When Rush Limbaugh called 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton the "White House dog," it was not classy.
When John McCain called 18-year-old Chelsea Clinton "ugly" in 1998, it was not classy.
When April Winchell gives Lourdes Ciccone Leon, a 13-year-old adolescent, a hard time for having bushy eyebrows and some hair on her upper lip, it's not classy. I mean, pick on Lourdes's mother, Madonna, all you want. She's an entertainer, she's a celebrity, she continues to seek celebrity, and she works out so much that the veins on her arms bulge out freakishly. She'll turn 50 this year, so it's fair to needle her about dressing as if she's still 25.
But her daughter Lourdes is 13, and she's gotten double-whammy of southern European genetics. Until she gets older and decides to depilate a little bit -- and who knows, maybe she'll choose to go natural -- she's a kid who's got dark, thick, and very, very noticeable Mediterranean hair. Does Winchell think Lourdes doesn't already know that?
I have only half the Mediterranean genes that Lourdes does (one of my parents is northern European, the other, wop), and I started going crazy self-conscious over what I thought was the world's biggest unibrow . . . at age 13. Like most American girls, I've had body issues since adolescence that persist in one form or another to this day. No young teen girl needs yet another jackass promoting unhealthy, unrealistic, patriarchal standards of beauty.
Not to mention the dogpile in the blog post's comment section: dozens of basement-dwelling, undersexed men picking on a girl and telling her to get her face waxed.
Winchell defends her hateful post in the comment section by saying that it's Madonna's fault, because she "allow[s] her to be photographed in public over and over again" and she "insist[s] on putting her on display in the media." There's no mention of the paparazzi's hand in Lourdes's being photographed over and over again. Instead, April's conclusion is that Madonna is failing in her duties as a mother because she does not "deal with the facial hair." So Madonna would be a better mom if she made Lourdes wax, shave, or bleach her face before she left the house? A 13-year-old girl? Or maybe the answer is to never let Lourdes leave the house at all, since stepping out the door means displaying her to the public. That's it! Children of celebrities, according to Winchell, leaving their homes constitutes displaying themselves to the media.
Apparently, if celebrities insist on letting their children exit the house from time to time, they must be waxed, shaved, bleached, primped, and made up as if they were going to be on the cover of Redbook. (Or, in Lourdes's case, Highlights for Children.) But in any event, I fail to understand how not taking 13-year-old Lourdes to a salon for a waxing makes Madonna a bad parent.
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10 comments:
Tweezing and grooming are not "unhealthy" or "unrealistic". A 13 year old girl doesn't need a unibrow and pronounced facial hair.
And as far as going natural, your example is a joke. Brooke Shields eyebrows are perfectly manicured and she doesn't have a mustache.
I'm half Greek and half Italian so I know from facial hair issues. Whenever things got a little too dark and hairy, my mom made sure to pluck what needed to be plucked and Nair what needed to be Naired. Why? Because she knew that kids are the meanest people on earth and she wanted to spare me from that.
Take the scrutiny I received as a regular kid and multiply it by about ten billion for Lourdes. Madonna is certainly no stranger to how the media works so why would you leave your child open to that kind of criticism if there was something that you could very easily do about it? No one, April included, is saying Lourdes has to go out in full makeup and look like a prostitot. But shouldn't Madonna want to protect her daughter from that kind of humiliation?
As for "dozens of basement-dwelling, undersexed men", that is also not classy. Criticizing people for criticizing someone else by making unfounded critical comments is just a touch hypocritical.
Not to mention the dogpile in the blog post's comment section: dozens of basement-dwelling, undersexed men picking on a girl and telling her to get her face waxed.
Welcome to the internet! I hate comment sections on non-political websites.
anonymous coward -
Brooke Shields very famously let her eyebrows stay natural when she was a young model in the 1970s and 1980s. The trend in the 1970s was a very slim, plucked eyebrow look, and her choice to keep her eyebrows full was one thing that made her stand out at the time. Perhaps you're too young to know about that. It's been only in the past ten years or so that she's gone for a more groomed look.
tiki -
You realize you're making the "my parents spanked me, and I turned out OK" argument, don't you?
Also, Winchell and the commenters on her blog were insisting that Lourdes get waxed, not merely plucked. I think that's child abuse, not protection from humiliation.
You realize you're making the "my parents spanked me, and I turned out OK" argument, don't you?
Are you saying that plucking a kid's eyebrows is child abuse?
You're inferring that Tiki's mother was cruel because of the way she dealt with her daughter's facial hair.
That sounds an awful lot like the blog you're criticising.
tiki -
You're saying it's not?
anonymous coward -
It's implying, not inferring.
You're right. Inferring means you've arrived at your conclusion using logic.
As long as we're correcting each other, you might want to rethink throwing the words "child abuse" around to make a point about standards of beauty.
As a survivor of horrific child abuse, I can tell you that equating a waxing at a salon and actual abuse is ignorant and irresponsible. You do a disservice to those who suffered real abuse at the hands of others.
And no, helping your adolescent daughter shape her eyebrows with a tweezer is not abuse. If that actually fits your criteria for savagery, I envy your childhood.
"It's implying, not inferring"
Glomarization wins. Anonymous fails.
I need to make sure I have this straight before I reply in-depth. You, Glom, are saying that my mother abused me by plucking my eyebrows to keep me from looking like a Muppet. You consider that to be child abuse. Do I have that correct?
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