I’m tellin’ you, a girl could get her feelings hurt around here…
Ouch.
Yikes!
Ah, wait, the saving grace…
Sniff Thanks… but I still don’t rank with the supermodels? Damn. Ah, well, they’re all too friggin’ skinny anyway.
Anyway, as tasteless as the OP may have been (and as much as we’re losing sight of what matters here–that a girl is dead and her family is suffering), I think there’s room here for commentary on what it says about our society that:
a) somehow a woman’s life is slightly more valuable–and her death more tragic–if she’s “attractive” (because come on–as fucked up as it is to say, AWB can hardly be the only one thinking this way), therefore
b) the media do tend to include adjectives like “pretty”, “popular”, and “innocent” in news stories about young girls who are dead or missing, to heighten the tragic effect (as if kidnapping, murder, etc. weren’t tragic enough), because fewer people would be moved by the death of a Plain Jane.
Am I suggesting that the news articles instead say, “She was slightly overweight and had acne and a lazy eye”?
God no.
I’m just saying that attitudes like AWB’s and Synister’s don’t exist in a vacuum, and that’s largely due to the fact that reprise is right; news about a young MAN who dies tragically are generally NOT accompanied by an assessment of his appearance (except in the case of, maybe, JFK Jr., and even then, it was just part of the young/successful/good guy package).
I think it’s fucked up.
But that don’t make it any less true.