Opinion
A Concerned C.U. Citizen
Too Sexy For The Sun
October 30, 2007 - 11:00pm
This article appeared in the 2007 edition of the annual Halloween joke issue. The content below was intended for entertainment and parody purposes only and is not true. Happy Halloween!
Little Miss Sunshine taught us that life is just one beauty contest after another. While you might say that life (especially life at Cornell) is much more than a beauty contest, I enjoin you to take a closer look. We’ll start with the obvious: pretty much everyone knows that Cornell hosts a week long beauty pageant every year at the start of the spring semester. Oh, and if you think I’m just referring to sorority rush, you’re sadly mistaken. I’ve heard talks of the importance of “getting a really HOT pledge class” from guys in my fraternity (and without the heterosexual decency of saying “no homo” after such a statement, no less).
However, beauty contests often exist in places where you wouldn’t expect to find them. Take the newspaper you’re reading right now, for instance. The Sun insists on placing a headshot right next to the title of whoever writes an opinion column. And this headshot exists both to the advantage and to the detriment of many of The Sun’s columnists.
Let’s be honest. Very few people read the opinion column of that dude that looks like a cracked out gerbil who just came back from a week long stay at the tanning salon. I’m sorry to whoever you are, but it’s true: your column would have been more successful (in terms of readership) if you had just forgone that picture all together. You could have been like Jenna B., just a gray outline of a person, and gotten more readers.
What’s worse for a column’s readership is when an unattractive columnist has some hot-shit moniker for their column, something along the lines of “Ever Heard of Me?” or some sort of Ron Burgundy tagline. However, even more fatal than the unattractive columnist/bad-ass moniker combo is the columnist striking an utterly inane pose. How can anyone take someone who flashes gang signs for their column picture seriously? This isn’t New Haven, Morningside Heights or West Philadelphia, this is Ithaca, N.Y. If you wanted to flash gang signs you picked the wrong Ivy League school. Nevertheless, your looks would have followed you anywhere, hot or not.
So why, even in the somewhat-intellectual arena of a newspaper opinion section, do we select which columns to read based on the picture of the person writing them? Is it fair to make assumptions about these writers based on their pictures? Like: Oh, that beat girl probably doesn’t have any funny opinions to voice; she’s probably just going to go on some rant about what we need to be doing in Darfur. Or: Hey, there’s a good looking guy, I bet he has some crazy story to tell involving the time he vomited on a cop in front of Johnny O’s.
In some ways, such assumptions are warranted; our looks do have an effect on our confidence, our personalities, and our life experiences. However, our appearances do not determine the quality of our writing, the breadth of our knowledge, and the strength and clarity of our opinions. This is my rallying call to The Sun — everyone deserves an equal chance at having their opinions read, so eliminate all pictures on opinion columns. Except mine. Check out that pec definition.
Andrew Podolin ’09 is a contestant on America’s Next Top Model. He can be contacted at hotornot@cornellsun.com. Too Sexy for The Sun does not appear this semester.
This article appeared in the 2007 edition of the annual Halloween joke issue. The content below was intended for entertainment and parody purposes only and is not true. Happy Halloween!
Little Miss Sunshine taught us that life is just one beauty contest after another. While you might say that life (especially life at Cornell) is much more than a beauty contest, I enjoin you to take a closer look. We’ll start with the obvious: pretty much everyone knows that Cornell hosts a week long beauty pageant every year at the start of the spring semester. Oh, and if you think I’m just referring to sorority rush, you’re sadly mistaken. I’ve heard talks of the importance of “getting a really HOT pledge class” from guys in my fraternity (and without the heterosexual decency of saying “no homo” after such a statement, no less).
However, beauty contests often exist in places where you wouldn’t expect to find them. Take the newspaper you’re reading right now, for instance. The Sun insists on placing a headshot right next to the title of whoever writes an opinion column. And this headshot exists both to the advantage and to the detriment of many of The Sun’s columnists.
Let’s be honest. Very few people read the opinion column of that dude that looks like a cracked out gerbil who just came back from a week long stay at the tanning salon. I’m sorry to whoever you are, but it’s true: your column would have been more successful (in terms of readership) if you had just forgone that picture all together. You could have been like Jenna B., just a gray outline of a person, and gotten more readers.
What’s worse for a column’s readership is when an unattractive columnist has some hot-shit moniker for their column, something along the lines of “Ever Heard of Me?” or some sort of Ron Burgundy tagline. However, even more fatal than the unattractive columnist/bad-ass moniker combo is the columnist striking an utterly inane pose. How can anyone take someone who flashes gang signs for their column picture seriously? This isn’t New Haven, Morningside Heights or West Philadelphia, this is Ithaca, N.Y. If you wanted to flash gang signs you picked the wrong Ivy League school. Nevertheless, your looks would have followed you anywhere, hot or not.
So why, even in the somewhat-intellectual arena of a newspaper opinion section, do we select which columns to read based on the picture of the person writing them? Is it fair to make assumptions about these writers based on their pictures? Like: Oh, that beat girl probably doesn’t have any funny opinions to voice; she’s probably just going to go on some rant about what we need to be doing in Darfur. Or: Hey, there’s a good looking guy, I bet he has some crazy story to tell involving the time he vomited on a cop in front of Johnny O’s.
In some ways, such assumptions are warranted; our looks do have an effect on our confidence, our personalities, and our life experiences. However, our appearances do not determine the quality of our writing, the breadth of our knowledge, and the strength and clarity of our opinions. This is my rallying call to The Sun — everyone deserves an equal chance at having their opinions read, so eliminate all pictures on opinion columns. Except mine. Check out that pec definition.
Andrew Podolin ’09 is a contestant on America’s Next Top Model. He can be contacted at hotornot@cornellsun.com. Too Sexy for The Sun does not appear this semester.