Yawn. Pop culture and entertainment news tends to focus their stories primarily on the lives of actresses and actors. Instead of the talent that these celebrities may or may not have, entertainment news lives to fuel the unachievable beauty and body ideal standards our society has rigidly set in place.
Popular entertainment stories for this week include Jennifer Lawrence, the break through star of the Academy Award Nominated film 'Winter's Bone', who is set to play Mystique in the anticipated film 'X-men: First Class'. Lawrence is featured in the popular men's magazine GQ wearing 60's style bathing suits that leave little to the imagination. The article that accompanies these pictures, which is found on the Huffington Post Entertainment section, focuses very little on Lawrence's strengths as an actress but instead on her 'naked' role in the upcoming 'X-men' film, her appearance in GQ, and the rumors surrounding her love life.
Not only are Lawrence's talents belittled this week, but so are those of host of the popular cooking show, Top Chef, Padma Lakshmi.
However, it is Lakshmi herself who belittles her own talent, by telling Parade Magazine that she's "been a model for 15 years, and I’ve been on Top Chef for eight seasons, and before that I had other cooking shows, so I’ve learned a thing or two about how to camouflage certain areas and how to draw the eye to a preferable area of the body." Lakshmi, a model, is hardly what anyone would call 'overweight', but she insists on defending an idea about body image (size 0, size 00,) because she has done something outside of the modeling box and is actually part of a show that encourages eating.
Instead of embracing this, Lakshmi scrambles to find a way to denounce her role in the Top Chef world.
This obsession with the beauty ideal, the idea that women can only be beautiful if they obtain the impossible standards set up by the media world, constantly influences the way we consume our entertainment news. It taints many stories, and in fact is the main focus of these stories more often than not.
Is this the only way entertainment news can be entertaining? No way...so let's spice it up and do something a little different.
In other pop culture news this week:
Jennifer Aniston and Bradley Cooper Date
And Joaquin Phoenix comes back on to the acting scene
Caity: This is great topic for your blog. I especially like what you wrote in your first post about what your objective will be. As for "B is or Beauty Ideal," you make a good thesis statement in your lead, but don't start any story with "yawn"--the word itself is a turnoff, especially at the story of the post. In the secon graf, "breakthrough" is one word, and movie titles all take double quotes, not single (AP style). Good links. If you intend this blog ot be readable, I suggest you switch away from the pink/red on gray. Graphics and design should enhance the reading experience, not detract from it. Otherwise, good start. Score = 9.
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