If Your Looks Got You The Job Don’t Complain When The Job Goes When Your Looks Fade
BBC TV newsreaders past and present at the BBC TV Centre in London. From Left to Right Peter Woods, John Snagge, Corbet Woodall, Bob Langley, Colin Doran, Kenneth Kendal John Timpson and Robert Dougall. Seated Anglea Rippon, Richard Whitmore and Richard Baker. Date: 26/06/1979
LIFE is indeed unfair and it is entirely true that some of us lose our jobs after our looks start to fade. The latest little scare story being that we don’t have enough middle aged and older women on the tellie, telling us all how the world is in the news and the like.
To which there’s a pretty robust response. If you originally get your job because you’re pretty, somewhat toothsome on the eye, then it’s a bit odd to complain about losing said job when you’re less easy on said eyes. As Michael Buerk has been pointing out:
BBC veteran Michael Buerk says TV presenters who got their jobs through their beauty have no right to complain if they’re axed when their looks fade.
While the anchorman has expressed his satisfaction that broadcasters are now featuring more and more experienced talent, such as Great British Bake-Off presenter Mary Berry, he says many of those that complain about ageism should not have been given their roles in the first place.
He said: ‘”Presenter” in any case is a very recent job description dreamt up to provide somebody who fronts a programme without any special reason for being on it.
‘And if you got the job in the first place mainly because you look nice, I can’t see why you should keep it when you don’t.’
It’s worth noting that no one hired Buerk in the first place for his cheekbones so it might be that he knows what he’s talking about.
And we might go further too: there really is injustice in this world and one of them is that good looking people have it easier than the rest of us. This is what drives the fury in quite a number of the middle aged in fact. For when those looks fade they find out what life has been like for the rest of us all along. And the injustice isn’t that we ignore the middle aged whose looks have faded, but the ease with which the beautiful glide through life while us munts look on in envy. While those looks last of course…..
Posted: 9th, April 2014 | In: Money, Reviews, TV & Radio Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
