On Red Carpet, Stars Revolt Over Pageantry

[summer]

I have to say watching that exchange between Seacrest, George and Amal, was uncomfortable. You could see her internally rolling her eyes.

I hate E! coverage. I love seeing the clothes, but I hate the special cameras and the "who are you wearing? OMG, those jewels are lovely! Do you get to keep them? (they always say no, why do you keep asking???)" inteviews. 


www.nytimes.com/2015/02/05/movies/awardsseason/on-the-red-carpet-a-revolt-builds-over-the-pageantry.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news


At this year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards, Julianne Moore, Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston made headlines, of a sort, by taking the revolutionary step of refusing to stick their paws in E!’s Mani Cam.


For anyone who has tragically missed this gimmicky red carpet arriviste, the Mani Cam is a camera-mounted box lined with red on which actresses are exhorted to show off manicures and borrowed jewels. Already armed with a “Glam Cam,” showing 360-degree views of stars’ outfits, E! rolled out the Mani Cam in 2012. And the host Giuliana Rancic instructed actresses to walk their fingers through it “like a runway.”


Results have been mixed. Jena Malone stuck her tongue out at it. Elisabeth Moss gave it the finger. Then came the three A-listers’ snubs, which CBS News reported as a “sign of a growing gender-equality push in Hollywood.” Which goes to show just how low the bar can be for what passes as a gender-equality push in Tinseltown.


As anyone who’s watched a televised awards show can attest, the red carpet is part beauty contest, part catwalk (emphasis on catty) and all gaming range, where viewers, along with paid hitters like E!’s “Fashion Police,” can gleefully excoriate celebrities — usually actresses — for their sartorial choices. As Hadley Freeman of The Guardian put it, “This is a strange pocket of the Western world where it is still deemed utterly acceptable to take smart, successful women and reduce them to beauty pageant contestants.”







Oscar Ballot 2015



On the one hand, it may be hard to drum up much pity for gorgeous, highly paid famous women who are usually outfitted in peerless haute couture at no charge. On the other, women quickly age out of Hollywood, are paid less than their male counterparts, are more likely to have their phones hacked and remain role models for some youngsters, all while being expected to attain mannequin-like perfection, making the red carpet’s indignities seem a little worse.


At the Golden Globes in January, hosted with arch glee by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, the red carpet seemed especially out of step with the ceremony’s actual goings-on.


Inside the Beverly Hilton, Maggie Gyllenhaal, a Globe winner, drew thunderous applause for noting the new “wealth of roles for actual women in television and in film.” Outside, the gals at Go Fug Yourself, a comedy-fashion blog, criticized her dress for being “the color of my mom’s third wedding.” (Zap2it, meanwhile, likened Ms. Fey’s gown to “a Candies prom dress from 1998.”) Inside, Amal Clooney was rousingly praised for her global human rights work. Outside, on the red carpet, her opera gloves unleashed paroxysms of outrage.


Ms. Clooney had already been served the harsh lesson that the red carpet was a type of combat zone earlier in the night. Shortly after arriving at their first Hollywood event as newlyweds, Ms. Clooney, a noted barrister, and her famous husband, George Clooney, were foisted upon the E! host Ryan Seacrest, who held up a T-shirt emblazoned with a bride and groom and the words “Game Over” — a reference to Mr. Clooney’s playboy days. The disdain on Mr. Clooney’s face said it all.


Yet while red carpet inanity is nothing new, pushback has been gaining momentum, and not just from the anti-Mani Cam clan.


Last year, Cate Blanchett called out a camera operator who was scanning the length of her dress. Crouching down, she asked, “Do you do that to the guys?” A few weeks later, Ms. Freeman declared in The Guardian that we’d reached “peak red carpet,” saying “it’s all just got too stupid and too hysterical,” this surreal, curiously hostile place “with celebrities paraded on it like race horses while the public pulls up their lips and inspects their teeth and ridiculous entertainment journalists shout inane questions.”


Foremost among the inane questions, at least according to Upworthy, which recently put together a montage of such queries, is the evergreen “Who are you wearing?” The video exhorts journalists to “ask better questions,” echoing the #AskHerMore campaign first propounded by theRepresentation Project and then taken up by Ms. Poehler’s Smart Girls organization, which encourages youngsters to “cultivate their authentic selves.”


“We kept getting messages and tweets like, ‘God, why do they ask these questions on the red carpet?’ ” said Meredith Walker, Smart Girls’ executive director. “Our viewers and followers are interested in these women, interested in deeper questions that help us learn anything interesting. They don’t want that time wasted hearing them saying what they’re wearing and all this stuff that really doesn’t matter.”




At this year’s Globes and Critics’ Choice Awards, The Daily Share (“news, information, enlightenment”) took up the cause, asking actresses about the best advice they’d received and what they would tell their younger selves. While The Daily Share’s audience is a fraction of E!’s, the questions its host asked yielded infinitely more interesting replies.


Yet what these hashtag campaigns might not take into account is the amount of money celebrities stand to make from what, essentially, is self-promotional work.



“The red carpet has created a new economy for actors,” said Bronwyn Cosgrave, the author of “Made for Each Other: Fashion and the Academy Awards.”


If celebrities “do a series of good looks” on the red carpet, Ms. Cosgrave said, they are better poised to land lucrative contracts. “Over the shoulder of Middle America and Kathy Griffin” — one of the hosts of “Fashion Police” — “you have all of these luxury groups watching to see who is making it through the year, from Cannes all the way to the Oscars,” Ms. Cosgrave said.


She pointed to Lupita Nyong’o, who won an Oscar for her role as the tortured Patsey in “12 Years a Slave” after working the awards season carpets looking, as Ms. Cosgrave put it, like “the second coming of Audrey Hepburn.” Ms. Nyong’o was selected as the face of Miu Miu and went on to a prized contract with Lancôme.


“She landed the golden goose,” Ms. Cosgrave continued. “For actors, this means they don’t have to make B movies. They can fund their career. And do art-house pictures while still enjoying the kind of money they’d make while making a blockbuster.”


Indeed the money behind the promotional work has led some to speculate that Ms. Moore, Ms. Aniston and Ms. Witherspoon opted against the Mani Cam not in response to #AskHerMore, but instead out of an unwillingness to basically shill for a brand of nail polish or jeweler. Maybe answering dumb questions is a small price to pay in exchange for fattening one’s bank account and making up for Hollywood’s pay gap.



Then again, maybe they just didn’t feel like playing ball.


Still, the critique raises the question of whether there is complicity in the red carpet’s predictable shallowness.


“If the actresses are fed up with the questions,” Ms. Cosgrave said, “why are they obeying the publicists lining them up to answer them?”

[ttt]

The reason they ask "Who are you wearing?" all the time is because celebrities have contracts with the companies that provide the gowns and jewels that require them to say "I'm wearing XYZ designer" as a condition of getting that dress for free.

[Cicero]

Feb 5, 2015 8:19:59 GMT -5 ttt said:

The reason they ask "Who are you wearing?" all the time is because celebrities have contracts with the companies that provide the gowns and jewels that require them to say "I'm wearing XYZ designer" as a condition of getting that dress for free.

Exactly. Something tells me that they're not so fed up with it as to quit doing it and actually buy the dresses and jewelry themselves.

[rupertpenny]

Some of the questions the ask are inane, but I actually like knowing who designed the dresses.

And although men aren't asked to do the mani cam, they are often asked who they are wearing.

Out of all the ways Hollywood isn't fair to women this is pretty far down the list.

[shortstax]

Wasn't it Cate Blanchette (or someone else) last year who literally looked at Seacrest and said "would you ask a man that?!?" I forget what his question was, but I wanted to high 5 her through the screen

[mrsbro]

I don't mind the 'what are you wearing' because as stated above, they typically are obligated to promote the designers and jewelers. However the inane - wanna do a shot!? Stupid shit is ridiculous. I mean you can ask what they are wearing and also about the damn movie they are up for. There can be a balance. Also, E! is like the lowest of common denominators for this stuff - other channels ask more appropriate questions (why they chose the movie, how they felt this work would impact audiences, not just the OMG WHAT COLOR IS YOUR NAILPOLISH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

[Deleted]

Eh, if they don't want reporters asking questions, they can always stop accepting handouts and endorsements from designers.

[heyjude]

#boycotttheoscars

[josieposy]

Feb 5, 2015 8:52:43 GMT -5 papiercherri said:

Eh, if they don't want reporters asking questions, they can always stop accepting handouts and endorsements from designers.

Wouldn't that just totally rock the fashion world if everyone decided to PAY for their attire? Crazy-ass thought.

[Deleted]

I would guess the jeweller that gave Aniston the ring was not happy about the refusal to show it off. (If she was loaned a ring- who knows?)

[ChillyMcFreeze]

Costume design and haute couture are art forms. These actresses (and to some extent, actors) are wearing art. I cannot get worked up about focusing on the fashion.

The mani cam is stupid, but I also don't think it's an affront to feminism. It doesn't take away from the actor's accomplishments. The red carpet is ALL about looks. The actual awards show is about the acting. They are two different programs that happen on the same night.

[ttt]

Feb 5, 2015 9:10:08 GMT -5 ChillyMcFreeze said:

Costume design and haute couture are art forms. These actresses (and to some extent, actors) are wearing art. I cannot get worked up about focusing on the fashion.

The mani cam is stupid, but I also don't think it's an affront to feminism. It doesn't take away from the actor's accomplishments. The red carpet is ALL about looks. The actual awards show is about the acting. self congratulatory publicity. They are two different programs that happen on the same night.

