Birds, can I tell you a secret, since we’re all being inundated via various social media outlets about this evening’s glittery gowns and award winners? (Golden Globes anyone? Pshhhhh, don’t pretend like the excitement of awards season is beneath you. It only makes you seem more pretentious than usual. )
Most so-called “red carpet” events where there’s an actual red carpet are tiny. The Globes and The Academy Awards are two of the few exceptions to this rule.
Take, for instance, this photo of one of the crew (a very nice member of the crew) packing up the ubiquitous red carpet after a film premiere at The Annenberg Theatre in Palm Springs. The entire photocall took place on a small square landing. That’s right, all of the red carpet photos you will see from the festival that didn’t take place at the opening gala, held at the breath-taking Parker, probably took place on this tiny, square patch of unremarkable concrete.
Red carpet events, while in photos they may appear to be glamorous, are really just a bunch of people, most of them up-and-comers, tartlets in tiny, bedazzled dresses (or worse, the ubiquitous bandage dresses), who want to be seen.
Truly famous people, the one who are chased by the paps down Robertson Boulevard, neither need nor like the red carpet. Oprah doesn’t need a red carpet for us to know she’s Oprah.
The red carpet is really about the sponsors, whose names and logos are plastered on the backdrops of such photos, and the unglamorous people who need to appear to be glamorous, e.g. the Lindsay Lohans and the wannabe-Snooki’s lacking a reality t.v. show and a bump-it.
The Red Carpet during awards season is akin to mating season in a tribe of peacocks, everyone pruning and fanning their feathers, hoping to catch the eye of that special mate, be it producers dangling roles, perfumers flush with cash to burn on image building, or other pagans of opportunity.
And with so many people trying to claim a piece of the fame pie, you forget that the carpet upon which they stand is even red.
Maybe a dull, brown shag would be better suited for the lot of them?
So don’t be fooled, Birds, by the mirage. These proud peacocks are working hard for that $$$$$ tonight.
P.S. The only people who’s gowns I’m truly interested in are Rooney Mara and Shailene Woodley. Rooney, because of her no-doubt Vogue-approved transformation and Shailene, because she’s the only one out of this year’s tartlets who has thus far avoided trying too hard, even if she’s flops often.
