Key Points
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Danielle Fishel believes there is a double standard at work on Dancing With the Stars.
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Discussing the judges’ scores for Tyler Cameron and Sharna Burgess on their final week, Fishel suggested that the judges “have a tendency to be harder on the women than they are on the male celebs.”
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The actress also believes the audience is harder on the female judges than they are on the men.
Danielle Fishel is calling out a Dancing With the Starsdouble standard.
The Boy Meets Worldalum and DWTSseason 34 vet had former pro and two-time Mirrorball Trophy winner Kym Johnson on a recent episode of her Ballroom Breakdownpodcast to break down Horror Movie Night.
Guest judge Shirley Ballas, a Latin dance icon who has long served as a judge on the British progenitor of DWTS, Strictly Come Dancing, shook things up on Oct. 27 by handing out a series of devastatingly low scores. After scoring actresses Julia Stiles and Tatyana Ali with a pair of 4s, Ballas gave Bachelorettealum Tyler Cameron and his pro partner, Sharna Burgess, a 5.
“I was surprised that Shirley did give him a five because I thought the girls were better than that,” Johnson candidly shared. “That’s exactly how I feel too,” Fishel joined, and then broke down where that feeling comes from.
“I also thought that a 5 was generous when she had given Tatyana and Julia a 4. I thought, ‘There’s no way that this dance was better than what we had seen. And so, if you were going to give the ladies 4s, I feel like this was worthy of a 4 as well,” Fishel explained.
But even back in week one, a 4 would have come as a shock. But Ballas is notorious for her strict judging. From Fishel’s and Johnson’s points of view, Cameron and Burgess’ shaky Viennese waltz was not noticeably better than Stiles’ and Ezra Sosa’s Argentine tango, or Ali’s and Jan Ravnik’s paso doble.
So why the 5 over a 4?
“I do believe that the judges, all of them, have a tendency to be harder on the women than they are on the male celebs,” Fishel ventured. “It could be wrong. But, in my opinion, I think sometimes the men get a pass that the women don’t get.”
That isn’t a new opinion among DWTSfans. There’s even data to back up the assertion that judges like Carrie Ann Inaba are softer on the male celebs than they are on the women. Just last year, Inaba admitted to Varietythat the assertion is “partly true.”
She explained, “I am the woman on the panel, and I understand what it is to be a woman, so I can get into more detail about what I’m seeing. Because I support women so much, I let them know what I see, because they are working so hard, I always feel it’s my responsibility if I sense somebody hasn’t given it their all, because I don’t want them to walk away with regret.”
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To that point, Fishel expanded her argument to include Inaba as a victim of gender-based bias. “That same can be said for the audience at home, watching the judges,” she said. “The men get away with being able to give a constructive criticism here or there, whereas the women judges, Carrie Ann and the guest judges, they get booed.
Johnson agreed, chiming in a quick “true!” while Fishel reasoned, “So in general, I think we see a little bit of unfairness with how women are treated in multiple different ways on the show.”
You can listen to Johnson’s full episode of Ballroom Breakdown above.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
