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The Tomato Nation advice column addresses your questions on etiquette, grammar, romance, and pet misbehavior. Ask The Readers about books or fashion today!
Please head on over to my day job: the new blog at wenn.com, which formally launches today. Get your fill of celebrity snark, and feel free to tip us on your celeb sightings and/or gossip with an email — sarah dot bunting at wenn dot com.
You’ll see a few other familiar names there too. Enjoy!
I’ve (re-)discovered a few things over the course of the recent Days Of Rage. Some of them are great!
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a lonely girl in possession of a library card must be in want of a twin. The child who spends a lot of time in books also spends …
Dear Sars,
Welcome back! Dear cracking dry hands season, not so much. I’m here to ask you/the readers about a product I could swear I saw mentioned on the Vine ages ago, but I can’t find …
Woo, more snark! One question… is there a way to know who wrote what? I do love to assign the proper internal voice to the comments :)
It used to note who had posted the item, but I see that’s disappeared for some reason. Must have happened during the URL changeover; I’ll inquire.
You just might have the best. job. ever.
and is the same person who wrote the “tori spelling is too skinny” post the same as the person who wrote the “look at how fat mariah carey is” post?
oops, i see now you did write both, sars. not trying to attack you, just hoping that we don’t have another celebrity blog commenting on women’s bodies no matter what size they are.
I’m pretty sure I didn’t say Mariah looked fat. I did call Valentino a honey-baked ham, and compared Kevin Spacey to Eisenhower, but on a celebrity photo blog, that’s pretty much the job. (The boss referred to in the Who reference is actually not me, so…)
I…did not know there was a new Osbournes reality show. Which I guess proves the point.
Putting Anne “I’m a bit of a chalk stripe here, my own self” Hathaway next to Signor Hamentino gives new meaning to the term “Ivory girl.” Congratulations on the new gig.
Does this mean Tomato Nation is going away?
No rss feed? People love the RSS feed!
I like your snark so far, and I do think you’ve stayed on the good side when it comes to bodysnarking, but, Victoria Beckham and her kids not smiling? Posh Spice has said about five million times she hates her smile and therefore doesn’t smile in photos. And I really really hate when paparazzi and gossip blogs act like it’s some part of a child’s job to smile and make the picture more palatable for the people at home. Possibly, even the Beckham kids who have lived their lives with this, don’t really want to deal with the photographers and that’s what they’re not smiling.
And the constant hectoring to smile from bloggers and pap blogs alike for some celebrities just make me think of how I react when someone I don’t know says “smile! you look so pretty!” to me. I don’t like it. It feels like an attack, like who are you to decide how I should look right now? Not to get all 70s feminist here, but.
When it comes to candids, outside of Heidi Montag and reality stars of that ilk, I don’t think any celebrity’s job includes smiling in shots taken while they’re shopping or otherwise and I don’t care if they don’t. Plus, it’s the kind of the thing that falls disproportionately on women. Some blogs will post ten pictures in a row where Ryan Phillipe and Jake Guyhenhall aren’t smiling with no comment about it at all, but that first one where Keira Knightley is scowling and it’s “she’s such a bitch.”
Sorry to go on at length, it’s a huge pet peeve for me.
Congratulations and good luck, Sars! :)
@k: I hear you, but again — photo blog. I’m paid to do commentary whether there’s much material there or not, and in that case? Not, so much. (Keep in mind too that I see dozens and dozens of pictures of that family, and to my eye they did look more “meh” about the whole thing than they usually do.) Garner’s underpants from last week, same thing; I really could not care less, on a personal level, and it’s been laundry day for all of us, so I don’t judge her — but if the snappers give me Garner’s torn underpants, I’ve gotta work with it somehow.
Not to come off defensive, because I actually think this is an interesting opportunity to look at/discuss this aspect of our culture from a consumer standpoint versus the working reality (since the comments over there are not currently open), and how different people approach it. If I’m unconsciously applying a double standard, let’s hear it, but my working reality here is commentary on photos; I can’t opt out of discussing what the subjects look like.
@Cij: Nope. Totally separate things. I’ve had the gig for months but we didn’t launch until today.
In public I’m going to moan and groan about how oh now I have to read this crap, damn you all, but secretly I’m thrilled to have an excuse to read one of these blogs without feeling like a dink.
