Guilty Until Proven Innocent: Charlie Sheen’s Witness.

 

Maybe it’s because she’s a porn star/escort. Maybe, but hopefully not, it’s simply because she’s a woman. But more than likely, it’s because Charlie Sheen has been allowed to get away with (practically attempted) murder for decades now.

It’s no secret how I feel about Charlie Sheen, and I think it is an absolute disgrace that our celebrity-obsessed culture has allowed him to escape jail and rehab for drug use, property damage, domestic violence, alleged child pornography consumption, and shooting Kelly Preston, yet retain his $1.2 million per episode pay check for Two & a Half Men.

But the way the media has treated Capri Anderson is just as bad. It has been proven that she is the woman who was found locked in a bathroom of the hotel suite that Sheen was staying at when the incident occurred. Is the fact that she’s a porn star damaging her credibility as a victim of domestic violence who feared for her life?

This perception of her harkens back to a lot of articles I’ve written about or referenced on this here blog in the past few months, but it basically comes down to slut-shaming, in my opinion.

So Anderson has sex on camera for money, but what Sheen does off-camera but is still paid a pretty penny for what he does on-screen is far worse.

Related: Why Are Famous Men Forgiven for Their Wrongdoings, While Women Are Vilified For Much Less?

Good-Time Girls.

Elsewhere: [Ideologically Impure] I Am a Women & I Enjoy Sex.

[Jezebel] Jersey Shore: If Men Can Wax Their Eyebrows, Why Can’t Women Sleep Around?

[Jezebel] Easy A Tackles Slut-Shaming, Gossip & What We Expect From Girls Now.

[Jezebel] Capri Anderson Says Charlie Sheen Choked Her, Does Not Like Being Called a Whore.

On the (Rest of the) Net.

It’s hard out there for a pimp male model. MamaMia profiles “Male Models. Inside Their Straaaange World”, and how images of “buffed” and “ripped” men on magazine covers might affect male body image.

Hannah Montana is the superhero of the modern generation.

“Freelancing means being so poor and so hungry for so long that you ‘eat’ a bowl of soup that’s just hot water, crushed-up multivitamins and half your spice rack…”according to Richard Morgan, in “Seven Years as a Freelance Writer, or How to Make Vitamin Soup”.

Sex in the Digital City writer, Kitty Tonkin, details how she unplugged her iPod on public transport and had a good, old-fashioned conversation with an elderly man on the train. He talked about the old days, and the kinds of values they had back then. While some of his views were certainly outdated (“women need to learn and remember that it’s a man’s role to fish”), Mystery Train Man did drop such gems of wisdom as “feminism has warped views in society” and “romance is so cheap [wine, fish and chips overlooking the ocean] people have no excuse”.

Rachel Zoe literally “dies” for US Harper’s Bazaar. Death by Marc Jacobs? Yes please!

Tiger Beatdown has some interesting views on the “Love The Way You Lie” video. While I think both the song and the film clip accurately portray the cycle of domestic violence, author Garland Grey asserts that both glamorise the situation. View the video and the article, and you be the judge.

Any LOSTies out there still mourning the end of the series? io9 hits it right on the head in “12 Theories About Lost That Were Better Than the Actual Show”, acknowledging that half the fun of watching the show was formulating our own hypotheses about its mysteries.

The Thought Experiment writes about “the cinematic discourse established by director Rob Luketic employs the consistent rhetorical metonymical device of synecdoche to psychologically reinforce the theme of a woman’s appearance…” in Legally Blonde. Or, in layman terms, the film deals with “the constant breaking of the women down in to digestible parts when they are focussed on Warner. This is important because, to a man like that character, taken as a whole, what are we ladies? Too much to chew on, it seems.” Great article.

While our country might be in the midst of a hung parliament, Mia Freedman exerts her feminist stance on the issue in her profile of Julia Gillard: “Would she describe herself as a feminist? ‘I would. All my life I’ve believed that men and women have equal capacities and talents. That means that there are as many smart women as there are smart men and it means there are as many dumb women as there are dumb men. So we’re equal and consequently there should be equality in life’s chances.” Now go bag that Prime Ministership, Julia! (You can also read Freedman’s journey to interview Gillard here.)

Jezebel loves herself some Mad Men. This time around, the feminist blog profiles the show’s stance on “The Psychology of Women”.

Elsewhere, on the “psychology of men” stratosphere, “Can Superheroes Hurt Boys’ Mental Health?” When I said to a male friend that I wasn’t really into superheroes, he said I mustn’t have any daddy issues, ’cause people with daddy issues love superheroes. Well, I have no shortage of daddy issues, and I am dressing as Cat Woman for my Halloween/birthday party, so I guess that proves his point. And so does the article.

Johnny Depp has pulled of many a character, which is no mean feat. The fact that he’s managed to be “doable in pretty much every role is an even bigger accomplishment”.

Once again, women just can’t win. The latest study to prove this shows that “men whose wives make more money than they do are more likely to cheat”. Take a bow, Jesse James, Ryan Phillippe et al.

Ex-Factor: Matthew Newton.

 

Earlier in the year, I wrote about (male) celebrities like Matthew Newton and Matthew Johns becoming hosts of television shows, despite their questionable behaviour in their private lives, which became very public.

It is no secret that I feel very strongly about the issue of famous men being rewarded for their indiscretions because “he’s such a nice guy” or “he plays that sport we like”, despite the fact that they are a known wife-beater and drug-addict (Newton) or have been implicated in a group sex scandal with their team-mates, which the woman involved later alleged wasn’t consensual (Johns).

I expressed my disdain for the situation at my workplace yesterday: “what does this guy have that makes beautiful, talented, successful women go after him when he is a known abuser?” One colleague replied that it’s not Rachael Taylor (his most recent ex-girlfriend who filed the claims) nor Brooke Satchwell’s (the first ex to cry assault) faults, which she thought I was insinuating, but let me make myself very clear, if I haven’t already: UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES IS IT THE VICTIM’S FAULT. But seriously, I will ask the above question again: What does Newton have that makes beautiful, talented, successful women go after a known abuser? And what’s more, why would Seven hire him to host The X Factor, due to debut in less than a week, when he has expressed unreliability in the past.

I personally don’t think celebrities with addictions should be thrust back into work straight after attending rehab, or in the case of Lindsay Lohan, jail to boot. Addicts need time away from the stressors of everyday life and the entertainment industry, if that is their chosen field, in order to fully recuperate and overcome their demons.

Mia Freedman also commented on the incident, asking “what should Channel 7 do” with The X Factor’s already-filmed footage, which Newton is “all over”? “When will we stop enabling celebrities to behave in utterly unacceptableand possibly criminalways? And rewarding them if we think they’ll bring ratings?” Freedman asks.

But is The X Factor really aimed at a family audience? With Newton, who was given the hosting gig around the time he was admitted to rehab earlier this year, Kyle Sandilands, a shock-jock who is constantly in hot-water for putting his foot in his mouth, and Ronan Keating, who was recently embroiled in a cheating scandal, the show’s stars aren’t exactly family friendly.

Related: Bad Boys, Whatcha Gonna Do? Host a Seven Family Show.

Why Are Forgiven for Their Wrongdoings, While Women Are Vilified for Much Less?

Elsewhere: [Musings of an Inappropriate Woman] Reblogged: No Words For What Hurts.

[Tiger Beatdown] I HATE I Love the Way You Lie.