Leg-abaloo much ado about nothing
So, Justin Trudeau was all the heartthrob rage when he became prime minister, international media salivating over his good looks and charm and faddishly post-millennium feminism. Hubba-hubba hullabaloo. Canada’s journo pack may not have led The Un-Bachelor rah-rah — I believe this JT swooning may have been sowed in an America that suddenly took notice of happenings north of the border — but most fell in line obsequiously enough, as if basking in Trudeau’s reflected glow.
Personally, I don’t see it. Unlike his dad, Justin never got my blood racing. I don’t even think he’s got great hair.
But I’m raising the matter now to remind that few pundits — and certainly not the broader public — complained about objectifying Trudeau as some kind of sex stud, all testosterone sizzle (though I’d suggest metrosexual pfft) and no substance. Nor did the PM take the road more demure, dining out on his glossy magazine cover Herr-Hotness, endlessly selfie-bombing and removing his shirt to flash flesh.
Why, then, the social media outrage — has there ever been a non-outrage to emerge from cyber-babble? — sparked by a sassy Daily Mail front-page photo this week featuring the gorgeous gams of British Prime Minister Theresa May and Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon?
May is 60. Sturgeon is a comparative filly at 46. I strongly doubt either would seriously bitch about being paid a compliment on their underpinnings, though they might find it necessary to pay lip service to the sexist shudder.
Perhaps this scandale in a B-cup has not raised hackles back in Canada. I’m overseas and devouring British newspapers, as per usual, because nobody does it better, whether the piously left Guardian, the establishment Times of London or the ankle-biting reactionary Mail — what the Toronto Sun dreams of being when it grows up into an adult tabloid, if it doesn’t expire first, a grim prognosis facing all newspapers. Anyway, there were May and Sturgeon in Glasgow, putting their nicely coiffed heads together to discuss Article 50 — which would formally trigger British pullout of the European Union, as dictated by last year’s referendum — and Sturgeon’s stated aim of gerrymandering some sort of Scottish unilateral scheme to stay within the EU single market; also Sturgeon banging on again about holding another Scottish independent referendum, which failed the yea-test in 2014.
The Mail, not for the first time, got hammered for its sexist portrayal of two politically prominent women, with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn predictably sniffing via Twitter: “It’s 2017. This sexism must be consigned to history. Shame on the Daily Mail.”
Corbyn, more like, who should have been consigned to history following the Brexit poll last summer and his meek efforts on behalf of the Remain side, which stoked a heated dump-Corbyn campaign from his party.
Few voices of get-a-grip-people were raised in the Mail’s defence, though British Vogue did observe the lady pols looked “magnificent.
“Don’t they, whisper it, look like women, rather than women masquerading as men?”
Well, I don’t know about that because gender identity has become six-ways-from-Sunday complicated over the past year and transgender rights the cri du jour, from genderneutral pronoun wars to gender-designated washroom clashes transformed into the hill on which U.S. reactionaries have decided to plant their flag, with a huge boost from President Donald Trump revoking transgender rights — introduced by president Barack Obama — which allowed transgender students to use washrooms and change-rooms matching their chosen gender identity. I’m getting off track here. The controversy over the glamgam photograph and The Mail’s “Leg’s it” headline — a rather lame Brexit pun — was right in the tab’s wheelhouse, vaulting to the top of trending social media chinwagging. Much ado about nowt, as a Yorkshireman might put it.
That’s the part which really gets up my nose: How social media is leading mainstream media around by the nose.
Just because something’s trending on Twitter doesn’t make it news. Usually it’s not.
I am sick to death of newspapers piggybacking on tweets (celebrity blurts most especially) and Instagram and Snapchat and what-all-blather, as “Legacy” media websites race to post the latest gurgle on their websites — and, worse, converting them into Twitter-says front-page stories.
This will be the dumbing-down doom of us, waddling into a digital universe of minutiae, driblets and alt-news inconsequentialities.
I’m well aware that newspapers are ailing terribly and staff has been slashed across the industry. These phoney stories fill the holes, grab eyeballs and are easy to toss off — an intern widget can crank them out by the bushel after trolling to commentariat troughs.
Even more dismaying are the genuine news stories now slapped together off social media postings in the wake, say, of a murder or natural disaster — because legwork, pounding the pavement, is a luxury many newspapers can ill-afford. So, just scroll and skim, cannibalizing Facebook instead of picking up a phone or knocking on a door or — getting on a plane to cover a catastrophe first hand.
A whole generation of young journalists, hip to digital and social networking, is being shackled to their desks, churning out reportage without ever leaving the newsroom.
Maybe I’m getting old and definitely I’m getting cranky. But that was the best part of journalism, as I knew it — getting out, witnessing, talking to people, channelling the agonies and the ecstasies. That’s one Girl Reporter’s opinion. And if you look up, to the top of the page here, you’ll see a photo that accompanied a decades-old feature on the prostitution strip in downtown Toronto. That woman in the leather mini skirt and the stiletto heels and the fetching legs-overeasy? That’s me. Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday.