Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt’s Picture-Perfect Life

[Anonymous]

If Katherine were just living her rich girl life, no one would care about her. But she's decided to push herself into the public eye, and the public is reacting.

It reminds me of Ree Drummond (the Pioneer Woman), who used/uses her money and connections to peddle her not-very-substantial wares while posing as some sort of Everywoman. Which just be sort of annoying but avoidable if people like one of the early posters weren't feeling bad because they think they ought to be able to produce that sort of life, too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If Katherine were just living her rich girl life, no one would care about her. But she's decided to push herself into the public eye, and the public is reacting.

It reminds me of Ree Drummond (the Pioneer Woman), who used/uses her money and connections to peddle her not-very-substantial wares while posing as some sort of Everywoman. Which just be sort of annoying but avoidable if people like one of the early posters weren't feeling bad because they think they ought to be able to produce that sort of life, too.

The Drummonds are from an extremely wealthy family, but they also do work on their own land/ranches which is hard work and live most of the time in rural Oklahoma.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It really drives the bitter malcontent wannabe girl bosses here nuts when an idle woman is pretty, skinny, rich, married, with kids — and devout. Clutch the pearls - she CAN’T be perfect. Or maybe she is and it makes you jealous as hell.

Nope, none of us need her advice, that's what we are mocking.

Pretty can be made with enough money.
Skinny can be made with enough money.
Rich = money.
Married= is it really a good deal unless you have money?
Kids= made way easier with money
Devout= I personally believe religious indoctrination-especially evangelical- is the main source of evil in this world so nope not interested in her opinions

That fact that she thinks she has something original to say when her entire existence is because of mommy and daddy money.....she is just a snake-oil columnist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If Katherine were just living her rich girl life, no one would care about her. But she's decided to push herself into the public eye, and the public is reacting.

It reminds me of Ree Drummond (the Pioneer Woman), who used/uses her money and connections to peddle her not-very-substantial wares while posing as some sort of Everywoman. Which just be sort of annoying but avoidable if people like one of the early posters weren't feeling bad because they think they ought to be able to produce that sort of life, too.

The Drummonds are from an extremely wealthy family, but they also do work on their own land/ranches which is hard work and live most of the time in rural Oklahoma.

I don’t watch her show or have any of her cookbooks but man I want her life. I would love to live in an outdoorsy place and spend lots of time cooking for a crowd and have a bunch of dogs. When I was in college I joked to my parents that I wanted to marry a rancher and live on a sheep farm and my dad was like “man, you picked the wrong place to go to school” (which was a fancy NE college)—and I had a lightbulb moment that I probably building entirely the wrong life for myself. But never managed to figure out how to turn that ship and here I am a DC desk jockey with a house in the suburbs and only one dog.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If Katherine were just living her rich girl life, no one would care about her. But she's decided to push herself into the public eye, and the public is reacting.

It reminds me of Ree Drummond (the Pioneer Woman), who used/uses her money and connections to peddle her not-very-substantial wares while posing as some sort of Everywoman. Which just be sort of annoying but avoidable if people like one of the early posters weren't feeling bad because they think they ought to be able to produce that sort of life, too.

This is exactly it. Why should I care? Because she wrote a children’s book? I also wrote a children’s book- when I was 5. The only difference is she’s a kennedy Schwarzenegger and hers got published not because of talent, but because of connections.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It reads like the writer really, really resented being assigned to write it. Like the whole profile was a favor the publisher was doing one of his rich friends, and she drew the short stick and hated every minute of it.

The photo they used for the top of the article is hilarious. It's literally a picture of her through a window, with the outdoor reflections slightly obscuring her appearance. She's not smiling but not frowing, looks neither sexy nor chaste. Just perfectly coifed and made up and neutral. A cipher.

The profile definitely gets some digs in at her. She comes off as vapid, bland, and hypocritical. She praises her parents for keeping them out of the public eye, claims she wants to do the same, but only after explaining that she intends to bring her daughters on her book promotions with her because they are sisters and the book is about sisterhood.

