The Takeaway wrap-up: Ellen Page out, Lena Dunham bare, spanking back
L.A. Times columnist Robin Abcarian gives video reporter Ann Simmons a wrap-up of trending issues featured in her blog, including Barbie vs. HBO’s bikini-clad Lena Dunham, “Juno’s” Ellen Page coming out and proposed spanking legislation in Kansas.
What do Ellen Page coming out, Lena Dunham going bare and spanking have to do with one another? All were fodder this week for The Takeaway, columnist Robin Abcarian’s daily blog.
Abcarian happened to be covering the Human Rights Campaign LGBT youth conference in Las Vegas on Friday when Page, the actress who made a splash as a pregnant teenager in the 2007 film “Juno” announced, with a tremendous amount of emotion, that she is gay. Abcarian and the Times’ Ann Simmons talk about why the event made headlines.
On Sunday, the groundbreaking HBO series “Girls” made cultural waves again when its creator and star, Lena Dunham, 27, spent most of a 30-minute episode in a green string bikini. Dunham, whose roly-poly body defies the underfed Hollywood starlet norm, is the kind of role model we need, Abcarian says, not the one promulgated by Sports Illustrated, which featured a maillot-clad Barbie doll on the cover wrap of its annual swimsuit edition.
Finally, a Democratic state senator in Kansas has proposed allowing parents, teachers and other authority figures to spank children — even teenagers as old as 18 if they are still in high school — until the skin on their bottoms becomes red or bruised. Simmons asks Abcarian: What’s the matter with that?
