While we all might get a chuckle or two out of watching a bunch of women dressed in bridal gowns digging for cash inside a wedding cake in the middle of Times Square, female copywriter, Veronica, writing on her A Big Fat Waste of Time weblog, thinks WE’s Bridezilla and its promotional campaign degrades women and portrays them as brainless gold diggers. Aside from that fact that’s the point of the show and there’d be no show if the brides didn’t act like that, Veronica writes, “Sure those kinds of women exist in the world. There are a lot of Black guys in jail, too, but I think we reached our quota on those kinds of movie roles a long time ago, don’t you?” She hopes the whole thing wins the AWNY Grand Ugly Award.
Veronica suggests a more interesting show might be filming a few single women, armed with $50,000, backpacking around the world for two years “while they enlighten themselves on world views.” She adds, “You can get REI to sponsor it. You can change some people’s lives. Think about it.” We did and we just can’t get past the fact that trucker hats became unhip before they were hip, that viewers turned so quickly on the second season of “The O.C.”, that next year, people will begin to crap all over “Lost”, that we suddenly hate Tom Cruise because he’s happy, that every ad campaign sucks unless it’s the one you worked on, that Cannes still matters, that no one will remember that Ashlee Simpson got caught lip syncing when she hits the top of the charts again, that Lindsay Lohan’s boob size is news, that Paris Hilton actually increased sales for Carl’s Jr., that Hooters is an actual restaurant. Two years of intellectual stimulation is a lot to ask of a society where stimulation is a Hollywood movie as opposed to a well written novel.
OK, so all that’s harsh and Veronica does make a good point. Today, it’s all about the lowest common denominator. Entertainment via idiocy is celebrated over the appreciation of intelligence. Fame comes from money and connections rather than hard work. It would be fantastic if a two year show about women intellectualizing about life and themselves was a hit but the sad truth is it won’t be. Even if it was shortened to two months, we’re not sure it would be hit worthy. It seems we just want our women young, hot and running around in tiny bikinis, acting stupid or diving into wedding cakes.
