Brilliant bachelorette Naz went on her media rounds today – a mostly horrifying exercise in objectification. But no one stooped lower than George FM’s serial offender Thane Kirby, says Alex Casey.
Last night on The Women Tell All, Naz was a fucking firecracker. She stood up, pointed and yelled at an audience member for calling her a bitch, cut off poor Mike Puru and refused to apologise for anything that she did during The Bachelor NZ.
With the entire country wanting to know what was going through her mind, she graced George FM this morning. “Were you drunk, just an idiot or heavily edited?” Thane Kirby asks her in a video posted (and since removed) on their website.
“I did have a few beforehand just to calm the nerves…” Naz begins her answer. I’m genuinely excited to hear what she has to say, because I’ll listen to anything Naz has to say. This is Naz with the Hit List! Naz with the “dog act”! Naz is truly unlike any other reality star New Zealand has ever seen. She’s international-level Bachelor talent, and regardless of your opinion of her we are blessed as a nation to have had her on our screens for as long as we did.
But not everyone was as interested in her answer. As she elaborates, whoever is controlling the camera at George FM slowly zooms in on her chest, instantly distracted. It’s the longing stare equivalent to a hungry person in a cartoon imagining a mountain made out of burgers. It’s the slow, drooling gaze of the leering dude on the train with his hands a bit too near his crotch. It’s the horrible, inescapable reminder that women are there to be looked at, not listened to.
This woman is explaining herself, using unsexy boring old words! Let’s have a geeze at some knockers instead because this is Zoo Magazine George FM, where everything’s made up and human decency don’t matter. Why WOULDN’T they be filming her boobs? I haven’t been to broadcasting school so I can only assume that’s how you are taught to make good RADIO.
Completely unaware, Naz finishes her answer. The camera snaps back out of the slow zoom much like an old man snorting himself awake from a nap.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t stop there. Naz had already revealed that her and Jordan had slept together after being pressed for answers by The Edge’s Dom Harvey. Being commercial radio, of course the stakes must be raised with every merciless round of banter. Everyone! She’s a damn strumpet who did the sex! Let’s air her out on the radio!
“Is he well hung?” Thane asks, eyes half-closed. Naz fiddles with the sellotape in front of her nervously, letting out an uncomfortable giggle and looking to (I’m assuming) a publicist for help. Sadly it’s not the first time I’ve heard that giggle or seen that look from a Bachelorette on a commercial MediaWorks station.
“No comment” she says, perhaps the most rattled I have seen in her entire ten week run in the public eye. Off camera, Thane is directed to keep the interview about Naz, so of course he immediately asks her if she orgasmed during the fantasy date. A woman, I’m assuming Kara, makes an involuntary noise like she has just seen an exploded hedgehog on the road. “Excuse me? I will keep those comments to myself,” Naz says, hopefully bumping Thane to the top of her hit list.
With orgasms and schlongs aside, Thane sighs and settles back into boring old ask-a-woman-the-questions-you’re-supposed-to-ask-her routine. “… So… how did you find… the whole thing?” Kara, revived after her brief hedgehog reaction, thankfully elaborated slightly more, asking if it was hard for her to see Jordan again after being rejected. As Naz answers, re-opening what is sure to still be a sensitive wound, I begin to notice the lens moving in and out. It’s almost as if the person behind the camera might be getting ready to take a trip to Knockertown again.
“I’ve got one more question for you,” says Thane, “real or fake?”
All aboard the boob express! Naz’ jovial response gives our horned-up camera person free reign to zoom straight in on her chest. “They’re fake,” she grins, “there was a whole article about it.” “Oh I didn’t read it,” says Thane.
I get the feeling he’s the kind of guy who never reads the articles.
Alex Casey hosts ‘On the Rag’, a monthly podcast about life for women in New Zealand. Listen below, or download here on iTunes, or here on Stitcher: