Female news broadcasters criticize double standard
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WTAE anchor Sally Wiggin was once asked by a former boss, "Would you please bring your hair back into this ZIP code?"
CBSLast week CBS was caught in the embarrassing position of explaining why 20 pounds were airbrushed off this photo of Katie Couric.
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It's time for the news -- Katie Couric style
Clothing store owner E.B. Pepper, along with hair stylist Marc Albert and stylist Thommy Conroy, discusses Katie Couric with the PG's Cristina Rouvalis. Female TV news pioneer Eleanor Schano talks about double standards. Lynn Cullen's PCNC viewers angrily e-mailed her: "Don't you have any other clothes?"
KDKA anchor Sonni Abatta changed her hair color from blond to brunet this year and heard about it from both viewers and the station. "You would have thought I shot the pope," said Abatta, who blames the uproar on her "own stupid mistake" of not forewarning her boss.
The type of scrutiny that female broadcasters undergo for their appearance would make most of us want to crawl back into bed and hide under the pillow.
No one has undergone more skin-deep scrutiny than Katie Couric, who assumes the CBS anchor chair today. Her hemlines, her hairstyles and her makeup have been dissected and analyzed as though they were economic indicators.
Neither ABC anchor Charlie Gibson nor NBC anchor Brian Williams was grilled on his grooming, raising the question of whether there is a double standard.
Definitely, says Eleanor Schano. Her new memoir, "Riding the Airwaves," details how she became Pittsburgh's first solo prime time female anchorperson 33 years ago. She is amazed about all the hoopla over Couric new job today.
"Here we are in 2006, and what is all the fuss about? It's crazy this time in our history," said Schano, 73, host of "LifeQuest," a talk show on WQED.
"People are going to be watching [Couric] with a critical eye," Schano said. "They are going to watch and say, 'Oh, what about her makeup. Hmmm, do you like that haircut? Did anyone comment on Charlie Gibson's hair or the color of his tie?"
But media analyst Matthew Felling thinks the grooming scrutiny is justified because Couric has worn her fashion plate credentials on her designer sleeves and on the stilettos dangling from her famously crossed legs.
"If one takes pride in being a fashion plate on a morning program, it is a fair expectation how that will play out on the nightly newscast," said Felling, media director for the nonpartisan Center for Media and Public Affairs in Washington, D.C. "She never shied away from talking about her fashion, or her haircut or diet. It is a matter of making one's journalistic bed and then sleeping in it."
Lynn Cullen
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Eleanor Schano
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Though unsympathetic to Couric's protests about wardrobe questions, Felling said women in the public eye are being judged on their looks like never before.
"In 2006, Joan Baez could not be a national hit," Felling contends. "You cannot be a professional singer without doubling as a Maxim model."
TV anchors, though, have to walk a fine line between being glamorous and serious. CBS has been trying to glam down Couric's image by circulating a photo of her in a somber pinstriped suit and pearls, instead of her trademark bright fashionable clothes. But the network last week was caught in the embarrassing position of explaining why 20 pounds were airbrushed off the photo, and blamed the digital doctoring on an overzealous employee.
Local female broadcasters say the intense scrutiny over their looks is an unfortunate fact of broadcast life.
It's been 28 years since radio personality Lynn Cullen cut her long black hair while an anchor for the CBS affiliate in Madison, Wis., after viewers attacked her for looking childish. "I certainly hope you don't prepare food with that hair," one woman told her.
But Cullen got even more backlash after she chopped it off. "I can hardly look at you anymore," one disgusted viewer wrote her.
Even in her current TV gig on PCNC, which is taped while she broadcasts her WPTT-AM radio talk show, Cullen gets unsolicited fashion advice about not looking up to snuff. "You are on television now," viewers chide her.
Cullen had vowed to keep dressing down like a radio person, but caved and bought new clothes.
