Saturday, December 14, 2002

MEDIA DIET

It is happening again, as they used to say on "Twin Peaks." Vanity Fair's latest issue features an interview with the radiant Cameron Diaz which features the Standard Actress Eating Paragraph. You know, where we find out that Diaz, who is sort of a tomboy girl, eats like a Normal Person---"plays against type" when she orders soup and a vegetable and then "scarfs nearly a whole basket of bread."

Please entertainment journalist people, please stop. Allure magazine, that hardboiled beacon of journalism, found the Standard Actress Eating Paragraph so frequently in actress intervews, that they created a chart of various actress interviews and analyzed the Paragraphs. They are nearly all variations on the same thing...that despite the fact that the Actress resembles a matchstick, she eats like a longshoreman.

Here's my suggestion: if you can't stop, start writing the Standard Actor Eating Paragraph. "Edward Norton, delicate-boned and pale, inhaled a T-bone, and burped." The only time male performers get the scrutiny is if they are genuinely eccentric in their eating habits. Besides, it's all acting anyway. Who knows what actually stays on these performers' stomachs and what gets drugged/exercised/vomited/surgery-ed away?

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