Should it be a spectator sport?



Rebel without a Closet:
Frances McDormand at the 2011 Tony Awards.



It's award season again, when actresses and singers are slimmed and sucked, buffed and polished to what seems to be complete and utter perfection....only to run the gauntlet of red carpet wherein they will be flayed by a pack of critics with all the intellectual heft and decency of sixth-grade mean queens.  Who cares who wins the awards?  It's who's a fashion "hit" and who's a "miss" that grabs more news. 

I confess that I find Joan Rivers' Fashion Police amusing, but Joan Rivers is an old warhorse of an insult comedian.  Unfortunately, the joke in the tv title is not really a joke anymore.  We live in a Fashion Police State, and every "mistake" and "miss" will be noted, Fraulein.  And that's the real problem with all these blood sport critiques.  They've turned powerful women into sheep, dutifully hawking designer duds.  Which in turn has taken a lot of the life out of the fashion and more than a little of the fun out of watching.    

Whoa, what's that?  I feel my soap box crumpling....must have gained too much weight over the holidays....resolve to slim down to toothpick size, like what I see on teevee screen.....