Undressing Our Heroes
Belief:
Atheists, It's Time to Stand Up to Jesus
Russell Blackford, Udo Schuklenk
Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace:
As Foreclosure Nightmares Increase, Will More Homeowners Pay Off Their Bankers in Violence?
Scott Thill
DrugReporter:
Lies About Marijuana Drive People to a Much More Harmful Drug -- Booze
Steve Fox
Environment:
Why We Need Bees and More People Becoming Organic Beekeepers
Makenna Goodman
Food:
Despite Censorship By Beef Magnate, Michael Pollan Spreads Message About the Real Price of Cheap Food
Health and Wellness:
New York May Stop Heartless Health Insurers from Dropping Coverage When It Stops Being Profitable
William Ehart
Immigration:
NYC Marathon Raises Question of Who Is American Enough?
James E. Johnson, Jr.
Media and Technology:
Focusing on Fort Hood Killer's Beliefs Is an Easy Out to Avoid the Deeper Reasons for the Massacre
Mark Ames
Movie Mix:
The Yes Men: Pranksters Out to Fix the World
Mark Engler
Politics:
What Michelle and Barack's Marriage Has in Common with 56 Million Other Ones
Annabelle Gurwitch
Reproductive Justice and Gender:
Fetus-Shaped Potatoes? Going Undercover Inside the Weird World of Right-Wing Abortion Foes
Ann Neumann
Rights and Liberties:
"My Kids Want to Hide Their Identity; They're Scared Someone Will Attack Us": U.S. Muslims Being Targeted
Jaisal Noor
Sex and Relationships:
Instant Sex: Has the Digital Age Destroyed Relationships or Made Them Better?
Vanessa Richmond
Take Action:
G-20 Meetings: Nothing Much Happened in the Suites, and There Was Too Much Punch in the Streets
Laura Flanders
Water:
Why Natural Gas Is Not a Clean Energy Panacea
Stan Cox
World:
With Unemployment at 40 Percent, Afghan Teens Enlist in Army, Police
Lal Aqa Sherin
By now the world has seen a lot more of figure skater Jamie Sale than it did when her skirt may have flipped up on the ice during the 2002 Winter Olympics.
If you don't remember her name (and I didn't at first), you might remember her Modigliani eyes and Ivory Girl face; Sale was the Canadian figure skater who, with partner David Pelletier, almost got jerked out of her gold medal when a French judge handed it over to the less stellar Russian team, making Sale and Pelletier the Gore and Leiberman of sports for a few minutes. Fortunately, Skategate was quickly rectified, and the Canadians got their gold.
Now Sale is getting a little PR by posing in a racey-but-tasteful photo shoot for FHM magazine. In the online version, Sale says she wants to remind men that figure skating is sexy -- as though men needed a reminder to have lascivious thoughts about anything. You could run over a man's foot in your car and he'd still take a moment to appreciate the perfect curve of your wheels.
It might surprise a lot of people that Sale, a self-described "wholesome girl," decided to pose for a sexy layout like this. It even surprised her. She went into the shoot not wanting to wear anything as skimpy as a bathing suit and ended up topless (though her breasts are always covered; with fake snow in one shot). In the photos, which I saw online, she is stunning. In addition to other body parts, a few eyebrows might be raised because Sale is exactly the kind of celebrity usually tapped for the part of Role Model. Why, some might wonder, would such a good girl exploit herself?
I like it that she did this. Lately, manipulated images of The American Hero have been foisted on us; George W. Bush holding a phony Thanksgiving turkey; Jessica Lynch on the cover of Time Magazine. But these flat images for our new flat screen TVs don't always fit in life, which comes in 3-D. I like that Sale, who has all the qualifications to be the archetypal Good Girl, upended the image. I know she only meant to get a little publicity and didn't intend her self-exposure to buttress any philosophical arguments, but to me what she's proving is that people are endlessly complex. She had the unswerving dedication to achieve the purest of goals and she's also got the humor to show herself as a bombshell. That's cool. That's a role model with a little texture.
The Jessica Lynch caper is probably the best example of a Role Model becoming even more exemplary than she was set up to be by simply telling the truth. It was brave enough of her to go to Iraq at 19; an age where, for most girls, Iraq something boys tell you you have a nice one of. The fact that Lynch called out the spin doctors on making her into a she-Rambo and told the truth when she didn't even have to, points to an integrity that transcends anything the image makers could have created.
Madeleine Albright is another example of someone who has the guts to poke holes in her dignified image. She made it to Secretary of State when there are some days I'm lucky to make it to the grocery store. I look at women like that and despair at times, thinking that they're so strong, focused and high-minded they probably never let something as dopey as love get in their way, like I do. Then I read an article about Albright in Elle magazine a few months ago. Speaking of her divorce, she said, "I know that at the time I would have given up any thought of a career if it would have made Joe change his mind."
In her autobiography, "Madam Secretary: A Memior," Albright talks about the 30 miles of bad road she endured on the way to the final split and says she had even absorbed her husband's tastes, and "rediscovered" after the divorce that though the couple had eaten beef for dinner regularly she didn't really like it. "Perhaps," she says, "without realizing it, I had always needed someone to reaffirm my worth."
That depth and candor, the willingness to show that she can be Secretary of State and also be a fool for love is more inspiring to me than the flat, polished sheet of her resume would be. It helps to realize that these personalities are normal people who have heroic or iconic moments, and that if they can do something, any of us screw-ups can.
There is so much tiresome, simplistic imagery coming out of Hollywood and Washington -- and prepare yourself to see much more of it with the presidential campaigns looming -- that you have to wonder if that isn't why we sometimes even typecast ourselves; the tortured artist, the nice guy, the writer in search of a nifty way to wrap up an opinion piece.
Seeing people in 3-D is a lot better for us than the one-dimensional images we're usually served up. Time is going to change us anyway, so we might as well do some of it ourselves. Jamie Sale, for example, is going to be glad in her golden years that she has a record of herself looking so hot in her gold medal years. For an athlete, it was a good stretching exercise.
Liz Langley, a freelance writer who lives in Orlanda, Florida, is the creator of ABBAParty.com.
Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from AlterNet! Sign up now »
| More News and Analysis: | ||
|
Lies About Marijuana Drive People to a Much More Harmful Drug -- Booze DrugReporter: Anti-pot propaganda drives most people to drink alcohol instead. But booze is far more dangerous than marijuana. By Steve Fox, AlterNet. November 9, 2009. |
Pentagon Pouring Your Money Into Afghanistan: Are They Preparing for a Very Long War? Forget the "debates" in Washington over Afghan War policy. Construction activity and the flow of money suggests that the Pentagon plans to be there for a long, long time. By Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com. November 9, 2009. |
Tea Partiers' New Hero: Ex-KGB Agent Who Thinks U.S. Will Collapse Next Year Igor Panarin warns that the U.S. will splinter into separate states controlled by foreign powers in 2010. Conservative activists think he may be on to something. By Nick Baumann, Mother Jones Online. November 9, 2009. |
Support AlterNet
Do you value the information you're getting from AlterNet? Please show your support with a tax-deductible donation.
Feedback
Tell us how we're doing.