Secret Combination (Of Words And Presentation)
Firstly, I am not disappointed by the choice of ladies. I don’t know any of them but I’ve read their biographies and done a bit of googling, I am sure they will be professional and will distil their duties with grace and polish. This is not about our hosts for Lisbon 2018, I don’t mind that they’re all female – in fact redressing the balance of history and lack of women on prime-time TV shows perhaps we need a few more Eurovision Song Contests with a purely female hosting team.
As we know the Song Contest does take a combination of presenter and script to make it work. I would argue the past three years have been the text book examples of how to do it and how not to do it. In Vienna we had a great script that pretty much fell flat in the hands of all but one of the presenters, and she was farmed off to the Green Room. Last year in Kyiv we had three great gentlemen, who in interviews were lively, chatty and funny yet were given a doozy of a script that made them fall flat.
Sandwiched in between is Stockholm 2016. We had excellent example of the scripting genius of Edward af Sillén (listen to his interview with Ewan here) working alongside the hosting expertise and pinpoint accuracy of Petra Mede and Måns Zelmerlöw. Their success shows the required combination of charismatic and quick-thinking hosts with a writer who knows their style and the tone required to deliver an entertaining contest.
Obviously, only time will tell what sort of material our hosts are given to perform, and how they eventually handle the world’s biggest music party.
Party For Everybody
My disappointment with the presentation was that it confirmed to me everything that is wrong with the expectations of women on television. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, women are all sizes, shapes, colours and backgrounds, but women through the ages have been constantly fed a rhetoric of what makes them acceptable to men, by men. Perhaps even more dangerously, that message has been handed down through generations of women, whether subconsciously or overtly. The ultimate message is that women’s lives should be lived to please men, and if that means hours of exfoliating, buffing, waxing and styling then that is the price we must pay.
In recent years a new and much healthier message has been told to women and girls: there are multiple ways of being a woman and many ways of expressing your femininity. We are teaching our girls in school that all women should be able to feel beautiful, admirable and respected. A surprisingly important part of this message is for girls to see all sorts of women succeeding in all walks of life.
So let’s take a look at just how are hosts were announced yesterday and whether it really is the female empowerment that it is attempting to be, or whether something is missing.
She’s Got Her Lipstick On
We start the introduction video in the make-up room, because the most important thing for women on TV is to look ‘perfect’. This reinforces to the viewer that an initial judgement of you as a woman is based upon the hairstyle, the designer dress and the makeup. Who you are, what you’ve achieved, your CV, your voice even are secondary to this. The video’s message suggests that the prominent reason these ladies were chosen for this challenging presenting job is because of their look.
The hairstyling is also all the same, Sílvia has had her hair dyed to a dark blonde colour, but ultimately the styling for all four ladies is that same perfect ‘Hollywood’ look of slightly tousled curves reaching to just below the collar bone.
Of course, as I am a makeup artist you’ll be aware that it’s not the actual makeup or hair styling that I have a problem with. The problem is that all of the looks are exactly the same – even down to this season’s on-trend brow shaping. Believe me, no two women’s faces are the same and it looks spooky when you try to make them the same.
At last year’s London Eurovision Party, the look I created for Levina from Germany (a super fresh girl-next-door look) would not have been appropriate for Agnes of Latvia’s Triana Park (hers was pale skin and a matte powdered finish), or Anja from Denmark (bronzer and super glossy lips), or even Conchita (ultimate highlighter and cheekbones I’m sure you could have seen from space!).
The beauty industry is (or at least should be) a tool for women to express their own style, creativity and femininity. It can do more than create one uniform look. This is a potentially beautiful thought until you realise that some looks are given more value than others in front of camera.
Don’t Call Me Your Sweet Cheesecake
Returning to the host’s introduction video there is a shot of Sílvia’s legs as she stands for the camera. As we know legs are a very important part of a woman, far more important than her brain (insert sarcasm here!)
