Rachael Ray and the Modern Pin-Up

If there is some public stock somewhere to get in on Every Day with Rachael Ray, please sign me up. I'd like to sell my Martha Stewart Living and get on that IPO bandwagon with Rachael.

Over the past year I've gone from seeing Rachael's disarming smile on the occaisional cookbook sold somewhere, to seeing her money-making mark(eting) everywhere, from those same occaisional cookbooks - now seemingly much more numerous- to free coupon dispensers in the grocery store, magazines, spots on talk shows, talked about, her own section on the local news site, and lately the ultimate sign that one's reached stardom, an announcement in a tabloid that the husband cheated on her and oh-my-god what is she going to do now?

As with all modern-day Pin-Ups, girls dig reading that dirt because they want to be like Rachael or sympathise with her, and guys dig reading the dirt because they simply want Rachael in that American-fantasy-pinup way, they way every red-blooded American boy wanted the hot-yet-wholesome babe in Gil Elvgrin calendar art from 50 years ago.

In the beginning, I liked the Rachael Ray image. I liked her as the still-wholesome, younger, hotter, American-ideal-hausfrau alternative image to the homebody old-crone stock-market-cheating, prison-sittin' Martha Stewart. More power to her, thought I, not many people become famous because of a cooking show. And today I don't have any different opinion on that same fundamental image: I still like looking at Rachael's smile - smiling back at me saying that she'll be home making the cookies so stop shopping/working/doing whatever and come home, but the overdrive marketing that's sprung up, probably fueled by my (and probably countless others') positive reaction to the image has now become the big turn-off. I'm a victim of my own emotional reaction. The irony is that, to this day, I have yet to actually hear Rachael...like...talk; I've never seen Rachael on her cooking show or any other apprearances, I've only read the transcript of one interview she's done.

I saw Rachael again today in the QFC, doling out coupons. Then I saw her at Matthew's Thriftway, her magazine Every Day with Rachael Ray. I've seen those before, but its alarming where her image is popping up these days. Soft porn? Rachael even did a FHM spread (you can find it on the Internet easily) a few years back - maybe its not true porn but the images of Rachael grinning back at me half clothed pulling a turkey out of the oven was just too much....any fantasy suddenly and irretrievably busted. I don't want to see Rachael any more, I am getting sick of her.

However, where can I buy some stock in that??