[ttt]

Mandatory Unisex Golden Globes Uniforms Keep Focus On Stars’ Work






LOS ANGELES—Pundits from across the entertainment industry are hailing the fashion requirements put in place at last night’s Golden Globes as a resounding success, agreeing that the Hollywood Foreign Press’ mandate that all celebrities wear identical gray full-body unisex jumpsuits achieved the intended goal of refocusing the ceremony on the craft of acting and filmmaking. “The spirit of the Golden Globes has always been about celebrating individuals’ achievements in film and television, not their physical appearance or wardrobe, and the hundreds of required one-size-fits-all bodysuits worn last night certainly helped redirect attention to where it’s due,” said E! correspondent Kristina Guerrero of the compulsory gender-neutral garments that Hollywood A-listers were obligated to wear as they filed in a straight line down the red carpet, sans makeup, at precise intervals. “Of course, you can’t deny that despite the uniforms, the stars still dazzled. I mean, whether she’s wearing a custom Zac Posen gown or a woolen body covering and matte-finish Velcro sneakers, you just can’t take your eyes off Amy Adams.” Fashion critics pointed out, however, that typically couture-savvy Sandra Bullock did not wear the obligatory uniform well, noting that the star’s garish breast-pocket serial number distracted from her garment’s boxy, shapeless waist.

[IIOY]

Feb 5, 2015 8:57:31 GMT -5 josieposy said:

Feb 5, 2015 8:52:43 GMT -5 papiercherri said:

Eh, if they don't want reporters asking questions, they can always stop accepting handouts and endorsements from designers.

Wouldn't that just totally rock the fashion world if everyone decided to PAY for their attire? Crazy-ass thought.

I wonder how many of them could afford to dress themselves for every single appearance, from red carpet to premieres to random events. I remember reading an interview with Reese Witherspoon in which she said that people assume all actors are wealthy but in reality many have a lot less money than people think for a variety of reasons. I think I just read the other day that Dianne Wiest is either broke or close to it.

[heyjude]

Maybe it wouldn't be such a big deal if film work by women or about women wasn't treated with such low regard by the academy and Hollywood in general. But it's a combination of not being respected on the red carpet and not being respected by the various awarding outfits. Year after year women are ignored for the work of men and the few that make it past the tall phallic gates are expected to parade like cows for Ryan Seacrest. Maybe they've had enough.

[josieposy]

Feb 5, 2015 9:17:19 GMT -5 IIOY said:

Feb 5, 2015 8:57:31 GMT -5 josieposy said:

Wouldn't that just totally rock the fashion world if everyone decided to PAY for their attire? Crazy-ass thought.

I wonder how many of them could afford to dress themselves for every single appearance, from red carpet to premieres to random events. I remember reading an interview with Reese Witherspoon in which she said that people assume all actors are wealthy but in reality many have a lot less money than people think for a variety of reasons. I think I just read the other day that Dianne Wiest is either broke or close to it.

So basically they're screwed either way. Awesome.

[heyjude]

And a couple years ago many of these women walked the red carpet perhaps proudly and entered an auditorium where the first thing they heard was a song about how "we saw their boobs." So yeah. Not surprised there is a growing mood change.

[mominatrix]

Here's my GOML contribution...


It all goes back to Joan Rivers. In the early days of E!, they had some nice red carpet coverage. I don't remember who did it, but if I remember correctly it was the guy who was the first host of Talk Soup or E News. They talked to the celebs about their day, about their movies, about their kids. Whatever.

Then, they hired Joan Rivers to do the red carpet... my sense was she didn't like the stars shilling for their next projects (which many of them were doing), so she started in on the clothes. Also, they were easy to mock. It was long before the interwebs and they'd do a fashion roundup after (say) The Oscars, where they'd talk about whose clothes were great and whose sucked.

Because the clothes hadn't been much of a focus before, it wasn't like it is now, with stylists roadtesting every bracelet. Some of the stuff was (gasp!) just their own. There were some big fashion boo boos. It was kind of fun.


But, IMHO, what it did do (as it became more and more of a thing, and the web took it to a whole other level) is narrow the scope of what was acceptable and impose kind of a groupthinkiness to the whole thing. (of course, long before that the studio system had made the red carpet just another scene for costume designers, but that's a whole other conversation...)




see also: www.vanityfair.com/vf-hollywood/2014/08/red-carpet-history




proof... here's Julia Roberts in 1990:



also this: www.wetpaint.com/news/video/watch-what-the-oscars-red-carpet-looked-like-in-the-80s-video
note the complete lack of 'who are you wearing?' at all.

[Velar Fricative]

The Mani-cam is stupid and I do agree that there's a difference between how men and women are treated on the red carpet.

But in terms of the red carpet conversations...they're actors. I guess I'm just not getting why they need to be asked all the hard questions on the red carpet. I'm not watching red carpet and award shows because I'm curious about their opinion on drone strikes and ISIS. As long as it's equal-opportunity fluff, I don't care.

[pixy0stix]

The mani-cam is ridiculous. Everyone who is asked to do it has a "wtf is this thing" look on their faces.

I like watching the red carpet for the fashion. I'll probably skip watching the actual show this year.

#halfBOYcottheoscars