Editorial: What Not to Watch

Early Saturday afternoon, I had my regular appointment at the Blood Center of Wisconsin's Downtown location to donate.  The newly installed flat-screens were tuned to TLC, specifically "What Not to Wear".  I don't own a television and what little TV I do watch is at my parents' house, and they've never had cable. So my impression, having never seen the show before, was that its premise is slovenly, overweight men taking their wives into the shop for a tuneup. 

The second part of the episode featured a woman who was supposedly a "witch" (I put that in quotes because the whole thing had such an air of scripted bogusness about it--it was just now that I learned that TLC is also the Jon & Kate network).  Actually, she looked like a mashup of any number of my ex-girlfriends and paramours.  I wonder if the "witch" part was thrown in because one wouldn't put a larger woman on TV without it being part of some kind of gag.  It brought me back to a blog post that had been forming in my mind since watching the documentary of "Julie & Julia".  This is what Julie Powell looks like.

Surprised?  I was too--but in retrospect, how could one be?  As much as I find "Julie & Julia" enjoyable to watch, its lovely images aren't believable, at least insofar as Amy Adams plays Powell.  Amy Adams' BMI (Body Mass Index) is probably somewhere in the neighborhood of my own, which at about 22.4 is smack dab in the middle of clinically "normal."  (A little Internet research indicates Adams is about 5'4", but obviously her weight is a better-guarded secret.)  Maintaining that kind of figure in a life composed of working a desk job, blogging and cooking super-rich food is simply not plausible.  

Moreover, as much as such things are in the eye of the beholder, Adams' portrayal is far too bland to do justice to Powell.  The real-life Powell has a saucy demeanor (the computer I'm writing this on doesn't have sound, so when watching the video I just linked to, I can't hear what she's saying).  She also sounds really, really intelligent.  Adams' portrayal is smart enough to get through the day, but with not much left over at the end.  That's not blogger intelligent. 

Comments

[Suzanne]

Never trust a skinny chef.
TV totally skews people's idea of what is normal or typical or acceptable in terms of human appearance.

[Michael Miller]

There's a non sequitur here: I say I was watching the YouTube video without sound, then describe what Julie Powell sounds like. Of course, I was referring to the DVD documentary.