IS A SHAM!
© Guy Graybill
Formerly Published
in Bloomsberg News
Clearly, the glamour world is without shame and People magazine reveals thatfact to the nth degree.
In fact, I think that People magazine happens to be the world’s dumbest publication. My evidence? People magazine’s pathetic, yearly naming of the world’s most beautiful woman or the world’s sexiest man! Under the guise of legitimate journalism, they have informed their gullible readers that they will be the lucky readers who will be first to learn the identity of the year’s most beautiful woman or sexiest man. People’s entire project raises a host of perplexing questions for which the editorial staff members need to provide some pithy answers.
One’s first query might be: Who says? Who judges the judges? How many people, and of what position in the journalistic world, are those people who are involved in the selections? What training and qualifications have they acquired? What qualifies People magazine to act as arbiter for selecting a single, unique male or female for annual worldwide honors?
Why have the selections come, almost exclusively, from the entertainment world? Why are there no selections from business, politics, academics, art, labor or stay-at-home-parent categories?
Why are the choices so blatantly devoid of sexy men or beautiful women from the world’s teeming populations of Asia, Africa, Latin America or Oceania? Those two annual issues are patently xenophobic and shockingly racist! How do we know that there is not a truly beautiful woman or sexy man in some Indonesian city or Japanese prefecture or Himalayan village? How can the editors of People sleep nights, knowing that somewhere there might be some truly qualified beauty or hunk who has been overlooked in this inane, twice-a-year rush to create an eye-catching magazine cover?
Another thought: If Brad Pitt was the world’s sexiest man in 1995 and, again, in the year 2000, why wasn’t Brad the sexiest man for those intervening years? And since this year’s selection of Julia Roberts as the “World’s Most Beautiful Woman,” (issue of 5/1/17) matched People magazine’s choices in 1991, 2000, 2005 and 2010, why hasn’t Julia been their choice in all the intervening years? There’s that other annoying thought: Certain things disqualify people from competing in certain competitions. I say that anyone who competes in a ‘sexy’ or ‘beauty’ competition should automatically be denied consideration if they work in a known glamour industry where they likely have a stable of make-up artists, stunt doubles and publicity agents! Do you recall? People even had Jennifer Aniston featured in a recent year. Goodness! My impression is that Ms. Aniston must keep a bevy of publicity agents busy placing her portrait on countless magazine covers and feeding the tabloids titillating details of that one old romance that she couldn’t seem to let die quietly. To give such glamour hounds consideration for the cover under discussion is skewing the competition against all the world’s natural beauties or natural hunks.
One might also suggest that such an international contest should have a panel of judges with international credentials and who come from a true variety of lands.
I say that there appears to be but one overriding criterion for being eligible for the honor of being chosen as the “most beautiful” or “sexiest” whatever for placement on the cover of People. That lone eligibility requirement is that the designee’s portrait on their cover will help sell copies of their journalistic rag.
So long as People runs this twice-annual phony feature with absolutely no fairness… and no substance, they are placing their publicity-loving winners on a sham pedestal.
~~~
In the chaos we are experiencing related to accusations of "fake news" and whether we can trust the media... I wanted to share this excellent opinion piece by Guy Graybill...
Have we routinely accepted material from various sources without consideration of the substance, the truthfulness, the validity of accuracy? Sure, we know there are news and magazines designed purely to "speculate" and if we have some reason to want to read those, they are available...
Yet Graybill brings up some certainly valid points on just ONE particular subject... Can we assume that this magazine could or would also publish similar questionable articles?
Perhaps more than ever before, we can no longer look at the media as "entertainment" that has valid reasons for sharing their material...
Even more, how can we consider basic newspapers and news reporting when the cry of "fake news" continues to point toward long-standing news media that we have followed for years...
Just as Guy's opinion piece questions just who is the sexiest, or most beautiful individual, we have been forced to face reality that many will continually lie, even on important and current happenings in our world...
Personally, when Julia Robert's notice came out, and she didn't even know it had been published, I began to question...There is no doubt Julia is a beautiful woman...but... reread Guy's questions and I have to agree with him...
Just as Adam Levine responded to his selection... it is today very important that we stop accepting tweets as valid news...take caution with who and what is published for both entertainment, news and other issues coming to us in all forms of media, including the Internet... By the way, that goes for Blogs as well, in my opinion... Check out writers of blog information just like all other sources...
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