Gretchen Voss of Marie Claire Magazine on Pastor Melissa ScottMost of you have probably read Gretchen Voss attacking Pastor Melissa Scott in Marie Claire magazine by now. It's a pithy, dated article, but for some peculiar reason keeps rearing its ugly head in the search engines, and hence worthy of comment. This article by Voss is wrong on so many counts, I'm not sure where to begin. I would call Voss a self-loathing female who believes the lie that a woman cannot be both beautiful and intelligent, but I don't know her well enough. I can only gauge by this article on Pastor Melissa Scott and other articles Voss has written about women that she is prejudiced in this area. Case in point -- instead of writing about some of the challenges that Pastor Scott faces being a woman in a profession dominated by men (less than 1% of Pastors are female), and how she copes with Fundamentalists trying to silence her solely because of that, Voss in her infinite wisdom instead attempts to reduce her into a mere sex object with a regurgitation of old porn-star allegations that she found on the blogs. Of course, Pastor Melissa Scott is a beautiful woman, so in Voss's mind there's no way she can have anything to important to say. Pastor Scott's intelligence is completely ignored, and Voss instead fixates on sexualizing her, so much so, that if Voss were male, HE would be done for sexism. We all talk about the glass ceiling for women, presumably kept intact by the white corporate male. But how many times have you seen one catty female in power keep other women down? Or how many times have you heard women in the workplace bashing a beautiful woman with assertions that she succeeded only because of her looks? It's not a subject we like to delve into because it removes the corporate male from the crosshairs somewhat, but nonetheless, it happens. And when women like Voss use their pen as a weapon to destroy the careers of other women, we're treated to yet another version of this sad spectacle. Just look at the language Gretchen Voss chooses to describe her victim: "...enraptured by the low, breathless calls for salvation from Melissa Scott. The unlikely stunner who leads this congregation, Scott, 40, struts the stage clutching a red-leather Bible, periodically flinging her endless chestnut locks. Her doe-eyed image is beamed to local cable stations..." "Having wrapped up her Sunday sermon only a half-hour earlier, she's still wearing a thick layer of makeup — a worked-over blemish on her chin cracks the otherwise pristine veneer." "She smiles often and broadly, revealing impeccably white, straight teeth, the product of braces and bleaching." "Then she relaxed her big, curly hair..." Here's the one that gets me: "Everyone, Pastor Scott coos, has a little Doubting Thomas in them..." Pastor Scott coos? "Low breathless calls for salvation???" Voss insults not only Pastor Scott, but the intelligence of anyone who has listened to her deconstruct the Hebrew and Greek languages. In Voss's mind, the readers of Marie Claire are as vapid as she is. There are over 70 hours of teaching alone on a video loop at PastorMelissaScott.com if one can find evidence of "cooing" or sexy "low breathless calls for salvation," please point it out to me. The porn allegations about Pastor Melissa Scott are as old as the hills. Just because disgruntled ex-members still keep this old story alive by blogging about it incessantly, doesn't make it a new story. Gretchen revels in pointing out Scott's age as 40, but then shows nude pictures of a 20-year-old woman. Even if the pictures were of the same person, these are not recent photos. Pastor Scott has neither confirmed nor denied that she posed for pics 20 some-odd years ago, but Voss calls it a "denial" and then draws a wild equivocation between Scott and other so-called "disgraced televangelists." It is beyond anyone's comprehension how Voss can claim that someone who says, "My past is none of your business..." is making a denial. The ministry has never been about Pastor Scott's perfection, her past, or herself at all -- unlike some of the male televangelists Voss tries to compare her to. Unfortunately, Voss's article smacks of the "give us dirty laundry" mentality that so many reporters resort to when attempting to capture the attention of the lowest common denominator of society. I've read other articles by Gretchen Voss and I don't think she's dumb, but she certainly acted like it when she wrote about Pastor Melissa Scott. Yes, there is still a glass ceiling in America for women. Yes it exists, and sexist men have a lot to do with it. But so long as there are women like Gretchen Voss lurking in the wings to destroy fellow females out there trying to make it in a man's world, bigoted men can take a holiday. Here is an article about Gretchen Voss' Hit Piece on Pastor Melissa Scott. Gretchen Voss (the reporter for Marie Claire) welcomes your feedback at: gvoss55@hotmail.com |