'Work It' Canceled: Shark-Jumping Show About Guys Who Dress up as Girls to Get Jobs
Two hairy bros can't get jobs. So they dress up as women to get their high heels in the door.
ABC 'Work It' boyfriends.
Hilarious. Lets green-light that, said the professional shark jumpers at ABC. Not so fast, said such LBGT groups the Human Rights Campaign and and GLAAD. It's offensive to gay and transgender people (not to mention women, who don't actually have an easy time getting jobs -- unless they're 1 percenters like Kim Kardashian).
The website Gawker mounted a campaign against Work It, calling it ...
... the worst show in history.
A bit of hyperbole, if you ask us: To be the worst show in history you'd actually have to last like, at least a season.
In the case of Work It, ABC pulled the plug quietly over the weekend after just two episodes.
We love this ABC "press release," billed as a scheduling "correction/update" in which the next three episodes of Work It are deleted out of existence.
ABC entertainment honcho Paul Lee compared Work It to the Dustin Hoffman movie Tootsie and said he didn't get the outrage. This how ABC billed the program:
From "Friends" producers Andrew Reich & Ted Cohen comes "Work It," a high-concept comedy about two unrepentant guy's guys, Lee and Angel, who are unable to find work in a tough economy and dress as women to get jobs. Not only do they pull it off, but learn that to be a better man may mean having to be a better woman.
(Again, we're surprised more women's groups weren't pissed as well).
HRC and GLAAD leaders Joe Solmonese and Mike Thompson wrote in the Huffington Post:
The premise of this show is repulsive, and ABC -- a network that routinely scores highly in GLAAD's annual TV reports and whose parent company, Disney, receives a perfect 100-percent score from HRC's Corporate Equality Index -- should know better than to air it.
The group took out a full-page in Variety urging the network to clip this particularly offensive appendage.
Victory.
Today GLAAD rejoiced, via statement by Herndon Graddick, senior communicator:
As a result of this campaign, an important dialogue has been started in Hollywood and mainstream media about the real discrimination faced by transgender people today.
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