(Untitled)

[petrichor_fizz]

 I read a very interesting post on Old Feminist just now about TV casting and how it tends to reflect the whims of the male creator/executive producer of the show. I've been trying to think whether this rule can be applied to some of my favourite shows:

House

Yep. Of the three main characters, Cuddy is clearly the most conventionally attractive, not

Comments

[tasha_elizabeth]

That's a really interesting point. It's also worth bringing up that the second female lead of Studio 60 is supposed to be an actress, so would be held to an even higher standard of beauty within the confines of the show.

Female characters do seem to follow trends. The new Doctor Who has had more than it's fair share of curvy blondes. And, to take it into another medium, how many of Robert Heinlein's heroines were red heads? A pretty big chunk if I'm recalling correctly.

Personally, I have a strange and confusing attraction to Bradley Whitford, so I'm not much of a judge there. ;) But I'll certainly be thinking about it next time I'm rewatching some beloved TV show.

[nigeltde]

The new Doctor Who has had more than it's fair share of curvy blondes
That would seem to throw a spanner in the theory of the original post, as I doubt RTD is casting curvy blondes because he's attracted to them :-D

[tasha_elizabeth]

Fair point.

[nigeltde]

It doesn't seem all that remarkable to me to note that men get a much larger range of representative possibilities than women in Western media. To ascribe trends in appearance to the creator/runner of the show is interesting but there are so many hands in the broth of TV I'm not sure it would hold up.

What you say about on BSG and the Six Feet Under picture does say something interesting about how age-specific "conventionally attractive" is. Despite our demands that women be constantly and consistently attractive from extreme youth to old age it always seems to be older men that we admit into the "sexually attractive" ranks (Connery being the seminal example (ugh!)). And yet the women of BSG have such a commanding presence, if I could have my choice of anyone on that show it would probably be Roslin (or Grace Park...).