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"Hey, bro. Glad you could come over and chill with me tonight. I was thinking we could order some pizza, play XBox or something. Make yourself comfortable, bro — take off your shirt and stay a while. And there's some beer in fridge. Man, those pants look pretty annoying. Maybe you should just take those off too? It's cool, bro. Just two bros, hanging out. Hot briefs, by the way."

That's pretty much how bros hang out, right? You may disagree, but GQ apparently doesn't. Because even though the magazine named Kristen Wiig "Bro of the Year" in their annual "Men of the Year" issue (in a cool little gender-swap move, I must say), she still shows up in the magazine wearing just some sexy black underwear. (And what looks like a child's blazer. Seriously, that garment is for a seven-year old.) Jezebel does a pretty good job of zeroing in on the problem here:

Kristen Wiig is hilarious, and for all intents and purposes she's got a body that she's got no problem showing off and GQ is a magazine for straight men who like looking at ladies in their unmentionables, and, you know, fine. But naming Wiig "Bro of the Year" and then featuring her in a sexylady configuration poses questions that even Hamm's glowing writeup can't quell. For example: why is the bro of the year wearing even less clothing than Mila Kunis, GQ's Knockout of the Year?

And they're right — if you're going to single out Wiig for her comedy chops, for her willingness to "go there" and be gross or abrasive or downright ugly in the name of laughs, if you're going to cross gender lines in your manly list of men to include her as the bro, having her pose in sexy lingerie kind of undermines your point. Like Jezebel, I recognize GQ's readership and how much they like hot pictures of hot women, but isn't it the whole nature of a "bro" (and please know how sorry I am for using that word so many times) to be a person you hang out with for reasons that aren't how much you want to get in their pants? Maybe I'm expecting too much here, but c'mon, GQ: if you're going to make a point, stick to that point.

Commentarium (13 Comments)

Nov 22 11 - 3:10pm
Except...

it was ultimately her choice to pose in her underwear.

Nov 22 11 - 3:31pm
Jill

Why can't women wear whatever they want with out being slut-shamed by other women?! "Emancipate yourselves from Mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our mind"-Bob Marley

Nov 22 11 - 7:52pm
R.

This article is not making that point. It's not about Wiig's "choice" to pose in lingere, it's about GQ's inability to take photos of a woman with all of her clothes on. Even a woman who they nominated as "bro of the year," a presumably non-sexual title.

Nov 26 11 - 11:53pm
Ugh

People have seriously been playing the "ooo, slut shaming is bad" card a lot lately. It's getting trite. A Hooters waitress goes to an elementary school's Career Day to talk about her job and a mom asks why they couldn't get a female doctor-- slut shaming! Give it up, already.

Nov 22 11 - 3:39pm
Crooklyn

Yeah. If anybody actually read that GQ, they'd know the feature in question identified 2011 as the "Year of the HighBro" (admittedly an awful portmanteau). So it's less about identifying her as a "bro" (and therefore, I guess, somehow more prone to wearing sweatpants and a t-shirt?) and more about keeping up a consistent tagline.

Nov 22 11 - 3:41pm
nope

Isn't one of the running jokes about GQ that its loving shots of partially undressed men make it reek of homoeroticism? I think naming Kristen Wiig Bro of the Year is pretty great, and if anything, I think this reads more like a guy and his funny female best friend who keeps trying to bump herself out of the friend zone to no avail. Only the guy is the male viewing audience and the female best friend is Kristen Wiig's PR team.

Nov 22 11 - 5:49pm
Observer

I may be cynical but suspect that Wiig realizes that her physical beauty is at least partly responsible for her success.

Nov 22 11 - 5:57pm
Awww

I was totally with you until you confused to and too. Cringe.

Nov 22 11 - 7:44pm
MK

@Jill "Why can't women wear whatever they want with out being slut-shamed by other women?!"
I don't think the term slut-shaming is appropriate here. The author at Jezebel isn't denigrating Wiig. She's simply looking at a societal trend. Why is it obligatory for women, regardless of the talents they're best know for, to be photographed in a pound of makeup and almost no clothing? The picture didn't seem to go with the article. It wasn't funny or even interesting. Still, I think we can all agree that it's nice to see a woman in comedy getting the accolades Kristen Wiig is getting.

Nov 23 11 - 8:57am
Bruce leeA

Your right, let's photograph them in NO clothes nd NO make up. Men too. I am totally serious.

Nov 23 11 - 2:53am
Dan

Maybe she wanted to pose in her underwear?

Kind of a pointless article.

Nov 23 11 - 5:07pm
jm

Seriously, why does what she wears matter more then what she does?

Nov 23 11 - 5:32pm
GeeBee

Can't we all just agree that she's both funny and hot?

Now you say something

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