Dr Frances Bonner
English, Media Studies, and Art History
University of Queensland
f.bonner@mailbox.uq.edu.au
Frances teaches Media and Cultural Studies. Her principal research interests
are in non-fiction television, celebrity and magazines. Her most recent publication
is Ordinary Television and she is one of the authors of Fame Games:
The Production of Celebrity in Australia.
Presenting Dress: The Clothing of Australian Television Presenters
This paper looks at the clothing worn by presenters on Australian free-to-air television to try to understand how the working dress of people in the public eye operates as a component of both the celebrity persona and the televisual image. Not all presenters are celebrities, but many are and the paper will consider the celebrity/non-celebrity dimension as one of many relevant distinctions including gender, age, programme type (news and current affairs, game shows, lifestyle programmes, sports shows) and whether or not the programme has sponsorship by a clothing company. Because television presenters are intermediaries between their individual programmes and the viewers, their clothing tends to be more ordinary than one would expect from people so much in the public eye. It is rare for a presenter's working costume to be particularly noticeable or discussed, though this is by no means the case for the same people at more formal, "dress-up" occasions like awards nights. Exceptions to the "subfusc" character, like game show "hostesses" and female panellists on Beauty and the Beast are considered to reveal how women in subordinate roles modulate the argument. Eddie McGuire, Don Burke and Johanna Griggs will be among the presenters considered.
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