Thepeoplescube.com
The chieftains of all things frat-boy at Maxim have added a series of slideshows to their website, the most recent being "TV's Ten Least Appealing Ladies." Among the list's grotesque, misshapen ranks? Perenially easy target Fran Drescher, 57-year-old film icon and L-Word star Pam Grier (Imagine, she's actually gotten bigger than a size 4! Instant hagsville!), obvious hottie and recently-departed Saturday Night Live mastermind Tina Fey and new ABC darling "Ugly Betty" (actually a very pretty America Ferrera, though the Maxim boys admittedly didn't bother to look her up).
Overall, the "Hey guys, let's laugh at ugly chicks!" humor tactic is hardly new and not really worth dissecting (it's a warm Friday afternoon, why spoil it with a plunge into the oozing depths of the frat-boy psyche). But ripping into CNN's Chief International Correspondent and Peabody Award-winning journalist Christiane Amanpour for her "stern, forbidding" looks and "boxy haircut" reeks of everything wrong with the macrocosm of women in TV journalism. From the infamous pound-shaving to being labeled "too sexy" for a co-anchor slot, female journalists already tiptoe the fine line between the bleached, primped and tucked standards of TV starlets and the public's expectations for on-screen media personalities (GRAVITAS! THOU SHALT HAVE GRAVITAS!). Amanpour stands out as a reckoning force who has covered war zones from Bosnia to Rwanda, won nine Emmys, speaks three languages, was named one of Forbes' 100 Most Powerful Women in 2005 (but uh-oh, look Michael Noer, she's married!) and is one of the industry's highest-paid field reporters. Oh, and by the way, she's hardly brutal on the eyes (not that it should matter, but let's be honest, it does). Grouping this world-class journalist together with Tina Yothers and Peggy from King of the Hill in a finger-pointing, fat-circling laughfest instantly catapults an otherwise juvenile stunt from merely cringe-worthy to nausea-inducing.
Although we will say this: the Nancy Grace ranking we can't help but agree with.
— Melissa Lafsky
