mary kate and ashley

You know, with all the hubbub about the Olsen twins of late (their crappy movie, their turning 18), a few business pubs have written about the marketing challenge the twins face as they try to shift their fan base from 8-year-olds to adults. One of the biggest problems: Getting people to differentiate between them, since people have thought of them as a unified MaryKateandAshley unit for so long. Much was made of the fact that, in their movie, one of them was supposed to be the “wild,” irreponsible one and the other was supposed to be practical and collected. (Which was which? Hell if I know.)
So then it comes out that Mary Kate is anorexic and canceling some public events to seek treatment. And the first thing I think of is: I wonder if this is part of her people’s attempts to differentiate the two of them. Instead of MaryKateandAshley, people will now think of “Mary Kate, the anorexic one” and “Ashley, the…other one.”
And hell, maybe they’ve got some new identity baking for Ashley. “Ashley, the one who only dates Latino men.” “Ashley, the one with an interest in Moroccan food.” “Ashley, the one with psoriasis.”
The fact that my mind went immediately to such cynical thoughts means I am a very bad person.
In related news, bad person and Friend of Crabwalk.com Jane is selling these eminently tasteful t-shirts.

4 thoughts on “mary kate and ashley”

  1. This is weird. I sent off an email to someone that read, in part:
    “Here’s the lead sentence in an article in The Chicago Sun Times: ‘There may be a silver lining to the news that Mary-Kate Olsen is being treated for an eating disorder believed to be anorexia.’
    I don’t know about you, but I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweats, wondering why Mary-Kate doesn’t get some more meat on her bones. I’m just breathing a sigh of relief that there may be a light at the end of this dark and troubling tunnel.
    Ahh . . . all the years of laughter that she and all those grown men on Full House brought into my life. I own them all so much.”
    Then I ducked into here for a second to see what’s happening and you had this Olsen’s post.
    I’m just going to stop asking questions and wait for FOX News to sort it all out for me. It’s just too much for me to process on my own right now.

  2. hey josh, sorry to leave this in the comments instead of sending an email but i just wanted to let you know that there’s an interview with dana stevens aka liz penn in the young gothamist section of gothamist.com. check it out! she kinda explains herself. so cute!

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