By Erin Weinger
Both television and society reached a new low last night with the series premiere of The Spin Crowd, an E! reality program that delves into the world of celebrity public relations and product placement.
The show follows publicist Jonathan Chebon as he and his team put self tanner and energy drinks in the hands of the Us Weekly darlings who are guaranteed to generate sales.
From the five minutes I happened to see, Chebon seems like a piece of work -- the very first scene shows him demeaning one of his underlings, a fresh college grad named Erica, for wearing an outfit he claimed made her look like a mime. But I literally had to get up and leave the room when he convinced the same employee to get lip injections, despite the fact that she didn't want them.
I'm not sure what grossed me out more: The fact that this sorry excuse for a man would dare demand that a woman (and an attractive one, at that) get plastic surgery or the fact that she actually went through with it (technically she went for temporary fillers to decide if she wanted to go the permanent route. No matter).
When I saw this scene, I thought of everything that my mother, grandmothers and great grandmothers must have gone through to afford me the ability to vote, pay taxes and own my own business. And bless their hearts. Married women weren't even able to own their own home before 1848, a fact that few likely knew while watching Spin Crowd executive producer Kim Kardashian settle in to her brand new mansion just minutes before.
We women didn't get to the Supreme Court, the Indy 500 or the top of the masthead by allowing ourselves to be pushed around and told what our bodies should look like. And it is is pretty upsetting that this Erica, an educated lady who clearly has career goals, did anything other than say "hell no" the second she was told to plump her lips for no apparent reason (I would have likely spit in Chebon's face as well, walked out and never looked back. But that's just me).
Sad to think that impressionable young girls in middle America now think that they too have to be bullied by a coward with a bad haircut and ill-fitting pants in order to get further in their careers.
Watch Chebon's disgusting antics here.
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