Shayne Dahl Lamas and the Lure of Fame

I hadn't been watching the TV reality show The Bachelor since an earlier season of it, but two seasons ago, my mother suggested I watch it again, and now, like my mother, I'm really into it. It's fascinating because it's very revealing of personalities and meanness/deception/lying/underlying motives.

My mother and I adored the contestant Shayne Lamas (the daughter of Lorenzo and the grand-daughter of Fernando Lamas and Arlene Dahl), the one who the bachelor, Matt Grant, from England chose out of 25 American women. The way the show edited what was presented as documentary (rather than scripted) footage, Shayne seemed genuine, warm, kind and compassionate, mature far beyond her 22 years.

We were surprised by the announcement yesterday, the day after the show's finale, that Shayne is appearing on the cover--and inside, in a six-page (non-nude) spread--of the second issue of Girls Gone Wild magazine, whose first cover featured NY Governor Eliot Spitzer's whore.

I guess having grown up in Hollywood, Shayne felt she had to jump at the offer to further her 15 minutes of fame. Sort of sad, because--despite the hair that she's been dying platinum since she was 12, which gives some people the impression that she's just another shallow Hollywood starlet--Shayne seems to have a depth that would make for real acting talent. I hope she hasn't derailed what could even be an Oscar-worthy career by typecasting herself in this way.

Standardizing Beauty Digitally

Hollywood is digitally reducing breast size on some actresses

I have two responses to this development (excuse the pun). The most glaring offense is that Hollywood is making well-endowed women feel there is something wrong with the way nature made them. As we know, the culture has been doing that to overweight women for a long time. But overweight is something a person can do something about, by exercising and choosing what to eat; and overweight is not good for one's health.

Unlike fat, bust size (for those women who are "born that way," without surgical enhancement) is a given. By digitally remaking a woman's chest, Hollywood is thus telling women that if they are more than an A or B cup, they are to be looked at as nothing more than a sex object. There is something seriously wrong with this picture.

How would men feel if their genitals were on display to be judged by the culture? (Since men are free to go topless, their penises are the part of their body most parallel to women's breasts.) I don't think men would like that! The author Eldridge Cleaver (Soul on Ice) once designed jeans for men that had a penis-shaped pocket that would display their organ the way a bra or bikini top displays the shape and size of breasts. Maybe we need to start sending these jeans to Hollywood moguls and insist that they wear them from now on.

My other response is that Hollywood's decision to digitally reduce starlets' breast sizes opens the door for actors of all sizes and shapes to play the coveted high-paying lead roles in films. So what if your face isn't symmetrical, you have double chins, you're a midget, you have a paunch or a big butt? Digital artists can make you, too look like a supermodel, or like the flavor of the month, whether that be big boobs or small ones. They can even make you into the other gender, if you really want a certain role.