The V Spot

Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett and Holly Baxter of the Vagenda Magazine

Emma Stone was right to call out sexism in the media. Will other actors join her?

Time to end "rabbit food questions".

By Rhiannon and Holly Published 13 August 2012 10:42

Emma Stone faces the media. Photo: Getty

Something strange happened during an interview in American Teen Vogue last week. Exhausted from interminable questions about her hair and her ‘style icons’, Emma Stone called bullshit in the best way possible, to much applause. Listing the types of inane questions that she, and not her male co-stars, usually face, she concluded simply: ‘It is sexism.’

Of course, Stone is not the first actor to kick back against the overwhelming stream of questions women face in interviews over their diet regimes, their make-up routines and their exercise schedules (and let’s not forget how they could possibly manage to be successful while also having children).

Helen Mirren was famously furious back in 1975 when Michael Parkinson asked her whether she found that her ‘equipment’ hindered her in her aspirations to become a serious actress. She was so pissed off that she still mentions it in interviews. (Or rather, it is still asked about in interviews, and referenced in columns such as this. And thus the media feeds itself.)

Stone and Mirren’s travails with interviewers lead us to question whether anything has really changed since 1975. Successful women are still being asked about their bodies above all else, sending the message that our appearance is what defines us; that it is our most crucial asset. Interviews by Cosmopolitan and its ugly sisters often follow an established pattern: a structure so predictable and formulaic in nature, and therefore so familiar, that Mhairi McFarlane’s pisstaking Ultimate Celebrity Interview quickly went viral earlier this year. In such interviews, cutesy little fillers such as ‘umm’, ‘er’, ‘you know?’ are interspersed with endless commentary on what the subject is eating and wearing, both at the time and on a daily basis. Invariably, the body shapes paraded on the covers of these magazines owe as much to Photoshop as they do to a personal trainer.

These women are often described as ‘impossibly thin and beautiful’, but then a piece of token advice is always offered up to remind us that we should feel bad for not achieving these heights of graphically enhanced impossibility. ‘I just eat a spinach leaf once in a while and sometimes jog from my front door to the taxi.’ Most of the time, the celeb is ‘just like you, honest’ - and allegedly dines out regularly on bacon and cheese-stuffed pizzaburgers. The subtle implication is that your failure to reach a similar state of physical and mental uniformity is an inadequacy on your part.

That can be enough to trap you into an insecurity so deep that you find yourself buying the same magazine every single month, hoping that a ‘beauty secret’ will be revealed, as if Oracle-like knowledge of looking like Natalie Portman after you roll out of bed in the morning has just been waiting to be revealed inside the glossy pages of Grazia.

Even magazines that usually offer enlightened commentary fall short at this final hurdle: Stylist’s weekly interview with a ‘career woman’ differs notably to the interviews in its male counterpart Short List by unnecessarily mentioning the food eaten during the day for each woman they report back on, dangerously correlating calorific control with financial success.

Saying that, it’s hard to tell whether or not Stylist even asked for dietary information from their interview subjects. Perhaps women have been so indoctrinated by celeb food diaries and diet articles that a monotonous recital of every substance that has passed our lips is becoming second nature. It’s hard to know what came first: the corn fed, free-range organic chicken or the Duchy Originals egg. Either way, it’s clear that this obsession with women’s bodies is not just something celebs have to worry about.

Those reputable social scientists at Littlewoods recently conducted a study in which 2,000 women were asked to envisage their perfect bikini body, the result of which was an alarming composite image of a vacant automaton in sunglasses (they had evidently neglected to ask Tanya in Wigan for her favourite set of celebrity irises.) The tedious predictability of such shallow, familiar lines of enquiry leads us to conclude that no Western Woman is now safe from being asked about her arse as she goes about her daily business. It’s a sad state of affairs when squatting goes from signifying living rent-free in a bohemian utopia to something you do to make your posterior look like J-Lo’s. Will we be asked about our cankles next time we fill in a census? And next time a woman dares to say something insightful in a public role, will she forever carry the caveat ‘not just a pretty face’?

