Wednesday, January 20, 2010

The Apocalypse Is Upon Us ...

I had trouble deciding on a headline for today's post, given the completely unfathomable weirdness of what I'm about to write about. I also considered "The End Of Civilization As We Know It," and, simply, "A New Low..." So what is it exactly that's got me in such a lather? As I do every Wednesday, I just checked out the weekly "What's in the Fabloids" feature on The Daily Beast, and what did I see but Nadya Suleman, a.k.a. Octomom, posing in a bikini on the cover of the new issue of Star magazine. Oh how the mind reels ...

I've blogged about Nadya before. I've blogged about pictures of women in bikinis being used to sell magazines before. I consider myself to be a pretty astute observer of pop culture, but even so, it never occurred to me that I would be using "Nadya in a bikini" and "this week's cover story" in the same blog post, much less in the same sentence. She actually looks pretty good, fitness-wise, especially for a woman who's given birth to 14 kids, but heaven help us, she's trying to be sexy too, hooking her thumb under her suit bottom in the big picture, and looking flirtatiously over her shoulder in the small one. It's not working for me, but then I'm so not the target audience for such things.

My understanding is that tabloids pay for posed cover shots, and Nadya has to support her family, but did it have to be in a bikini? Unlike other tabloid cover girls, like Heidi Montag and the Kardashian sisters, Nadya's fame and public persona are not based on her sexuality, at least not yet, but maybe Star will change all that. It will be interesting to see how well this issue sells. If we all take a solemn vow and promise not to buy it, maybe we can help to ensure that Nadya in a bikini is a one-time-only event and not the beginning of a trend. Here's hoping...

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