No, I really do. And now she celebrates 20 years. I like her because she seems normal; she isn’t conventionally pretty (although I happen to think she’s really gorgeous), she’s outspoken and opinionated, and she seems unafraid to do things her own way. She came up from poverty to become one of the most successful women in the world, and one of the first familiar African-American faces on television. Unlike most other celebrities, she doesn’t take freebies — everything she wears and owns she purchases on her own. And she uses her celebrity status to do a lot of good.
For every crass audience give-away (last year she gave a new car, donated by Pontiac, to each of her 276 audience members), her show matches it with a call to alms. Almost all talk shows raised money for tsunami and Katrina victims. Ms. Winfrey makes a point of also embracing less obvious causes. The collection includes snippets from several segments that Ms. Winfrey did on obstetric fistula in Ethiopia, where many young women who give birth too young are left with internal holes that leave them trickling bodily wastes and shunned by their families.
Ms. Winfrey interviewed an elderly Australian obstetrician-gynecologist, Dr. Catherine Hamlin, who has been performing fistula surgery on tens of thousands of young Ethiopian women for more than 30 years. Until Nicholas D. Kristof wrote a column in The New York Times about their fate in 2003, only Australian newspapers and European medical journals paid much attention to those women. Ms. Winfrey’s show – and subsequent visit to the clinic in Addis Ababa – introduced the subject to millions of viewers, instantly raising public awareness as well as $2.2 million in donations to date. To her credit, Ms. Winfrey admits that she resisted doing the story until a stubborn producer told her she knew “in her soul” that this was a cause worthy of Oprah-giving. (Apparently, employees of her company invoke their souls when they want the boss’s full attention.)
To date, she’s also one of the only public figures who has spoken openly about living through sexual abuse. Breaking the silence about such a stigmatized issue is definitely laudable. And as much as I mock “Oprah’s Book Club” books, she get millions of people reading — hell, she single-handedly got John Steinbeck back on the NYT best-seller list. She introduced millions of “average” people who may otherwise lack an interest in literature to Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou. Right now, she has her book club reading “A Million Little Pieces.” That’s something.
I know a lot of people have complaints about Oprah, and I’m not trying to prop her up as a perfect feminist icon. She’s not. But then, she’s never really claimed to be. She does, though, take women’s lives seriously. While “frivolous” female things may garner a lot of attention on her show, and are easy to write off as fluffy and silly, the truth is that all people indulge in the unnecessary. See Lindsay Beyerstein, in a somewhat unrelated (but thoroughly fantastic) post:
It’s also important to ask how irrelevant gender stereotypes blind us to relevant similarities between superficially different behavior patterns. Who gets called frivolous, and what for? Usually, we associate frivolity with gossip, fashion magazines, and giggling. But if we think about what frivolity is and why it’s bad, it’s clear that men are equally prone to this vice. Frivolity is an excessive and/or situationally inappropriate preoccupation with amusing trivia. There’s nothing inherently gendered about the concept. Yet, a guy is unlikely to be dismissed as frivolous if he’s excessively preoccupied with poker, sports stats, or horse race politics.
So, long story short, I like Oprah because she explores human experiences from her own perspective; she isn’t afraid to recognize that our lives are complex, and can include the political as well as the fun; and she’s broken down a lot of barriers. So cheers to her.
If you’re around today, check out her show — it’s all about bras, and my best friend from Seattle‘s mom is going to be on as the bra expert (that’s right, I buy my bras from the Oprah bra expert. Amazing). While you’re at it, go get fitted. I see people walking around all the time in ill-fitting bras, and it just looks painful (something like 80% if women wear the wrong size bra). Wearing the wrong size bra can cause back pain, muscle tension, headaches, and all kinds of other bad stuff. Even if you’ve been fitted before, go and get re-sized if it’s been a while, especially if you’ve lost or gained any weight (I was the same size for years, and when I got re-sized a few weeks ago I went down a full size in my ribcage measurement. That’s just the way it goes sometimes. Now my new bras fit better). If you don’t want a stranger to size you, get out a tape measure and figure it out yourself: wear a non-padded, well-fitting bra and measure around your ribcage, directly under your breasts. Add 5 inches, and that’s your rib cage size (32, 34, 36, etc). If you’re an odd size (like 33), go up one. Then measure around the fullest part of your chest. If the difference between your breast measurement and your ribcage measurement is less than 1 inch, you’re an AA. If it’s one inch it’s an A, two inches is a B, three inches is a C, and so forth. If you can, though, it’s worth getting fitted professionally, as they can help with bra strap length and style of bra that’s right for you. Department stores that are more focused on customer service, like Nordstrom and Bloomingdale’s, and speciality lingerie stores (but please no Victoria’s Secret) are going to be your best bet.
And this is just my two cents (really, what isn’t?) but it’s worth it to invest in high-quality bras. I’m a big Natori fan — they fit well, they’re pretty and comfortable, and they’re invisible under t-shirts. For women with bigger busts, I’ve heard good things about Wacoal, and the Nordstrom website carries them up to size I. Bras should be hand-washed or put in a mesh lingerie bag before you put them in the washing machine on the gentle cycle. Never put them in the dryer.
Or you could just do what I do and go braless much of the time.