Woman of the Year
I see that Jennifer Aniston is GQ’s “First Woman of the Year”. A curious choice. But, as GQ editor Mark Healy insists it’s not a gimmick and “Sometimes, when you think someone is deserving, then you make room.”
I guess I don’t follow Hollywood close enough to know why she is more deserving than any other actress or female celebrity who doesn’t look awful with a sideways view of her breast. She appears in the tabloids a lot, largely by her own doing? (Publicity Hound, I suppose.) She is going to be in a bunch of movies next year?
The featured article contains several photographs of her shirtless, and scanning it I see a pull-quote showing that she is in favour of World Peace… something along the lines of “At a time when we should be coming together, we’re splitting apart.”
Okay. I will now pick my blog’s “woman of the year”. Maybe there are women more deserving than the choice I picked, and maybe there aren’t. I can’t say for sure.
From Pakistan, I choose Mukhtran Bibi.
Mukhtaran Bibi (c. 1972 – ) is a Pakistani woman from the small and impoverished village of Meerwala, located in the rural tehsil (county) of Jatoi in the Muzaffargarh District of Pakistan. Also known as Mukhtar Mai, Mukhtiar or just Mukhtaran, she was gang-raped on the demands of tribesmen — or by some accounts, on the orders of a panchayat (tribal council) — of a local clan known as the Mastoi. The Mastoi clan reportedly had bitter disputes with Mukhtaran’s clan, the Tatla.
After the conviction of her attackers, Mukhtaran became a symbol for advocates for the health and security of women in her region, attracting both national and international attention to these issues. [If I have to spell it out, traditionally women from these areas after being raped kill themselves out of shame] Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf awarded Mukhtaran a financial settlement of Rs.500,000 (about US$8000) [President Perev Musharraf having to be dragged and prodded by international pressure] which she used to build two local schools, one for girls and another for boys. There were no schools for girls in Mukhtaran’s village before this and she never had the opportunity to get an education. Some Western donors have also come forward with contributions.
Okay, so the editorial dictums of GQ and struat.com/election are different. For the record, I could just as easily have tossed up a hot sem-nude celebrity that I find attractive, and could’ve done so on a whim… and I would have picked someone hotter than Jennifer Freaking Aniston.
I see from Jeff’s latest “Elsewhere” link that Chris Elliott is “Struat.com’s Man of the Year”. The voting tallies show that he beat out Lyndon LaRouche by just 4 third place votes.