Re: Kate's Looks

[Robb McCaffree <nsrjm@nursepo.medctr.ucla.edu>]

barnster wrote:
> 
> Since so many of you responded to my message, it is obvious that her looks
> are important to many of you.

This is a bit of a leap over logic: many of the posters wrote in 
to say that they couldn't give a whit about Kate's looks.


If her looks really didn't matter, many of
> you would not have gotten so excited by my message that you had to post.

Again, if these posters were excited, it was in their fervor to 
say, "No, this is an issue that doesn't matter to us." Saying 
then that their excitement proves their interest is like saying 
"You voted for Clinton because you were excited about Dole."

I
> still maintain that her good looks helped her to become a huge success, and
> she is also amazingly talented.

No one will refute this. But commercial success depends on 
'peripheral fans' as well as on the 'hardcore' base. When you 
ask hardcore fans a question about something as ephemeral as 
good looks, of course they're going to respond negatively.

Ask the fans who bought TKI...and then none of Kate's other 
albums. They'll respond quite differently. Ask the EMI exec's 
who first approved her contract. They'll be even further down 
the 'looks vs. talent' scale. Then ask the (presumably male) 
marketer who approved the 'pink leotard' photo as the cover of 
TKI (a cover Kate vetoed). He may actually have found Kate's 
music annoying and thought her looks to be her only asset.

My point is that, yes, obviously Kate's career was initially 
buoyed by her looks, her willingness to exploit her sexuality, 
and a somewhat fickle fan base. And as Kate's appeal becomes 
that of a forty-ish woman instead of a twenty-year-old girl, 
some of that fan base is bound to slip away. But why ask the 
lovehounds, who are obviously still very interested in what Kate 
has to say, if their fanaticism is based on her looks?


>I'm looking forward
> to
> > > decades from now when she is crinkled as if an old apple, stumbling
> > around
> > > with a cane, hawking up phlegm after every sentence, to see if any of us
> > > would still buy her records.


Did it occur to you while writing this that such a flip 
reference to the artist within her own newsgroup would be 
offensive? I may not be particularly interested in Kate's looks, 
but that doesn't mean I like seeing her denigrated in this way.


Robb