The profile also often provides all of the available details about something without comment, and leaves it to the reader to draw their conclusions. For instance: there is no evidence she is evangelical. She was raised Catholic, of course. But she met Pratt at a "hip" evangelical church frequented by Justin Bieber. So you think, "oh she's evangelical." Nope, her daughters were baptized at the same Santa Monica Catholic Church she was baptized at as a baby. The impression you get is that she is actually not religious at all, just an opportunist who knows how to work an angle.

At one point Shriver says “Sometimes people don’t realize how methodically she’s gone about building her career,” and, uh, Maria, that's abundantly obvious. She wrote a book at 19 about interning at a PR firm. She wrote another book at 22 about figuring out what to do after college while she was... figuring out what to do after college. She released a book about forgiveness that curiously enough came out after it was revealed to the public that her very famous father had cheated on her very famous mother with a housekeeper and fathered a love child. The book, of course, doesn't mention any of that, but there is no question that the publisher of that book anticipated some people would buy it based on that connection, hoping for insight into her famous family.

She's clearly a methodical opportunist who has used her name and connections to build a "career" that amounts to writing bland bablum on a generic, broad topic every few years and knowing people will buy it because of her name. The whole thing is absurd.

I didn't know anything about her before reading the profile and now I have an extremely low opinion of her. Impressive!

Good assessment. And that picture is terrifying, whereas she can look nice in some pictures.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:She’s an evangelical. Part of it is to sell the lifestyle as beautiful and perfect. Why? Bc that’s a woman’s only job: to be beautiful and look happy next to her husband.

No one grew up in a perfect household when your dad was nailing the cleaning lady.

Exactly. Her dad is not a good guy in real life.

And I heard that from one of his friends!

Me too. Even the person I heard it from (his friend) is kind of a dog.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If Katherine were just living her rich girl life, no one would care about her. But she's decided to push herself into the public eye, and the public is reacting.

It reminds me of Ree Drummond (the Pioneer Woman), who used/uses her money and connections to peddle her not-very-substantial wares while posing as some sort of Everywoman. Which just be sort of annoying but avoidable if people like one of the early posters weren't feeling bad because they think they ought to be able to produce that sort of life, too.

The Drummonds are from an extremely wealthy family, but they also do work on their own land/ranches which is hard work and live most of the time in rural Oklahoma.

The born-Drummonds do. Ree does not -- she's putting her marketing degree to work. (And again, that's great, good for her, but don't pretend you're just folks when you're a rich woman with a huge staff to do the actual work on the ranch, at home, and in your Pioneer Woman business empire)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If Katherine were just living her rich girl life, no one would care about her. But she's decided to push herself into the public eye, and the public is reacting.

It reminds me of Ree Drummond (the Pioneer Woman), who used/uses her money and connections to peddle her not-very-substantial wares while posing as some sort of Everywoman. Which just be sort of annoying but avoidable if people like one of the early posters weren't feeling bad because they think they ought to be able to produce that sort of life, too.

The Drummonds are from an extremely wealthy family, but they also do work on their own land/ranches which is hard work and live most of the time in rural Oklahoma.

I don’t watch her show or have any of her cookbooks but man I want her life. I would love to live in an outdoorsy place and spend lots of time cooking for a crowd and have a bunch of dogs. When I was in college I joked to my parents that I wanted to marry a rancher and live on a sheep farm and my dad was like “man, you picked the wrong place to go to school” (which was a fancy NE college)—and I had a lightbulb moment that I probably building entirely the wrong life for myself. But never managed to figure out how to turn that ship and here I am a DC desk jockey with a house in the suburbs and only one dog.

God do I feel this....
I live on a tiny lot surrounded by houses growing my garden, canning, raising my chickens and my mom is like "You should have married a farmer! What were you thinking?"

I found this article hilarious, including the photos where she looks beautiful but somehow has zero sex appeal. It is frustrating to speak to people like this who never open up and get real with you and surely doubly frustrating if you're a journalist assigned to dig deeper with this person.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It really drives the bitter malcontent wannabe girl bosses here nuts when an idle woman is pretty, skinny, rich, married, with kids — and devout. Clutch the pearls - she CAN’T be perfect. Or maybe she is and it makes you jealous as hell.

