Feminist icon joins Britain's 'Celebrity Big Brother'

LONDON - She's a feminist icon - and now, reality TV fodder.

Germaine Greer, whose 1970 book "The Female Eunuch" provided intellectual fuel for the women's movement, has agreed to spend two weeks locked in a house on the British show "Celebrity Big Brother" with, among others, Brigitte Nielsen, Sylvester Stallone's ex-wife.

"I've got to strike a blow for the old ladies," the 65-year-old Greer said before entering the camera-studded house Thursday.

Greer's participation is the latest surprise from the writer, who categorized contestants in an earlier version of the show as exhibitionists who "risked the wreck of their pampered egos."

Greer appears frequently on British television, usually on high-toned political and cultural debate programs. And she previously has sounded unimpressed with reality TV. Watching such shows, Greer wrote in 2001, "is about as dignified as looking through the keyhole in your teenage child's bedroom door. To do it occasionally would be shameful; to get hooked on it is downright depraved."

Many Britons, it seems, disagree. Previous reality shows have attracted up to 14 million viewers, more than a fifth of the population.

This is the third series of "Celebrity Big Brother," a spinoff from the reality hit in which a group of strangers share a house under constant surveillance.

The show combines the soapy, voyeuristic appeal of "Big Brother" with a boundless British fascination with celebrity. As Greer wrote in The Observer newspaper in 2001, reality TV "is not the end of civilization as we know it; it is civilization as we know it."

But some observers detect signs the format may be running out of steam.

Thursday's "Celebrity Big Brother" opener drew 5.2 million, a respectable figure for broadcaster Channel 4 - but 2 million fewer than the last series in 2002.

For the first time, the celebrities are being paid to take part. If she wins the $94,000 prize, Greer has said she will donate it to Buglife, a charity dedicated to saving Britain's bugs, slugs, snails and insects.