I've been mulling a phenomenon around in my head the last few days and I need to share it with you. This phenomenon is the sheer and utter lack of entertainment role models who are both white and curvy. And by curvy I do not mean boob jobbed out to Pamela Anderson proportions. And TrimSpa nutcase Anna Nicole Smith doesn't count either even if she is on-again/off-again both curvy and white (or oompaloompa orange) because she's by no means a role model. Perish the thought. Shudder.
It took a long time for anyone non-white to get their own role models on TV or in the movies and I applaud the fact that they are there. Keep 'em coming. I'd like to think role models transcend color and gender lines, but sometimes I would like to look at a person on screen, on my TV, or even in a cheesy tabloid, who actually looks like me, i.e. a normal, maybe even slightly overweight, white woman, instead of unnaturally thin, often preteen, lollipop stick figures.
Why is it so easy for society to embrace curvy, hella sexy, Latina or African American women but throw a calorie toward a white actress and all of a sudden she's got a weight problem? Where is my Queen Latifa, Sara Ramirez*, or America Ferrera?
And on a similar note, why are pudgy even unhealthily overweight white men accepted with wild abandon? Drew Cary, Jim Belushi, Jimmy Kimmel, and Kevin James are just a few I can think of off the top of my head. And if you look at their TV wives - you discover the white female bobbleheads again. I'm sorry, but if some woman who, on an attractiveness scale of 1-10 was the same number as any of those guys, tried to have her own show it wouldn't happen. Would not happen. For some reason America needs their female characters to be unnatuarlly "hot" and the definition of hot for a white woman (really, all woman) currently is starved.
For now I'm going to embrace my ethnic sisters as my own role models and hope that the establishment comes around to understanding that there are a lot of curvy, hella sexy white woman too. In the meantime, I'm going to drown my sorrows in Ben & Jerry's.
* For the record, I saw Sara Ramirez in person at a cabaret and she is just as fabulous in real life as in fiction, maybe even more so. And hilarious. I want to be her.
It took a long time for anyone non-white to get their own role models on TV or in the movies and I applaud the fact that they are there. Keep 'em coming. I'd like to think role models transcend color and gender lines, but sometimes I would like to look at a person on screen, on my TV, or even in a cheesy tabloid, who actually looks like me, i.e. a normal, maybe even slightly overweight, white woman, instead of unnaturally thin, often preteen, lollipop stick figures.
Why is it so easy for society to embrace curvy, hella sexy, Latina or African American women but throw a calorie toward a white actress and all of a sudden she's got a weight problem? Where is my Queen Latifa, Sara Ramirez*, or America Ferrera?
And on a similar note, why are pudgy even unhealthily overweight white men accepted with wild abandon? Drew Cary, Jim Belushi, Jimmy Kimmel, and Kevin James are just a few I can think of off the top of my head. And if you look at their TV wives - you discover the white female bobbleheads again. I'm sorry, but if some woman who, on an attractiveness scale of 1-10 was the same number as any of those guys, tried to have her own show it wouldn't happen. Would not happen. For some reason America needs their female characters to be unnatuarlly "hot" and the definition of hot for a white woman (really, all woman) currently is starved.
For now I'm going to embrace my ethnic sisters as my own role models and hope that the establishment comes around to understanding that there are a lot of curvy, hella sexy white woman too. In the meantime, I'm going to drown my sorrows in Ben & Jerry's.
* For the record, I saw Sara Ramirez in person at a cabaret and she is just as fabulous in real life as in fiction, maybe even more so. And hilarious. I want to be her.
Comments
I think you might just be looking in the wrong places.
Katie Couric is so normal-sized that CBS digitally lopped off about 25 pounds in the first promo pics of her.
Two words: Rosie O'Donnell. Certainly an exception, but so are some of the people you named. And like her or not, there are very few people out there speaking their minds the way Rosie does.
As for Katie, that just proves my point. She's fabulous, funny intelligent, and gorgeous but the establishment wasn't satisfied with that so they turned her into a bobble head whether she actually was, or wanted to be one, or not. How the hell is a normal woman supposed to compete when even the average sized ladies are being airbrushed into oblivion?