Forget The Dress: What The Red Carpet Should Be About

P.T. Philben ’17 / Emertainment Monthly Staff Writer

Last year the very gracefully mild Elisabeth Moss flipped off the E! “mani-cam”; a camera with a mini runway with which actresses are able to show off their manicures. The ultimate manifestation of entertainment industry sexism and objectification, more or less.

The Golden Globe nominated actress who is consistently ranked among the greatest actors of her generation who had two nominations that evening and apparently the interesting question to ask her was about a mild fashion statement that someone else did for her. E! “reporter” Giuliana Rancic exclaimed “Do it! C’mon, do it! This is E! We’re in 160 countries!”. So Elisabeth Moss was effectively flipping off 160 countries.

Before she actually did it Moss admitted that she wanted to do it last time and who can blame her. Elisabeth Moss is an actress who has a very impressive body of work for her age and for some reason E! saw it as appropriate to spend more time on how she looks than the reason she was there. Anybody who is more interested in how well an actress meets the absurd standard for western beauty than they are in two of the greatest performers of her career had it coming.

Full disclosure; I am a straight man who will never have to deal with this crap. This is a mans perspective, as a man, I will nonetheless reinforce the feminist mantra of “Im a little annoyed by that”. Its sexist, and I’m more interested in their work because its the Oscars.

Now lets be real here. E! can more or less be described as a compromise between the professionalism of the Hollywood reporter and the shallow sensationalist trash for people who like trash publication known as TMZ. Their “journalism” is to be expected, you get what it says on the box. I don’t care. What they do does not belong on the red carpet.

Many would say that publications like E! work a classier business than TMZ, but at least TMZ knows their place. At least they know that they work from the cocaine smelling underbelly of the entertainment industry. At least they know that they should stick to covering the Taylor Swifts latest “victim”, Amber Rose’s twitter war with Kanye or all the byproducts of the casting couch and not bother with the red carpet of a ceremony meant to celebrate the cumulation of excellence in an entire industry. E! should not come to a red carpet event, something that should be filled with prestige and reverence for the worthy nominees just to hound some middle aged actress about how she lost the baby weight for the dress. You should be asking said middle aged actress how they lost enough weight to convincingly portray an aids patient or whatever other Oscar troupe.

There is a place for fashion; its called a fashion show. There is a place to use a camera to scan a person’s body; its called a fashion show and/or porn. This is not the place to make objects out of any accomplished professional. There is a place for fan service but this is not it.

As a man, yes; Felicity Jones is extremely attractive. Allow me to speak for all straight men on the planet when I say that we are in a perpetual state of appreciation for the beauty of these women. We don’t need it to be highlighted in what may be the peak of their careers or in the case of Meryl Streep; a very good Sunday. An Academy Award nomination is arguably the most significant praise an actor can receive. Who’s fashion design she’s wearing is a very disrespectful question at the peak of their professional ascension. I would say that we should resort to the uniform of award shows being grey onesies.

Felicity Jones is very attractive, but I would like to give Robin Roberts, a reporter from a very light, non-serious and entertaining news program leaving her looking good at simply pointing out the obvious and moving on to giving due respect with simple questions about her work. Its not because Roberts is a women; its because she knows what a person watching the Oscars should want to know and leaving the belittling nonsense to The Fashion Police. As Reese Witherspoon so eloquently put it in her interview with Robin; “We are more than just our dresses.”