Wednesday 4 May 2011

Hollywood Babble On & On #720: HOT BABES HOT BABES HOT BABES!!!

That title ought to get me some Google hits. Heh-heh-heh...

But the title is not just about me jerking your chain, I'm actually going to talk about hot babes, or to be more specific, who Hollywood thinks is a hot babe.

Maxim Magazine released their annual Hot 100 list, and it has thoroughly confused the fragrant folks at Movieline. You see there is a lot of mystery behind some of the choices for the list. Lindsey Lohan made it to #38 despite looking like an ex-stripper twice her real age who reached the pinnacle of her career playing a biker bar in Pahrump, Nevada. Meanwhile the curvaceous and definitively sex-a-licious Christina Hendrix from Mad Men languishes at #56.

Cameron Diaz, who was hot back in the day, but is currently turning into some sort of leathery creature with eyes that resemble two piss-holes in a snow-bank is #4, and the #1 choice is Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, causing the whole world to cry out:

Who the hell is Rosie Huntington-Whiteley?

Apparently she is some kind of actress, but like a tree in a forest that needs to be heard in order to make a sound, shouldn't she at least be seen somewhere before she's declared the "Hottest Woman" in entertainment?

This is the first time this year that a magazine's tastes in famous women has caused some confusion. People Magazine declared former hit-maker/movie star turned American Idol judge Jennifer Lopez as the most beautiful woman in the world. She's not ugly, but is she really the most beautiful woman in the world?

So if aesthetics aren't behind these decisions, then there must be some sort of logic behind them, and there is, it's Hollywood logic though, and it's all about access.

Maxim and People are lifestyle and pop-entertainment magazines, magazines need hot celebrities on their covers if customers are going to pick them off the rack and buy them. To get the celebrities they want they need to go through publicists, both the celebrity's publicists, and the publicity departments of the studios/networks/record labels they work for.

These publicists control the precious access to the celebrities, and if you're a magazine that wants to get the people that will sell copies on your covers, then you're going to have to play their game, and lavish attention, praise, and dubious honors on their lesser clients.

If the magazines asked their readers, they'd get completely different answers. But these lists aren't about finding out who the readers thinks is hot, it's about telling those same readers who the publicists want them to think is hot because they have a movie/TV show/album to sell.

Ironically, the more the publicists use these lists to foist their clients on the public, the less sales impact these lists seem to have. Where they once inspired lust, envy, occasional adoration, and potentially interest in buying what's being sold, they now inspire confusion, boredom, and even suspicion that they're being sold a pig in a poke.


1 comment:

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