One shouldn’t put a woman on a pedestal. Unless that woman is Sofia Vergara, the lovely and brilliant comedic force who stars in the hit sitcom “Modern Family.” Vergara, who’s from Colombia, gamely played a human pedestal as part of a gag on the Emmy Awards last night. And while the joke may have failed, the backlash against it is completely overblown.
Vergara introduced Bruce Rosenblum, the chairman of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, who delivered a typically boring awards-show-executive’s speech while Vergara rotated on a platform, knowingly flaunting her figure. This prompted Twitter to explode with complaints about objectification and sexism.
Perhaps some of the criticism was warranted; the TV industry has a troubling record over gender and racial diversity, and it was unclear whether the Academy was trying to be self-deprecating or ironic. Still, everyone seems to be missing the big picture. While nobody can argue that women — and Latinos— have a long way to go in Hollywood, Vergara is not the appropriate object of our ire. All of that righteous outrage, directed at her, distracts us from the conversation we should be having, about the lack of fair representation on TV screens. It also exposes a huge double standard over sexism, feminism and objectification in media.
source: Bostonglobe
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