On March 2nd, 2016 Tina Fey went on the Howard Stern podcast to share her opinions about Hollywood. The accomplished persona expressed her gratefulness in living in New York City because while attending the Oscars, she claimed that it seemed to be filled with so much “Hollywood bullshit” since everyone was telling her what to do, or say about certain socio-political matters. She goes on to point out the hypocrisy of these millionaires in Hollywood who talked obnoxiously about rape and corporate greed, and kept jumping from one social issue to the next. She called them out by saying that they couldn’t save the world overnight. She also questioned said hypocrisy by shedding light on the oxymoron that is rich people Oscar attendees yelling and denouncing corporate greed.
While interviewing Fey, Stern was quick to discern Leonardo Di Caprio as a "misogynistic womanizer." Fey defended DiCaprio by saying that “sleeping with a bunch of women who want to sleep with you is not misogynistic” and that “we can take care of ourselves, if we want to sleep with a man we will.” Fey also goes further and points how everyone at the Oscars are lacking natural beauty because of so much plastic surgery happening at such a young age. She goes on by saying that nowadays, we “never see a real human face, one that moves with it’s actual teeth.” Fey adds that people forget that we have a choice in deciding what the standard of beauty is, and noted its toxicity on the younger generation.
Fey’s complaints pertain to Anderson and Hill Collins Prism of Difference and The Structure of Social Institutions. Anderson and Hill Collins discuss how a dominant form of knowledge is constructed from those who hold the most powerful positions in society. The Oscars being the gathering of powerful people in society at a media event epitomizes exactly that. Fey mentions that these people ironically discuss corporate greed, portraying their hypocritical perception of their world. Anderson and Hill Collins in the Prism of Difference discuss how knowledge orients the world as it frames the self and others. The fact that they are at such an exclusionary event, defeats the whole purpose behind social justice. Hence, Fey’s disgust is because these people aren’t even trying to learn about others and about the partiality of their own experience, because of their pretentiousness. Instead of doing something about a socio-political issue and having the patience and perseverance to stick with it, they prefer to speak about multiple issues and pit one against the other.
The fact that Stern brought up the fact that DiCaprio sleeps with women in a misogynistic way, is sexist in itself because he assumes that these women don’t sleep with him out of their own free will. He is doing nothing wrong. The fact that Stern even had to make that comment means that there has become an institutionalized stigma around men who enjoy sleeping around with many women. These women are aware of their sexual decision and are aware of the kind of person the are sleeping with. Fey was right to defend him.
Furthermore, beauty, Fey says, has become such an institutionalized aspect of the media industry, where people are expected to look a certain way. Because of this, younger women are getting plastic surgery, even when they don’t really have to. Fey expressed her disappointment, which compliments Anderson and Hill Collins’s argument about how body culture is a canvas of beauty ideals. The Hollywood beauty ideals have now not only spread within the industry, but all throughout the world. These media institutions tell us what is attractive and beautiful and what is not, making people unfortunately, change their appearance to cooperate with the now set “beauty norms”. The media’s controlling images can confine what we can be and what we can see and interpret as beautiful. And while Hollywood does control much of what America perceives as beauty, it is safe to say that Hollywood media is a powerful propaganda weapon.
To listen to the full podcast, click on the link: https://www.howardstern.com/show/2016/3/1/tina-fey...
