What Women Want category on Jeopardy!
EQUAL RIGHTS?
Thor may be a woman now but there are still blunt instances of sexism that make headlines regularly, and three of them happened this week.
Item One: Many viewers of the long-running game show Jeopardy! are dismayed over a glaringly sexist category featured on Monday night's show.
Under the startlingly-dated category of "What Women Want," the clues included such sexist suggestions as "Some help around the house; would it kill you to get out the Bissell bagless canister one of these every once in a while?" (The answer: "What is a vacuum cleaner.")
The same category also identified other items that today's modern woman supposedly desires, among them, Sleepytime tea, good-fitting Levi's and crossword puzzles.
Not surprisingly, the category was deemed offensive by many female viewers, including Rosie O'Donnell, who went onto the Twitter account for The View on Wednesday to tweet, "'I'll take equal pay for $500' –@Rosie on the @Jeopardy 'What Women Want' category."
The topic also came up on Wednesday morning's edition of NBC's Today show, during which host Natalie Morales responded to the category by saying, "I can't believe that. How did that get past everybody in the room who thought that was a good idea?"
Item Two: Have you heard about the new TV ad for U.S. Republican candidate Rick Scott? You can watch it here, but you had better sit down first.
Already sarcastically tapped by Slate magazine as the "most amazing political ad of the season," the minute-long spot for Scott, who is running for re-election as the governor of Florida, is modelled directly on the popular TLC reality series Say Yes to the Dress.
Except in this TV ad, the premise is titled "Say Yes to the Candidate" and the two dresses on display represent Rick Scott and his Democratic opponent Charlie Crist.
Filmed in the precise glossy style of the TLC series, the spot introduces viewers to an "undecided" twentysomething voter named Brittany, who admires herself in the mirror wearing a ruffled wedding frock and declares, "The Rick Scott is perfect!" while her friends nod and coo their approval.
Brittany's dour mother, meanwhile, has other ideas and says, "I like the Charlie Crist. It's expensive and a little outdated, but I know best."
Obviously, the spot is geared toward millennial voters but do the higher powers at the Republican Party actually believe that all young female voters think about are frilly reality shows and their dream wedding?
The really scary part: The GOP is employing the identical Say Yes to the Candidate concept into TV ads for several other Republican candidates running for office all over the U.S. in next month's gubernational elections, including this spot, reports Bloomberg View.
Item Three: Everybody's buzzing about the new interview with Gillian Anderson in which she takes sharp aim at blatant sexism in Hollywood and society in general.
In her interview with Red magazine, the 46-year-old actress declares that sexism "is built into our society – it's easy to miss and it's easy to get used to it."
Anderson also said, "There are things that are intolerable in today's world in terms of the perception of women. Whether they're vamps or vixens, the expectation is that, if a woman is wearing a short skirt, she's 'asking for it.'"
Perhaps most tellingly, in the same sit-down Anderson reveals that it took her three years to receive the same pay as her former co-star David Duchovny on The X-Files.
BABY NEWS
It's a baby girl for new parents Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher. The celebrity couple welcomed the arrival of their first child on Tuesday at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles. A source told People magazine, "She's here and healthy." The former That '70s Show co-stars announced their engagement last February and Kunis revealed she was pregnant the following month. In July, Kunis told W magazine that she planned to curtail her acting commitments after the baby was born. "I don't eat and breathe acting," said Kunis. "I'm sure Meryl Streep has a very different point of view. But I'm excited about being a full-time mom."
Source: People
HE'S BACK
Charlie Sheen is making headlines again, and for all the wrong reasons. TMZ reports that the Anger Management star is being investigated by Los Angeles police for allegedly pulling a knife on his own dentist. TMZ cites law enforcement sources claiming that Sheen went to a dental office last Thursday for an abscess tooth. When the dental technician started to administer nitrous oxide, Sheen allegedly began flailing his arms, striking the dental technician. The report also claims that when Sheen's dentist approached him, the actor pulled a knife. By midday Thursday, Sheen's lawyer Marty Singer contacted TMZ and called the allegations "completely fabricated," adding that, "Charlie had a bad reaction to the noxious gas put in his mouth and nose."
Source: TMZ
TRUMP GLOWERS
Donald Trump thinks the title of the new ABC sitcom Black-ish is racist. Only two days after Trump was punked into retweeting a photo of two infamous serial killers to his 2.7 million followers, the Celebrity Apprentice host was back on Wednesday to tweet the comment, "How is ABC Television allowed to have a show entitled 'Blackish'? can you imagine the furor of a show, 'Whiteish'! Racism at its highest level?"
Source: USA Today
SMALL PROGRESS
Network television has more lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters than last year, and most of them are on the Fox Network. The U.S. advocacy group GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) has released its annual snapshot of the primetime landscape to reveal that 32 of 813 series regulars currently scripted network television shows are LGBT; last year there were 26 LGBT characters overall. Fox leads the way with 10 LGBT roles among its 154 series regulars. ABC is second with nine LGBT characters out of 201 series regulars. NBC has seven LGBT characters out of 183 characters. And CBS came in last with only six out of 186 primetime series regulars being LGBT.
Source: Entertainment Weekly