Megan Fox knocked off top spot by Mad Men actress!
From abcNEWS.com: "Mad Men" actress Christina Hendricks looks completely revamped on the cover of Esquire magazine, which named her "Best-Looking Woman In America," with over 30 percent of the 10,000 women surveyed picking her over Megan Fox and model Adriana Lima. Her tips for men in the issue include expanding their vocabulary. "There are better words than beautiful. Radiant, for instance. It's an underused word. Also, enchanting, smoldering, intoxicating, charming, fetching," she said. She also lists chocolate-covered bacon as her favorite food.
Octopunk adds: Good for Christina Hendricks! I hear Mad Men is great, but she also stars in two episodes of Firefly, and I always like to see those folks make good.
16 comments:
She should fly into obscurity after the travesty that was Jennifer's Body.
I have a couple of points to make here; maybe they'll be controversial.
First, I am reasonably fond of Christina Hendriks in her role on Mad Men (which really is one of the more brilliant television shows ever), but that's it. I do not see her appeal in the reality of 2010. The whole point of Mad Men is that it's set in 1960-63 (so far; we're told it will end in 1970) and all kinds of fashions and trends were completely different. And Ms. Hendriks is, well, a little zoftig by today's movie and television standards; she's not the unreasonably attractive woman you'd see in a prestigious office job in a contemporary series; instead, she's the 1960 idea of an unreasonably attractive woman in the office etc. etc. This all means that she gets male attention for being very buxom and female attention for not being rail thin.
And now here she is on the cover of Esquire as the "sexiest" or whatever. Why? Because only women voted.
That's why she beat, for example, Brazillian model Adriana Lima (who I've seen referred to as "the hottest woman on the planet" in more than one context) or Megan Fox (who I'm not particularly fond of as an actress, and whose odious personality makes her difficult to like in any context).
I remember a conversation I once had with a couple of (snarky) friends about a girl we'd all met at a party the night before. I said, "She's pretty." My female friend said, "Not really. Well..." Then, sneering dismissively, she allowed, "...she's 'guy pretty'." Our male friend exploded, "But there only is 'Guy Pretty'!" Apparently this wasn't his first time around the concept.
So if what I (and my aforementioned friend) think of as "pretty" turns out to just be this fringe category (for men) called "Guy Pretty," then, what's legitimate, real beauty? Apparently we have to get all the men out of the room and let the women vote, in order to find out. And the answer is, Christina Hendricks. Why am I not surprised? Usually the answer is Kate Winslet, or Angelica Huston. I remember back in college it was always Isabella Rosellini.
Clearly, once you stop listening to the men with their scornful, oafish, primitive longing for "obvious" types like Scarlett Johannsen, Jessica Alba, Megan Fox etc. then you're able to appreciate the real beauties...who are not as thin.
There, I said it...but is this really all that's going on? I've sat and watched the Oscars with crowds before, and listened to the women in the room handicap the dresses. Meryl Streep will come out, or Holly Hunter, or XX and the women in the room all sigh. "Don't you just love her? She's so beautiful..." Then Jennifer Garner or Reese Witherspoon gets up there and the women in the room are contemptuous and dismissive. "She looks like a man... She's too skinny! Don't you think she's too skinny? Trashy-looking...I hate that dress" etc. while the men in the room are all squinting at each other, silently nodding their appreciation of Jennifer Garner, who is merely "Guy pretty."
So what's the deal? Is the truth somewhere in between, as usual, or what?
XX was supposed to be Helen Mirren.
Let me be more clear. My question is, are we really talking about two different aesthetics here? (Which would be interesting?) Or is this really all just about everyone's insane fixations with female skinniness? (Which is ultimately no less interesting, but is completely different.)
Here's a picture of Adriana Lima so you can see what I'm talking about. And here's another one.
jpx, i'm shocked by your comment. didn't you see the boobs?
jordan, i'm guessing it's a female skinniness issue, not a separate aesthetic issue. i think this lady is gorgeous, but so are jennifer garner and adriana lima. as a psychologist i am concerned about nigh-unattainable or potentially unhealthy standards for female beauty, but it doesn't seem fair to project that issue onto any particular woman.
yeah, jordan, i'm totally a guy and christina hendricks gets my nod over everyone else you just mentioned.
then again, i'm completely mystified by why Ginger (and with her, everyone who favors her) always gets scoffed, in Ginger v. Mary Ann debates -- which eventually wind up being less debates, and more opportunities for people to say, "yeah, uh-huh -- you *would* pick her," when i choose Ginger.
i don't think there is such a thing as "guy pretty" there's just people who favor one thing and people who favor another.
megan fox should get run over by 14 taxis.
Before I jump into the debate I'll say this. On one of my many re-watches of Firefly, I was so taken by the slap-you-in-the-head hotness of Christina Hendricks that I just jumped around in her scenes, scoping out details. You all do that, right? (Cough.)
Anyway, I noticed she was kinda hippy. And I noticed that the people behind the camera noticed too, because they were obviously trying to avoid shots of her butt. Also, while I was hunting up info for this story I came across at least one "is voluptuous the new black" -type headline.
These facts tell me two things. One, the Media Machine has its opinions on "how thin is good" and most of the time the answer is going to be pretty damn thin. Before I get to two, let me add something I already knew: tight squirrel butt or no, Christina Hendricks is good at being sexy. Which leads us to two, which is that right now her charisma has leveraged a "maybe the good amount of thin is different than we thought" question into an interesting and profitable place.
Will it change things? Will the new idea stick? No it won't, because it never does.
Also, it's Esquire magazine. Just think of the ratio of readers' respective viewerships of Mad Men and Transformers, men and women.
When it turned out Julie didn't like Buckaroo Banzai, someone I mentioned that to said "It's a guy movie." And while I probably know some women who like that movie, I can't say I didn't know what my friend meant. Which means I can't dismiss Guy Pretty and Girl Pretty as legitimate descriptive parameters.
BUT they're not as polarizing as movies, TV, magazines, the fashion industry, and Jordan's two friends will tell you. There's a lot of overlap, obviously, or the VS model and Megan Fox wouldn't have come in 2nd and 3rd in the same vote we're talking about. Also, in my opinion, no single factor can really be the only thing that matters in the complex system that is human attraction.
BUT I'd say gender plays a big factor, and perhaps the biggest. It's not too hard to project a collective feminine "Yeah! See?" on the results of this vote.
BUT I don't think it's all like that. Maybe you need to try some out-of-town Oscar parties, Jordan.
Beauty is ever elusive.
I don't have the time to read all these comments now, and too bad. But I have to try to write some scripts, or I will never get anywhere in life, and then I'll be saying to myself, why oh why did you only smoke ganja and screw around on blogs? And now here you are eating cat food. And the stupid thing is, cat food is expensive. You dimwit.
But all I want to say is that I cannot belieeeve Jennifer's Body was not a good movie, because it was such a great script. Or so I thought. Perhaps I simply have no taste. And maybe in that case, I should not be trying to write scripts at all, and I should spend ALL my time blogging.
"Will it change things? Will the new idea stick? No it won't, because it never does."
By which I mean that specific idea of relaxing standards of media/thin/beautyness, not new ideas in general.
This is excellent. I was hoping everyone would join in like this.
Thinking about it some more, I guess I have to refine my coarse points a bit. The fact is, there are women whom men lust after whom, if I was a girl, would make me disgusted by the whole "male taste in beauty thing," sometimes. I mean, girls like Pamela Anderson or whoever, where you can legitimately argue that platinum blonde hair, huge tits, huge lips and trashy clothes are affecting men's minds adversely. I can see the point; the part of the male gaze that remains 14 years old must be very frustrating to women. But then women go and develop ridiculous crushes on Prince William or John Kennedy Junior (two complete jerks) and I realize that the same "14 year old brain" element is at play, and just like part of my brain is still looking for the blonde in the bikini, a part of many women's brains is still looking for "a prince" of some kind. (Not the same point but it's close.)
I think people are intimidated by people more attractive than they are, and resentful, and that resentment takes the form of a rejection of the criteria: a sense that the person who's preferring someone else over you is doing something wrong. I know that I've been scolded by female friends for admitting being attracted to women whom they found intimidating or were envious of (whether they admitted it or not) and it came out as scolding me for some kind of moral failing for liking the "cheap, obvious girl," you know, "just" because she happens to look a certain way. (Point being, I'm not making up the "guy pretty" thing.)
In my experience women have just as many "embarrassing" crushes on celebrities or other people whom they do not necessarily like or respect; where it's just pure sex. ("Tom Cruise's smile is pure sex," a girl said to me in the 'nineties.) And that's totally fine, but somehow it doesn't get me off the hook with the same women for liking, say, the models in the swimsuit issue. ("Obvious; plastic etc.)
The only women who's a total object of male lust who mysteriously doesn't piss off women in the way I'm describing (they actually like her, unless they, you know, hate her) is Angelina Jolie. I'm not sure why.
I once read a whole debate thread on some blog post where a whole bunch of women were trying to figure out why so many men called her "ugly," "horse-faced" etc. They didn't get it. "She looks the same as all the other Hollywood starlets," these women complained. (With that same touch of contempt that suggests that all men see are tits and ass and teeth.) They all decided that men (and me) don't like Sarah Jessica Parker and call her "horse faced" because we "resent women in power; women who've accomplished something."
That's not it. I don't "resent" Sarah Jessica Parker's slutty TV show (and that women who see her or Carrie Bradshaw as symbols of "women in power" are taking a controversial position anyway). I just don't think she's very charismatic. Maybe that's the point: you don't have to resent a "pretty" girl (say, a Cameron Diaz type). Similar stuff was happening ten years ago with Callista Flockheart...and then Harrison Ford married her. So go figure.
Jesus Christ! Missing line!
I switched from Jolie to Jessica Parker, up there, without saying so. Hopefully someone reading this can follow what I'm saying...
Damn it, I'm mincing words, and I told myself I wouldn't. I don't think Sarah Jessica Parker is "not very charismatic" -- I think she's got an ugly face, an no amount of "successful woman pulling herself up by her bootstraps and enjoying a healthy, liberating female sexual appetite without guilt or stigma, as a man would" pixie dust is going to change that ugly face into a pretty face. She may be an engaging actress, character, symbol etc., while, say, Jessica Biel is a total boring cypher, but Jessica Biel's way, way prettier. That's just the way it goes.
I take back "slutty TV show." I've never watched the show and I'm upholding a reactionary idea inadvertently. The show is about promiscuous women, and promiscuous women are not "slutty" for engaging in the same behavior that gets men labeled as "studs" or whatver. That's an outmoded stereotype and I shouldn't have used it. I really have nothing against the show or the actor except that I refuse to accept having my attitudes tacitly insulted simply because I think she's unattractive.
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