It’s that time of year again. Voting for the Afterellen.com Hot 100 has began, so that we can feel like we’re fighting the establishment, but in which we really just we discover which TV shows and movies and music lesbians saw this year!
I’ve always been fascinated by these ‘most beautiful’ lists. Ignoring the whole problem with judging people based on beauty (which is a horrible, horrible way of doing things), how does one actually decide who should go on such a list? How do you make beauty into anything like a quantitative measurement? There are millions of women whom the average observer would call ‘beautiful’. Thousands of those women are so beautiful as to defy comparison. But most of those women are not known publicly, and thus won’t be on the list. Many of the rest are little known actors, or little to well known models. Only a fan would recognize the actors, even if they are in commercials, have minor roles in movies, etc. As for the models, only a connoisseur of such things would ever remember them enough to recall their names.
So, we’re left with a handful of moderate to well known actresses and musicians, a few media personalities, and a few super-models. Who, taken together, don’t represent anything resembling the most beautiful, hottest, or any other criteria, of women. So a magazine likes Maxim picks the most well known women who fit the cultural stereotype of ‘hotness’, and then fill out the rest of the list with women who need the career boost and who have fast talking agents. That’s how Maxim’s ‘hottest woman’ last year came up an unknown model, if you ask me. See – the magazine can then do a cheap(er) photoshoot with her (since she not well known), bill her as the hottest woman, and everyone makes lots of money. But as far as the list goes, no one woman on the list is any ‘hotter’ to the casual observer than any other!
Afterellen, on the other hand, votes on the list. There’s no opportunity for commercial considerations, and the famous people whom nobody likes (Brittney, Paris) are automatically excluded. The remainder of the famous stereotypes (Angelina, Cate Blanchett) are included, as are the lesbian icons (Jennifer Beals, Ellen). The balance of the list is the interesting part – Queen Latifah and Helen Mirren, for example. Last year, of course, the afterellen [vb]loggers made 7 spots on the list, which rather weirded everyone out in a gah-self-promotion sort of way. (I still can’t believe that Bridget made no. 4, by the way – sorry Bridget… but also good for you!), This just illustrates how much of a ‘who have you heard of’ contest this is. Again – Maxim does it too: Who works at Maxim? Photographers and other industry types. Who do those people know? Models. Thus their list…
In terms of self-promotion, it’s a tie between AE and Maxim.
We (I mean the lesbian/bi community) would also like to think that our choices are more inclusive of WOC and older women, but that’s hard to do when voting, while for Maxim it’s just an editorial decision away, a decision they made rather easily last year. Maxim wins. (and that’s why we have the hot 10 lists this year…)
So the afterellen.com list has already lost. Any ‘hot’ list is irrelevant and intrinsically biased, and it’s all just a big, objectifying, judging game anyway. And Maxim has more readers.
On the other hand, I probably shouldn’t talk. I just spent 20 minutes deciding who to vote for. My criteria? Cool=Hot. And Angry=Sexy. Go Jill Bennett!