Sonni Abatta
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Sally Wiggin
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She believes male anchors are also increasingly being judged on looks, but the scrutiny is more intense for women. "If you talk to any woman on television, there is pressure. Even if it is not from your boss, the pressure from the public can make you so insecure you don't know which way to turn.
"The nervousness that television producers have about this nonsense is well founded, unfortunately. The audience does react viscerally, emotionally, prejudicially to those people on their screen."
Wiggin, the WTAE anchor who has been at the station since 1980, was advised on her wardrobe and hair when she was younger. She laughs at the ZIP code zing by the former boss. She said he was absolutely right. Her hair was a poofy mess.
Today the pressure to maintain her looks in a youth-oriented business is self-imposed by the 54-year-old anchor.
"I do what all women my age do to try to avoid a face-lift," she said. "I have a high bill at the local skin center. I have a choice between my face and whether I get curtains in my apartment. I choose my face."
"I haven't seen a double standard. If I start looking old on the air, do I panic? Yes, but so does a man."
Wiggin gets more brutally honest grooming advice from her friends, who leave her messages to get more sleep, than her bosses.
"If a man gets sloppy, they are hauled into the office as much as I am. But there is more room for error for women" because of all the wardrobe options, she said.
With fashions becoming more revealing, some cable reporters are pushing the envelope, eschewing the blond-bob, power-anchor look stereotype for tight sweaters, chunky jewelry and colorful makeup.
Sonni Abatta, KDKA morning anchor who wears mostly suits and jackets, said, "It is difficult for women wanting to look fashionable to be professional. I have never known a man being questioned for what he is wearing except maybe comments about his tie being too loud."
Abatta, 24, who enjoys following fashion trends, recently called off a turquoise necklace with irregularly shaped stones. It was deemed too distracting. "I am always making jokes about what is legal and not legal on the air."
But dressing has become easier since the spring, when Suzanne Mauro, fashion coordinator from the Mall at Robinson, started picking a fresh daily outfit and accessories for Abatta and Kristine Sorensen, anchor of "Pittsburgh Today Live" and co-anchor of the station's 5 p.m. newscast.
"It is a more trendy look, but professional," Abatta said. "She makes it work for us."
Mauro favors bold colors over patterns, short necklaces over long ones. "We do necklaces in a classy, traditional way. We do it to enhance an outfit. It is not like, 'Oh my, what does she have around her neck?'" said Mauro, who hopes to style some of the station's male anchors next.
Mauro prefers the "classy" KDKA look, contrasting it to the skin-tight, cleavage-bearing outfits she saw on a few female broadcasters while vacationing in Florida. "I don't like it. It boils down to your credibility."
Joe Rovitto, former news director at WTAE and a consultant for TV stations nationwide, said he advises no distracting jewelry or clothes. "What I want the viewer to look at is your eyes," he tells female anchors. "I don't want them to look at your dress, your hair, the fancy little thing on the lapel of your blazer."
Like national talk show host Oprah Winfrey, he said, Couric had the freedom to experiment with her personal style after the audience accepted her.
E.B. Pepper, the owner of a Shadyside clothing store bearing her name, loves how Couric evolved, looking professional but fashionable.
"She finally got hip," said the stylish merchant, who especially liked Couric's stiletto heels. Pepper thinks Couric can make the jump to the evening news in the same wardrobe.
When shown the more somber publicity photo of Couric as anchor, Pepper screamed out, "Oh no. She looks like Barbara Bush's sister. Or her aunt."
Cullen thinks Couric will get grief no matter how she dresses.
"God help her. If anyone can pull it off, it's her. She's a smart, savvy cookie. But every time she changes a hair on her head, the suits in the boardroom will hold an emergency meeting."
Correction/Clarification: (Published Sept. 6, 2006) The caption on the photo of Katie Couric in this story about female broadcasters as originally published on Sept. 5, 2006 incorrectly stated that 20 pounds had been airbrushed off her image. A different, full-length pose of Ms. Couric was the photo that was airbrushed.
First Published September 5, 2006 12:00 am
