28 May 2008

The PopScene and Me

AOL homepage just informed me “‘Sex’ girls weren’t always glamorous, even had big 80s hair.” Following this already gripping finding, a link labeled “Pics to Prove It” made it hard not to click. I got to AOL’s entertainment page where its “On the Radar” segment featured other compelling pieces including “PopScene Photos” and “Stars on the Beach: Some stars look awesome. Some don’t.”

I think I’ve come to expect my pop culture stars to be exemplars of precision when it comes to form and poise these days. They’re stars for a reason, radiant models of femininity and masculinity, the Noah Websters of glamour with whom I can’t argue.

I thought about writing some criticism about these conventions, about stardom, beauty laws, and the “PopScene” media force on me. But then I thought about audience culture and the conventional, lose-lose approach I usually take in confronting fame and the people in it.

I am a strong advocate for equal opportunity in media. I want to see people of all colors, shapes, and sizes in my sitcoms, in commercials promoting my favorite clothing stores, on magazine covers, movie posters, and billboards. But when I look towards Hollywood, the same kind of physical images flash across the screen: leanness and tone signal sexy, healthy, and supreme mainstream figures. These images set the example, and I can’t help but get mad at them for the idealism they perpetuate. It’s unfair these stars are so hot, toned, beautiful. It’s unfair these people comprise my popular culture; I wish I could see someone like me in there, someone with blemishes, love handles, and noticeably asymmetrical eyebrows.

At the same time though, when I see pictures of stars “letting themselves go,” I scoff. When I read sexy celebs weren’t always as attractive, I scorn them in my head. “You’re the famous ones! You’re the ones who shouldn’t have problems like these!” I end up criticizing them for being more like me, instead of accepting their more “humanizing” marks. I want them to be like me, but when they drop from their pedestals, it’s easy to condemn them for it.

I want to get rid of the standards stars set, yet I want to hold stars to them because they’re the ones who "set" them in the first place.

But, this process of mine can’t be useful because it only reinforces the system I want to change. If headlines read “Some people look awesome. Some don’t,” I’d have a fit. Change one word, stars to people, it would change my whole perspective. “Oh, the nerrrrrve!” But, isn’t that how I should read these lines? Shouldn’t I get just as angry about hypercritical remarks directed at people with acting or singing jobs as ones directed at other working and non-working people?

Shouldn’t I embrace dissimilar, changing shapes and sizes, changing people like me in my media, rather than fault them for straying from pop patterns I can hardly bear?

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