Ellen DeGenius

I have nothing against Ellen. Okay, actually I do. Every time I watch any of The Ellen Show, I am just constantly thinking about how this fits the bill perfectly for hypocrisy. Ellen undoubtedly is one of the biggest female icons on the air right now with a net worth of about $300 million and just based on the demographic of the audience members in the episodes, I think I can safely say that Ellen is very popular among women. And it is very easy to see why. I remember in one episode, Shemar Moore, much to the delight of the audience, was auctioned off for a makeout session on the show. The eager lucky winner was a woman who says herself right before the big lip-lock, "I'm so married...I'm so Christian..." But those half-hearted breaths of reluctance are quickly droned out by the consensual approval of the audience members, which manifests itself through uproarious applause and cheering.

I think if I asked a random person on the street if they thought having strippers on public television was acceptable, they would say no. I think I would get the same answer if I asked them if they thought it was okay for David Letterman or Jimmy Fallon to tell their female guests to remove their clothing. Then how come Ellen is still having male strippers dance on her show with their shirts off all the time? How come every male guest on Ellen is taking their shirts off? And most importantly, why is it being reinforced? There really is no argument to be made here. The hypocrisy is evident. If the lucky married woman that kissed Shemar Moore was instead a lucky husband making out with some attractive female celebrity, I bet that show would be ripped to shreds on social media. If David Letterman asked his female guests to take their tops off for his audience to ogle, Letterman himself would get ripped to shreds. I really wonder why this double standard exists. Shouldn't the women who are so bothered by the objectification of their own bodies understand best why not to do the same to others?

Don't get me wrong. My problem does not lie in the objectification of men. I don't care that Ellen gets her male guests to take their shirts off. I am only bothered by the fact that when the roles are reversed, people cry foul. I have observed this time and time again, with one incident being when Larry Summers, former president of Harvard University, hypothesized that because of differences in standard deviations between men and women pertaining to the STEM fields, men make up more of the top scientists/researchers etc... This created widespread controversy and all of the social media backlash can easily be found simply Googling "Larry Summers Men Women." However, when BBC frequently posts headlines like "Women better at multi-tasking than men," or when Michelle Obama literally says, "Women are smarter than men," things seem to be fine. I say this because Larry Summers had to apologize three times before people insisted he just keep apologizing, but the latter faced no such obstacles.

This is why I think Ellen is actually a genius for being able to target her audience in this way. While I highly dislike her methods, I have to commend her on her ability to cater so well to her demographic. While Ellen herself is gay and is a public advocate of gay rights, the majority of the action on her show is directed in a heteronormative context as explained in Kim's study. I am not saying this is wrong, but it does contradict her own identity and motivations to only provide eye candy for straight females on her show. And while I personally do not have gripes with the sole act of putting male strippers in your show to dance for married women, I do think that the existence of this kind of media content, and the reinforcement of it through Ellen's continued success (Emmy's, loud audience approval, peer approval) can cultivate double standard gender scripts. We teach children not to be racists, sexists, and bigots. Why would we teach them to be hypocrites?

Kim, J. L., Sorsoli, C. L., Collins, K., Zylbergold, B. A., Schooler, D., & Tolman, D. L.

(2007). From sex to sexuality: Exposing the heterosexual script on primetime

network television. Journal of Sex Research, 44(2), 145-157. doi:

10.1080/00224490701263660