(Also, GODDAMN, Tori Spelling does not look well. Skinny looks okay on some girls, but not her, and not the kind of skinny where you can identify each individual arm and leg bone…)
I kind of feel sorry for Jennifer Garner there. I mean…dude, they can zoom in enough to get a detailed shot of her underpants. That’s a mite unsettling. (Violet is the cutest celebrity baby EVER, though, aw.)
I’m all for the rapid fire snark, sure some of it misses or is weak or baseless and reaching, but enough of it hits. My main issue? WENNDALL. Really? It’s.. maybe, I’m just not enough of the celebrity news fan, but twee doesn’t begin to describe everything about … him.
I work for an online retailer and granted some of our brand image grates, but how do you reconcile him as your mascot of sorts? I think the only way must be over the top acceptance and love; obnoxiously obscuring any thought that his very existence might counterbalance any and all humor on the site. In short, I think you need a WENNDALL tee-shirt or full-on WENNDALL costume or a Keckler-esque “WENNDALL’s celebrity sleeze chasing cocktail of the week” feature. The cheese-ball must either be fully embraced or erased, there can be no in-between.
That is all.
“and compared Kevin Spacey to Eisenhower”
Again, I love you Sars.
Ah, writers are labeled now. Much better. :D Thanks!
Oh MY! I love it! Celebrity gossip and Bunting snark? It’s like 2 breath mints in one!
What’s with the not being able to right-click? Minor point I’m sure, but I like to open a bunch of links and “after the jumps” in new tabs, and can’t do it here… always makes me feel like when someone follows me round their store, like you (okay blog owner) thinks I’m going to do badness, raid the goodies – when in fact, all I want is to browse about…
@Moon: That may change, so stay tuned. All links off-site should open in new tabs or windows, though.
On the smiling thing, one of the reasons it tends to really peeve me off is that with pap blogs or celebrity gossip blogs of a certain ilk, the idea that maybe the celebrity isn’t smiling because they’re being photographed so rarely comes up. It’s the difference between “Jessica Biel put on her bitchface today again, why when she’s dating a stone hottie like Justin Timberlake” and “Jessica Biel as always wouldn’t smile for our photographers as she walked out of the restaurant in her grandmother’s dress.” It seems incredibly disingenuous (and worse) to write as though the celebrity’s mood/expression is completely divorced from being photographer/video’d when it comes to candids.
And especially with kids – I can not tell you the number of times I’ve seen people wonder why such and such celebrity tot didn’t smile. If you see the video it’s five photographers (or more) walking backwards a few feet from the child, flashes going off, questions being thrown at the parent. How should the average 10 month old react to that? And yet bloggers will be all “why doesn’t Olive Cohen smile??” Not every child has Violet Affleck’s level of equanimity with being photographed by paps. There was about four weeks during Katie Holmes’s broadway run where Suri Cruise looked miserable and frightened every single time Katie brought her out through that gauntlet. Buzzfoto kept saying “shy” and no, we have eyes. (Setting aside the discussion of Katie’s choices there, which is a totally valid thing to snark about, I think.)
And I agree, they all look downcast in the Beckham photo that started this, however familiar the kids are at this age with the photographers, it doesn’t stop the paps from affecting their mood. And you totally weren’t guilty of the hoary “why are those kids down? they’re rich and famous blah blah” or demanding they smile and buck up, little cheerio, but I’ve seen it so often (about kids and adults) without any mention that maybe they’re down/look bitchy because twenty flashes just went off in their face, it sets off my argh feeling.
But you’re already look positively saintly vs the biggest pro-ana blog on the web (X17 Online, and also racist, and also more than once distorting what happened with the pics) and the annoying lech who thinks rigid gender roles are HILARIOUS (TMZ – I will not get over how HILARIOUS they think calling Tom Brady emasculated and errand boy is because one time he mailed a package for her and the time they called Jessica Alba’s husband her “bitch” and similarly emasculated because he took a picture of Alba and a fan using the fan’s camera).
I also hope if the blog ever allows comments, there’s some moderation – TMZ and X17 are cesspools of idiocy/racism/straight up misogyny/slut shaming. I don’t even read them because it just makes me want to sterilize the entire world.