Which is why it’s so wonderful to see women biting back. When Anne Hathaway was recently asked how she lost ‘so much weight’, she drily asked her interviewer if he was scouting for personal advice, and assured him that he looked great as he was. Scarlett Johansson, meanwhile, highlighted how a journalist had asked her male co-interviewee ‘an interesting, existential question’ while subjecting her to ‘a rabbit food question'. Seeing these women react with wit to the inane probing of celebrity hacks is nothing short of joyous.

If things continue in this vein, the celebrity diet/fitness/hair formula will come to be replaced by the requisite ‘sexism in the media’ question, and soon we’ll be reading confused responses to halfway-house questions such as ‘how does your hair feel about the glass ceiling?’ and ‘do your abs have anything to say about the unfair division of domestic labour?’.

So next time someone in a white coat approaches you on your local high street, clipboard in hand, to ask how you feel about your bum, you are perfectly entitled to turn around, drop your keks, and yell ‘WHY DON’T YOU ASK IT YOURSELF?’ Feminism is nothing if not an accumulation of small victories.

Tags: feminism

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19 comments

Mon, 2012-08-27 22:17 — Gael N (not verified)

I agree that modern media is pretty sexist. However what kind of questions was she expecting from Teen Vogue? I also would like to point out that this sort of 'sexism' is almost entirely driven by women. Magazines like Vogue and Cosmopolitan have a very heavily female readership and the interviews are almost all conducted by females. Men are generally not interested in the topics in these publications.

That is not to say that media sexism instigated by males doesn't exist. But this is clearly not the case.

Sun, 2012-08-19 18:29 — newsitewon'tacceptname (not verified)

Writing worth reading in the NS. Bloody hell. Rather enjoyed this.

Fri, 2012-08-17 13:59 — Alan Peart (not verified)

It's awesome that they called the amalgamated "perfect body babe" Sophie, a name that means "wisdom".

Tue, 2012-08-14 19:09 — nickfrankfurt (not verified)

"sexism in the media"

yes that would be mostly female reporters writing for magazines deigned, edited and often owned by female led companies and management bought by women asking questions about diet, bodies, "post pregnancy curves" of female celebrities.

I have never met a man who is remotely interested in the above.

The issue is complex but to dimiss it as "sexism in the media" is to insult readers' intelligence and to produce endless articles of no depth, little analysis and utter pointlessness.

Tue, 2012-08-14 07:06 — McMac

This isn't men's fault....or women's, it's the fault of some people in various related industries. Some men, some women, some, some gay, some straight etc.

Turning the world into a Venn diagram, identifying a set you're not a member of and then blaming "them" for the world's ills is the absolute lowest form of analysis.

Mon, 2012-08-13 20:49 — Jackdaw (not verified)

Nice one Jankaas, wheel out the straw man and put words into my mouth.

"unintended sexist notion that women in general are just too stupid to 'get it' and are to weak to resist"

There is no such inference. In context I was quite clearly discussing cultural indoctrination and socialisation. The fact someone (and this goes for men too) who is subjected from infancy to misogynistic values, with next to no counterpoint to be encountered, then internalises those values and perpetuates them is testament to the sheer weight and dominance of the dogma. Of course there was no inference of intelligence or weakness, but it's much easier to cast aspersions when you're pithily retorting to straw men, eh?

"Jackdaw has obviously not factored in any verifiable evidence."

As opposed to your well-referenced dissertation on 'the market place'? So your view is that women objectify, limit and disadvantage themselves and each other mindfully - without any other influences (as to suggest anyone is prey to socialisation, media messaging, cultural history etc is to accuse them of being weak and stupid) - because they enjoy causing each other harm? As a result women have cultivated a culture that subordinates all other facets of their gender by obsessively focussing on their physical appearance? Men clearly played no part in this, as it is women who buy the lifestyle magazines in a free market place. The benefit of this self-made sexism - being catty - is the cogent 'uncomfortable inconvenient truth' you speak of? And you took umbrage because I called this argument shallow?

