Putting Real-Sized Women On TV? That's A "Cynical Ploy"!
There's this insane Times article about how Lifetime is for women and Spike is for men? So many things about it are suspect. (Including the line that Lifetime "recently started a separate, movies-only channel." The Lifetime Movie Network actually began in 1998?) And then: "It's a tough call as to which is the more cynical ploy: brazenly playing to a female audience that probably could stand to lose a few pounds or shamelessly playing to a male audience that likes to fantasize about women more gorgeous than actually exist in real life." So Lifetime's damned if it puts normal-looking women on TV and damned if it doesn't, I guess. Messed up. And then it calls Project Runway a show for women. (Color me baffled, ladies!) It wraps up with a sarcastic take on a woman's "perfect day" which includes getting kidnapped and having a "fattening lunch." We actually emailed Lifetime for comment but the publicist was off on jury duty, no doubt collecting some fresh women-in-danger plotlines, so.
Neil Genzlinger seems to have missed the whole Bravo/Weinstien smack down w/r/t Project Runway.
Also, he says that Project Runway "isn't really about the designers or the judges. It's about the garments." which should be enough to disqualify the entire article on the grounds of being completely backasswards.
Betrayed by Trust: The Mary Fischer Story
Not to self promote, but just to self promote: I present to you the definitive guide to DVRing Lifetime/Oxygen/LMN fare. If you get started now you'll be all set come the President's Day long weekend.
Self-promoter!
A Petrarch to your 'Dark Age of Lifetime':
My Name Is Sarah (2007)
"After following the exceptionally handsome Charlie into a church where he attends his usual AA meetings, Sarah allows the embracing bunch to believe she too is an alcoholic. What was a spur-of-the-moment fib evolves into layers of lies by the time she and Charlie start falling in love. At the risk of losing him, can she muster up the courage to tell him, "My name is Sarah, and I'm not an alcoholic"?"
To be fair, the graphic depicting A Woman's Brain really does capture perfectly my love of guns, ice cream and the theory of relativity.
I do not relate the Male Brain atall.
Doesn't a woman's "perfect day" also involve marching up the steps of the state capitol after being told by the local sheriff that rape is "technically not illegal in this state" and successfully lobbying lawmakers to change the law?
Actually, Lifetime is working on a crossover pilot, Dr. Quinn: Frontier Shrinkage, in which an itinerant marriage counselor (Jane Seymour) in 1880's Montana coaxes wayward husbands back into the fold through new-fangled therapy involving horse collars and a scythe.
The men tested think it's hilarious, but so far, the women don't get it.
Maybe the men could mansplain it to the women. You know, give them the manswers.
The important thing here is, they're not going to start putting real-size women on TV, right?
Oh man, Baby For Sale did not live up to that title.
Wait, that NYT piece was NOT by Cintra Wilson?
"Once the novelty of this reality show had worn off, and it was down to the hard-core fans, it was a women's show."
That may be the most ignorant sentence I've read in the pages of the Times in quite some while … and that's saying a lot.