By Lori Hanson
The chatter on Seth McFarlane’s song at the Oscar’s continues. I am an avid fan of Family Guy, love the show and its humor. But I gotta say that when it came to the Oscar’s although it was an obvious risk, I didn’t expect to see Family Guy-type humor in the opening act.
The song (the tune annoying is still in my head), is something that would make a group of teen boys giggle. But for an event like the Oscars, presented to adults…oh, and their families? It just didn’t make sense to me. In addition, his humor about the women who “got the flu” to look good in their dresses was ridiculously uncalled for. Sunday was the first day of eating disorder awareness week, we still have so much to do.
Both the boob song and joking about women purging to look good in their dress, point to the ever-present issue of females as objects of affection and open season on celebrity bodies and appearance. Didn’t hear Seth talking about men and how snappy they looked, nor was there any talk about how many male members we’ve seen in the movies. Perhaps he should have evened out the song by singing “We saw your boobs…we your junk.”
Above and beyond the discussion of the double standard, or treating women fairly, one of the biggest issues we have in improving body image and reducing the epidemic of eating disorders is to somehow, some way get through to men how damaging their comments can be. They may think what they said was in jest and totally harmless, but on a national stage, many eyes are watching, many ears are listening. And for too many girls, what they see and hear is taken as truth—even though it’s from Hollywood, the land of make-believe.
©2013
