List: 'World's 100 Most Beautiful People 2010'

Today’s ‘List Friday’. Well it’s that time of the year again: When People magazine publishes its list of the ‘World’s 100 Most Beautiful People’. I wrote of the 2009 list here [1]. The 2009 winner was the then 37-year-old Christina Applegate [2]. Though the complete 2010 list, like its predecessors, is only available in the magazine, this year’s number one is Julia Roberts [3] – who’s 42. So the winners are getting older. But I’d venture to say they won’t progress much if at all past 42. This is the twelfth time Roberts has been on the list [4], and the fourth time she’s been number one and thus on the cover of People’s ‘100 Most Beautiful’ issue [5]. (The first time was in 1991 when she was aged only 23, and already the highest paid Hollywood actress [6].) Self evidently Roberts has wide and enduring appeal. But not to me. She doesn’t stir my juices. She never has. But admittedly I’m judging her on her appearance alone. And it seems her beauty goes beyond her looks, because George Clooney said ‘There’s a reason why Julia is a timeless beauty, and it has nothing to do with the way she looks. It has everything to do with who she is’. I can’t disagree with you, George. Ho hum.

P.S. I promise you, dear readers, that next Friday’s list’ll be much less soporific than today’s.

farmdoc's blog post number 381

I’ve just finished reading Giving Ground: Media and Environmental Conflict in Tasmania. Writer Libby Lester – a sister of Sue Lester – quotes a Tasmanian newspaper editor replying to public complaints about increasing trivia in their regional, daily newspaper: ‘I put a dog on the front page and sales go up by five to six hundred. I put forestry on the front and sales go down by five to six hundred. I make no apologies. The paper is a commercial enterprise’. Yes, all newspapers and magazines are. This week’s issue of People magazine features its annual list of the 100 world’s most beautiful people. But this list’s not available in full on the Internet even though, as I wrote last Monday, People’s Time Inc. magazine stable-mate Time posted the full list of its 100 most influential people, on its internet site. I suppose it has to do with market demographics and segmentation, and other esoterica that are lost on me. Anyway I’ve no idea how People constructs its list. But at least it contains some males; and the cover photograph’s of someone called Christina Applegate – who’s had breast cancer, a double mastectomy and breast reconstruction. As cover girl (cover person?), she’s numero uno on the list. I don’t care. But I do care that, whilst I haven’t seen the full list (and I never will, because I’m not buying the magazine), of the list members I’m aware of, no-one’s aged over 49 years. Ho hum.