Ms. Pac-Man

Our crack research team (i.e., myself) has been crunching numbers and tracking down interesting data points (i.e., what genders are Kristian Laliberte, Jamee Gregory) and we have discovered something pretty weird, actually.

Recall my last post, wherein we learned that 17 of the 25 People Magazine Hottest Celebs were women.  That is 68% of the list.

Of the top 50 Fame Game profiles as of November 20th, 2008, 34 were women.  This is 69.39% of the total.

The numbers are almost the same, which raises a few observations:

First, a banal one: it may not be as surprising as it seems at first, since the lists come from the same time period (roughly) and purport to measure similar things.  Note, however, that the actual individual celebrities in both lists are different, so it would seem we are seeing some sort of wide effect, and not simply repeated analyses of the same data.

Second, it’s interesting to think about the industries the two lists draw from.  People is overwhelmingly movie and tv stars, while Fame Game looks more at socialites, fashion moguls, and politicians.  It is a little counterintuitive that the proportion would be so similar between two different areas.

Third, of course, none of this is statistically solid–yet.  I plan to get into the larger Fame Game database and perhaps find out some more solid trends.

And of course, look forward to some work on race and celebrity.

ladies in red.

I sought a theme (for a blog post), and sought for it in vain.  Until, that is, I discovered People Magazine’s list of the 25 hottest celebs.  One thing leaps off the page as something many of these people have in common: most of them are ladies.

Fully 17 out of the 25 are women–that’s almost 70 percent.  Two divergent responses occurred to me:

1) It’s good that there is an area of society where women are comfortably in the lead.  These women are wealthy and successful.

2) It’s troubling that women dominate the celeb arena, an arena that is driven by interest in sex, glitz, and scandal.

To be honest, it is not immediately clear what to make of this.

Some other interesting factors include the power of celebrity couples (tomkat are sitting at #1 and #2) and the whiteness of the faces.  Perhaps there is something to be analyzed about the race of celebs in a future post.

Look for a follow up soon wherein I study the recent famegame 2008 wrapup with an eye towards race and gender.