May 17, 2010

Tabloid Talk, week 4

Week four of Tabloid Talk features more of the same:

Relationships rank high in the tabloid headlines: 5 references, including beginnings, endings and pregnancy.

Heidi Montag appears on both covers this week and the focus is on her lack of individual agency as related to her body project gone wild through the relentless pursuit of “perfection” by continuously modifying her body.

The “body,” focus on women’s beauty and their assorted body projects have been a leading theme week to week. Dina, of the Real Housewives of New Jersey, is featured to the far left of the Life & Style cover and explains “Why I got a breast reduction.” Juxtaposed next to Heidi Montag’s looming headline, “Forced into more plastic surgery,” Dina appears to be a claim to body sanity. After all, Heidi Montag has been turned into a circus freak, an emblem of the industry’s standard of beauty gone awry.

And, of course, in addition to body talk and a focus on heterosexual relationships, no tabloid would be complete without the girl feud. This week, the “nasty feud” is between Kate Hudson and Cameron Diaz. The main issue? A guy, natch, and Kate thinks its Cameron’s way of paying Kate back for Kate’s hook-up with Justin Timberlake.

Looking at the pop culture landscape, women are rarely shown in authentic female friendships or in solidarity with one another. Women seem to be endlessly competing with one another in hot pursuit of the beauty myth, an unrealistic image of perfection sold to women as the primary indicator of worth, and men. Of course, I have stated time and time again, the former serves to nab the latter.

This article reinforces these ideas about “mean girls” waging war:

There’s plenty of bad blood between the two professionally. “Kate thinks that Camewron is an aging old-lady actress struggling to remain sexy and relevant,” the insider says of Hudson…

In a cultural environment that prizes female beauty, youth is a primary component in the way that beauty is constructed. Taking aim at Cameron’s age is a classic example of the way in which women are devalued as they age and the derogatory comments hurled at one another in spite, envy and competition.


No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Leave a comment