Gladiators: Boob Of Death!

[andygates]

The new series of Gladiators starts soon and teaser posters are popping up.  They're all the same format: one of the new glads looking mean and photoshopped, with the caption "Gladiators Ready".  Go on, read it without doing the referee bloke's voice in your head.

What confuses me is that the male glads are generally looking, well, gladiatorial - all muscles and mean stares and the promise that the contenders are going to get a kicking.  As you'd expect.  But the female glads are done up in statuesque poses that suggest not so much combat readiness as a flexploitation eagerness to bludgeon someone into unconsciousness with their Boobs Of Death. 

C'mon marketing guys.  Girls can be athletes too, y'know?  They can even be athletes and hot, without having to unleash the cheeseball Red Sonja stereotype.  There's something about this that suggests that the boys will be playing for real and the girls will be mud-wrestling for the boy's delight, and that doesn't sit comfortably.  Female readers: Does this sort of cheese put you off?  Or am I just overreacting? 

Ah well, it's just the posters.  I look forward to the marvellous silliness of the programmes later when they escape Sky 1's orbit.

Comments

Oh dude!

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

http://gladiators.sky.com/gladiators

You have to go there. Hit the "Gladiators" button. But turn your sound down if you're at work.

Does it annoy me?

Yes. It annoys me the same way that the first superpower anyone ever gets in comics is to get smacked with the preposterously hotulizer. Programmes that depict women like that ignore basic physiological facts and promote a stereotype of the "Amazonian beauty" that cannot be achieved without cosmetic surgery and the constant attention of make-up artists.

The guys are all big, all ripped, and wearing fairly sensible shorts. The girls are all lean-legged with boob jobs and wearing what appears to be lycra bondage gear. In the past the girls at least looked like they might be able to take on an athletic challenge or two -- Sharon Davies was a Gladiator! These ones all look like they'd be knocked unconscious by their own boobs hitting them repeatedly in the face before they'd made it 2km into a 10k.

Oh gods. I'm going to have to go and have a rant now.

Gladweasel

[andygates.livejournal.com]

You'd think at least one of the guys would be a snake, actually, someone a little bit woo, little bit waa, duck 'n' dive. Gladweasel. A wall of gym beef is almost as bad as the wall of boobs (though granted, not as pervasive).

Re: Gladweasel

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Oblivion is not exactly a beefcake. He just thinks he is.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

There's some absolutely hilarious content on that site. Check out the "Vidiator" (I am not making this up).

Introducing the seductive, siren, TEMPEST.

(sic)

I think that says it all. The guys are described in terms of how much damage they are likely to do: the girls are all described in terms of hotness. Other than the "enigmatic ENIGMA".

Come on. It's insulting. Not because it's degrading, but because it assumes that the audience thinks women are only worthwhile if they're hot...

Oh. We're back to addle-brained, slack-jawed, mouth-breathing idiots again. Now I don't know whether to throw my hands in the air and accept that they're marketing to morons, or be grumpy about them perpetuating an unattainable stereotype.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

"I don't know whether to throw my hands in the air and accept that they're marketing to morons..."

Monetize that low denominator. I need to see Idiocracy.

Trapped by the Vidiator

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Battleaxe looks like a proper heavyweight. But WTF is she wearing? Could they not cope with the fact that strong girls don't have gappy feed-me-lettuce-and-tissue-paper thighs?

She's got some decent meat on her so they put her in a fake Hollywood Roman Centurion type kilt?

Dude, help. You have to get me out of here.

Re: Oh dude!

[andygates.livejournal.com]

And did they have to call her Battleaxe? Yeesh. I know Gladiator naming is the cheesiest of the cheese, but surely there was something less Carry On Follow That Atlasphere?

The enigmatic Enigma is almost sigworthy. That's Mystery Men stuff, that is.

Compare and contrast if you please the recent track world champeenships. Some fierce competition, bumps, scrapes, lycra and bulging muscules in all the right places, but with....

...hell, with dignity.

Re: Oh dude!

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

What has struck me is that this time the Gladiators are openly acknowledging that they're gong to be competing with each other for crowd attention.

The interviews with the old Gladiators all talk about how friendly they were and how much support and camaraderie there was. The old one was very British. It seems to have been Americanised.

Re: Oh dude!

[andygates.livejournal.com]

It'll be Running Man one day...

[shifty-176.livejournal.com]

Oh come on guys, it's Sky 1, FFS. You should know by now that BSG (or whatever other half-decent show they've bought) is not going to be the norm. The norm is lowest-common-denominator fill between the adverts which are supposed to pay the bills. The arse has fallen out of the TV market in the last few years, so it's all about bums on seats for advertising revenue. That means boys toys and explosions (brainiac and its ilk), and eye candy. Throw in a dash of prurient exposé and that's about it, especially now that the phone-in vote revenue has gone titsup. The late Alistair Cooke had a phrase for it: Content-Free Television.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Gladiators is definitely lowest-common-denominator. I think I've just spent too much time around proper women wot do stuff to be taken in by the Boob Of Death any more ;)

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

And they wonder why the arse has fallen out of the TV market...

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Come now: these people were watching 321 back in the day. There has always been a deep arse end to the prime-time TV market.

[thudthwacker.livejournal.com]

They can even be athletes and hot, without having to unleash the cheeseball Red Sonja stereotype.

Indeed. I give you, for example, Allison Stokke. Athlete, champion pole-vaulter (stop), and, as the picture notes, hot.

[ravenbait.livejournal.com]

Dude, it is far too early in the morning for you to be thinking about...

No, it's never too early.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

It is never too early.

Sad thing about Ms Stokke. She got so much attention for that photo (which is, it must be said, so hot that my shoes are sticking to the floor) that she went a bit reclusive. At least the glads will be groomed for celebrity, vapid though it is.

[despaer.livejournal.com]

Just hang around at any triathlon meet. All athletes, no mingers. Which reached jaw-dropping proportions at the national relays last year...

Regarding gladiators, they have not yet reached their low. They will do that when they get some slightly weedy looking blokes (probably celebrities) in for a 'laugh' and get the girls to beat up on them. Me? I shall watch the olympics with particlar detail to the swimming and athletics. Much more like it.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

It must be said that riding through Brean was a bit of a shock yesterday, after attending a bunch of triathlon meets. All was redeemed with today's marshalling.

Interestingly it's not just the size, there are always a few hefty boys and girls present, it's the gumption. Okay, and the rest. But the gumption is a big factor. I will admit though that young, smart, talented, devastatingly fit and full of gumption (cf Vanessa Raw) is very distracting.

(You can, of course, already get weedy-bloke-clobbered-by-Amazon-totty material online - there's a lucrative market in it. C'est l'Internet.)

[despaer.livejournal.com]

Of course you can. But you're not a sad perv loser if you are watching mainstream telly and it just happens along now are you?

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Well, your sad perv loser score is not altered. I doubt it will drag my score back up into respectability...