When I speak of the origins of sexism I'm pointing to both the present and the foundations of history. Culture doesn't occur in a vacuum. The subjugation of women by men isn't a fairy tale, it's a well-documented fact that stretches back throughout the history of civilisation in virtually every culture in the world. The only reason there has been progress is due to social struggle and protest. Do you think we've reached the end of history in gender relations? Do you think there's been the establishment of a level playing field in society from which women have disadvantaged themselves? Do you think the media/cosmetics/fashion industries are all run by women who, viewing themselves merely as animated mannequins, saw that there was a vacancy for a market for beauty products? Don't be so naive as to suggest that the market place is defined solely by the buyer, and that demand isn't ever manufactured. Why the hell do you think the saturation of cosmetics advertising and the glossy lifestyle magazines exist?

Ignore all that if you like, but consider the argument logically, why would women freely choose to impede themselves with sexist values? Why would women prefer that the full range of their capability and character be consistently ignored in favour of their bodily measurements? Aren't you the one who's inferring stupidity on women by suggesting they'd inflict this sacrifice on themselves because 'women cause other women great harm with absolute relish.'? Who gains the most from the objectification of women's bodies really? The women who have the opportunity to cattily judge one another, which you've put forward as an explanation, or the libidinous men who benefit from women's cultural compulsion to spend an inordinate amount of time attempting to maximise their sexual attraction?

"Physical beauty will be important as long as the human race exists. An appreciation of it is written into our DNA, for needs of survival. Most people would like to be physically beautiful."

You miss the point entirely Fordy1968, this is a discussion about ethics, not evolutionary biology. The point is that, when the full gamut of someone's personal qualities and talents is being sidelined by a fetishistic obsession with that person's body, the very core of that individual's identity is being overlooked, and this is demeaning and degrading. When the focus on sexual attractiveness is not equally attributed to both genders this is an issue not only of belittlement, but of sexism. If we've managed to develop our faculties of ethics beyond mere primal hankering, which we have or society wouldn't exist in its present form, then no social injustice can be dismissed as 'a brute fact' of nature. This is an ethical imperative to address the problem.

Tue, 2012-08-14 13:08 — jankaas (not verified)

gosh, that's quite some squirming there Jackdaw. you say;
"There is no such inference. In context I was quite clearly discussing cultural indoctrination and socialisation."

ok, that was you context though your conclusion remains unaffected that women in general are just too stupid to 'get it' and are to weak to resist. (by all means take out the hurty words like so; women in general just don't 'get it')

you then unload one enormous mess of unevidenced cliches from the 70's, pls do stop. if you make a specific claim then provide evidence. i'll try and be a sport and at least dig into some of your musings.
you ask;
Q "So your view is that women objectify, limit and disadvantage themselves and each other mindfully...?"
A quite possibly yes. what makes you think this is not a valid motivation when aimed at another woman by a woman? you think women incapable of acting aggressively and cruelly if they wish to do so?

Q "As a result women have cultivated a culture that subordinates all other facets of their gender by obsessively focussing on their physical appearance?"
A yes, women seem to aggressively compete with one another by means of their appearance and that of others, and most of the time in an environment entirely absent of males. it's personal and males are at that moment in time an irrelevance.

Q "Men clearly played no part in this, as it is women who buy the lifestyle magazines in a free market place."
A close sort of, indeed males hover merely on the periphery of this display of female on female ritualised battle. the ammunition (i.e. women's magazines) is purchased almost exclusively by women.

in closing we get to the hub of the problem;
Q "...why would women freely choose to impede themselves with sexist values?"
A same reason as informed educated adults smoke, people buy lottery tickets, go to Reiki healers and Homeopaths etc etc.

it may be news to you Jackdaw, but human beings are an extremely illogical and deeply irrational animal. i fear your mistake is to think too highly of humans as a species. as a result you tend to over-analyse and head off in the wrong direction, anything to avoid dealing with the uncomfortable truisms of our species. btw you are far from alone in this approach, but i feel it is unfit for purpose.

Mon, 2012-08-13 23:14 — Fordy1968 (not verified)

I don't think ethics is entirely seperable from biology. I think all academic disciplines link up. Moreover, as far as I know, there is an equal focus on sexual attractiveness for both sexes. I wasn't aware that women had ceased to have ideals of male beauty that men try to live up to. All of us have a contra-sexual side that shapes how we present ourselves to the opposite sex. Of course, it is possible to build on that psychological aspect of ourselves and fetishise it and commodify it, to the detriment of the individual's psyche. If that is your argument, then I may share some common ground with you. However, if your argument is that it is wrong for human beings to shape themselves in conformity to the gaze of the erotic other, then I suggest you are advancing an unnatural form of sexual ethics. The Greeks would have had no problem being in awe of physical beauty.

