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Friday, May 17, 2013

Response to: Women as Public Figures: Why it Doesn't Work


Diana West beint interviewed at the Presidential Speakers Series

Tiberge from GalliaWatch wrote a post on women as public figures here.

I was recently discussing the evil Angelina Jolie, and the horror she has inflicted on us, and most terribly, on a whole generation of young women who want to emulate her. I think Tiberge's comments on her are exactly right.

She agrees with my views on Diana West and Pamela Geller, who are Of course, not on the same level as Jolie, but who nonetheless inhabit the world of women as public figures.

On women in general, Tiberge wrote:
It's difficult to criticize a person's appearance. I feel uncomfortable doing it, so I keep it to a minimum. Lawrence Auster did it all the time, and sometimes I felt he went much too far, attributing an entire gamut of psychological traits to a person based on one photo.
I have to disagree. There are certainly many uncontrollable elements when one's photo is taken, but we still have control over a lot. We decide what to wear, how to pose, whether to smile or to scowl, how we groom ourselves (make-up, hairstyle), and we can even control with whom we have the photo taken. The ultimate decision is ours, unless we live in some kind of totalitarian gulag. If we don't like the photo, we can ask to have it removed from a public posting, and if that is not possible, write a statement that it wasn't our decision to have that (unflattering) photo taken in the first place.

So, if we as ordinary citizens can do all that, more important figures have more power over the dissemination of their image and to present the kind of image they want disseminated. And ultimately, their responsibility is also larger, and hence their damage potentially greater.

And writers also have some kind of duty to call them out on this. If these public figures claim to represent us, then they should represent us properly.
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Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
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