The New York Times gets itself in girl trouble.
By MICHELLE GOLDBERG
eighteen years after the New York Times settled a legendary sex discrimination case, the old gray lady is still clueless about girls.
Last Sunday's Magazine, "Heroine Worship," had promise. A radiant preteen girl graced the cover, wearing a T-shirt sporting a list of famous women. A caption stretching across the page explained what was up: "Inventing an identity in the age of female icons. A special issue."
Unfortunately, though, this special issue won't provide much help to anyone trying to navigate their way through a postmodern girlhood. Instead, it's devoted to female "icons" — or, at least, to those women the Times has designated as such.
"An icon is a human sound bite, an individual reduced to a name, a face and an idea," explains Holly Brubach, the magazine's style editor. It's a sad attempt to put a new spin on the old idea of fame. In an essay apparently designed to rationalize the whole weird venture, Brubach describes the power such icons ostensibly wield. "About to move on to the next century, we call on various aspects of them as we reconfigure our lives," she writes, "deciding which aspects of ourselves we want to take with us and which aspects we want to leave behind." It's as if building an identity were as simple as putting together an ensemble at Macy's or ordering dinner at a sushi bar.
What is most dispiriting, though, is the paucity of choices. Of the few articles about contemporary women, two are about models and the third is about Playboy-Playmate-turned-MTV-dating-show-host Jenny McCarthy. We also get the rest of the usual suspects — Madonna and Oprah, as well as Martha Stewart. (Writer Patricia McLaughlin defends the domestic goddess, claiming that we despise her not for her cloying domesticity, but because "hating Martha Stewart is safer than hating your whole life.")
The whole issue exudes a kind of retro sensibility that wouldn't be entirely out of place in Esquire. In "Virgin Territory," John Tierney tries to link a nightclub promoter's corralling of models to the mythical power of the virgin. "'Virginal' might not be the first word associated with today's models, but there actually is a certain purity to their cultists' devotion," he writes. "Doormen and bouncers at clubs have the same mission as guards at the Temple of Vesta: to ward off lustful males." In the end, though, the only power Tierney ascribes to models is the power to "put a smile on his face." Or, more likely, a pistol in his pocket.
Though the magazine cloaks itself in the fashionable notion of girly empowerment, it never gets any further than this in examining the relationship between women and the emaciated ideal. In his model article, Village Voice columnist Guy Trebay rattles off a list of facts about Naomi Campbell. Some of them, like the tidbit about Campbell getting her start in Boy George's "I'll tumble 4 ya" video, are interesting. None are enlightening. Trebay's only point seems to be that he can recite obscure facts about Campbell off the top of his head. He asks, "Does this mean, I wonder, that we've reached a critical stage in celebrity pollution?" Or does it mean that Trebay has too much free time on his hands?
Premiere writer Rachel Abramowitz's profile of McCarthy, who until recently hosted MTV's "Singled Out," is similarly unenlightening. Abramowitz seems to think that merely describing capitalism at work — like a dutiful student in Cultural Studies 101 — counts as a kind of critique. "No, she's not just another blond bimbo with a big smile," Abramowitz writes. "She's a cash machine." Apparently, cash machines are big with the girls of today: "She professes not to care how others see her, and therein lies her appeal as a Generation X icon: she has no seeming allegiances to anything greater than the spirit of Jenny."
Well, more power to her. But the New York Times should know better than to attempt to wrap this sub-People fare in a "feminist" package. Ironically, though the editors purport to be reporting on those idolized by the culture, the heroines that many girls really doworship — women from singer Ani Difranco to rapper-turned-actress Queen Latifah — don't get a mention. Musicians, of course, are the ultimate icons to the young, but the only rock star profiled in the magazine is Tina Turner. Instead of Patti Smith, we get Patsy Kline.
The contributors tend to justify their selections with vapid aphorisms. "What is the difference between a literary icon and an ordinary writer?" Cynthia Ozick plaintively asks. "The writer is sometimes read, the icon almost never." Is this really true? What about the male writer-icons, from James Joyce to Jack Kerouac, whose works are devoured by their disciples? Never mind. Women are about image, not substance.
Some of the Times' contributors are openly hostile to their subjects — and to those who appreciate them. Dan Hofstadter's profile of Frida Kahlo is more insulting than informative. "Kahlo's worldwide constituency is composed not only of Mexicans and other Latinos but also of art students, leftists, feminists, the genuinely ill, the merely miserable," Hofstadter glibly opines — transforming Kahlo from an icon of artistic suffering into one of mediocre degeneracy.
Old movie stars (from Audrey Hepburn to Mae West), get a little more respect — as does Margaret Thatcher. Indeed, after reading Brenda Maddox's profile of the Iron Lady, someone who had never seen a picture of Thatcher might come to believe that she was some sort of British Evita. Maddox quotes Francois Mitterrand: "Ms. Thatcher has the eyes of Caligula and the mouth of Marilyn Monroe."
To whom is this bland smorgasbord of possibilities supposed to appeal? As Brubach explains, "Kate Axelrod, the 11-year old on our cover, stands not only for the girls of her generation, whose identities are in the formative stages, but for women of all ages, who tend to regard themselves as works in progress."
Apparently, then, the "icon" for womankind is a child.
Michelle Goldberg's last piece for Media Circus was about Calvin Klein's use of plus-sized models.
Bookmark: http://www.salon1999.com/media/mediacircus.html