I'm afraid Froggitt is right. We have to treat other forum members with respect, even though they're allowed to be unpleasant and personal towards young women who've never done them any harm and whose only crime is to have a bit of ambition.

But I must confess I laughed at your second line. It reminds me of Some Grey Bloke... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFKHaFJzUb4

she is lovely isnt she, whereas Amy looks very much like Jennifer Saunders with a huge jawline.

Thanks for your support peeve.

However in actuality, I am not being unpleasant and personal towards any of the young girls, I am making comments on a bulletin board - the two are totally different.

We all have our own views on how aesthetically pleasing the girls are, and you will notice how earlier I commented that they last night they looked considerably better than the set of mug shots that the Beeb had on the Dorothy microsite......you cannot deny that they looked awful.....like a bunch of crims from Holloway.

FWIW, despite a few tuning problems last night, it was a great opening show, and I wish them all the very best of luck.

Aren't we all forgetting something? Judy Garland was no oil painting...

Judy was incredibly beautiful imo

You're right - you're not actually making your remarks directly to them; you are as entitled to your opinion as any of us. But I hope you can understand why some posters become outraged on the contestants' behalf when remarks are made about their lack of beauty, which is pretty much irrelevant for this show. It's also pretty obvious that you're a bloke, and it becomes very tiresome when men focus on that one aspect of a woman, as if that's all that matters.

It reminds me of a quote I read only recently from Richard Bernstein in The New York Times:

"What the Internet and its cult of anonymity do is to provide a blanket sort of immunity for anybody who wants to say anything about anybody else, and it would be difficult in this sense to think of a more morally deformed exploitation of the concept of free speech."

Whoops, a bit off-topic, but it's often how flame wars start...

Excellent post peeve. I think though, that you'd find if I only considered their looks, rather than the other nine or ten attributes required to be Dorothy or Nancy or Maria or Sandy, Id be in the poor house by now.

Frog

PS One aspect? I haven't even started on Amy and her puppies chances of being Toto......joke!!!!
PPS Was that Bernstein the Watergate Bernstein?

You really think that looks are irrelevant for this show and indeed any show in the totally fake world of TV?

Perhaps I should qualify that. The 'look' has to be right, ie she needs to look like a young farm-girl, since that's her character. But she doesn't need to be a beauty. I doubt they'd have had cosmetic surgeons and orthodontists in 1900s Kansas, either, so whether the actress chosen to play Dorothy has a wonky nose, or crooked teeth, is irrelevant to her ability to convince as Dorothy.

I agree that TV places higher demands on looks, but theatre is different - and long may it remain so.

Does that make it clearer?

Nope, the one who wrote West Side Story...

Sorry, sorry - couldn't resist. The Watergate Bernstein was Carl. Richard Bernstein is also a journalist, though, so it's an understandable confusion.

If I give the impression of being incredibly erudite in reading The New York Times, I should 'fess up that the quote is used at the beginning of Jeffrey Deaver's new novel. I am, in truth, a lightweight...

Indeed peeve. Jodie was well down the queue for the beauty counter in IDA, but her look was perfect for the role. In hindsight she was a shoe-in.

Ditto Connie Fisher.

You under-sell yourself - anyone that uses words like araldite and reads novels isnt a lightweight

Well said. I just get fed up coming on here and seeing comments from the 1970s regarding how these very talented young women look, with the cloak of anonymity given by the internet. Some members focus on small things like a gap in someone's teeth FFS!!! And if you read back to some of the earlier comments they are very personal indeed, nasty and unpleasant and not related to their suitability for a role.

Its depressing but nowadays it seems every gilr has to be deemd "hot" to be considered successful.

Who said the girl has to be hot? Not me. These girls need about nine or ten attributes to be right for this role. People make comments about singing. Comments about acting. Nothing wrong with comments about their face, height, age, boobs (eg noone could believe Amy with her puppies could be Dorothy) IMHO.