Media Coverage Is Only Looks Deep

The familiar, haunting face of a beaming JonBenet Ramsey smiled at us from People magazine again last week - even though there’s really nothing new to report about the investigation into her murder.

JonBenet’s hair is dyed white-blonde, her lashes are curled and her lips are brushed a bright red. In that photo - and in any number of professionally done photos we’ve seen of JonBenet - she looks like a miniature movie starlet.

But she was just 6, not 26. That photo is not only heartbreaking, it’s creepy. If there’s a legitimate reason why any child that age should ever wear that much makeup, it’s beyond my grasp.

This is not to say JonBenet wasn’t a beautiful child. By all conventional American standards of attractiveness, she was absolutely stunning.

We as a society don’t like to admit we make judgments based on such superficial qualities, but we do - even when we’re looking at children.

Some people have cute kids, others don’t. It shouldn’t make a whit of difference, but it does.

In fact, looks have made a difference in terms of the amount attention we’ve all paid to the murder of JonBenet. (She’s also the subject of a lengthy story in the latest Vanity Fair.) If that child had not looked like a living doll, the mystery of her death would not still be garnering quite so much attention. I dare say it never would have made such a huge splash in the first place.

We in the media - and many of you who consume the information ladled out by the popular press - prefer our subjects to be young and attractive. The younger and more attractive they are, the more excited we get about their story, no matter how tragic.

Case in point: Princess Diana.

What if the princess had been the exact same person with the exact same life - but she had been less attractive physically? Say she had been the female equivalent of her decidedly plain-looking ex-husband. Would she have been the focus of such intense scrutiny when she was alive - and such intense mourning in death?

Isn’t it true one of the reasons Di was always 10 times more scrutinized than Fergie was that Fergie looks too much like the “average” woman, while Di truly looked the part of a princess?

We can ask the same hard questions about Nicole Brown Simpson, who was relatively unknown in life but became one of the most famous women in the world in death. Of course there would have been unrelenting coverage of the O.J. Simpson trial no matter whom he was accused of murdering. But would we have seen so many photos of his ex-wife if she hadn’t been so stunning?

Don’t kid yourself. The answer is no.

JonBenet, Diana and Nicole all came from money, and there’s no doubt the media (and the public) prefer stories about the wealthy. But our fascination with good-looking people transcends financial boundaries.

For proof of this, we turn back a few years to a couple of stories involving female athletes.

When tennis star Monica Seles was stabbed by a deranged man who assaulted her in the middle of a match, Time and Newsweek gave the story little play.

“A Bad Week for Tennis,” snickered Newsweek above its three-sentence entry in the Roundup section. Time’s treatment was equally sparse.

But the far less serious attack on skater Nancy Kerrigan received instant mega-coverage, even before we knew of Tonya Harding’s involvement. Newsweek put Kerrigan on the cover and gave the story three full pages. Time had a two-page feature.

Why such a disparity in the coverage? The looks factor, perhaps? Kerrigan was considered to be something of a babe, Seles wasn’t. And even in the highly competitive environment of world-class athletics, if you’re a woman, your appearance counts big-time.

Just ask Jan Stephenson, one-time calendar girl for the LPGA, or Gabriela Sabatini, darling of the tennis set, or Gabrielle Reece, the modelvolleyball player who receives far more attention than her more talented peers on the circuit.

Kerrigan was America’s sweetheart, our cultural girlfriend for a short time. (We’re more fickle than Larry King when it comes to such matters.) And according to our value system, somehow, it’s more shocking if the homecoming queen - as opposed to some frump - is attacked.

Or is the attacker herself. This same sort of sexism was displayed in the case of Amy Fisher, “the Long Island Lolita” - a cute little bombshell with a cute name. She sold her story for big bucks and continues to receive love letters in prison. She even got better-looking when she was portrayed on television by pinup nymphets Drew Barrymore and Alyssa Milano.

But take the exact same saga and insert a mousy, overweight teenager in Fisher’s place, and it wouldn’t have been such an intriguing story - it would have been the pathetic tale of a disturbed, attention-starved girl who had an affair with a grunting clown and shot the clown’s wife in the head.

Sweet or evil, victim or perpetrator, if you’re a woman in the spotlight, your looks will be a factor when the media determine just how much coverage you’re going to receive.

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