11:15AM --
No question, ESPN got behind the PC point of view and now they're paying the price.
Jokah --
They don't seem to accept models less than 5'7", I guess the clothing doesn't hang right.
Were you tempted by that woman at all? I know what you mean about space alien, there are some tall model-types whose beauty I can admire without feeling attracted to them.
Looks that photograph well aren't necessarily the same thing as looks that look good in person. What photographs well seem to be exaggerated features, cheekbones that stick out TOO much, and eyebrows that are TOO dramatic, etc. Hence the weirdly inhuman look.
Not really. To the extent I was, it was more to the whole "mystique" of being a model than anything else. Like if she had been, say, a pharmacist, I wouldn't have necessarily picked her out of a lineup over a still pretty but more conventionally proportioned woman.
And you're absolutely right about feature exaggeration - this is the main reason she was a little off-putting in person. She looked great in glossy retouched Maxim ads and stuff but in posed photographs you can get the angles just right and the fake boobs, super wide eyes, and collagen-infused lips really help.
A fun experiment is to give a guy your high school yearbook and have him try to pick out which girls were considered the hottest based on portraits alone. People have surprisingly low accuracy at this sort of thing.
Jokah --
Ah, you've hit on something which has influenced me in the past, what you call the "mystique" factor, what I've always thought of as the "being able to say you've been there" factor. I've seen older models and actresses, and if I didn't know who they were, I might not necessarily be attracted, but the thought does go through my head, hmm, I'd like to be able to say.....
My best story along those lines:
https://justnotsaid.blogspot.com/2010/10/ekland-britt.html
And yes, boniness definitely helps. And excessive makeup which would look slutty in person can photograph well too.
Oh yeah, Rachel Lindsey...we're supposed to believe she's the best black contestant to carry the lead role for this franchise? Mike Fleiss simply buckled under PC pressure to cast a minority lead (since the last one, Juan Pablo, was a disaster.)
I do believe the redefining of beauty came in part from Tyra herself, since 1) she was executive producer at the time, and 2) she went on tangents about it on her now-cancelled talk show as well. The current owners of the show (VH1) cast an overweight model as judge, Ashley Graham, who calls herself a "beauty activist".
Fled --
I'm afraid those names don't mean anything to me, as I've never seen the show. But a "beauty activist," wow. The Left has massaged the language in so many misleading ways, but "beauty activist" still stands out. the Left really seems to consider its job to be, changing human nature and obscuring the truth.
Good luck with that.
Oh, gawd. I'm sickened when shows pair blacks and whites. Geez. It's unnatural, dysgenic, and most whites aren't interested in blacks. Thankfully! The TV shows are desperately trying to brainwash. UGH!
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