Have you ever thought about your personal brand? How you present yourself to the world? Probably not, but then again, as essayist Joanne Weintraub points out, you’re not an iconic TV star:
How do I love thee, Oprah Winfrey? Let me count the ways.
You’re a self-made woman who’s conquered New York and Hollywood by way of Milwaukee and Nashville, and who gives her hard-earned money away by the fistful, including something like half a billion dollars to educational causes alone. I love you for that.
Ialsoloveyourwit, yourwardrobe, that Super Bowl commercial you once did with David Letterman, and the amazing resilience it’s taken to keep losing the same boatload of weight again and again, no matter how often you keep gaining it back.
OK, Oprah, that last one probably sounded snarky, so let me tell you something about myself. Like you, I’m a yo-yo dieter, and also like you, my yo-yo swings up and down more wildly than most. In fact, I was once two-thirds of the woman I am today, and I’m trying to reclaim that healthier, happier me again.
Which brings me to your latest venture, buying a 10% share in Weight Watchers and putting yourself out there as its highest-profile spokeswoman since…well, since ever. Weight Watchers isn’t the only way to go, but they know a lot about losing weight, you know a lot about losing weight, and if I were a betting woman, I’d bet this relationship is going to work.
But Oprah? Girlfriend to girlfriend? Would you stop saying—and I’m quoting you verbatim here, because you say this a lot—“My heart is my brand”?
You said this recently in an interview about your Weight Watchers venture, you’ve said it about your O.W.N. cable channel, and I get what you mean. You do what you love, you’ve been hugely successful at marketing what you love, so when you put your very valuable name on something, you want the world to know that you’ve put your heart into it, too.
ButOprah, aheartisnotabrand. Aheartiswhatkeepsyourbloodpumping. It’syoursoul, your spirit, or whatever you want to call the most personal and most precious part of yourself. And it kind of makes me cringe to hear you confusing those things with your brand.
Not to be crass, but branding is about money and power. Donald Trump, for whom money and power go together like models and marriage, is a brand. Whether you want to buy that brand or not is a whole ’nother subject, and frankly I’m hoping that if I ignore that brand it will just go away quietly, or more likely go away noisily, so I won’t go there.
Oprah, I’m not naïve, and I know that you wouldn’t have as much power or as much money as you’ve amassed if both of them weren’t pretty important to you, too. But the reason I love you is that you do seem to have a heart almost as expansive as your credit limit. And when you tell us that your heart is your brand, well, I think you’re better than that.
So thanks for letting me get that off my chest, my dear idol, role model and secret friend. And be sure to let me know how your weight-loss battle is going. Because even if we don’t agree on hearts and brands, we’ll always have that in common. And from the bottom of MY heart, I hope that this battle is the last one for both of us.
Lake Effect essayist Joanne Weintraub is the former TV critic for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She’s currently a freelance writer and editor.
