Who Wants To Be a Pin-Up Girl?

March 6, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN
Chicago Sun-Times
The Pussycat Dolls are a novelty act looking for a new girl to join their pop music group, which appeals especially to Maxim readers and girl-women who aspire to be Pussycat Dolls.
The whorishly clad Dolls are trying to find their new, seventh lady by using a new competition show called "Pussycat Dolls Presents: The Search for the Next Doll."
This is synergy: a fakey band plus a marketing show equals money.
You might like "Next Doll" if you want to hear their big hit "Don't Cha" over and over until you desire to invite the song outside and bludgeon it to death with your bare fists and maybe your boots and harsh words, too.
("Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Don't cha?")
The surprise is that most of the auditioning women are good singers with somewhat identifiable voices. The not-surprising thing is the show sucks like a starved kitten.
"New Pussycat" actually has nice earnestness in it. The girls aren't immediately hate-able. The judges and trainers take auditions seriously and come across as genuine and skilled, as opposed to poseurs vamping for TV.
But really, who cares? This is the search for a bonus girl in a crappy girl group. There are no villains to root against or super-interesting women to latch onto unless you're interested in singing lingerie models.
("Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Don't cha?")
It's also creepy to see how a few girls' statements seem to have been creatively edited. Sandra, 27, says her parents were killed in a plane crash when she was 14. Later, she messes up during rehearsal, then you hear her say this:
"Because of the loss of my parents, I'm not comfortable singing."
Here's the problem. You can tell "Because of the loss of my parents" has been spliced into "I'm not comfortable singing." It's like the film editor wants us to think she's blaming her long-dead parents for her clumsy vocals.
That's kind of scummy, if that's the case.
("Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Don't cha?")
Most of the singer-dancers do come across as professionals bent on girl power -- the kind of girl power vixens employ with their open legs, not the kind of girl power you'd find in, say, a female physicist.
"The Pussycat Dolls are about female empowerment," Brittany, 20, says. "And I'm all about female empowerment -- being that I've never had to rely on a man for anything."
Anything? My, my, that is Pussycat power.
("Don't cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me? Don't cha?")
The girls also audition to the Pussycats' "I Don't Need a Man." But they do need men, apparently. Songs were co-written and co-produced by men. And the girls are coached to dance and sing by men.
It's men who keep the contestants focused. One potential Doll stumbles during practice and tries to giggle her way out of a tight spot. The male instructor cracks down.
"We don't have time for Kewpie doll stuff," he says. "It's not time for you to smile and say, 'Oh, I made a mistake.' It's time for you to really zone in and listen."
So these talented women wish, unlike Pinocchio, to transform from person to Doll. But they are guided by men, and the mass beneficiaries of their visual splay are men's ogling eyes. Female empowerment has come a long way, baby.