"The status quo"

Journalism The trouble with female celebrity profiles and the men who write them. Just because it happens, doesn't make it right:

"The status quo results in pieces such as Chuck Klosterman’s “The Pitfalls of Indie Fame” (Grantland), which mercurially identifies musician Merrill Garbus as “a somewhat androgynous American woman,” and Tom Junod’s “The State of the Female Singer” (Esquire), which describes Lana Del Rey’s lips in fanatical detail, and relegates Florence and the Machine’s 2011 album, Ceremonials,to “something our wives can pick up… at Starbucks while waiting for Adele to get out of the hospital.” The latter goes on to shame Lady Gaga, Rihanna, Ke$ha, and Beyoncé for adopting stage personas—as if Kanye West and Justin Bieber don’t lay it on thick."

It's reached the stage where I tend to skim most interviews and profiles in general trying to find the sections where the given subject is actually talking rather than having to wade through a given journalistic opinion, in which a person is being objectified.

Which isn't to say there isn't a skill and some profiles can be entertaining and illuminating and there are some very good writers (as ever Elizabeth Day, Emma Brockes or Hadley Freeman spring to mind).

But sometimes I wish it was simply some preamble then a Q&A format.  If a person has nothing to say they'll be laid bare and as such allow us to make our own impression of them.  Similar the really interesting people will shine like beacons.