Yesterday's Oprah featured a stunningly thin and fit Gwenyth Paltrow, who had recently lost twenty pounds and yet eschews dieting of any kind, claiming that even thinking about dieting causes her to gain five pounds.
But after a bit of prodding and (conveniently) a packaged video piece, it was revealed that Paltrow works out six days a week in a beautiful home gym with an omnipresent trainer who "makes" Gwyneth sweat it out in 80 degree, brutal strength training and cardio sessions. Paltrow likes the setting because she can look out the window onto an apple orchard and hear her kids playing in the pool while one of her two nannies watches them and she does countless "butt" repetitions.
This video is the closest thing to lifestyle porn as anything ever conjured up by the talented Oprah production team, outperforming Martha Stewart on her best day.
Good for Paltrow, I guess, for amassing the wealth to support her quest for peace with her own body.
But how, exactly, is it supposed to inspire me?
Most of us will never be able to achieve that body so we can eat whatever we want by working out for twelve hours a week with a trainer urging us on to perfection. Surely Oprah knows this.
Is she simply feeding into our voyeuristic impulses and celebrity worship, which Oprah herself purports to share with us, creating an illusion that we are Oprah's girlfriends as we round the television together at four p.m. to watch our celebrity goddess achieve that ideal form, that ideal role as mother and wife and object of desire?
Or should we be more cynical, concluding that perhaps the less secure we feel about ourselves, the more we will watch Oprah in search of solutions, making us nothing more than a desirable demographic?
If neither of these things are true, then wouldn't it have been nice if Oprah had said, "Results not typical" ?
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Sheesh.
(I'm sheeshing a lot today, I think I need some sort of vacation. Yeah, right.)
This reminds me of reading recently in "Vanity Fair" (the thinking woman's porn) that Jennifer Aniston takes two minute showers to save the environment.
Translation: "What kind of Earth-sucking sloth are YOU, Ms. Housewife? You take FIFTEEN minute showers."
Well, then I just got angry about that.
Jennifer Aniston undoubtedly has a facialist, manicurist, masseur, "asthetician", hairstylist and makeup artist. It's amazing she has to shower at all. Furthermore, she's a spokeperson for a bottled water company.
When she gives up all of her service personnel and her tap water encased in plastic, I'll start feeling bad about my shower duration which involves listening to four children try to light the house on fire while I stand on one leg trying to shave my legs, shampoo my hair and pray to all that is holy that the phone doesn't ring.
Furthermore, Gwyneth found a way to make Sylvia Plath's life boring. That is an inexcusable sin.
Okay, done ranting now. Great post!
What I loved was Mario Batali. All through the cooking segments, he was pointing out Gwennie and Oprah's quirks and idiosyncrasies to the audience, all the things that I'm sure celebrities hate for people to know about them. It made me really dig Mario. A lot.
I find Oprah selling a lifestyle that I'm not buying. I'm all for empowerment. I've never been able to quite put my finger on what is so grating. Perhaps it's the idea of the profit she is making daily off of the average housewife. It's not much different that selling snake oil.
According to the missus, Oprah spent a lot of time some years ago focusing on her weight loss - achieved through ass-kicking workouts and meals prepared by her chef. This is a weight loss plan that is hardly applicable to other people, but she was right in there with a message of "I did it, so can you."
In other words, Gwyneth Paltrow's workout regime is completely understandable, if you're Oprah.
As for whether it's laudable... would you criticize a football player for working out 12 hours a week? Probably, actually, they wouldn't be doing their job. And I'd argue that regardless of whether it's wrapped in self-actualization blather, weight management is a professional maintenance activity for Gwyneth Paltrow.
Whether anyone actually wants to watch it... well, who knows. Movies with rich people were pretty popular during the Great Depression, so maybe Oprah's going to keep consistent here.
Jodi, the two-minute shower is a great example! It fits in with the show where Julia Roberts and some other organic-only guru came on the show to scare us all to death about eating regular old food available anywhere but Whole Foods. People are losing their homes and they are painting the non-organic food supply as near child abuse. It's all part of a bigger narrative, too, about the constant dangers we face, whether it's molestation or chemical poisoning.
Mary, I have a love/hate/ambivalence relationship with Oprah. I guess it depends on where I am in my own head at any given time.
Liz, the Mario aspect of the show was great. He always comes off as so personable and passionate about food, without getting crazy. He's fantastic on Iron Chef. (I watch too much TV, I admit.)
lgranzyk, my worst criticism of Oprah is that she is anti-intellectual. She's obviously smart, business savvy, and her charisma and self-confidence exude, yet her analysis of anything is only about an inch deep. When she has a "very serious issue" show like this week's child molestation show, she generates such a fevered pitch. It sounds like I'm staying child molestation isn't a problem, but I'm not. But a more balanced approach would make the show better.
Mikek, I can see why you would think the show is designed for a certain affect and I agree, but I'm not sure that Oprah herself understands the biases she brings to the show topics, and it doesn't seem to me like she has any conscious intention to manipulate our emotions.
Thanks to all for such insightful comments. I am in the middle of "The Story of Edgar Sawtelle," which will be announced today as the new Oprah pick. The author is a fellow Denver metro area person and from what I've read of the novel so far, it's very good.
She averages maybe one a week of these silly celebrity shows, and they're fodder for the people who worship celebrities. It keeps the show light enough, and keeps building the audience. I think she does them to pay the bills, keep the show running. I'm OK with that.
Jon Stewart once explained that TV audiences crave light stuff and celebrity, and if they sit through 20 minutes of biting satire on socially-relevant topics, you reward them with a six-minute celebrity interview.
That sort of gave me the shivers, but that's the business. I figure I can delete one Oprah a week from my tivo right off, and some of the others on other grounds, and she's still brilliant at least three days a week.
She's a real talent: a stunningly wise and empathetic person, who can entertain and enlighten. I think she's a national treasure. And she ladles out some annoying crap to keep it going. I'm OK with that.
I don't remember exactly when it was, but a few years ago, Harper's had a piece on gyms and exhibitionism. Very interesting. No where else in the world, do people work out on treadmills or bicycles in windows exposed to public view.
Or maybe just a surrogate?
Perhaps to somehow make the sweater more attractive to all within earshot and eyesore ( I mean eye sight) my sister-in-law announced that the sweater cost $700.00. What? $700.00 was it made of spun gold everyone wondered and someone rudely asked. No, she explained but it had come from Afganistan and was produced from local wool by local craftsmen.
Really?
The guy who sold the wool might have gotten $0.01 american for the wool and the guy who spun it into cloth maybe $0.05. The guy who actually sewed the sweater together might have gotten a dime for his efforts and the importer and retailer split most of the remaining $699.84.
I olny bring this up to point out that my sister-in-law who came from a somewhat modest economic background took no time at all getting out of touch with the way most people actually live. No sense that $700.00 might pay someone's rent. Or put food on someone's table for a couple of months.
It's not just the born with a silver spoon crowd that's out of touch but many with newly acquired wealth who have lost touch and taken leave of their senses. And they really ought to know better.
John, I really enjoyed your comment. That moment of the gift exchange must have been uncomfortable...Thanks for posting about it.