The cover article is a pretty nice story on Minaj as well, although it brings up one of my biggest pet peeves about “celebrity journalism.” (An oxymoron, if I ever heard one.) Why is that that every time someone interviews a female singer, actress, musician or nearly anything, there is some inane, utterly useless comment about what they are eating and if they’re bigger/smaller/tinier/curvier/whatever than expected? As far as I’m concerned, unless it’s a bodybuilding magazine or motherfucking Saveur, who the hell cares if Minaj is eating KFC or is tinier than expected? You hardly ever read such stupid comments about male musicians, celebrities, actors, etc. One can argue that someone like Minaj is selling her image as much as her music, but maybe she wouldn’t have to sell it so hard if people stopped making comments about what she looks like. Circular fucking argument!
As a contrast, read the first few paragraphs of this old James Franco profile in New York: you get plenty of detail about his clothes and his urination habits, and okay, a mention of his Starbucks consumption — but there’s no inane detail about “Franco looked like he was maintaining his lithe physique, even while eating a big casket of McNuggets” or some bullshit like that.
Or imagine this: “James Franco sipped at a cup of tea in the lobby of the Dorchester hotel as he orders a thoroughly eccentric meal: field greens followed by a soft pretzel with mustard, and an elderflower spritzer.”
“Is that it?” I ask.
“I swear, I eat. I ate a bagel an hour ago. I consume my own weight in hummus every day. I cook a lot, and I even do vegan baking.”
I didn’t make this up, except for the Dorchester and James Franco — I ripped that off of the Vogue profile of Natalie Portman. See how dumb it sounds with James Franco? It’s just as dumb with chicks!
Don’t even get me started about this public eating article in the New York Times.
Related Posts
Tags: celebrity journalism is a total crock of shit, feminism, James Franco, Nicki Minaj, public eating, this shit is fucking stupid
AMEN, SISTER!!!!
right on, indeed. xo k.
This from the NYT article:
“On our first date, I was like, ‘Hey, why’d you stop being a vegan?’ And she was like, ‘What kind of guy’s going to date a vegan?’ And I was like, ‘You’re awesome.’ ”
WHAT? Sick.
this is the shit that makes me skew misanthropic! grrrrrrrrrrr!!!
xo k.
My eyes nearly rolled out of my head.
As in so many things, men are allowed to be “neutral”, but everything women do has some kind of deeper significance. What a man eats says nothing about him as a person, unless he’s an outspoken vegan or has gone crazy and only eats white foods or something. But what women eat is supposed to mean something. Just like what shoes they wear, what kind of bag they carry, etc.
God that NYT article is unbelievable.
yep. i guess everyone in this day and age of “personal branding” is up for consumption on some level, but for women, it’s often so intimately tied up to their bodies instead of just their intellectual or creative labor.
that NYT article is just a total eyerollfest!
xo k.
Love it, love it, love it.
thank you for writing thissss.
you’re welcome! xo k.
Wow.
[...] since I wrote about Nicki Minaj here, I’ve been slightly obsessed with the whole idea of “public eating” in [...]