Mon, 2012-08-13 16:45 — jankaas (not verified)

Jackdaw has obviously not factored in any verifiable evidence in his shallow argument. tired old claims as this one require more than just regurgitation;

"If women are doing this to themselves then where does the objectification come from originally? It's not too cryptic to peel back a cultural layer to see quite clearly that this is misogyny incarnate."

and as ever such a baseless claim is followed by an unintended sexist notion that women in general are just too stupid to 'get it' and are to weak to resist;

"The troubling fact is that so many women perpetuate sexism to such a degree against themselves and others without recognising it as such."

Mon, 2012-08-13 16:36 — Fordy1968 (not verified)

Physical beauty will be important as long as the human race exists. An appreciation of it is written into our DNA, for needs of survival. Most people would like to be physically beautiful. As such, it is hardly surprising when some people are curious as to how another human being maximises their beauty. Physically, some people are beautiful, some people are plain and some people are ugly. That's a brute fact, like it or not. Nature is aristocratic.

Thu, 2012-08-16 00:48 — M Murakami (not verified)

My dear fellow, as Pontius Pilate would say, "What is beauty?" It's a cultural concept. When Marilyn Monroe went to Japan on her honeymoon with Joe DiMaggio, the locals were unimpressed with her. An exact quote from my mother, who was there: "what a homely woman," was the general verdict. Eventually a diet of Western films and TV had some effect on Japanese ideals of beauty, but to this day Audrey Hepburn would get more votes.

Thu, 2012-08-16 05:16 — Fordy1968 (not verified)

I'm not sure beauty is entirely a cultural concept. Is it really culture that determines who we are attracted to? Are there not classical notions of beauty that approximate to some objective measure, irrespective of fashionable taste? Is it purely culture that would highlight the physical appearance of Audrey Hepburn as beautiful and that of a female, Russian shotputter as ugly? Sorry if I've offended any female, Russian shotputters out there. I may indeed be guilty of stereotyping. I'd be happy for someone to link me a photo of a beautiful shotputter to make me eat my hat.

Mon, 2012-08-13 16:34 — jackdaw (not verified)

Jankaas has obviously not factored in the element of internalised sexism into his shallow argument. If women are doing this to themselves then where does the objectification come from originally? It's not too cryptic to peel back a cultural layer to see quite clearly that this is misogyny incarnate. The troubling fact is that so many women perpetuate sexism to such a degree against themselves and others without recognising it as such. This internalisation is so pernicious and damaging that it distorts the parameters of the discourse. With so much sexism submerged as normal and permissible even for women, the feminists with their eyes open are disparaged as extremists railing against straw men.

"you could easily argue that it's giving mainstream viewers what they want." -Christopher

This discounts the forces that shape what mainstream viewers feel they want. Do you really believe that young girls form these desires primarily in a cultural vacuum, only for the media/fashion/cosmetics industries to spring up after the fact and offer them satiating products? I suppose the multi-billion dollar advertising industry is incidental. Since it is advertisers who are the paymasters of periodicals such as Teen Vogue, and the corporations who sell the products who are the paymasters of the ad men, don't you think there's another explanation for why: "The sad fact is that young girls *do* want to know about diet regimes, hair styles, clothes etc"?

What's depressing about this piece is that we have to laud meagre scraps such as Stone's example. Perhaps it was just a rare slip into sincerity from a celebrity otherwise well-versed in the publicity required for a young actress to ascend the ladder of Hollywood fame. She's been compliant enough in the conventions of misogynistic popular culture to be 'glammed up' for countless photo shoots, she's been a red-carpet clothes-horse. A real stand might be to tell her agent to eschew the likes of Teen Vogue and the superficial glossies in favour of outlets that might place substance over appearance (what few there are). This would, however, fly in the face of the pre-requisites of a mainstream career, and although she'd become a hero to some if she were to consistently take a stand against what she identifies correctly as sexism, her profile in Tinseltown would exit stage left. It's an ethical dilemma for someone like Stone that carries massive personal risk.

