For a TV channel supposedly for women and targeting mostly female viewers, E! Entertainment (DStv 124) degoratory continuation of calling other women "bitches" on television continued on Sunday night when E!'s Golden Globe red carpet team with glee battled the "bitches".
E! Entertainment, interestingly, never calls men by any other word than ... men.
That E! Entertainment uses the word "bitches" as part of its internalised sexism, seemingly without thinking and as a joke, makes it even worse.
E! who is quick to show women makeovers and give fashion tips, signals to those very women that its okay for them to be labelled "bitches".
It's not just fine if someone calls you a "bitch" according to E! - according to E! Entertainment it's actually inspirational and something to aspire to.
If a top Hollywood actress can be called a "bitch" or battle for the "boss bitch" title, any woman according to E! Entertainment should be so glad and honoured to be labelled a female dog.
The irony compounds when you see the unvarnished misogeny the NBCUniversal Networks International channel on MultiChoice's DStv blatantly does over and over again - while it will shockingly censor other material that it shouldn't.
Making it worse it that E! Entertainment shows people in Africa - women and men, girls and boys - that its "okay" to call women "bitches". Even successful ones. Even beautiful ones. Yes. The successful and beautiful ones can be "boss bitches".
Why is it okay for E!'s Giuliana Rancic to call someone like Empire's Taraji P. Henson a "bitch" on the red carpet? Or doing "Bitch Stole My Look" on Fashion Police?
If the executives at NBCUniversal, E! Entertainment and NBCUniversal Networks International call their moms "bitches" in their face it would probably not be as bad, but I highly doubt that those with daughters call their own children "bitches". Yet its fine for it to be done to females on their TV channel.
What's sad is that it happens without thinking - without seemingly a second thought - an attitude of let's have fun with the "bitches" right, because women don't care.
Will NBCUniversal introduce Frances Berwick who oversees all its lifestyle channels like E!, Esquire, Bravo and Oxygen at an advertiser upfront event or press junket for media as "boss bitch Frances Berwick"?
Yet E! is fine to call other women working in television that.
All the support for women's rights causes, all the shocked and breathless Bill Cosby reporting outrage, all the lip service to helping and reflecting women and their lifestyles and lifestyle issues pale in comparison to making a conscious systemic change of how you refer to, and speak - and won't speak - about women.
Not to go all Oprah or Iyanla on people, honey child, but your words become your reality.
How you describe yourself and others, and how the media, like E! on DStv, gives you seemingly "permission" to talk to and describe others, shape our existence.
Describing a woman - any woman (or a man) - as a "bitch" is and always will be a put-down, even if E! Entertainment wants to make it look acceptable or as if it's "good" for a powerful or well-dressed woman to be called a female dog.
E! Entertainment has the power to change its "bitch" attitude; sadly it doesn't appear as if the NBCUniversal channel even realises that it has a "bitch" problem.
