Ginia Bellafante


Ginia Bellafante is an American critic and columnist for The New York Times.

Career

Bellafante worked at Time, as a senior reporter covering fashion, until 1999. Bellafante then joined the New York Times as a fashion critic, and later worked as a television critic before joining the Metropolitan section covering New York City. In 2011, she began writing for the Big City column in The New York Times, "a weekly column dedicated life, culture, politics and policy in New York City".

Criticism

In 1998, Bellafante wrote a cover story for Time called "Is Feminism Dead?" claiming that young feminists care primarily about "their bodies" and "themselves." The story was critiqued by Erica Jong of The New York Observer, who said, "Times idiotic cover story on feminism is, in short, a symptom of what's wrong, not an analysis." Janelle Brown of Salon described it as "poorly thought-out."
Bellafante's New York Times review in 2011 of Game of Thrones was criticized by some as sexist for suggesting that only sexual content might motivate women to watch a complex fantasy story.
In April 2020, Bellafante came under fire for linking Fox News' and, in particular, Sean Hannity's, coverage of COVID-19 to a New York man's death. The man had contracted the virus while on a cruise, which he had decided to take after consuming media that had downplayed the threat of the virus. Several parts of the story were considered to be misleading by some sources; in particular, remarks by Hannity reported in the article were made after the cruise had already began. Bellafante herself had also downplayed the virus around the same time, saying she didn't understand why people aren't traveling to China.

Personal

Bellafante is a native of Long Island, and now lives in New York City with her husband and their son.