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JOURNAL
January 2006
SAY IT ISN’T SO, KRISTIN CHENOWETH!
FHM (For Him Magazine) seems to cater to the middle class, middle American hetero guy who’s into tools, cars and babes. Their online site contains features, along with its boobylicious and bootylicious babes, with such scintillating titles as “Hot Chicks Stuck in Cars” and “Pimp My Chain Saw.” Apparently, Kristin and her people feel she needs this audience in order to reach the next rung in the ladder of her success.
Make no mistake, Kristin looks fabulous and everyone likes photos of good-looking flesh. But did she really need to go this route? While she may not be a household name in middle America, Chenoweth is a Tony-winning and nominated actress (“You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown” and “Wicked”), a semi-regular on TV’s “The West Wing” and “Sesame Street” and starred in a TV remake of “The Music Man” with Matthew Broderick, has had a few small movie roles and some bigger roles coming up in “The Pink Panther” (with Steve Martin) and “Running With Scissors” (with Gwyneth Paltrow). She even had a self-titled sitcom in 2001, in which she played a Christian virgin. (Alas, the writing was bad and perhaps America couldn’t believe that there was one--Christian or virgin, take your pick--left in the world. Too unbelievable. It was cancelled after six episodes.) Furthermore, last year she released a CD of inspirational tunes (“As I Am”) and promoted herself on talk shows as a down-home Christian gal. She seemed happy to cultivate her good-girl image, and that made a lot of us fans proud of her. I suppose her next announcement will be that she will star in “Hostel 2.”
She has clearly proven herself as a talent and, at age 37, need not go the way of her pop tart contemporaries, the embarrassingly styled Mariah Carey and the desperate Janet Jackson (quite frankly, they didn’t need to go that route, either, but they’ve never promoted themselves as good girls). Leave that to Britney, Christina and Shakira, who are still young and naive enough to let their managers talk them into being marketed as porn stars with voices. Even the rather plain-looking vocal powerhouses Kelly Clarkson and looking-for-a-comeback LeeAnn Rimes are being tramped up for MTV. Kristin Chenoweth has enviable talent and a career, while not superstar, that most young, struggling actresses would love to have.
Who are the entertainment role models for our daughters, most of whom will not grow up to look like Kristin Chenoweth? The talented Roseanne (and for that matter, her sitcom co-star, Laurie Metcalf) is not to be seen on the TV or movie screen, but that no good, no talent, dumpy ex-husband of hers still has a flourishing career! Where are the young, plain, brilliant Sissy Spaceks today? These days, even the movie roles for “ugly” are given to beauties like Charlize Theron. It must be so fun for her to play dress-up as a monster!
If the biz (always bad) were like this a few decades ago, singers like Aretha Franklin and Karen Carpenter and Barbra Streisand and Cass Elliot would have never made it through an agent’s door because they didn’t look like porn stars--and wouldn’t the world have been a sorrier place? Whose to say what great talents we are losing out on today?
There is a place for the bad girl in entertainment. We love them. But isn’t there any room left for a good girl? Can’t we have a balance? Or must we have crotch and cleavage shots of every celebrity in our midst? Thank God for Jodie Foster and Amy Grant, who got to their forties without such displays--and their careers continue to flourish.
Kristin, my dear, I had higher hopes for you. Now, I can only hope that the next photo I see of you in the New York Post is not of you walking the red carpet to the Grammy Awards, arm in arm with Eminem.
What's Your Opinion?
KevScoHall@Verizon.net