Legs are very helpful for TV producers because they are a way of putting sex on the screen without actually putting sex on the screen. It has been decided by our society that legs are sexy. Eurovision is prestigious, and things that are prestigious require high value, sexy presentation. Therefore, you use legs to advertise Eurovision.
The video then brings the ladies into the studio that has been set up for their photo shoot, where we see snippets of their individual moment in front of the camera. They are not shown posing as serious broadcasters or charismatic individual personalities – their poses are more coy, shy and flirtatiously demure. The signal this sends is that these women may as well not have individual views or personalities because their value is in how they smile and look delightfully down the camera.
The video in fact could be a trailer for ‘Real Housewives of ’, ‘Sex in the City’, ‘Portugal’s Next Top Model’, ‘Loose Women’, or ‘Made in Chelsea’. Seriously, it could be any entertainment show anywhere on the planet.
To top it all off the video was put up on social media with the caption ‘Here come the girls’. They are not girls, they are professional women who in this video have been reduced to one generic expression of femininity and then patronised by calling them girls.
What About My Dreams?
What this says to me and many other women like me who have tried and tried and tried to break through the media battlements and actually have a career on TV and radio is that if you don’t express your femininity in the way deemed acceptable by male TV bosses, then you have to be super intelligent or downright funny or you will never have the career you long for. This is not the case with men. Men can be ordinary looking and still get the big presenting gigs.
Men can be older and still given the leading parts in films, for example Hugh Jackman (49) in ‘The Greatest Showman’ is much older than his on-screen wife Michelle Williams (37) when in reality Charity was two years older than Barnum, but it would never have occurred to Hollywood to cast a 51 year old woman in the role, no more than I think it would cross the minds of a major network to cast a 50+ woman as the host of a prime-time show. (By the way I do still think that film is utterly brilliant!)
This is a continuation of a conversation from the Junior Eurovision Song Contest, and something I said during my ‘Musical Moments’ piece on ESC Insight a few weeks ago. In that I was talking about Murieann McDonnell from Ireland and how she had a pretty nasty ride on social media because she doesn’t look like what people expect of an 11 year old girl singer, she has a purple pixie-cropped hairstyle, wears DM’s and plays football in her spare time.
Remember back to Marija Serifovic’s appearance for Serbia back in 2007, the first thing a lot of people had to say about her was ‘she’s gay’ or ‘she’s fat’. She wasn’t a conventional beauty in a long ball gown so a lot of people just didn’t know what box to put her in. Then there was Bojana Stamenov, also from Serbia, in 2015 again the amount of abuse thrown her way on social media in the run up to the contest because of her weight was unbelievable.
I’ve had it myself too, when I was working with Eurovision Ireland in Stockholm during the 2016 Contest. We were doing our live Periscope show and a number of the comments coming in from men as I was presenting were along the lines of ‘you’re fat’, ‘you’re ugly’, yet we can put a larger, more ordinary looking chap on an Eurovision screen and they won’t get these comments, they just won’t.
So whilst I am thrilled for the ‘Fourtugal’ as I have seen them named over on Whoops Dragovic, please remember our 2018 hosts only represent one expression of what it means to be a woman. Where is the more masculine woman in an awesome tux? Where is the disabled host? Where is the host who is bigger than a US size 4? Where is the older woman with years of experience? Where is the woman of colour? Where is the woman who has a short pixie crop hairstyle? For that matter, where is the ginger-haired woman?
I’ll tell you where they are, they are watching the Eurovision Song Contest. They are your sisters, your girlfriends, your mothers, aunts, grandmothers, you best friends, your daughters; maybe even yourself.
They are waiting and hoping for their chance, waiting and hoping for change. They are in the audience, in the press room, in the production teams, on the delegations, watching on screens around the continent and the world,and when they see these ladies walk on to the stage they will feel conflicted.
Pleased that at least there are women at the forefront of a major prime time entertainment show, yet a little sad because yet again those women don’t represent them.
Amen!!!
Marija Serifovic was Serbia 2017.
