Stereogum released the results of its reader-voted "2007 Gummy Awards" today, and once again the winners in "Ms. Indie Rock" prove that when it comes to wank-mining material, your average indie-rocking male is looking for (gasp!) a skinny white girl with a shaggy haircut. Emphasis on the "skinny." And did we mention the "white"? Aside from a few notable tokens exceptions, there are enough pointy elbows and too-sad-to-leave-the-house complexions here to fill up a year's worth of American Apparel advertisements. Way to reject mainstream standards of beauty, dudes! The guy hotties list also features many downy, bony gents, yet somehow offers a slightly wider range of body types than the chick list's parade of waifs. The full lists are after the jump, but first our thoughts on the least sexy year-end round-up of 2007.
THE GOOD: Not even going there.
THE BAD: Sure, you could pen a 10,000-word rant on how this list of female fantasy objects reflects indie rock's insular ideals even when it comes to sex, but we'll just say that sexism, stereotyping, and body image issues will no longer be a concern in indie culture when a lady who looks like Dan Deacon makes it into the Top 20.
THE WHAAAA? R&B queen Sharon Jones deserves to be on this list if anyone does, but aside from wrecking the curve in terms of both age and ethnicity, who in their right mind would class Ms. Jones as an "indie rock" hottie? (Also whoever voted for Natalie Portman needs their life changed with a boot in the ass.)
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Idolator
Ah, trend stories, the bane of every journalistic enterprise. On the one hand, they are handy for editors who want to know what "the kids" who will be taking their jobs and houses are up to. On the other hand, they're generally vacuous glosses on subjects that are way too surface-gleaning to even be called "superficial." Greg Sandoval at CNet took the world of "music blogging" under his trend-story wing this morning, and if nothing else it's a primer in how not to tackle this admittedly knotty, yet way too often completely misunderstood subject. Five anti-lessons after the jump.
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Dear Stereogum, if you promise to never, ever write about hip-hop ever again (ever!)—especially with all the overwrought Wire references, factual errors about samples, misspellings (unless that errant "e" tacked onto Flav
