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Oh, come on, Rebecca. We're leering and laughing at Lauren Caitlin Upton not because she's "young, pretty, blond, Southern and female" (thereby fitting into a convenient stereotype, as you would have it), but because her "reply" to the question was so astonishingly vacuous. As vacuous, in fact, as what we have heard far too often from another celebrity, but one who DOESN'T qualify as young, pretty, blond, or female--and is only marginally Southern--George W. Bush. Upton's absurd "explanation" at the pageant was as meaningless and unhelpful as so many of Dubya's have been; the main reason we can laugh over and over at her gaffe is that she probably won't ever have a chance to make her mark in or on the world, whereas our overachieving Prez has done extensive damage in his hours upon the stage, despite and because of his chronic cluelessness.
It's not a misogynistic impulse that causes such fascination with Upton's empty performance. It's alarm that now there are clearly at least TWO people in the country, one young and female, the other middle-aged and male, who have been given a chance to speak their minds publicly and had absolutely nothing to offer.
