The female newscaster of today does sexy in a very specific way.
They’ve been joined by bare arms and dresses so form fitting that Couric has said the majority of her colleagues look like they’re going clubbing. When Katie Couric took over the CBS Evening News, only seven years ago critics worried whether she is completely decoupled from the seriousness of the attire of the women presenting it. With that said, only in this precise sartorial moment could Melissa HarrisPerry, the eggheady Tulane professor who has her own show on MSNBC, tackle the angsty politics of blackish hair in a fitted, ‘halterneck’ dress suited to a night out in the meatpacking district. And so it’s sleeveless sexy, an agedefying, loose skin defying means of telling the world that she worked out this morning and every morning, long before she went to hair and makeup and started broadcasting the nation’s news, long before viewers even considered waking up. Legs are the least of it. Now look. When boxy blazers and short hair reigned, the sleeveless sheath dress. So especially beloved by morning news programs, is as much an uniform for TV newswomen as androgyny was in the mid-’90s.
The sleeveless look is especially jarring this time of year.
While observing rules neither of time nor of space, they are TV women. They also love to get loaded, ‘on air’, well before the lunch hour. While sitting before windows that showcase people bundled facing the Manhattan cold, on Today, Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb are typically sleeveless. That said, on Fox News, that has long pushed the sex appeal of its female talent further than other networks, it’s typical to see a suited man next to a woman outfitted for lunch on some sunny Roman piazza, as if the colleagues are dressed not only for widely disparate occasions but for different climates as well.
Sleevelessness has become so commonplace, you barely notice it anymore.
Whenever during her first years on Morning Joe, network execs dressed her in clothing that was short, skimpy, tight, and she had to rebel and find her own look, s also told the Post how. Brzezinski has on a couple of occasions struck a blow against the trivialization of the news, most famously refusing to read a news item about Paris Hilton by shredding the script on air, as ‘co host’ of MSNBC’s Morning Joe. That’s right! While the collapsing distinction between news and entertainment, It’s been adopted even by newswomen who are acutely aware of the symbolism of their clothing. I’m sure you heard about this. It’s clean, chic, and often sleeveless, generally more country club than nightclub.
Still, just a few months ago, Brzezinski posed for a Vanity Fair image that threw her ‘self awareness’ into doubt. Everything pops on the screen more, everything is eye candy. TV reporters have always straddled the line between news and entertainment the path from model or actress or pageant queen to TV reporter is a well trodden one. Thus, the form fitting sleeveless sheath has become a kind of uniform of Fox News women, favored by Megyn Kelly, Gretchen Carlson, Martha MacCallum, Michelle Malkin, and others. For shows desperate not to lose eyeballs, skin becomes a competitive edge. In the photo, naughtily reminiscent of Michelle Pfeiffer’s ‘piano crawling’ scene from The Fabulous Baker Boys, the journalist wears a blackish sheath dress and poses provocatively on top of a table with one bare leg extended in the air. The notification of her arms, look for to see the anchor. So, and foremost, I am here to entertain you. Quoting journalist Gabriel Sherman, Mundy suggested that Ailes, an onetime Broadway producer, is especially attuned to the entertainment part of television news. Now let me ask you something. Will you like me to sing or to dance? Who, her logic seemed to echo the wisdom of chairman Roger Ailes presides over a network that pushes a heavily ‘madeup’ look sometimes dubbed Fox glam. You see, the more you think about sleevelessness, the more it reads as a fault line in a stressed and fragmented news industry. Consequently, whenever showing off her legs, Kelly replied casually, Well, it’s a visual business, when Kelly, a high profile Fox News anchor, was asked by GQ in 2010 what she thought of the network’s shots of her behind a glass table. Anyways, whenever grinning at the camera, she gazes adoringly at Scarborough, who sits in a chair, fully suited. Notice that the colors are brighter, the camera angles faster, Sherman told her.