Cybill Disobedience
To the woke jihad against beauty
As Steve recalls, Sydney Sweeney’s jean/gene performance was a cover of Brooke Shields’ contortion act for Calvin Klein way back in The Age of Reagan. Another throwback is Cybill Shepherd, known for Taxi Driver, The Last Picture Show, “Moonlighting” and such. Shepherd has been on to the woke jihad from the start.
“If you’re considered a beauty,” Cybill explains, “it’s hard to be accepted doing anything but standing around,” but there’s more to it. “When someone is beautiful that gives people an excuse to go out of their way to be mean, as if someone who is beautiful isn’t really deep, doesn’t really hurt, and isn’t really a human being.” Sweeney would doubtless understand, and there was another side to Shepherd’s defiance.
Check out Cybill in an ad for “Beef: Real Food for Real People,” which wonders “whatever happened to real food?” Cybill is also on record that “sometimes I wonder if people have a primal, instinctive craving for hamburgers. Something hot and juicy and so utterly simple you can eat it with your hands. I mean, I know some people who don’t eat burgers. But I’m not sure I trust them.” Diet aside, Cybill has never been bashful about her own self.
“Some people say I’m attractive. I say I agree.” On the other hand, “one of my ex-husbands thought I had a breast job. They looked bigger. I just got the proper lingerie.” For her part, Sweeney has been described as “buxom,” “pneumatic” and so forth. That recalls a performance by the Monty Python troupe, anti-woke from the start.
Their “Summarize Proust” sketch features several efforts, but as host Arthur Me (Terry Jones) explains, “I don’t think any of our contestants this evening have succeeded in encapsulating the intricacies of Proust’s masterwork. So I’m going to award the first prize this evening to the girl with the biggest tits.” She turns out to be the stunning Julie Desmond, who could hold her own with Sydney and Cybill – but maybe not Jayne Mansfield.
Back on February 8, 1963, on what would become the “Tonight Show,” Jack Parr introduced her as “Here they are, Jayne Mansfield.” Of course, things were different then. As Mrs. April Simmel (Michael Palin) said, the kids “didn’t have their heads stuffed with all this Cartesian dualism.”
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Cybill made great sacrifices to move to Hollywood and allow herself to exploit her own appearance. She should be proud she had no front end surgical enhancements, below her neck, of course. She is an icon of the unglamorous lifestyle and fame she gave up to become Cybill Shepherd, renown social observer and commentator. Her impact was never limited by the way she made her living playing a rather or mostly dumb blonde. No, no, no, she never rode that stereotype to fame and glory. She read Goethe instead and practiced meditation with Richard Geer, in a desperate attempt to be taken seriously.
And as a result, she never will be.
Why is it those who work in the world of make believe, pretending to be characters and dressing up on different costumes, adopting accents and prostheses, insist on being taken seriously? Hollywood, or local theater, is the most capitalist venture on earth. You can hand out awards to minorities, but you cannot make audiences pay to see actors who do not entertain them (most often including nudity and violence). It truly is all about the money. And those who work, manage, and run Hollywood are some of the worst get-rich-quick scammers in the world. Thus, phony celebrities with phony personas, playing other people or characters suddenly decide they can convince us they are deep, reflective, well read, educated, and worthy of being taken seriously.
Cybill Shepherd is the kind of person who doesn’t like the Electoral College and would never send her children there.
Why am I only finding out about the Monty Python Proust skit now? It's an outrage!
Honestly, I do like to keep abreast of these things.