One bunny down, one to go! I’m not talking about devouring the cute chocolate Easter bunnies my kids got this last holiday. It’s about another sort of cottontails that might pop into your head when you tune into Dancing With The Stars, and there’s nothing wholesome about these dancing bunnies.
Kendra Wilkinson was booted off the dance show last week, but there’s one more bunny on the dance floor which explains what Hugh Hefner’s been doing sitting front-row at the show … keeping an eye on two of his pets.
DWTS was smoking after the announcement that red-hot professional dancer Karina Smirnoff had posed naked for Playboy. The media had a field day with news the obvious contradiction the dancer had audiences contemplating as she shimmied and twirled on the PG-rated show. “Dancing” is purportedly a family show broadcast during prime family-viewing time — purportedly because if you’ve been watching the dance competition, the dancers’ costumes leave very little to the imagination.
Apparently, the inconsistency is due to the steamy attention Smirnoff will be drawing from her nude photo spread in the May issue of the male entertainment magazine while she’s still bumping and grinding on the family dance show.
Furthermore, the sexy Ukrainian ballroom dancer struts her stuff next to Chelsea Kane Staub, a Disney Channel staple. Kane appeared on the Jonas L.A. show, and is currently part of Disney’s animated series Fish Hooks.
Talk about duplicity.
Shouldn’t the media been a blaze with a similar story before this season of the show even aired? The ex-Playboy centerfold, Kendra Wilkinson, who was also hopping her way towards the prized Mirror Ball, became a mother after her days at Hef’s mansion, and may have tried to clean up her image by performing on the popular family show.
Now, the opposite is happening on “Dancing.” The once-polished Karina is following in Kendra’s footsteps – and in more ways than the Quick Step.
While we’d hope ABC, a Disney-owned network, would stay true to its core audience, families, by keeping its stars clean-cut, it’s impossible for the network to control the lure of fame and fortune it’s celebrities are tempted by and the things they’re willing to do to get it.
In UPTOWN Magazine’s recent column, “Spotlight: Shame on Us!” Star Jones wrote her take on reality TV-created starlets and how shame doesn’t get in their way of attaining fame.
“When did posing with your behind up and your boobs out standing in front of a stripper pole make you a model? … Shame should be what you feel when you finally acknowledge that your only true talent lies in being the loudest, least-educated, best-dressed buffoon on the screen.”
These incongruent situations are reminders that we have to keep pointing out how reality T.V. personalities get away with straddling both camps in their pursuit of fame; you can be twinkle toes by day, the twinkle of strangers’ lurid eyes by night, and get paid for the shameless behavior.
During a recent high school National Honor Society induction ceremony, a well-respected English teacher and Football coach gave the keynote speech and managed to use Hollywood’s shameless fame culture to describe to impressionable teens how not to fall for the fraudulent allure of happiness through glorified dishonorable behavior.
He told students that “Intrinsic happiness in such behavior just isn’t there. Honor cannot be achieved through fraud.”
And then came this nugget of wisdom: “Now, at times the media appears to think that teenagers have collectively gone down the road to perdition — a hundred miles an hour, hair on fire… Generally, unethical behavior is not common among teenagers. If it was, it wouldn’t be news. That’s why we point it out, so it won’t become common. What we need to point out more often is that young people do make good choices more often… ”
It’d be nice if Hollywood pointed out more of their good choices.
Watching yet another sensible show slowly start to spoil (say that three times fast!) may be hard to digest for some. Fortunately for television aficionados, both Smirnoff and Wilkinson are as cute as bunnies, and also have some talent (*wink*), that new kind of talent Hollywood likes to breed these days.
Does it bother you to see Disney stars next to Playboy models when watching a show with your family? Should we just let things like this slide and chalk it up to yet another one of Hollywood’s contradictions?
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