Unfortunately it's a stretch to call her moment of justified indignation as even a 'small victory', as I'd sadly warrant that it gets buried by column inches echoing her much more consistent media voice as an actress that plays the game according to the embedded chauvinist rules that have been dictated to her. Therefore she's a woman with an instinct for what is wrong who feels compelled out of personal ambition to, for the most part, put up and shut up, and in abiding by such strictures she's one small cog in the juggernaut of misogyny that perpetually conditions young women to not only tolerate sexual objectification, but to subject themselves and their peers to it also.

Mon, 2012-08-13 16:46 — Fordy1968 (not verified)

By the same token,most young men who work out down the gym probably do so to appear beautiful to women. Is this an example of misandry then? Of course not. Most young people of both sexes want to maximise their beauty in order to satisfy their need to reproduce. Men want to look good to women; women want to look good to men. It's neither misandrous nor misogynist to want to maximise one's beauty to attract the opposite sex. It's life.

Mon, 2012-08-13 13:26 — Bronte (not verified)

I feel some commentators have missed the point of the article in suggesting that the reason women in the spotlight are scrutinised on appearance more than talent, hardwork and graft is that women, as a collective entity, are obsessed with appearance, write the magazines that perpetuate this injustice and so it's our own silly fault. It's a naive generalisation, and a tragic one at that. If women are obsessed with appearance, then it is - dare I say it - 'society' which encourages this mentality. Our obsession with girls being conditioned into having interest in appearances and 'girls things' (who wasn't given a Barbie doll or a Bratz figurine as a child, given girlish magazines in primary school that came free with shiny pink lipgloss?) is a historic legacy continuing on into our modern day society, where women in the media - self-made, talented women (for the most part) are subjected to this inane obsession with how much they weigh or how many sit-ups they manage per hour whilst perched on an exercise ball being force fed carrot sticks. One cannot blame some intrinsic part of each woman's DNA for this sexist treatment of women in the spotlight.

Mon, 2012-08-13 12:57 — jankaas (not verified)

just wondering which of the sexes is responsible for the fact that women's magazines and the interview described tend to focus on diet and appearance; the male or female?

i think the answer can be deduced from the market place where the overwhelming majority of those who actively seek out and buy into this nonsense are female. i realise this doesn't match to the Vagenda's agenda that sexism is created by men for the benefit of men, but the facts of life should force them to a far more uncomfortable inconvenient truth; women cause other women great harm with absolute relish.

Mon, 2012-08-13 12:29 — Three6t (not verified)

"When Kate Middleton shot to fame, did people rush out to study the same subjects as she did at university"

To be honest, that would be almost as stupid as copying her clothes, hair and so on.

Why would you base your life/career choices on what a celeb chose? It doesn't matter whether the celeb is a princess an actor or a pop star. (Or even, at the risk of going contrary to the present public mood an athletics champ.)

The writer makes a good point but misses out the question of whether Emma Stone (and the rest) would have "made it" without all the diets, air-brushing and plastic surgery. (I'm not saying Ms Stone has gone under the knife...I neither know nor care)

It's not surprising in this culture where we value being famous above all else and the vast majority of those who are famous are "attractive", that young girls (as this was Teen Vogue) are keen to hear about the diets etc that their heroes follow.

It's a strange sort of feminism that is happy to buy into this while they are trying to make it, but that gets all sniffy once in their lofty position of "stardom".

Mon, 2012-08-13 11:04 — Des Demona (not verified)

I think the clue to the innanity of the subject matter is in 'Teen Vogue''

Mon, 2012-08-13 10:56 — Chris Topher (not verified)

The sad fact is that young girls *do* want to know about diet regimes, hair styles, clothes etc, to allow them to better emulate their "heroes". When Kate Middleton shot to fame, did people rush out to study the same subjects as she did at university? Or did they rush out to copy her haircut, dresses, etc...

I'm not claiming this is a good thing. But you could easily argue that it's giving mainstream viewers what they want.

Personally, stuff like this puts me off watching celeb interviews. But then I wouldn't call myself a mainstream viewer.