Even in 2018, women are judged by look and have to work harder and get paid less for the same job men do.
It’s a men’s world, eventhough men don’t do the job necessarily better than women.
I wish women to have more influence and higher jobs. There is a chance we would live in a better world(all said from a point of a gay man)
Hell yes! I’ve been involved with online communities for over 20 years and the *only* time when my physical appearance has been attacked has been in the Eurovision community. But really, ain’t no one got time for that.
I’m also curious about the treatment of on-screen women in the world of Eurovision. There does seem to be a premium put on women with a certain glamorous style. This unique to Eurovision and certainly does not reflect television (or even music television) as a whole. Yeah, there is something fun and lovely about a glamorous slim, young diva in a dress with amazing long hair, but as we’ve seen with some iconic Eurovision performances, sometimes the diva can be just as good with short hair, glasses, a suit, a larger build, a few wrinkles, or indeed male genitals hiding under that frock. And funnily enough, looking atypical has generally never stopped these performers doing well.
A terrific article. Very refreshing and honest, with a clear message. I find myself thinking about the 2016 USA election where we saw the most insulting remarks about female party candidates when appearing on TV, specifically Carly Fiorina and Hillary Clinton. Mostly voiced in a way that men would not be subjected to. As another related point: I wish women would support other women much more in all levels of work-life, including TV. How disappointing that 53% of white women voted for the male candidate (with multiple sexual assault accusations), not the female candidate. Thanks Lisa-Jayne.
Thanks Shai, text tweaked to Serbia 2007.
Brilliant insightful piece that also encourages people to think about the fandom demographic.
Maybe because 2015 was my first ESC so it will always be the best one in my mind but I thought the three main hosts that year did a good job presenting so I’m rather confused with the negative feedback they’re getting from fans.
Frankly a bizarre choice of Top model: the older generation clones, clearly meant to counter last year’s all-male trio – even though that had more diversity with the 2 Bel Ami “models” joined by the bear in the green room. That aside, why four hosts? The scripted banter to cover up the fact that one of them will have nothing meaningful to do will be as painful as a meeting of middle managers.
I love the irony of an article that tries to celebrate women of all shapes, sizes and ages by knocking these particular women and their looks–which are part who they are and part how they choose to present themselves. The reasons they were chosen has nothing to do with their looks or legs but that would require you to actually discuss their CV. Filomena is RTPs version of Petra or Chelsea Handler–a humorist that hosts the channels popular late night series. Catarina is their most popular host who is also a UN goodwill ambassador. Silvia has had 10 years of hosting the national final. And Daniela is the country’s most famous actress in the English speaking market. I think their looks were the last thing on RTP mind but clearly were the main thing on yours.
Thanks Jake for your comment. I agree with you that these women all have impressive CV’s and were clearly chosen because of this. The article is not really a comment on why they were chosen but a comment on how they were presented, which would have been the decision of the producers, not the ladies themselves. It was never about discrediting the ladies, it is about how the video itself (and the media world in general) discredits them.
Actually Jake the article says they’re worthwhile hosts. It’s the narrow body image casting and singularity of their styling–especially hair and makeup–that are problems. The styling in particular erases, rather than enhances each woman’s individuality. Namaste allez!
There are call outs on their eyebrows and hair dye choices. That’s not a judgement on the way producers or directors are depicting them in a promo clip but the choices of how these women choose to depict themselves. Again, I’m all good intentions sometimes we victimize others in order to make a point.
@Jake no offense but you’re a bit naive if you think that the way TV presenters look has more to do with “how…(they) choose to depict themselves” than with the TV network’s preferences and accordingly briefed stylists. In my experience – as a man who has done on-camera TV work – on-camera staff generallydon’t feel victimited; it’s part of the job to live up to your employer’s image/brand – just like you wouldn’t come to work at a health food rtore 100 pounds overweight with bad skin. It is, however, regrettable that RTP chooses to go 4-fold for their/their GM’s view of a “feminine ideal”.