Who are you adults who think anyone or their lives are perfect? I can't imagine the level of simplemindedness that this takes.

[Anonymous]

I also get the sense that a PR person was allowed to review the piece before print and insist on certain things. For instance, the first mention of her kids includes Jack (Pratt's son with Anna Faris). Then Jack is not only not mentioned again, but she speaks in detail about her daughters and being their mom and writing this book about sisters in part for them. There is no discussion of what it's like having a blended family. She speaks very briefly of the heightened media attention she got after starting to date Pratt, but just kind of glosses over it with some generic comments about privacy and then no further discussion.

It just reads like she spoke to this journalist for 15-20 minutes while a PR flack sat nearby and interrupted anytime the conversation hinted at anything remotely interesting, and then later the family's PR reps reviewed and marked it up and added things like "add mention of Jack here so it doesn't sound like she's ignoring her step-son" or "redact [xxx] about dating Pratt, it reveals too much about him."

I think that's what gives it this weird tension, like the writer dislikes her subject but you can't point specifically to any actual judgment. I just sense it was kind of shadow written by someone in PR. Katherine wanted the press for her book, but she wanted it without having to actually talk to anyone or reveal anything about herself, even though the only reason anyone would be interested in anything she's written is if she reveals something about her rather unusual and privileged life. Real catch 22 there.

[Anonymous]

If you look under basic in the dictionary, there's a photo of KSP. She's like some sort of composite of pumpkin spice and everything "nice."

[Anonymous]

This article reads so snarkily.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I also get the sense that a PR person was allowed to review the piece before print and insist on certain things. For instance, the first mention of her kids includes Jack (Pratt's son with Anna Faris). Then Jack is not only not mentioned again, but she speaks in detail about her daughters and being their mom and writing this book about sisters in part for them. There is no discussion of what it's like having a blended family. She speaks very briefly of the heightened media attention she got after starting to date Pratt, but just kind of glosses over it with some generic comments about privacy and then no further discussion.

It just reads like she spoke to this journalist for 15-20 minutes while a PR flack sat nearby and interrupted anytime the conversation hinted at anything remotely interesting, and then later the family's PR reps reviewed and marked it up and added things like "add mention of Jack here so it doesn't sound like she's ignoring her step-son" or "redact [xxx] about dating Pratt, it reveals too much about him."

I think that's what gives it this weird tension, like the writer dislikes her subject but you can't point specifically to any actual judgment. I just sense it was kind of shadow written by someone in PR. Katherine wanted the press for her book, but she wanted it without having to actually talk to anyone or reveal anything about herself, even though the only reason anyone would be interested in anything she's written is if she reveals something about her rather unusual and privileged life. Real catch 22 there.

There is zero chance something like this got pre-publication review.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also get the sense that a PR person was allowed to review the piece before print and insist on certain things. For instance, the first mention of her kids includes Jack (Pratt's son with Anna Faris). Then Jack is not only not mentioned again, but she speaks in detail about her daughters and being their mom and writing this book about sisters in part for them. There is no discussion of what it's like having a blended family. She speaks very briefly of the heightened media attention she got after starting to date Pratt, but just kind of glosses over it with some generic comments about privacy and then no further discussion.

It just reads like she spoke to this journalist for 15-20 minutes while a PR flack sat nearby and interrupted anytime the conversation hinted at anything remotely interesting, and then later the family's PR reps reviewed and marked it up and added things like "add mention of Jack here so it doesn't sound like she's ignoring her step-son" or "redact [xxx] about dating Pratt, it reveals too much about him."

I think that's what gives it this weird tension, like the writer dislikes her subject but you can't point specifically to any actual judgment. I just sense it was kind of shadow written by someone in PR. Katherine wanted the press for her book, but she wanted it without having to actually talk to anyone or reveal anything about herself, even though the only reason anyone would be interested in anything she's written is if she reveals something about her rather unusual and privileged life. Real catch 22 there.

There is zero chance something like this got pre-publication review.

I am actually surprised that it was published as is in the New York Times without being heavily edited. The intent of it is very clear.