Pretty People, Ugly Careers
We currently have an interesting contrast happening on network television. I thought about this as I watched the last fifteen minutes or so of “Private Practice” last night. That “sexy” soap opera masquerading as a “medical drama” is a perfect example of what turns me off of these types of shows. Namely, there is not one unattractive person in the main cast. The main character, Kate Walsh, is one of the prettiest 40+ year-old actresses on television. She looks like she spends an hour a day on her makeup, and has never worked a 12-hour shift in her life. Take a look at the cast picture above, and tell me if you’ll ever see a doctor’s staff meeting with that much pulsing sexuality. Dammit, look at them throb!
If course this all goes back to “Grey’s Anatomy”, which I actually gave a chance back during the first season. All I heard was how it was not a typical “ER” doctor show, and how it was more about the doctors and their lives. I think I even heard a murmur of “realism”. No, it still has the .0001% freak-show patients, unrealistic dialogue and the manufactured drama that REAL doctors would avoid like a strep-throated leper. OK, I understand the monotony and bureaucracy than runs rampant in real medical professions would not make riveting television. However, does everyone have to be so pretty? McDreamy, McSteamy, Pompeo and Heigl - they should all be awoken at 4am then forced to stand up for 10 hours straight before filming. At least the guys don’t shave, so there’s that. Also, Sandra Oh looks like she wasn’t baked long enough, so she’s a plus. For all the “Scrubs” hate that circulates the web, at least the cast was realistic - when the cute but awkward Sarah Chalke is your ringer, you are more realistic than most.
I call this trend “Pretty People, Ugly Careers”, and it is rampant in other television dramas. It is a major reason I do not watch network television. “Bones” is a veritable meat-market - do you really think those forensics dweebs would look that good? No, they would be the freaks who were first ostracized in high school and had to turn to either video games or corpses for love (believe me, I know). Furthermore, check out all the popular “police procedural porn” shows and their primary casts - “CSI“, “CSI: Miami“, “NCIS“, “The Mentalist“, etc. If you can’t get lost in Simon Baker’s eyes, then you are soulless automaton. All these shows follow a clear pattern: handsome main character, surrounded by:a) hot women, b) scruffy older men, and/or c) cute or handsome young hunks. Also, where’s the beef? 60% of all Americans are supposedly obese, yet you wouldn’t know it from watching scripted television. Based on averages, every single skinny person must be in Hollywood. Something is rotten here, my friends.
So let’s get back to how these shows contrast with popular reality shows. I’m not sure how someone can go from watching “Private Practice” to “Hole in the Wall” or, even worse, the basic cable trash bins like “Rock of Love”. What do you watch in between to cleanse your palette - “The Daily Show”? The mind’s ability to shift gears from something so unreal to something realistic is amazing. I would really like to see some brainwave analysis performed on a tight focus group. However, I wouldn’t be a good test subject - all I watch regularly is professional sports and the ultra-realistic “Lost” - viva la Hurley!
A Guy’s Perspective
I am a guy, male, man, as women put it - a moron. I do my daily grind in an an environment where men and women work close to each other. We interact. We discuss. We plan. We mingle. We share stories of mirth and woe. We stand around the proverbial water cooler and talk about television, politics, and any other time killing topic someone can muster. We are a team.
Here is the thing: Men are visually stimulated. It is a proven fact(who proved this I don’t know, let us just agree that I read it somewhere profound) that men are 90% visually stimulated. This means that a deaf guy can pitch a tent with 90% frequency an accuracy(are tents accurate) of a man with all his faculties. A deaf guy can look at a woman and get aroused without having to smell her or hear her. Just she being across the room in visual range can make a deaf guy want to grab her and drag her off to his cave Neanderthal style. He won’t, but he sure as hell wants to. What happened to those days anyway?
I bring this up because in general, women are killing men. This isn’t happening directly, and in some cases not on purpose, but it is happening I assure you. I am not blaming women here, just pointing it out. If we consider my previous stated FACT that men are 90% visual and we combine that with the FACT that women are just better looking than men on every level we have a genuine problem. Women, just being themselves, can mentally cripple a man.
Here is how that happens:
Say we have Jessica, a moderately attractive female banker. She is a professional. She is not playing the field. She is amazing at her job. She is intelligent and confident. She does not need her looks to ensure her success. She is at the top of her game. Now let us wrap Jessica in the female version of a suit - simple skirt, matching suit jacket, blouse, and 2 inch heals. She is in no way dressed to hunt. She is not going clubbing. She is not trying to attract men at all. She is merely dressed for her professional job.
She is driving the guys she works with CRAZY. That professional suit makes her ten times more attractive than if she showed up dressed for a night out clubbing. The fact that she is professional, intelligent, capable, amazing at her job, and confident made her stunning to begin with; if we add in the fact that she also looks good dressed in professional garb we have created a monster, a man killing machine, again through no fault of her own.
You really can’t hold men accountable for this. Trust me when I say we don’t like that our brain has an instinctual, lust based, kill switch. We don’t like that the kill switch is located inside our genitals. We don’t like that the little guy can throw the kill switch at will and start driving the ship with his own evil little agenda in mind. We aren’t thrilled about the fact that at some point we are going to look at the Jessicas of the world in the same way a wolf looks at a baby deer. We don’t enjoy the fact that we often say stupid crap like “Jesus Jessica, you look hotter than that stripper I paid last night for a lap dance! Want to make 50 bucks?” It is not us, the brain part of us, doing this; It is HIM, the evil bastard living between our legs with the override powers to ruin our lives.
Keep this in mind the next time some guy you work with goes from professional to total douchebag in the blink of an eye. It is not an excuse, we shouldn’t do it, but it happens, and I just wanted to prepare you and inform you as to the why it happens. Besides, if you think about it, the fact that Men are really this stupid, and can be controlled by the right top and room temperature just proves that soon Women will be officially in charge and not just running the show via their amazing puppetiering powers.
