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I'm not going to link to it, and I'm not going to say who linked it to me, because all of it is happening out of context.
But.
I'm really, really fucking OVER these stupid polls that people have on their journals about who is the most attractive and who is the least attractive.
First, the results are basically like those holiday weekends where the local classic rock station counts down the top 1000 rock songs of all time. We all know that the top 5 will be some combination of Stairway, Baba O'Riley, A Day in the Life, You Can't Always Get What You Want and then a free space determined by how much newish music they play (November Rain) or how much metal they play (Sabbath). The pleasure of listening on weekends like that isn't the top, but the middle, even the bottom, where you actually get to hear music not recorded by British white men between 1967-1973.
Meaning, the hottest guy in the hottest fandom will win, skewed slightly by the people who have the journal friended and how well various fandoms get motivated to vote, and we can all predict who that person will be. (This particular poll seems to be a race between the guy who plays Arthur on Merlin and JG-L.) It's boring and in some ways sort of pointless.
Second, it's gross. I mean, it's bad enough that all the lady crushes I hear about are on girls that couldn't be better representatives of the dominant beauty culture, and I know that part of this is that it's the beauty culture we're in, and part of this is that our available imagery is dominated by that beauty culture, and you know, if your girlcrush is on Emma Watson rather than Amber Riley I'm not going to hold it against you. I just wish there were more diversity (of all kinds, not just racial--actually seeing different slender cute white girls would be new, too) and these sorts of polls drive us toward less diversity, not more. I mean, if the guy I think is super hot comes in 14th, how much of a loser am I? (The guys I think are super hot tend to not even turn up on these polls, actually; neither do the girls.) It's like when a movie you love doesn't do that well in the box office; mysteriously you feel a little like a loser for liking it in the first place. (Unless you're all indie and shit, in which case you care about other signifiers.) So sending me to some post where you want me to vote for Tom Hardy because he's losing against Chiwetel Ejiofor? Not gonna happen.
I'd started the color war as a salve against this stuff, but you know, I'm just one girl with a journal. I can't eradicate it. I can't even stop half the people on my flist from being pissed off at the latest "what's the bestest fandom eh?" whip around. Hell, I started color war because a friend of mine got so mad about them--and as far as I know, she didn't even look at it. So in a large sense, color war is basically a complete failure.
But you know, I'm trying! It's like, I am only one person writing stories here. I can't single-handedly change the slash/het/femslash ratio of AO3. But I'm trying!
ETA: I'm glad my annoyance is amusing! I'm kind of used to people not taking me seriously when I get angry. That's why I don't get angry very often because honest to god, i don't see the point when people just laugh at me. But I am saying: please don't link me to these polls, don't ask me to participate in these polls, don't ask me to host these polls, don't pressure me to vote for whomever, because I won't.
But.
I'm really, really fucking OVER these stupid polls that people have on their journals about who is the most attractive and who is the least attractive.
First, the results are basically like those holiday weekends where the local classic rock station counts down the top 1000 rock songs of all time. We all know that the top 5 will be some combination of Stairway, Baba O'Riley, A Day in the Life, You Can't Always Get What You Want and then a free space determined by how much newish music they play (November Rain) or how much metal they play (Sabbath). The pleasure of listening on weekends like that isn't the top, but the middle, even the bottom, where you actually get to hear music not recorded by British white men between 1967-1973.
Meaning, the hottest guy in the hottest fandom will win, skewed slightly by the people who have the journal friended and how well various fandoms get motivated to vote, and we can all predict who that person will be. (This particular poll seems to be a race between the guy who plays Arthur on Merlin and JG-L.) It's boring and in some ways sort of pointless.
Second, it's gross. I mean, it's bad enough that all the lady crushes I hear about are on girls that couldn't be better representatives of the dominant beauty culture, and I know that part of this is that it's the beauty culture we're in, and part of this is that our available imagery is dominated by that beauty culture, and you know, if your girlcrush is on Emma Watson rather than Amber Riley I'm not going to hold it against you. I just wish there were more diversity (of all kinds, not just racial--actually seeing different slender cute white girls would be new, too) and these sorts of polls drive us toward less diversity, not more. I mean, if the guy I think is super hot comes in 14th, how much of a loser am I? (The guys I think are super hot tend to not even turn up on these polls, actually; neither do the girls.) It's like when a movie you love doesn't do that well in the box office; mysteriously you feel a little like a loser for liking it in the first place. (Unless you're all indie and shit, in which case you care about other signifiers.) So sending me to some post where you want me to vote for Tom Hardy because he's losing against Chiwetel Ejiofor? Not gonna happen.
I'd started the color war as a salve against this stuff, but you know, I'm just one girl with a journal. I can't eradicate it. I can't even stop half the people on my flist from being pissed off at the latest "what's the bestest fandom eh?" whip around. Hell, I started color war because a friend of mine got so mad about them--and as far as I know, she didn't even look at it. So in a large sense, color war is basically a complete failure.
But you know, I'm trying! It's like, I am only one person writing stories here. I can't single-handedly change the slash/het/femslash ratio of AO3. But I'm trying!
ETA: I'm glad my annoyance is amusing! I'm kind of used to people not taking me seriously when I get angry. That's why I don't get angry very often because honest to god, i don't see the point when people just laugh at me. But I am saying: please don't link me to these polls, don't ask me to participate in these polls, don't ask me to host these polls, don't pressure me to vote for whomever, because I won't.
